Daniel Dennett, one of the most famous and prolific philosophers of his generation, now in his early eighties, has written a memoir recounting the achievements, battles and pleasures of an extraordinarily full life. His career in philosophy has also included frequent forays into the related disciplines of neuroscience, computer science, psychology and evolutionary theory, and there have also been serious engagements with music, sculpture, sailing, farming, carpentry and the brewing of cider and calvados. We get a lot of detail about these pursuits, and a sense of the joy Dennett derived from his huge appetite for doing, making, and knowing things.
Dennett was born in Boston in 1942 but spent his early years in Beirut, the son of a historian of Islam who was the cultural attaché of the American legation there, though he really worked for US intelligence. He was the first CIA agent to die in action, killed in a plane crash in Ethiopia in 1947 when his son was five. Dennett grew up in Massachusetts, got an undergraduate philosophy degree at Harvard and then went to Oxford, where he studied with Gilbert Ryle. He says he was no good at exams, so to avoid them he pursued a doctorate – which at Oxford required only a dissertation – and finished it, amazingly, in just two years. He was then recommended by Ryle to the philosophy department at the new University of California at Irvine, and began his teaching career there at the age of 23, with most of his philosophical education ahead of him – he learned the subject mainly by having to teach it.
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