Offbeat Philosophers #356

Book review

Feb 17, 2025

Dear friends of Daily Philosophy,

Welcome back! This morning, I had another exciting live session reading Descartes’ Meditations on the Internet. If you’d like to take part in this, it’s completely free and you just need your phone or computer and access to YouTube. We are going through the text, discussing the most important passages, and explaining the background and implications of the work. If you ever wanted to read the classics of philosophy but found it difficult to get into them without help, this is your opportunity! Next week, we’ll be discussing the Third and Fourth Meditation. The live sessions take place:

US: Sunday, 8 pm Eastern Time, 5 pm Pacific Time
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Hong Kong: Monday morning, 8 am

and are each about an hour long. You can find all the past recordings that cover Epicurus, Epictetus and Stoicism, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Plato’s Symposium, and now Descartes’ Discourse and Meditations right here:

https://www.youtube.com/@dailyphilosophy/streams

And here is the latest of my lecture videos on Descartes’ Wax Thought Experiment from the Second Meditation, in case you’re interested:

And now, back to this newsletter! Today we have a book review of a book I received last September, and that, with my classes, surgery and everything else, I forgot to review here: Lawrence Harvey’s Offbeat Philosophers: Thinkers Who Played a Different Tune. So let’s jump right into it!

Offbeat Philosophers

Lawrence Harvey (2024). Offbeat Philosophers: Thinkers Who Played a Different Tune. Iff Books. 96 pages. ISBN: Paperback: 978-1803416144. Get it here on Amazon UK. Paperback: 7.35 GBP, Kindle: 6.98 GBP. Link for Amazon US.

Offbeat Philosophers provides short introductions to the main ideas of ten important “offbeat” thinkers. It is a useful first introduction to some of the concepts that these philosophers worked on, but it could be more exciting and fun to read.

The author

Lawrence Harvey is a lecturer in Liberal Arts at the University of Winchester and teaches Philosophy at Peter Symonds College, Winchester. He writes on the philosophy of Levinas, Camus and Max Stirner, and also, his bio tells us, on “ethical modality of postmodern literature,” whatever that means. He also founded an online philosophy platform, “The Vectis College of Liberal Arts,” (link here, if I got that right) which looks like a similar project to Daily Philosophy — a website with philosophy articles that might be of interest to the general public, but, differently from what we are doing here, mostly based on what generally is seen as continental philosophy.

It is not easy to find more information on the author’s work. Philpapers lists three articles by “Lawrence R. Harvey,” and another three by “Lawrence Harvey” without the “R,” who may or may not be the same person. Except for one 2021 article, the others have all been published before 2012. Offbeat Philosophers seems to be his first and only book so far.

Food for Thought

Offbeat Philosophers is a small book — something to read while commuting on a train within perhaps a working week. It contains ten short philosophical biographies that cover, if we subtract bibliographies, appendices and introductions, just over 50 pages — around 5 pages for each author, of which one or two are what I would call “revision questions” in my lecture notes, and what the author calls “Food for Thought”: a list of points for the reader to consider. These look, for example in the case of Malebranche, like this:

Are you essentially two substances: a material body and an immaterial mind/soul?
Or are you matter in motion and everything about you is, at least in theory, explainable by physics?
Are you an immaterial mind or soul and the physical body is an illusion?
Supposing you are composed of two substances, mind and body, how do these very different substances interact?
Consider how it would be possible for an immaterial cog to interact or mesh with a material cog. If we extrapolate from this example, how can the immaterial mind animate the material body? How can a thought (rather than a brain process) cause the body to move or act?
More broadly, what causes things to happen in the universe?
Do your desires and your will cause things to happen in the world?
... and so on.

And this is, in my opinion, the first problem with this book: How is the target reader of a popular philosophy book expected to deal with a question like “More broadly, what causes things to happen in the universe?” that jumps at them from out of the blue? And what will this reader do if this is only one question out of twelve that are listed at the end of the Malebranche chapter? Are they supposed to stop reading and ponder each question for an indefinite amount of time until they have reached a conclusion? Are they supposed to glance at these questions and then forget about them? To discuss them with their partners? To google them? To ask ChatGPT?

