A Guide for the Perplexed - Softcover

Schumacher

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9780349131306: A Guide for the Perplexed

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349131309 ISBN 13: 9780349131306

Publisher: Abacus, 1990

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From one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, and the author of the international bestseller Small Is Beautiful, the reissue of a timeless treatise on the meaning of living.

In A Guide for the Perplexed, bestselling author E. F. Schumacher explores our relation to the world: our obligations—to other people, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly to ourselves. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a truly authentic relationship with the world—and truly know the meaning of living.

Schumacher argues that we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker is to find for everything its proper place. For things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and their proper places are filled by other things that should not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead.

A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers in following our destined path in life’s journey.

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From the Back Cover:

An inspired critique of modern materialistic values and a road map for achieving one's true, higher potential from "one of the wisest minds of our time."*

"This is what my life has been leading to," said the maverick economist E. F. Schumacher upon completing A Guide for the Perplexed, his summation of a lifetime of wisdom. The author of the classic Small Is Beautiful, the "eco bible" (Time) named one of the Times Literary Supplement's 100 Most Influential Books Since World War II, Schumacher charts the failings of "materialistic scientism," the system of thought that dominates the developed world and which Schumacher charges with narrowing the horizons of human experience. Instead, he seeks to offer a new, far more expansive "map for living" that liberates our goals beyond the constraints of logic and inspires in us the faith to choose a life of higher significance. "Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns," he writes, "but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us something much better: that we can become oak trees."

About the Author:

Born in Germany, Dr. E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) fled to England after the rise of Nazism and, with the help of John Maynard Keynes, taught economics at Oxford University. He is the author of Small Is Beautiful, the book that "changed the way many people think about bigness and its human cost" (New York Times).

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