Ten Philosophical Mistakes
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By Kenneth L. Miner on October 22, 2000 Review of Ten Philosophical Mistakes
The thesis of this book is that Western philosophy has been for the most part in serious error for the last three centuries. Many people would consider that a sufficient reason to render the well-known judgment, "I couldn't pick it up." I note, though, that E. F. Schumacher makes a very similar claim at the very beginning of _Small is Beautiful_, and that book is so popular that our local university library has three copies. And there are other such cases in which courage is rewarded.
In any event, Adler's general argument is this: the important modern philosophers, beginning with Descartes, made certain errors which have had disastrous results for contemporary notions of the objects of consciousness, the nature of the human mind, the nature of language, of knowledge, of moral principles, of free will, and even the nature of happiness. Succeeding philosophers, especially Kant, instead of ferreting out these initial errors, tried instead to circumvent their consequences, thus in a sense compounding the errors. The errors were made due to ignorance on the part of modern philosophers of ancient and medieval philosophy, especially Aristotle and Aquinas. (to read more click ==> here)