logo
Wrong email address or username
Wrong email address or username
Incorrect verification code
The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy - Colin McGinn
The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy
by: (author)
3.33 15
Chapter OneFirst StirringsI was born in 1950, five years after the end of World War II, in West Hartlepool, county Durham, a small mining town in the northeast of England. The hospital in which I was born was a converted workhouse, or homeless shelter as it would be known today. My mother was... show more
Chapter OneFirst StirringsI was born in 1950, five years after the end of World War II, in West Hartlepool, county Durham, a small mining town in the northeast of England. The hospital in which I was born was a converted workhouse, or homeless shelter as it would be known today. My mother was twenty years old, my father twenty-six, and I was their first child. Both my grandfathers — whose names were both Joseph, like my father's — were coal miners, as were all of my uncles except one, who was a carpenter and bricklayer. Life expectancy among miners was low, and both my grandfathers died young from work-related diseases. Everyone in my family was short and wiry. My paternal grandfather was known in the mine as "Joe the Agitator" because of his activities in fighting for improved working conditions; he eventually became secretary of the local miners' union, and read Karl Marx and Rudyard Kipling in his spare time. He was a kindly, clipped man, not much given to conversation, devoted to his Woodbine smokes. I never remember a time when my tiny, shrill-voiced, constantly cussing grandmother had any teeth; she chewed meat with her gums. She said "thee" and "thou" (pronounced thoo) as part of ordinary speech, as in "thee knaas Jack Ridley" (meaning "you know Jack Ridley"). Of a blunt knife she would say "I could ride bare-arsed to London on this" and give out a throaty, high-pitched cackle. I have no recollection of my maternal grandfather, though his widow is still miraculously alive at ninety. My father left school at fourteen and went "down the pit," his first jobbeing to pick stones out of the coal as it was shunted by on a massive belt contraption. But he quickly escaped this form of premature burial by going to night school and learning the building trade. He was sufficiently proficient at this to become general manager of a small building
show less
Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780060957605 (0060957603)
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages no: 256
Edition language: English
Bookstores:
Community Reviews
makinghismark
makinghismark rated it
An interesting intellectual journey with Colin McGinn, as he recounts his love and pursuit of all things philosophical. I learned some of the fundamentals of modern philosophical thought along the way; and found out that Daniel C. Dennett and Colin McGinn differ greatly in their assessment of the co...
Other editions (6)
Books by Colin McGinn
On shelves
Share this Book
Need help?