Big Ideas for Curious Minds Read online

  Published in 2018 by The School of Life

  70 Marchmont Street, London WC1N 1AB

  Copyright © The School of Life 2018

  Illustrations © Anna Doherty

  Designed and typeset by Studio Katie Kerr

  Printed in Italy by L.E.G.O. S.p.A

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition

  that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise

  circulated without express prior consent of the publisher.

  Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders

  of the material reproduced in this book. If any have been

  inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to

  make restitution at the earliest opportunity.

  The School of Life offers programmes, publications and

  services to assist modern individuals in their quest to live

  more engaged and meaningful lives. We've also developed

  a collection of content-rich, design-led retail products to

  promote useful insights and ideas from culture.

  www.theschooloflife.com

  ISBN 978-1-912891-06-1

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

  THE SCHOOL OF LIFE PRESS

  Introduction:

  What Is Philosophy?

  P 9

  Know Yourself

  with Socrates

  P 15

  Learn to Say

  What’s on Your Mind

  with Ludwig Wittgenstein

  P 20

  It’s Hard to Know

  What We Really Want

  with Simone de Beauvoir

  P 26

  When Someone Is Angry,

  Maybe It’s Not You

  Who Is Responsible

  with Ibn Sina

  P 32

  People Are Unhappy,

  Not Mean

  with Zera Yacob

  P 36

  Don’t Expect Too Much

  with Seneca

  P 42

  Maybe You Are

  Just Tired

  with Matsuo Basho

  P 46

  What Is Normal

  Isn’t Normal

  with Albert Camus

  P 52

  No One Knows…

  with René Descartes

  P 56

  Politeness Matters

  with Confucius

  P 62

  Why We Procrastinate

  with Hypatia of Alexandria

  P 66

  Why It’s Hard to Know

  What You Want to Do

  with Your Life

  with Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  P 70

  Good Things Are

  (Unexpectedly) Hard

  with Friedrich Nietzsche

  P 76

  Weakness of

  Strength Theory

  with Ralph Waldo Emerson

  P 82

  Kintsugi

  with Buddha

  P 88

  The Need to Teach

  Rather than Nag

  with Immanuel Kant

  P 94

  The Mind-Body Problem

  with Jean-Paul Sartre

  P 100

  Why You Feel Lonely

  with Michel de Montaigne

  P 106

  The Meaning of Life

  with Aristotle

  P 112

  Why We Hate Cheap Things

  with Mary Wollstonecraft

  P 118

  The News Doesn’t Always

  Tell The Whole Story

  with Jacques Derrida

  P 122

  Art Is Advertising for

  What We Really Need

  with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  P 126

  Why Do Some People Get

  Paid More than Others?

  with Adam Smith

  P 132

  What’s Fair?

  with John Rawls

  P 136

  Shyness:

  How to Overcome It

  with Maimonides

  P 142

  Why Grown-up Life

  Is Hard

  with... Philosophy

  P 146

  List of Thinkers

  P 151

  INTRODUCTION

  Philosophy is quite a mysterious subject that most people don’t know

  anything about. The average school doesn’t teach it, the average adult

  does not understand it, and the whole subject can seem odd and kind of

  unnecessary. That’s a real pity because in fact, philosophy has a lot to

  teach everyone, whatever their age. It might even be the most important

  subject you will ever study. This book wants to open the door for you—

  to show you what philosophy is all about, and how it can help you to

  understand life.

  The word ‘philosophy’ itself gives us a bit of a clue as to why the subject

  matters. It’s originally a word from Ancient Greek: the first part, philo,

  means ‘love’ (philately means the love of stamps). The second part, which

  comes from the word sophia, means ‘wisdom’. So, when you put the two

  parts together—philo-sophy—it literally means ‘the love of wisdom’.

  Philosophy helps us to live wise lives. But what does ‘wisdom’ mean? It’s

  not very obvious, at first. Is being wise just about being clever? No, it’s

  much more than that. It’s about being sensible, kind, calm and accepting

  9

  of how life can sometimes be (which isn’t always perfect, and sometimes

  really quite hard).

