Abstract

A philosophical miscellany, as diverting as it is instructive, centred on an eclectic sequence of themes, ranging from advice to ageing, from backbiting to bigotry, from freedom to friendship, and from work to walking. Stephen Trombley mines the canon of two and half millennia of Western thought for observations that reflect the seriousness, the joy and the strangeness of human existence, counterpointing these words of wisdom with episodes – sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, sometimes plain odd – from the lives of the great philosophers. WISE WORDS includes, on each of its themes, the thoughts of philosophers from the distant past to the present. The result is a multi-dimensional treatment of each theme that crosses temporal, national and ideological boundaries.