Product Description

'Grief and loneliness, depression, despair and failure - those things are the common human lot at least at times in all our lives'. Yet it is philosophy which, while not providing an answer to these problems, can enable us to prepare for them, and create strategies with which to deal with them. It is only through reflecting upon the world around us, reading, thinking, questioning, enjoying, that we can inculcate understanding, tolerance and importantly the courage to live our lives. It is our responsibility to live such 'considered lives' and to realise that we are authors of a narrative that can be shaped and controlled. This is the fifth in a series of essay miscellanies from our foremost philosopher A.C. Grayling, reflecting upon the form of our world and its multiplicity. The essays are grouped by theme into reflections upon life and the standards we live by, including vivid polemics and perceptive pieces on significant thinkers, contemporary rights and liberties issues. This book brilliantly articulates the philosophical debate and reflection that is needed to prepare us for life in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #216194 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Herald
"Grayling has that wonderful gift that all good teachers have, the ability to simplify"

Review
"Grayling has that wonderful gift that all good teachers have, the ability to simplify" (Herald )

About the Author
Dr A.C. Grayling is Reader at Birkbeck College, University of London, and is a Fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of numerous philosophical books and is a literary journalist and broadcaster. He has written an acclaimed biography of William Hazlitt, The Quarrel of the Age (W&N, 2002) and a play, On Religion.

Customer Reviews

Classic Grayling
As with the previous books in this series, this one sees Grayling eloquently applying philosophy to everyday life in an extremely readable and jargon-free manner. It's perfect for flicking through, either on a reasonably long bus journey or curled up on the sofa at home, with each short - but insightful - essay guaranteed to give you something to ponder or cause you to see the subject in a slightly different light.

Grayling is not simply a detached on-looker; a strong sense of humanistic ethics runs throughout his work, he repeatedly praises the emotions and arts which make life so interesting, while treating the abstract ideas and concepts which seek to cheapen human life (mainly, but not exclusively, religion) with scorn.

In short: warm, intelligent, insightful.

Who exactly is the intended audience for this stuff?
Grayling writes smugly, from what he clearly imagines to be a great height, downwards in the direction of what he equally clearly sees as his lowly and benighted readers. I spent an hour leafing through this yesterday and took away little more than a vague and amused impression that he was trying to patronise me. The fact that I agree with him about most things only made it worse: with friends like this, suddenly my enemies look a lot more dangerous.

Yuck.