by Summary:
Short. These excerpts summarize the answer I would have given, too. Q. Which books can tell me, from a philosophical standpoint, what makes life worthwhile or worth living? A. Philosopher and author Julian Baggini writes: Surprisingly, few of the world’s great philosophers have directly addressed this question. Instead, they have focused on a subtly different question: what does it mean to live well? In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasised the need to cultivate good character, finding the sweet spot between harmful extremes. For example, generosity lies between the extremes of meanness and profligacy, courage between cowardice and rashness. A remarkably similar vision is presented in the Chinese classics The Analects of Confucius and Mencius.… Should all else fail, there
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: Philosophy, the good life, the good society
This could be interesting, too:
Short. These excerpts summarize the answer I would have given, too. Q. Which books can tell me, from a philosophical standpoint, what makes life worthwhile or worth living? A. Philosopher and author Julian Baggini writes: Surprisingly, few of the world’s great philosophers have directly addressed this question. Instead, they have focused on a subtly different question: what does it mean to live well? In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasised the need to cultivate good character, finding the sweet spot between harmful extremes. For example, generosity lies between the extremes of meanness and profligacy, courage between cowardice and rashness. A remarkably similar vision is presented in the Chinese classics The Analects of Confucius and Mencius.… Should all else fail, there
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: Philosophy, the good life, the good society
This could be interesting, too:
Robert Waldmann writes Is Performative Speech Protected by the FIrst Amendment?
John Quiggin writes Debating postmodernism
Mike Norman writes The road to serfdom before Hayek (Knight, Lippmann, and a note on Weber today) — Eric Schliesser
John Quiggin writes Locke and Slavery, again
Q. Which books can tell me, from a philosophical standpoint, what makes life worthwhile or worth living?
The Guardian
Book clinic: which books best explain why life is worth living?
A. Philosopher and author Julian Baggini writes:
Surprisingly, few of the world’s great philosophers have directly addressed this question. Instead, they have focused on a subtly different question: what does it mean to live well?
In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasised the need to cultivate good character, finding the sweet spot between harmful extremes. For example, generosity lies between the extremes of meanness and profligacy, courage between cowardice and rashness. A remarkably similar vision is presented in the Chinese classics The Analects of Confucius and Mencius.…
Should all else fail, there is my own What’s It All About?, which aims to shows how philosophy does not so much answer the big questions as help provide us with the resources to answer them for ourselves.Some of the most important questions are "the enduring questions" that have to be approach anew in every era and also answered personally.
One of these enduring questions is, what does it mean to live a good life as an individual in a good society.
The Guardian
Book clinic: which books best explain why life is worth living?
Julian Baggini
See also
Good review that reconciles opposing viewpoints. Ibn Khaldun was a precursor of modern sociology and economics. Longish.
3:AM Magazine — Whatever It Is, We Are Against It
Good Orientalism: Robert Irwin vs Ernest Gellner on Ibn Khaldun. Boom!
Richard Marshall