The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin Versus the Passionate Life - Hardcover

This work tries to put the fun back in philosophy, recapturing the heart-felt confusion and excitement that originally brings us all into philosophy. Rather than a critique of contemporary philosophy, it is more an attempt to engage in philosophy in a different kind of way, beginning with a re-evaluation of Socrates and the nature of philosophy and defending the passionate life in contrast to the calm life of thoughtful contemplation so often held up as an ideal by traditional philosophers. In short, it is an attempt to recapture the kind of philosophy that Nietzsche celebrated as a "joyful wisdom." The author tries to break down the walls between academic philosophy and its lost audience, between thin logic and thick rhetoric, between philosophical reason and philosophical passion, between "analytic" and "continental" philosophy, between philosophy and life.

Robert C. Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Passions, In the Spirit of Hegel, From Hegel to Existentialism, About Love, A Passion for Justice, A Short History of Philosophy (with Kathleen M. Higgins), and A Passion for Wisdom.