  To get a better idea of what wisdom might involve, we can think about its

  opposite: not being wise. Imagine that your mum loses her keys. There

  are unwise ways she might deal with this. Maybe she starts shouting at

  other people: ‘Who moved my car keys?’ (even though probably no one

  did move them). Or maybe she gets into a panic and throws herself onto

  the sofa, moaning that she’s a complete idiot and that her entire life is

  ruined. Poor mum!

  What would a wiser mum do? Instead of ranting and raving, or starting

  to panic straight away, she would think: ‘Well, car keys do tend to get lost

  from time to time. I must have put them somewhere… maybe they’re in

  the coat I was wearing yesterday.’ She could ask (calmly) if you had seen

  them, and she might even laugh about how silly she was to forget where

  she’d put them.

  There are lots of situations where you can see the difference between

  unwise and wise ways of dealing with stuff that happens. There are lots

  of problems, both big and small, in everyone’s life—including yours, too,

  of course. We can never get rid of them entirely (though we try hard), but

  we can all get better at how we deal with our problems.

  We can try not to get angry so often, try to shout

  less, and try not to panic or hurt the people

  we love. Philosophy tries to help us act more

  wisely when facing the problems in our

  lives that we can’t do much about.

  10

  UNWISE RESPONSES

  Accuse your brother of cheating

  (though you know they didn’t really)

  Tell everyone how much you hate the

  game you were playing

  Feel that it’s incredibly important that you

&n
bsp; lost, and that you won’t get over it for ages

  or

  WISE RESPONSES

  Remember it’s only a game, and that whether

  you have good luck says nothing about what

  you’re like as a person

  Remind yourself that you’re bound to win

  some other time and that there are other,

  more important, things in your life

  UNWISE RESPONSES

  Be horrible back to them

  Feel that maybe you deserve

  to be treated badly

  or

  WISE RESPONSES

  Wonder what might be

  upsetting them

  Tell them calmly that they hurt your

  feelings, and ask what’s wrong

  UNWISE RESPONSES

  Keep on asking when you’ll get there

  Tell everyone that you are

  very, very bored

  Complain that the journey is too

  long every couple of minutes

  or

  WISE RESPONSES

  Admit to yourself that it’s going to

  take ages no matter what you do

  Look at things out of the window

  and make up a game or story

  Design the perfect house or submarine

  in your head to pass the time

  UNWISE RESPONSES

  Shout about how disgusting it is

  Throw it on the floor

  Refuse to eat it

  or

  WISE RESPONSES

  Politely explain what you would

  prefer to have instead

  Offer to help prepare something

  else another time

  Keep in mind that whoever made

  dinner didn’t mean to disappoint

  you, and that it might hurt their

  feelings if you complain

  UNWISE RESPONSES

  Tear it up and stamp on it

  Promise never to do another

  drawing again

  or

  WISE RESPONSES

  Try again—and eventually

  you will do it better

  Make a feature of the mistake.

  You could turn a smudge into

  a shadow or an ink blot into a

  spider —sometimes, what we

  think of as an ‘error’ can be

  the start of something even

  more interesting

  UNWISE RESPONSES

  Scream about how unfair

  everything is

  Slam your bedroom door

  or

  WISE RESPONSES

  Remember that life is very long —you

  will be able to stay up late eventually

  Focus on all the fun things that will

  happen tomorrow, then get up early

  and have an interesting morning

  Philosophy has been going on for a very long time all round the world

  because people have always needed help with shouting and panicking

  a bit less. They’ve always needed some help with understanding life and

  how best to deal with it. Over the years, philosophers have come up with

  a lot of useful ideas that provide this help. Here, in the rest of this book,

  are twenty-six of our favourite wise ideas.

