Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

Robert Rowland Smith

ISBN 10: 1439148678 / ISBN 13: 9781439148679

Editore: Free Press, 2010

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Codice articolo G1439148678I4N00

Riassunto:

Have breakfast with Socrates, go to work with Nietzsche, head to the gym with Foucault, then have sex with Ovid (or Simone de Beauvoir).

Former Oxford Philosophy Fellow Robert Rowland Smith whisks you through an ordinary day with history's most extraordinary thinkers, explaining what they might have to say about your routine. From waking up in the morning through traveling to work, shopping, eating, going to a party, falling asleep, and dreaming, Smith connects our most mundane habits to the wider world of ideas.

Start with waking up: What does it really mean to be awake? How do we know we're not still dreaming? Descartes argues that if you're able to doubt whether you're awake, you are at least thinking, and so you probably exist -- no small achievement for first thing in the morning. Or take going to the gym: As you toil on the treadmill, is your panting a sign of virtue or of vice, of healthy exertion or of unhealthy narcissism? Working out is a version of what Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic -- a kind of spiritual exercise, it also leads to worldly vanity.

With dry wit and marvelous invention, Smith draws on philosophy, literature, art, politics, and psychology to wake us up to a stunning range of ideas about how to live. Neither breakfast, lunch, nor dinner will ever be the same again.

Informazioni sull?autore: Robert spent the first part of his career as a Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and the second as a partner in a leading firm of management consultants.He has written for The Independent, been profiled in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, contributed to books on philosophy for children, and broadcast for BBC Radio. Robert now divides his time between consulting, writing, and giving talks about the philosophy of life. He lives in London with his wife and has three daughters.

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (...
Casa editrice: Free Press
Data di pubblicazione: 2010
Legatura: Hardcover
Condizione: Very Good
Condizione sovraccoperta: No Jacket