Description
‘Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects’ Steven Pinker
‘There is a question everyone has to ask and answer – in fact, has to keep on asking and keep on answering. It is, “How should I live my life?” meaning, “What values shall I live by? What sort of person should I be? What shall I aim for?” The great majority of people do not ask this question, they merely answer it unthinkingly, by adopting conventional views of life and what matters in it…’
From Stoics to existentialists, in philosophy and literature, discussion of the philosophy of life — of love and death, of courage, fortitude and wisdom – challenges us all to think about what kinds of life are truly worth living. In this summation of a lifetime’s thinking and writing about this great question, A.C. Grayling explores with clarity and depth the ideas that each of us must use in answering it for ourselves.
Philosophy and Life brings together wisdom from across eras and continents in a tour de force on the philosophy of being human in a complicated world.
‘An enthusiastic thinker who embraces humour, common sense and lucidity’ Independent
A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He has written and edited more than thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize. His many books include The Meaning of Things, Democracy and Its Crisis, The History of Philosophy and For the Sake of the World: Why Our Planet’s Crises Need Global Agreement Now.
