[Ayer, A.J.] Rogers, Ben.

A.J. Ayer: A Life.

London, Chatto & Windus, 1999. 16 cm x 24 cm. XII, 402 pages including photographs. Original hardcover with dustjacket in protective Mylar. Excellent condition with only minor signs of external wear. Contains two photocopies from a newspaper review pasted on back endpapers. Clean inside with solid binding.

Includes for example the following chapters: Teachers, Bankers, Merchants, Wives / School-days / Apprentice / Student / Marriage among the Scientists / Language, Truth and Logic, or the Philosophy of Nonsense / The Meaning of Life / Oxford, New York, Toulon / Benthamite Saint / Retirement etc.

″Freddie Ayer (1910-89) was one of the most influential philosophers of his generation, while his television and radio appearances, especially in the original `Brains Trust’, made him Britain’s first ‘media philosopher’. In this lively, penetrating study – the first, fully authorised, biography – Ben Rogers relates Ayer’s ideas to his remarkable life, strangely troubled beneath its glamorous surface. The ‘quintessentially British’ thinker was the only child of a Swiss-French father and Dutch-Jewish mother; after a lonely childhood he found his true role at Oxford. A friend of Isaiah Berlin, and a follower first of Bertrand Russell, and then of Wittgenstein. Ayer won fame at twenty-four with his brilliantly iconoclastic LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC – an essential text for students ever since. Ben Rogers shows Ayer at work, in London, Oxford and America, and also at play, as a passionate follower of cricket and football, a great dancer, a lover of witty conversation and beautiful 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, inimate, zestful and often poignant, this is a powerful biography.” (Amazon)

• Keywords: Analytic Philosophy · Biography · Catalogue Autumn 2020 · Language · Philosophy
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9780701163167
• Inventory Number: 78207AB

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