Great Thinkers: Simple tools from sixty great thinkers to improve your life today. (The School of Life Library) - Hardcover

The School Of Life

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0993538703 ISBN 13: 9780993538704

Publisher: The School of Life, 2018

Synopsis

A collection of simple - and surprisingly relevant - tools from great thinkers throughout history. 

Focusing on important ideas from Western and Eastern philosophy, sociology, psychotherapy, art, architecture, and literature, this collection of wisdom and insight includes everyone from well know thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Lao Tzu to more unexpected names like Coco Chanel and St Benedict. 

With original color illustrations for each featured thinker, this book presents a fascinating gallery of individuals from across the millennia who have shaped the intellectual project of The School of Life.

• A REFERENCE BOOK OF 60 GREAT THINKERS: and their most useful ideas.
• THE SCHOOL OF LIFE CANON: a gallery of individuals from across the millennia who have shaped the intellectual project of The School of Life.
• ORIGINAL COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS BY STUART PATIENCE
• THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE: for those seeking both answers and inspiration.
• PREMIUM GIFT FORMAT: shrink-wrapped with ribbon marker and belly band.

About this title

About the Author

The School of Life is a global organization helping people lead more fulfilled lives. Through our range of books, gifts and stationery we aim to prompt more thoughtful natures and help everyone to find fulfillment. The School of Life is a resource for exploring self-knowledge, relationships, work, socializing, finding calm, and enjoying culture through content, community, and conversation. You can find us online, in stores and in welcoming spaces around the world offering classes, events, and one-to-one therapy sessions.

The School of Life is a rapidly growing global brand, with over 6 million YouTube subscribers, 351,000 Facebook followers, 218,000 Instagram followers and 163,000 Twitter followers.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Their books share a coherent, curated message that speaks with one voice: calm, reassuring, and sane.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Aristotle (384–322 BC) 

Aristotle was born around 384 BC in the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, where his father was the royal doctor. He grew up to be arguably the most influential philosopher ever, with modest nicknames like ‘the master’, and simply ‘the philosopher’. One of his big jobs was tutoring Alexander the Great, who soon after went out and conquered the known world. Aristotle studied in Athens, worked with Plato for several years, and then branched out on his own. He founded a research and teaching centre called The Lyceum: French secondary schools, lycées, are named in honour of this venture. He liked to walk about while teaching and discussing ideas. His followers were named Peripatetics, the wanderers. His many books are actually lecture notes. Aristotle was fascinated by how things really work. How does an embryo chick develop in an egg? How do squid reproduce? Why does a plant grow well in one place and hardly at all in another? And, most importantly, what makes a human life and a whole society go well? 

For Aristotle, philosophy was about practical wisdom. Here are four big philosophical questions he answered: 

1. What makes people happy? 

In the Nicomachean Ethics – the book got its name because it was edited by his son, Nicomachus – Aristotle set himself the task of identifying the factors that lead people to have a good life, or not. He suggested that good and successful people all possess distinct virtues, and proposed that we should get better at identifying what these are, so that we can nurture them in ourselves and honour them in others. Aristotle also observed that every virtue seems to be bang in the middle of two vices. It occupies what he termed ‘the golden mean’ between two extremes of character. For example, in book four of his Ethics, under the charming title of ‘conversational virtues and vices’, Aristotle looks at ways in which people are better or worse at talking to one another – buffoonery, wit, boorishness. Knowing how to have a good conversation is one of the key ingredients of the good life, Aristotle recognised. Some people go wrong because they lack a subtle sense of humour: that’s the bore, ‘someone useless for any kind of social intercourse, because he contributes nothing and takes offence at everything’. But others carry humour to excess: ‘the buffoon cannot resist a joke, sparing neither himself nor anybody else, provided that he can raise a laugh and saying things that a man of taste would never dream of saying’. So the virtuous person is in the golden mean in this area: witty but tactful. In a fascinating survey of personality and behaviour, Aristotle analyses ‘too little’, ‘too much’ and ‘just right’ around a whole host of virtues. We can’t change our behaviour in any of these areas just at the drop of a hat. But change is possible, eventually. Moral goodness, says Aristotle, is the result of habit. It takes time, practice, encouragement. So Aristotle thinks people who lack virtue should be understood as unfortunate, rather than wicked. What they need isn’t scolding or being thrown into prison, but better teachers and more guidance. 

