Books like What Philosophy Can Do — picked by fans

I find this book answers questions many people ask: Why aren’t we always logical? What gets in the way of our making effective decisions?

I first read this book when I started my consulting practice and realized I needed to combine psychology with philosophy in teaching critical thinking in professional settings. People want to understand why we can be unreasonable in the first place. Kahneman’s book helped me improve my own thinking, making me aware of the ways my previous experiences quickly provide interpretations of new experiences.

I find the ability to “hit the pause button” regarding my response to a specific situation and to ask myself, “Is my immediate, intuitive response useful or misleading me?” is one of my most important insights from this book.

Where did the concept originate that there is a form of thinking, distinct from knowledge and wisdom, unique enough to be called “critical.” As it turns out, “critical thinking” has its origin point in this 1910 book by America’s most famous philosopher of education, John Dewey. In How We Think, Dewey identifies the kind of thinking – which he calls “reflective thinking” – required for citizens in a democracy to properly make decisions and perform their civic responsibilities. He also talks about how the development of reflective thinking skills (today called “critical thinking skills”) can be incorporated into the education process. If you are interested in improving your own thinking or teaching others to reason more effectively, John Dewey’s How We Think is Ground Zero for any critical-thinking project.  

While critical thinking is not synonymous with philosophy, philosophical principles like logic and epistemology play a huge role in thinking systematically and productively. If you’re interested in how these new and revolutionary ways of thinking were born, I highly recommend this 2003 tour of the history of early Western philosophy, from Ancient Greece through the Medieval Age, by former Executive Editor of the Economist Anthony Gottlieb. If that book leaves you hungry for more, Gottlieb’s second title the series, The Dream of Enlightenment, continues the story of Western philosophy through the start of the modern era.  

Why would I include a book on rhetoric right after a set of recommendations of titles covering philosophy, given the two-thousand-year rivalry between those two ancient disciplines? In contrast to other people who teach critical thinking, I place great value on persuasive communications, commonly referred to as rhetoric, given the need to see through the rhetoric of others when analyzing their arguments, and the ability of persuasive language to turn valid and sound arguments into unstoppable ones. In his recently updated bestseller Thank You for Arguing, author Jay Heinrich lays out a powerful case for why effective argumentation can bring people together to solve problems, providing potential offramps from today’s polarized, destructive pseudo-debates. Heinrich’s book is accessible and entertaining, drawing from pop culture and his own life experiences, alongside the wisdom of Aristotle and other great thinkers from history, to demonstrate how to productively argue out our disagreements,… show more.

This consummate French philosopher explores the lineage of psychiatry as an intertwined field of knowledge and form of power. For Foucault, moving beyond asylums, in the nineteenth and twentieth century armies called on psychiatry to assert the reality of military power and the functioning of military purposes. A similar relationship has taken place with the family in relation to nation-states and military establishments. The author provides many useful concepts to appreciate the psychiatrization of soldiers as shocked, exhausted, hysterical, neurotic, and traumatized, among other diagnostic categories. From this work, a significant value I gained is a historical understanding of how modern psychiatry developed in relation to armed forces and warfare.

These are Foucault’s final lectures in 1984. They are a remarkable testament to philosophical courage. In late December of 1983, Foucault fell ill. At this time he may have received a diagnosis of AIDS, but it is not sure. By March, he was regularly in and out of the hospital. At this point, he no longer sought a diagnosis but only inquired how much time he had. The editor Frédéric Gros observes that, like Socrates, whom Foucault references repeatedly in these lectures, he was more concerned with failing to complete his mission than with death. At the beginning of his final lecture, Foucault stood before his audience and said, “I am going to try to give you two hours of lecture today, but I am not absolutely sure I will make it.” He gave the full lecture.

Thomas Berry was a cultural historian who studied the cultures of Europe, China, America, India, and the Indigenous worlds with a single burning question in his mind: What is the role of humanity in the universe? Of course, this idea that humanity has a cosmic role is the opposite of the view promoted by modern science of an evolving universe that is going nowhere.

Given his professional background in the humanities, it is surprising that Berry names science as the primary revelation of the divine. He is committed to the idea that the sciences have discovered a common creation story, one that will play an important role for centuries to come. 

When I first met Thomas Berry and asked him about my personal role in the universe, he said simply, "Tell science's story of a developing universe; but tell it with a feeling for its music. That's what the spiritual… show more.

Nietzsche said; “Only those with very large lungs have the right to write long sentences.” Montaigne was of the same opinion. He pre-dated Nietzsche in couching his philosophy simply and clearly in short, sharp aphorisms. Like Nietzsche’s aphorisms, they are often very funny.

The relentless and erudite work of Arendt never ceases to challenge me. In the books included here—Thinking and Willing—she explores what it means that the self knows itself to be a self, and how that knowledge refracts and splits upon encountering others, and then changes when returning to solitude again. I read her knowing that she has not just considered but felt her ideas. “To be alive means to be possessed by an urge toward self-display. . . .Up to a point we can choose how to appear to others.”

Many of us, when young, read Looking-Glass with Carroll’s first work, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but it was as an adult, eager to reflect philosophically, that I began to appreciate deep puzzles within our language and consciousness – and these are more prominent in Looking-Glass.  

I taught philosophy for many years – oops, not true, I don’t think philosophy can be taught. Rather, I encourage people to step back and think philosophically by confronting paradoxes, using their imagination, and looking beyond appearances. I often recommend Looking-Glass to achieve a sense of bewilderment and the delicious desire to dig into and question everyday assumptions of living.