A Little Book for New Philosophers: Why and How to Study Philosophy (Little Books)

“What can I know?”, “What should I do?”, and “What may I hope?”34 Here the universality of the questions comes out, paradoxically, in their first-person character, as questions for anyone.

Meanwhile, in the other camp, public philosophers such as Alain de Botton have sometimes risked derision to publish books or establish institutions designed to take a dry and analytical field back to its humanitarian roots. They have dared to remind us how the great thinkers of history might help us navigate our modern world contentedly and with mi

Many ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, for example, not only thought philosophies of life were worth contemplating but thought the raison d’être of philosophy was to develop them. These philosophers typically had an interest in other areas of philosophy as well—in logic, for example—but only because they thought pursuing that interest would hel