Items24The creator’s order
  1. 1What does it all mean? (1987)What does it all mean? (1987)Published Jan 1, 1987How can you know what someone else is feeling? Thomas Nagel gives that question a short chapter alongside others on knowledge, free will, and death. Start here if you want someone to make familiar assumptions harder to take for granted using a few pages and very little specialist language.0
  2. 2The pig that wants to be eaten (2005)The pig that wants to be eaten (2005) 7.6/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2005What would you do if your dinner could tell you it wanted to be eaten? Julian Baggini’s short thought experiments start with situations you can picture and change one part of them at a time. Pick a single case to read and argue about when you want philosophy to give you a question you can try…0
  3. 3The Problems of Philosophy (1900)The Problems of Philosophy (1900) 6.7/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1900What do you know about the table in front of you? Bertrand Russell starts with an ordinary surface whose color and shape appear different as the observer moves. Read it to see how a question about a familiar object can become a separate question about what our senses give us.0
  4. 4The Socrates Express (2020)The Socrates Express (2020) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2020What would it take to listen more carefully? Eric Weiner links ordinary tasks and difficulties to individual thinkers, including his chapter on listening with Schopenhauer. The chapters give you several entry points. Choose this if you like to see a philosophical idea tested against what a person…0
  5. 5Life Is Hard (2022)Life Is Hard (2022) 10.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2022What makes failing at something different from being a failure? Kieran Setiya treats that as one of several ways an ordinary life can be hard, alongside loneliness and loss. Choose it for a philosopher’s way of making room for those experiences without assuming they can all be turned into success…0
  6. 6The Meaning of Life (2007)The Meaning of Life (2007) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2007Is the meaning of a life the same thing as the meaning of a word? Terry Eagleton starts with what the question itself can mean. His short book moves between literature and philosophy, which makes it a good choice if you want to find out why versions of the question can lead to such different…0
  7. 7Why does the world exist? (2012)Why does the world exist? (2012)Published Jan 1, 2012Why is there anything at all? Jim Holt takes the question to philosophers, scientists, and others whose work gives them different reasons to think it has an answer. Choose it if you want to follow a curious reader from one kind of explanation to another before deciding what would satisfy you.0
  8. 8How to Live (2010)How to Live (2010)Published Jan 1, 2010How much can you learn by paying attention to your own habits? Sarah Bakewell organizes Montaigne’s life and essays around possible answers to the question of how to live. Choose it to see what one writer can discover by taking seriously the small experiences that most books about big questions…0
  9. 9Think (1999)Think (1999) 8.6/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1999How sure can you be that you know what you think you know? Simon Blackburn makes knowledge one of the starting points of an introduction that also takes up the mind and freedom. Read it when you want to see how philosophers build a line of reasoning or find the point at which it no longer follows.0
  10. 10The consolations of philosophy (2000)The consolations of philosophy (2000) 9.3/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2000What can you do with the feeling that life ought to have gone another way? Alain de Botton brings Seneca into a chapter on frustration and sets other philosophers beside ordinary disappointments. Choose this if you want a book whose questions begin in everyday life and whose answers are specific…0