The problem is that the book does not provide the reader with any sort of philosophical background that would enable them to analyse such questions productively. The chapter on Malebranche gives a very short biographical intro, one paragraph on his philosophical inspiration from reading Descartes, and then goes on to discuss occasionalism, the “vision in God,” and the reception and continuing influence of Malebranche on Leibniz, Arnauld and Schopenhauer. The total length of the chapter is six pages, plus one page of “Food for Thought” questions, but the reader is not treated to any detailed discussion of the mind-body problem, except for an explanation of occasionalism. Therefore, a question like “What causes things to happen in the universe?” cannot be answered by the reader using any knowledge acquired in this book. The reader would either have to do their own research, or just skip these questions entirely.

The philosophers

The author clearly warns us in the title that we’re going to discuss “offbeat” philosophers, but I was still somewhat surprised by just how offbeat the selection is. Here is the table of contents:

Introduction 3
I. Max Stirner: Egoism 9
II. J. W. Dunne: Time and Immortality 14
III. Donna Haraway: The Rise of the Cyborgs 20
IV. T. E. Hulme: Schismatic Poetics 26
V. Nicolas Malebranche: Causation and God 32
VI. Paul Rée: The Myth of Free Will 39
VII. Clive Bell: The Value of Art 45
VIII. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia: Mind and Motion 53
IX. Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics and Otherness 60
X. Jalal al-Din Rumi: The Extinction of the Soul 6

First, I would have expected some of the more eminent or well-known “offbeat” philosophers. Of course, one may disagree about what the meaning of “offbeat” here is, but I thought that it meant something like “eccentric,” “off the beaten path,” or “non-mainstream.” Nietzsche would, in my mind, qualify as offbeat, as well as Schopenhauer perhaps, Wittgenstein, or even Leibniz with his monads that don’t have windows. Pythagoras, who died because he refused to cross a field of beans and who wouldn’t stir a fire, might certainly be called offbeat, and Empedocles, the magician philosopher who was swallowed by a volcano and turned into a god also seems like a good candidate. Cagliostro was not really a philosopher, but certainly offbeat, as were Aleister Crowley and Alan Watts. Our profession is not lacking offbeat figures.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that I would call Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, on whom I wrote an article on Daily Philosophy a while ago “offbeat.” Yes, she was unusual in that she was a woman in a men’s world, but she was highly educated and had very sane things to say about the less sensible parts of Descartes’ philosophy, particularly his claims about the pineal gland and the mind-body interaction. Rumi also seems to stretch the meaning of “offbeat philosopher.” He was a poet, a mystic, an Islamic scholar — but a philosopher? And is Donna Haraway really a philosopher in the traditional sense, or not rather a feminist theorist?

Generally, I have the impression that the selection here was dictated more by what thinkers the author already knew well or had previously written about, rather than the desire to make a representative list of “offbeat philosophers” that would cover the most relevant figures.

Second, I was wondering how the order of discussion for those philosophers who were included was determined. It’s not alphabetical, but it’s also not chronological, and neither are the thinkers grouped by topic: Malebranche’s occasionalism is separated by two chapters (on free will and art) from Elisabeth’s and Descartes’ discussion on the pineal gland — why? And Levinas does not seem to sit too comfortably right between Elisabeth and Rumi.

As it is, the selection seems, unfortunately, rather arbitrary and disorganised. It would have been nice to see some kind of organising principle at work here, some progression of topics perhaps, that would allow the reader to get deeper insights into the problems as the book progresses. But I cannot see anything like that here.

Writing and style

The writing style is pleasant and not difficult to follow, but it also somewhat lacks flair. Given that this is not a textbook, but a discussion of “offbeat” philosophers, one would expect the prose, the observations, and the biographical details in general to be a little more fun. Here is a typical paragraph from the book:

Born in Paris in August 1638, the young Nicolas [Malebranche] was by all accounts a frail child. Due in part to a painful malformation of the spine, he was educated at home; his pious mother, Catherine de Lauzon, provided watchful supervision. Later, he studied at the Collège de la Marche and subsequently the Sorbonne, becoming ever more dissatisfied with the ladles of Aristotelian thought served up as part of his Scholastic education. Having rejected a canonry at Notre-Dame de Paris, he entered the Oratory in 1660 — an order founded by Cardinal Bérulle, a theologian credited with encouraging Descartes’ own philosophical speculations. In 1664, Malebranche was ordained.

