Description
‘Philosophy in the Bookshop’ is our free monthly event that takes place on the first Saturday of every month. Public Philosopher, Author and host, Nigel Warburton interviews a different speaker about their chosen topic in our Philosophy Department. This month, Nigel is in conversation with Jonathan Reé about his book, ‘Witcraft’
‘We English men have wits,’ wrote the clergyman Ralph Lever in 1573, and, ‘we have also framed unto ourselves a language.’
Witcraft is a fresh and brilliant history of how philosophy became established in English. It presents a new form of philosophical storytelling and challenges what Jonathan Rée calls the ‘condescending smugness’ of traditional histories of philosophy. Rée tells the story of philosophy as it was lived and practised, embedded in its time and place, by men and women from many walks of life, engaged with the debates and culture of their age. And, by focusing on the rich history of works in English, including translations, he shows them to be quite as colourful, diverse, inventive and cosmopolitan as their continental counterparts.
Witcraft overturns the established orthodoxies of the history of philosophy, and celebrates the diversity, vitality and inventiveness of philosophical thought.