Ideas to save your life: philosophy for wisdom, solace and pleasure. Michael McGirr. 2021.

In Ideas to Save your Life McGirr shares his love of philosophy, focusing on the works of twenty-plus eminent thinkers across history.

The book goes back to Pythagoras and comes forward to the contemporary Australian Frank Jackson; back to Mungo Woman and forward to Martha Nussbaum, by way of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. It is animated by two related questions: from where do we draw a sense of life’s purpose? And how can philosophy make life better? It ranges widely across subjects - from solitude to community, language to order, experience to ecstasy, the idea of good to that of a good idea.

McGirr’s approach is warm and inviting. Drawing on his many years of teaching philosophy to teenagers, he shares stories from his own life and the lives of others. Ideas to Save Your Life is often funny, but it always serious about the task of philosophy. It makes the impenetrable accessible, the indescribable palatable, and invites you to change how you see the world.