It’s been a year to really get you thinking, and think I did. For almost half of the year I was on furlough, leaving me with more free time on my hands than I had had in years. Time that I spent thinking and reading, and reading and thinking, and thinking about what I’d been reading – which led me to reading philosophy. I’m going to share with you a couple of the books that really stuck with me in the hopes that you can read them too and start to see philosophy, like I have, as an anchor in a choppy sea and a safe place to call home.
The first ever philosophy book I read back in the spring lockdown was Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It by Daniel Klein, it was a perfect place to dip my toe in. The book is part history of philosophy, part autobiography; Klein reflects on a personal notebook of "Pithies" (quotes from, and notes on, various philosophers he collected during his youth) having since abandoned this notebook he picked it up again as an old man ready to reflect. He introduces the philosophers as friends, people who dropped in and out of his life as his circumstances changed and he developed as a thinker. The book made me feel nostalgic for the University days of discussing deep topics into the wee hours and simultaneously excited for the future where I, like he, may have the opportunity to reflect on it all and feel the richness of my own life built of layers of influences to that point.
From this readable and relatable intro to philosophy, it was a sharp incline into the ‘source texts’ for me – I had enough time on my hands to properly read and I was looking to be challenged. Picking up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations I didn’t find a challenge, I found comfort - it was the perfect book for our uncertain times. I reread it again during the recent November lockdown and found it to be immensely reassuring. Gregory Hays translation, which I recommend, is readable without feeling overtly modernised and the annotations are helpful to give historical context to the book. The stoic musings of a Roman emperor may not sound like the most fun or relatable read but I implore you to give it a go. The collection shows a man wrestling with his own mortality and the mortality of his empire, the pressure of being a good leader and a good man, and questioning what it means to live virtuously.
I will leave you with one of my favourite passages from Marcus’ Meditations:
"Human life.
Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare abs a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
Then what can guide us?
Only philosophy." - Book 2, entry 17
Books mentioned and further suggested reading:
From this readable and relatable intro to philosophy, it was a sharp incline into the ‘source texts’ for me – I had enough time on my hands to properly read and I was looking to be challenged. Picking up Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations I didn’t find a challenge, I found comfort - it was the perfect book for our uncertain times. I reread it again during the recent November lockdown and found it to be immensely reassuring. Gregory Hays translation, which I recommend, is readable without feeling overtly modernised and the annotations are helpful to give historical context to the book. The stoic musings of a Roman emperor may not sound like the most fun or relatable read but I implore you to give it a go. The collection shows a man wrestling with his own mortality and the mortality of his empire, the pressure of being a good leader and a good man, and questioning what it means to live virtuously.
I will leave you with one of my favourite passages from Marcus’ Meditations:
"Human life.
Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare abs a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
Then what can guide us?
Only philosophy." - Book 2, entry 17
Books mentioned and further suggested reading:
- Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It by Daniel Klein
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translation by Gregory Hays
- Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
- A surreal novel/intro to philosophy, from the perspective of a teenaged girl
- Happy by Derren Brown
- A very readable book on the pursuit of happiness by famed TV mentalist and interesting guy Derren Brown, it draws heavily on stoicism
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Frankl’s account of surviving a Nazi concentration camp and how this experience influenced his philosophy and his work as a psychologist
- Letter’s from a Stoic by Seneca
- Like Meditations a key source text in stoicism, collected letters from a great classical thinker
article written by Alice Pickersgill
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