A. J. Ayer: A Life

A. J. Ayer: A Life

by Ben Rogers (Author)

Synopsis

Freddie Ayer (1910-89) was one of the most influential philosophers of his generation, while his television and radio appearances made him Britain's first 'media philosopher'. Ben Rogers relates Ayer's ideas to his remarkable life, strangely troubled beneath its glamorous surface. A friend of Isaiah Berlin, and a follower first of Bertrand Russell, and then of Wittgenstein, Ayer won fame at 24 with his brilliantly iconclastic LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC - an essential text for students ever since. Rogers shows Ayer at work and also at play, as a passionate follower of cricket and football, a great dancer, a lover of witty conversation and beautful women. Married four times, Ayer was a leading figure in London 'cafe society', yet he was also a controversial public figure and broadcaster, vehemently left-wing in the 1930s, and later President of the British Humanist Association and the Homosexual Law Reform Society. Colourful, intimate, zestful and often poignant, this is a powerful biography of a provocative, cosmopolitan thinker and an intriguing, multi-faceted character.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 416
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 04 May 2000

ISBN 10: 0099536811
ISBN 13: 9780099536819

Media Reviews
A feat of biography that deserves to take its place alongside the two other great biographies of philosophers of recent times: Michael Ignatieff's Isaiah Berlin and Ray Monk's Wittgenstein . - Mail on Sunday Rogers--provides excellent and sympathetic summaries of all Ayer's main books and articles. Admirable. - Sunday Times
Author Bio
Ben Rogers wrote his doctoral thesis at Oxford on seventeenth-century moral and political thought, and also has an MA from Columbia University, New York. He has produced programmes on philosophy for BBC Radio 3 and writes regularly for the Independent, the Independent on Sunday and other newspapers. He is the author of Pascal: In Praise of Vanity in the 'Great Philosophers' series. He lives in London.