  14

  BIG IDEA #1

  It sounds odd to say it, but maybe you don’t know yourself very well. Of

  course you know lots of things about yourself—you know what age you

  are, the colour of your eyes and what you like to have for lunch—but some

  things are hard to know. Maybe you’ve never seen the back of your ears,

  for instance, and probably you don’t know much about your Eustachian

  tubes either (those are the tubes that go from inside your ears to the back

  of your nose). These sort of things don’t actually matter much, but there

  are more important things you might not know about yourself, which

  you should: things about your feelings. It’s not just you—everyone has

  difficulty understanding their feelings.

  This is because of a funny thing about the way your brain (and everyone

  else’s) works: your brain is very good at noticing that you have a feeling.

  You know perfectly well that you feel upset or worried or excited. But

  your brain is not so good at seeing why you feel that feeling. It doesn’t

  automatically remember what is upsetting or worrying you, or what you

  are really excited about.

  15

  Suppose you had planned to bake biscuits with your mum after school.

  You’d been looking forward to it all day, but then she rings and tells you

  that something’s come up at work, and she won’t have time to make the

  biscuits with you after all. You’re disappointed—you don’t know what to

  do now, and everything seems a bit boring. Later, when your mum comes

  home, you have a feeling that for some reason she is very annoying today.

  She asks you to clear the table for dinner and instead of getting on with

  it you shout, ‘No!’, to which she responds, ‘Don’t speak to me like that!’

  Suddenly before you know it, you’ve stormed out of the kitchen, shouting

  ‘I hate you, you’re so bossy!’

  You have a big, powerful feeling: ‘I am very upset!’ but your brain gets

  confused about what started the feeling. It forgets why you are really

  upset. It’s not that you hate your mum, you are just hurt because you really

  wanted to have a nice time with her and are feeling very disappointed.

  You don’t really think that she is bossy, you are upset that someone you

  love was too busy to pay you attention earlier. There’s a big difference

  between feeling ‘my mum is so bossy’, and feeling ‘I wish my mum had

  more time to bake biscuits with me’. But your brain is not very good at

  seeing the difference.

  Imagine this time that you wanted to play football with your older sister.

  You ask her if she wants to play, but she says she is tired and can’t be

  bothered right now. You go to your room and try to read a book, but it’s

  not very interesting. You wander about the house looking for something

  to do. Then maybe you see your little brother making a pile of bricks

  on the floor and you suddenly become angry. You kick the bricks over

  and he starts to cry. Your brain knows that you’re annoyed, but it is not

  very good at keeping track of what has made you feel that way. Instead

  of remembering that your sister upset you, your brain thinks it is your

  16

  brother and his bricks that you are

  cross with instead. These are times

  when you don’t know yourself very

  well. Not knowing yourself causes

  problems. The more you tell your mum she’s bossy, the less likely she is

  to make biscuits with you (which is what you really want); getting mad

  with your little brother doesn’t get you any closer to playing football with

  your sister.

  But this does not have to be the end of the story. You can get better at

  knowing yourself. The best way to do this is by asking yourself questions

  about what you feel. You can ask: what happened earlier that bothered

  me? Where has my upset come from—maybe not in the last three seconds,

  but earlier today, or even yesterday?

  Imagine that a feeling is a bit like a long, long snake hanging down from

  a branch of a tree. From where you’re standing you can see the snake’s

  head and its forked tongue: that’s the feeling of being upset. But
you can’t

  see the tail, and the tail is the real reason you feel upset. What branch is

  the tail curled round? Is it the bossy branch or the biscuit branch; is it the

  little brother branch or the football branch? You have to find out. You’re

  trying to join up the angry head of the snake with the tail. So, when you

  are upset you can ask: where is the tail of this feeling? What branch is it

  hanging from?

  A big part of philosophy is asking yourself why you feel what you do:

  why am I upset? What’s really been bothering me? Who has upset me?

  This isn’t just something children can do—it’s something a lot of adults

  should spend a bit more time on as well. Because the better you know

  your feelings, the more easily you can explain what you’re going through.

  17