Over at NDPR, Michael Kremer has “a review of Scott Soames’s two volume history of 20th Century philosophy”:http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=4061. Here’s how it starts and ends.

bq. These volumes are certain to become the standard history of analytic philosophy, and with good reason: they are clearly written, carefully argued, densely packed books, by a leading contemporary philosopher. They will help to shape a generation’s conception of the history of their discipline. Yet, in spite of their many virtues, there is cause to worry in this fact. For they also have many flaws, organizational, historical, and interpretive. As a result, readers of Soames’s books may come away with a distorted and incomplete picture of the history of analytic philosophy.

bq. …

bq. I will end this review with a confession. As I read these books, I often found myself persuaded on one or another point, and I could not help admiring the clarity and power of the presentation. Yet I also experienced a growing feeling of irritation and frustration, slipping at times into anger. Perhaps this review displays too much residual irritation, frustration, and even anger. I hope that it also conveys some of the ground for these feelings. I do not want to dissuade anyone from reading these books. There is much to be gained from them. But they should be approached with caution. Soames recommends reading them in conjunction with the primary sources. (Vol. 1, xviii) He is right — the best advice I can offer is to do so, and then form your own opinions.

I can certainly sympathise, and I agree with the final advice. Soames does an excellent job of telling a story, perhaps _the_ story, of 20th century philosophy. Kremer argues that, like all good storytellers, Soames doesn’t always let the facts get in the way of a good story, so if you want to know _exactly_ what various philosophers said, you’ll have to read them yourself. But we don’t read historical works for the details, we have the primary sources for that. There’s still a lot to be learned from Soames’s overview, and from his perspective. Still, if you do care about the details of some views, it’s easy to get irritated at the way they get shoehorned into the story.

Zadie Smith wrote somewhere that one of the hard things about writing novels is that the characters have to carry off not only being John Smith, hard enough work in itself, but representing the decline and fall of western civilisation. The characters in Soames’s story have to carry off not only being Gilbert Ryle, but representing everything that is wrong with ordinary language philosophy and behaviourism. It’s a hard ask, and probably more than the real Gilbert Ryle could do. But it’s something anyone who wants to tell a story about the history of philosophy will have to ask of him. So maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on historical storytellers.