The Pocket Philosopher a Handbook of Aphoisms

by Simon May

This collection of aphorisms is an aid to crystallising your own thoughts, with sections on truth, love, ambition, religion, aging, cruelty, friendship and all the other vital issues that we confront in life. Aphorisms can be a more enjoyable stimulus for thought than longer philosophical works because of their variety, because of their compactness, because they invite different interpretations, and because they provide such clear targets. The Pocket Philosopher is aimed at anyone who wants to understand their life.

Genres: Philosophy

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Paul Bard · Rating 2 out of 5]

The aim of the book is to make people think. If we compare this to the sayings of the Book of Proverbs (which aim to make a man successful), and the sayings of Gracian (which aim to make a man wise about the ways of the world), or de Rochefoucauld (which aims to make men courtly), the aim of this book is humble indeed.

Unfortunately it fails.

First on the style: May riffs Neitzsche and de Rochefoucauld, with occasional aspirations to the Wildean quip.

Second, the substance: this book manages to cast into doubt all human values including its own. It certainly gets us to think: we think the author is being needlessly provocative!

I do appreciate the low opinion the author has of his own work: he does not value aphorisms high enough to express much of a certain view at all.

I think the book fails the test of integrity: either it is a deliberately dishonest book, expressing only doubt for the sake of being "provocative", or it is honestly mistaken about the nature of philosophy as the love of wisdom: for May, philosophy appears to be the love of doubt.