Life: A User’s Manual: Philosophy for (Almost) Any Eventuality

This is a fabulous book by the two authors: philosopher, Julian Baggini and psychotherapist, Antonia Macaro.The book, titled Life: A User’s Manual, covers multiple topics and themes beginning with Anger and ending, near 400 pages later, with Zest.Between there are topics on luck, mental health, free will, fear, bereavement, relationships, and lighter ones like food and drink, each discussed from both a philosophical and psychological angle, and though some entries are shorter than others, I’d say, on average, each topic/theme covers approximately 800-1000 words, with references at the end for further reading and links to related topics. And if you are looking for, say, Leisure, and you can’t find it, it’ll be lodged under Work-Life Balance, which is more or less the same thing and not difficult to work out, thus making the book easy to navigate.In addition, there is a nicely written Introduction, quotes placed at the start of each of the sections, such as: ‘If one has a proper education, one never runs out of things to do’ (Aubrey de Grey) or ‘Money never made anyone rich: all it does is infect anyone who touches it with a lust for more of itself’ (Seneca), and a section at the end of the book titled ‘Philosophy, where to start’, which I must confess I didn’t find that useful as the books listed tend to be more academic rather than geared for the general reader like myself.Entries throughout are discussed with what has become expected of Baggini: uncomplicated, elegantly written prose backed with a great deal of knowledge on philosophy and philosophers (amongst others) and distilled in such a manner that I’m quite certain other writers can only envy. Of course you may not agree with all that Baggini and co-author Macaro write, and you can disagree with them as you wish. But whichever position you take I’m quite sure this book will inform and educate on many topics and certainly get you thinking. Highly recommended.I hope you find my review helpful.

First off, be warned: the print in this is tiny (to my eyes anyway, a 70 year old with cataracts). Anyway, in terms of content it's OK, sort of philosophy-lite. I'm OK with Macaro and Baggini. They seem knowledgeable and able to share the wisdom they come across with a broad range of readers. It's made of alphabetically listed topics. The ones I've read so far have not taken me past what I was already familiar with but there is always the occasional delicious quote that's new to me (e.g. 'Depression is melancholy without its charms' from Susan Sontag. Thematically, as the authors draw attention to themselves in the introduction, the treatments of each topic do suggest a few core ways of looking at things. One particular pattern seems to be like Marcus says X but we should not be too hard on ourselves and just seek to develop a few aspects of x. A limitation of the book, of course, is that it can only reflect the authors' backgrounds, attitudes, values etc.: it could not be otherwise for any author. Regarding the topics covered, they're much as you'd expect, and explicitly condensed with a suggestion for further reading appended to each topic (and I'd judge the recommended references to be accessible to most reasonably intelligent people). Some inclusions seem odd. There is Pornography, for some reason which, while an interesting and important topic, doesn't fit with the more generic selection of 'wisdom through the ages'. True, we must and can only think in relation to our times: thinking itself develops and shifts its methods as it reflects historical changes in culture and society. Odd, though that Addiction is only a title which refers the reader to the section on Self-Control: quite a value judgment over descriptive there. Also I'm surprised that Despair is not a topic nor even in the index. On the other hand, Despair's sibling, Hope, is there (and a jolly good thing hope is too!) Overall, a pleasant book to browse, useful in some of its references, but in keeping with the modern tendency to cherry-pick everything (as in Baggini's 'How the World Thinks' or various other volumes that seek to put our symbolic universe into a nutshell), a book like this is very far away from the hard practices required to manifest the hard study of just one narrow area of philosophy that may help our flourishing. On the other hand, as noted in the section on Mental Health, maybe all we want is to feel good and function in normal society, in which case there are good tips here.

This is an accessible and comprehensive A-Z guide showing how philosophy can be applied to everyday life.Each issue or dilemma is clearly discussed and followed by recommended reading.'Life: A User's Manual' by philosopher Julian Baggini & psychotherapist Antonia Macaro is an intellectually stimulating and endlessly browsable book which should appeal to the general reader seeking the meaning of life as well as students of philosophy.