Purchase
From Socrates to Nietzsche
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
January 2011
On Sale: January 4, 2011
432 pages
ISBN: 0374150850
EAN: 9780374150853
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
We all want to know how to live. But before the good life
was reduced to ten easy steps or a prescription from the
doctor, philosophers offered arresting answers to the most
fundamental questions about who we are and what makes for a
life worth living. In Examined Lives, James Miller returns to this vibrant
tradition with short, lively biographies of twelve famous
philosophers. Socrates spent his life examining himself and
the assumptions of others. His most famous student, Plato,
risked his reputation to tutor a tyrant. Diogenes carried a
bright lamp in broad daylight and announced he was “looking
for a man.” Aristotle’s alliance with Alexander the Great
presaged Seneca’s complex role in the court of the Roman
Emperor Nero. Augustine discovered God within himself.
Montaigne and Descartes struggled to explore their deepest
convictions in eras of murderous religious warfare. Rousseau
aspired to a life of perfect virtue. Kant elaborated a new
ideal of autonomy. Emerson successfully preached a gospel of
self-reliance for the new American nation. And Nietzsche
tried “to compose into one and bring together what is
fragment and riddle and dreadful chance in man,” before he
lapsed into catatonic madness. With a flair for paradox and rich anecdote, Examined Lives
is a book that confirms the continuing relevance of
philosophy today—and explores the most urgent questions
about what it means to live a good life.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy