Neither breakfast, lunch, nor dinner will ever be the same again. ,p>Working out is a version of what Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic - a kind of spiritual exercise, it also leads to worldly vanity.With dry wit and marvelous invention, Smith draws on philosophy, literature, art, politics, and psychology to wake us up to a stunning range of ideas about how to live. Or take going to the gym: As you toil on the treadmill, is your panting a sign of virtue or of vice, of healthy exertion or of unhealthy narcissism? From waking up in the morning through traveling to work, shopping, eating, going to a party, falling asleep, and dreaming, Smith connects our most mundane habits to the wider world of ideas.Start with waking up: What does it really mean to be awake? How do we know we're not still dreaming? Descartes argues that if you're able to doubt whether you're awake, you are at least thinking, and so you probably exist - no small achievement for first thing in the morning. Smith is a faculty member at The School of Life, where he runs a breakfast Club, teaches courses on Love and Family and practices constellations. His books include Derrida and Autobiography, Breakfast with Socrates: The Philosophy of Everyday. Have breakfast with Socrates, go to work with Nietzsche, head to the gym with Foucault, then have sex with Ovid (or Simone de Beauvoir).įormer Oxford Philosophy Fellow Robert Rowland Smith whisks you through an ordinary day with history's most extraordinary thinkers, explaining what they might have to say about your routine. Robert Rowland Smith is a British author and philosopher.
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