Well, yes, fine. But it all reads more or less like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by which, by the way, this beginning of the chapter seems to have been — at least — “inspired.” Here is the SEP:

Malebranche was born in Paris on August 6, 1638, ... Malebranche was one of many children born to his mother, Catherine de Lauzon ... As in the case of Descartes and Pascal, Malebranche was born in frail health. His particular affliction was a severe malformation of the spine, and due to this condition as well as his weak lungs he needed to be tutored at home until the age of sixteen. Subsequently he was a student at the Collège de la Marche, and after graduating he went to study theology at the Sorbonne. His education left him with a distaste for a scholasticism that focused on the work of Aristotle. Thus, in 1660 he decided to leave the universities and to enter the Oratory, a religious congregation founded in 1611 by the Augustinian theologian Pierre Bérulle (1575–1629) ... He was ordained a priest on September 14, 1664.

There is an obvious similarity between the two accounts. The SEP is, despite that fact, not credited in the book as a source, but another work by Tad Schmaltz, the SEP article’s author, is. I am not saying that this should be seen as plagiarism — after all, how much differently can one describe the main events in the life of a 17th century philosopher? But it is certainly inelegant — if you are going to write a book of biographical sketches, you should aim to do better than just paraphrase the SEP sentence for sentence.

And this seems to be a stylistic trait that runs through the whole book: the prose never really takes off, never excites or delights. It does its job, it informs and educates, but that’s it. As a bit of an unfair comparison, here is how Lytton Strachey, one of the English language’s greatest biographers, introduces his subject, Cardinal Manning:

In Manning, so it appeared, the Middle Ages lived again. The tall gaunt figure, with the face of smiling asceticism, the robes, and the biretta, as it passed in triumph from High Mass at the Oratory to philanthropic gatherings at Exeter Hall, from Strike Committees at the Docks to Mayfair drawing-rooms where fashionable ladies knelt to the Prince of the Church, certainly bore witness to a singular condition of affairs. What had happened? Had a dominating character imposed itself upon a hostile environment? Or was the nineteenth century, after all, not so hostile? Was there something in it, scientific and progressive as it was, which went out to welcome the representative of ancient tradition and uncompromising faith? Had it, perhaps, a place in its heart for such as Manning — a soft place, one might almost say? Or, on the other hand, was it he who had been supple and yielding? He who had won by art what he would never have won by force, and who had managed, so to speak, to be one of the leaders of the procession less through merit than through a superior faculty for gliding adroitly to the front rank? And, in any case, by what odd chances, what shifts and struggles, what combinations of circumstance and character, had this old man come to be where he was? Such questions are easier to ask than to answer; but it may be instructive, and even amusing, to look a little more closely into the complexities of so curious a story.

This was a long quote, and sorry if you are reading this on your phone, but I think that it was worth it. You can find the whole work for free, online, right here. See how Strachey reaches for the very essence of the Cardinal’s personality, how he weaves his subject’s life into the cultural tapestry of its time, how he inquires to find the underlying motifs, the forces and currents that shaped the person’s destiny. The best biographies are like that, and one wishes that Harvey’s book had at least tried a little harder to give the reader even a faint taste of such a treatment.

Conclusion

The book is not bad. It is a serviceable, if short, introduction to the work of ten thinkers one might not otherwise have heard of or know any details about. But it is also a bit of a missed opportunity. One cannot shake off the suspicion that this book is not a work of love, but an exercise the author had to undergo in order perhaps to qualify for some career milestone. It is, certainly, what Hollywood calls a “high-concept” book: an idea that is easy to grasp and that will appeal to the masses. Quirky, offbeat philosophers? Yeah. Bring it on!

Unfortunately, the execution is bland, the revision questions — sorry, the “Food for Thought” — unmotivated and impossible to tackle with the discussion provided. The reader will get some information, perhaps enough to get them interested in one or more of these thinkers and to make them look up other sources. Dunne, Haraway, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Levinas and Rumi certainly deserve to be known more widely among general audiences. But did they deserve to be presented in prose that is virtually indistinguishable from an online encyclopedia’s?

A very basic, introductory book about “offbeat philosophers” should be, first and foremost, entertaining — and then educational. This book, unfortunately, falls somewhat short on both accounts.

Daily Philosophy