Ideas to Save Your Life: Philosophy for Wisdom, Solace and Pleasure

Description

A profound, uplifting and accessible introduction to key philosophical ideas and their relevance to everyday life. This book is about the quest for order in a perplexing world. Ideas to Save Your Life follows Michael McGirr's much-admired Books that Saved My Life (2018). This time, instead of sharing his love of literature, McGirr shares his love of philosophy, focusing on the works of twenty-plus eminent thinkers across history. The book goes back to Pythagoras and comes forward to the contemporary Australian Frank Jackson; back to Mungo Woman and forward to Martha Nussbaum, by way of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. It is animated by two related questions- from where do we draw a sense of life's purpose? And how can philosophy make life better? It ranges widely across subjects-from solitude to community, language to order, experience to ecstasy, the idea of good to that of a good idea. McGirr's approach is warm and inviting. Drawing on his many years of teaching philosophy to teenagers, he shares stories from his life and the lives of others. Ideas to Save Your Life is often funny, but it is always serious about the task of philosophy. It makes the impenetrable accessible, the indescribable palpable, and invites you to change how you see the world.

Michael McGirr is the bestselling author of Books that Saved My Life, Snooze, Bypass and Things You Get for Free. He has reviewed almost one thousand books, his short fiction has appeared in publications in Australia and overseas, and he has been publisher of Eureka Street and fiction editor of Meanjin. He works in international aid and development for a large NGO, and lives in Melbourne with his wife, Jenny, and their three teenage children.

'Michael McGirr is a bit of a twenty-first century alchemist with words: nothing is too deep to be made understandable, his aim is consolation and kindness always, and the result is often magic.' * Geraldine Doogue * 'His anecdotes will make you laugh out loud. If you haven't read any books by him before, seek them out.' -- Good Reading Magazine 'McGirr's essays are often like good sermons, with their small bits of wisdom expressed simply.' -- Age on The Books That Saved My Life 'A wonderful excursion through a host of ideas and thinkers.' * Meredith Lake, ABC RN Soul Search * 'A tonic...A book to unscramble your brain and help refresh your perspective.' * Happy Mag * 'A lively, often comic, narrative combined with a romp through some of the key ideas of ancient philosophy...What McGirr draws from the well of philosophy serves his purpose as a storyteller and a critic of society, and he leads us from the personal to the philosophical in an entertaining and often insightful way.' * Janna Thompson, Australian Book Review * 'A bracing romp...Definitely add it to the Christmas list.' * Fullers Weekly * 'McGirr's survey of more than twenty major philosophers, including Socrates, Montaigne, William James, Simone Weil and Mary Midgley, is very much about which of their ideas retains authentic traction in a vocational life dedicated to making the world a more just and humane place...[This is an] erudite yet chatty collection of essays...New lights turned on for me as I read Ideas to Save Your Life. I'm thankful for the laughs too.' * Gregory Day, Age * 'Humorous and passionate...The life that McGirr commends is one that risks insecurity, is sensitive to one's fragility and fallibility, compassionate to other human beings, and full of wonder at a beautiful and death-marked world. The natural response to such a world is one of gratitude.' * Eureka Street *