The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything

"Within academic philosophy departments there is a conventional cannon that goes from the pre-Socratics through to contemporary philosophy and largely excludes eastern philosophy. That’s dismissed as either religion or homespun wisdom. That’s the caricature — but there is an element of that, certainly in the degree that I studied and that many people study. And there is an argument for that, because there is a causal influence from Plato through medieval philosophers to the present. It’s a particular story in which Confucius and Mencius and various other Chinese philosophers don’t have much input. There’s a debate about whether, possibly, some Buddhist philosophy could have come in through Schopenhauer and perhaps earlier, even, in Hume’s writings about the self. But, generally, eastern philosophy hasn’t had a huge impact on that particular story, though Arabic translators and philosophers were responsible for preserving some key Greek philosophy. And, yet, there are a number of very rich traditions in eastern philosophy, and most western philosophers are quite ignorant about those, as, I confess, am I. They may have read some Confucian writing, but they have very little sense of what the best of Chinese philosophy might be like. “Philosophy can be very good at renewing its past and making it relevant to today” The Path is very interesting because it’s written for a popular audience. It’s a very easy read, but it makes Chinese philosophy quite fresh. It’s written by a Harvard academic, who put on a course in Chinese philosophy that was incredibly popular with students. So he’s worked out ways to draw people into the subject. The big focus is on how you should live. That is the basic question in philosophy, the question Socrates was asking. It is not a trivial question, nor an easy one to answer. What he does in the book is run through a number of answers given by Chinese philosophers in a way that makes them seem, to me at least, part of the same activity as the greats of western philosophy. He talks, in particular, about the philosopher Mencius, who was working in a Confucian tradition. Mencius made some important points about the cultivation of virtue, starting with the family and how important it was to recognise your place within the family before you try to extend the circle wider and include other people. So Chinese philosophers are addressing the kinds of questions that Peter Singer addresses, for example, about how much care we should give to people beyond our nearest circle. But they do it in very interesting ways. This is not the last word. I’m not in a position to judge it as a work of scholarship on Chinese philosophy, but one thing it does is make you want to read further in Chinese philosophy. That’s another thing that a good introductory book should do. It shouldn’t leave you satisfied, it should leave you dissatisfied, feeling there’s something else you want to find out, something else you want to learn. So one book leads to another, and this book certainly leads to other books. There are some popular philosophy writers around at the moment whose books could just as easily sit in the self-help sections of bookshops as under philosophy. Some have their source in Roman philosophy, which put a big emphasis on studying philosophy to improve how you live. The problem with that for me is not so much that people are writing these books, but rather that they give the impression that this is what philosophy essentially is – a set of psychological techniques gleaned from great thinkers of the past that will make things go better for individuals. In contrast, I see philosophy as enquiry: you can’t prejudge the outcome. It is an on-going enquiry into the way things are, and how best to cope with them; but you can’t know in advance that following that enquiry—thinking about the nature of reality, the limits of your knowledge and how best to live—will actually improve your life or make you happier than you would otherwise have been. It might make things worse. You might get a glimpse of the abyss and find life unbearable. “Perhaps we would lead happier, more fulfilled lives if we just followed some simple ‘divine’ rules about how to behave, even if these are entirely human fabrications.” Perhaps it would’ve been better not to spend so much time reading philosophy books. Perhaps it would have been better not to recognise that there are no pre-existing values that shape our lives and no easy solutions to questions about how we should live. Perhaps we would lead happier, more fulfilled lives if we just followed some simple ‘divine’ rules about how to behave, even if these are entirely human fabrications. Philosophy might take you way away from happy ignorance. Some people who study philosophy are led away from religious faith, and from confidence in traditional ways of living; they’re taken away from certainties about how we should live. So it seems to me presumptuous to say that studying philosophy will make your life go better, or even that it might be, at heart, a form of self-help. It could be self-destructive. It could be disruptive. There are cases of people who have studied philosophy in depth and with great seriousness who’ve broken down as a result of it. “I see philosophy as enquiry: you can’t prejudge the outcome.” It’s the kind of subject that, if approached sincerely, leaves you fundamentally ill at ease at a certain level, because most of the things you take for granted are questioned, and there may not be any certainties to put back in their place. There can be some consolation in knowing that you have tried hard to understand what’s really going on, of course, but success in understanding is not guaranteed as human intellect is very limited. Socrates made clear that his strength lay in knowing how little he knew, not in how much – that’s were his wisdom lay. There’s an important message there. Philosophy aims to give a clearer picture of how things are, and how we might live better. It may or may not achieve those things. It’s an on-going conversation aiming to reduce our ignorance, a subject with a 2,500 year history. It is not a subject of neat little answers that will, if applied to your love life, bring amazing outcomes. If that’s what you want, I recommend studying empirically-tested psychology. Philosophy is still a wonderful subject, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to put anyone off exploring it. But we should recognise it for what it is."

"In one way or another, the previous four books I’ve chosen are all concerned with the fundamental question of how we should live. This fifth book follows the trend, but from a different perspective. Based on Michael Puett’s incredibly popular lecture courses on Chinese Philosophy at Harvard University, it provides a way into the ideas of a number of the great Chinese philosophers, including Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi. This makes it sound a tougher read than it is. In fact, this book is both entertaining and challenging at the same time – challenging, not because the prose is difficult or the thinking hard to follow, but because the perspectives on ethics, which are frequently communicated through stories or thought experiments, are so different from the usual fare of Western philosophy."