2. What is art for? 

The blockbuster art at the time was tragedy. Athenians watched gory plays at community festivals held at huge open-air theatres. Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles were household names. Aristotle wrote a how-to-write-great-plays manual, The Poetics. It’s packed with great tips: for example, make sure to use peripeteia, a change in fortune, when, for the hero, things go from great to awful. And anagnorisis, the moment of dramatic revelation, when suddenly the hero realises their life is going very wrong – and is, in fact, a catastrophe. But what is tragedy actually for? What is the point of a whole community coming together to watch horrible things happening to lead characters? Like Oedipus, in the play by Sophocles, who by accident kills his father, gets married to his mother, finds out he’s done these things and gouges out his eyes in remorse and despair. Aristotle’s answer is catharsis. Catharsis is a kind of cleaning: you get rid of bad stuff. In this case, cleaning up our emotions – specifically, our confusions around the feelings of fear and pity. We’ve got natural problems here: we’re hard-hearted, we don’t give pity where it’s deserved, and we’re prone to either exaggerated fears or not getting frightened enough. Tragedy reminds us that terrible things can befall decent people, including ourselves. A small flaw can lead to a whole life unravelling. So we should have more compassion or pity for those whose actions go disastrously wrong. We need to be collectively retaught these crucial truths on a regular basis. The task of art, as Aristotle saw it, is to make profound truths about life stick in our minds. 

3. What are friends for? 

In books eight and nine of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle identifies three different kinds of friendship: there’s friendship that comes about when each person is seeking fun, their chief interest is in their own pleasure and the opportunity of the moment, which the other person provides. Then there are friendships that are really strategic acquaintances, where people take pleasure in each other’s company only in so far as they have hopes of taking advantage of it. Then, there’s the true friend. Not someone who’s just like you, but someone who isn’t you, and about whom you care as much as you care about yourself. The sorrows of a true friend are your sorrows. Their joys are yours. It makes you more vulnerable, should anything befall this person. But it’s hugely strengthening too. You’re relieved from the too-small orbit of your own thoughts and worries. You expand into the life of another, and together you become larger, cleverer, more resilient, more fair-minded. You share virtues and cancel out each other’s defects. Friendship teaches us what we ought to be: it is, quite literally, the best part of life. 

4. How can ideas cut through in a busy world? 

Like a lot of people, Aristotle was struck by the fact that the best argument doesn’t always win the debate or gain popular traction. He wanted to know why this happens and what we can do about it. He had lots of opportunity for observations. In Athens, many decisions were made in public meetings, often in the agora, the town square. Orators would vie with one another to sway popular opinion. Aristotle plotted the ways audiences and individuals are influenced by many factors but don’t strictly engage with logic or the facts of the case. It’s maddening, and many serious people can’t stand it. They avoid the marketplace and popular debate. Aristotle was more ambitious. He invented what we still call rhetoric – the art of getting people to agree with you. He wanted thoughtful, serious and well-intentioned people to learn how to be persuasive, to reach those who don’t agree already. He makes some timeless points: you have to soothe people’s fears, you have to see the emotional side of the issue – is someone’s pride on the line? Are they feeling embarrassed? – and edge around it accordingly. You have to make it funny because attention spans are short, and you might have to use illustrations and examples to make your point come alive. 

We’re keen students of Aristotle. Today, philosophy doesn’t sound like the most practical activity; maybe that’s because we’ve not paid enough attention recently to Aristotle.

Edition details

• Publisher: The School of Life
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0993538703
• ISBN 13: 9780993538704
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Patience Stuart
• Number of pages: 480