Skip Navigation

Brain 2005 128(2):443-446; doi:10.1093/brain/awh396
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Cornwell, J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Cornwell, J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Brain Vol. 128 No. 2 © Guarantors of Brain 2005; all rights reserved

Book review

THE HAND: A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY IN HUMAN BEING

Raymond Tallis 2003. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Price £19.99.

ISBN 0 7486 1738 8

I AM: A PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY INTO FIRST-PERSON BEING

Raymond Tallis 2004. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Price £19.99.

ISBN 0 7486 1951 8

THE KNOWING ANIMAL: A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH

Raymond Tallis 2004.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Price £19.99.

ISBN 0 7486 1953 4

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


Reading Raymond Tallis's formidable three-volume work on what it is to be a human being, puts one in mind—for its protean mix of science, philosophy, art and metaphysics—of the amateur (in the best sense) philosophizing of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Contrasts and comparisons with Coleridge, known only gradually for his wide-ranging philosophy, enable us, I believe, to get Tallis in much needed perspective. Literary, intellectually fretful, Tallis is a member of a rare breed of English polymaths who has been waging a lonely war against the explanations and final theories of radical scientific reductionism. Also in Coleridge's footsteps, Tallis has a tendency to ramble and be seduced by the sirens of German philosophy—Kant, Fichte and Frege in particular. The tendency is seldom entirely unfortunate; but one has to wonder how many readers will accompany him as he feels his way through the denser phenomenological fogs of Martin Heidegger, while occasionally slamming . . . [Full Text of this Article]

John Cornwell

Cambridge


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?