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At work a semi-common (meaning I get the question a few times a year) question that gets sent my way is something like, "I want an introduction to philosophy". I don't like this question very much. Most people who are asking it have no background in philosophy and they are looking for one quick book that will teach them everything they need to know. Sometimes they want this one book to have original writings by philosophers, but just the essential stuff, along with easy to understand little commentaries to explain it all to them. Most of the people who have asked me this question (or more likely have been sent to me to answer this question, since this is my supposed area of expertise) I'm sure are well meaning people who are looking to learn something about philosophy but have no idea where to start (or in the case of one particular man who wanted a book that would just tell him the meaning of life, but in a small compact book).

I don't like this question because there isn't a good answer to it. Most people don't care for my standard answer, which is to read Sophie's World, a YA novel about the history of philosophy. I personally think this is a great introduction to philosophy, and I wish I had read it a few years before I did when I had first started my erratic reading of various philosophers. My second and third recommendations are Copleston's seven or eight volume history of western philosophy collection, which I'm sure is quite good, even if I have only read parts of two of the volumes, and the encyclopedia of philosophy edited by Robert Audi, an invaluable collection of short essays on just about any topic one can think of in philosophy. This book many times in my student days helped me out by giving me enough of a background in something being mentioned in a book to have at least some idea of what the writer was saying.

Why all of this blah blah blah? Because I think I might be adding this book to my weak and disappointing arsenal of books to give to people who want a bit of an overview of philosophy. Maybe they won't learn too much from this book about actual philosophy (there is sort of an understanding in the book that the reader kind of knows something already, but not an alienating understanding), but they will be given fun anecdotal stories about a whole slew of philosophers, and at least get their palates whetted for where they might want to start their own reading. It will also expose them to the reality that there are no answers in philosophy, just a whole bunch of questions that in all likely hood one would be a healthier person not to think about.

The book itself is a lot of fun to read, it's kind of like an In Touch magazine special issue on the intellectual celebrities from the past twenty six hundred years (or so). You get lots of juicy little details about philosophers, you get lots of deaths, some of them mundane, some of them spectacular and even some improbable. You get to learn details of philosophers lives that you would never imagine. For example, did you know that Spinoza liked to train spiders to fight each other, and apparently one of his favorite pastimes was watching them fight. Or that Nietzsche was coprophagic? Do you even know what coprophagic is? Well I didn't, and neither does my spell checker. It means that he drank his own urine and ate his own shit. Wow!!!! Who would have thought. I also didn't know that Wagner had written to Nietzsche's doctors with his own opinion about the philosopher's breakdown, apparently Wagner was the opinion that Nietzsche suffered from his nervous breakdown because of excessive masturbation (which leads me to wonder who Wagner would know this, did they talk about beating off? Can you picture in your mind the giant of German opera discussing how he jerks off with the melancholy philosopher? Or maybe did Wagner walk in on Nietzsche doing it? So many questions, volume 2 please, I propose the title to be The Book of Auto-Erotic Philosophers).

My complaint about the book is that there is no entry for Cioran, maybe not a major philosopher (but seriously there are quite a few non Rock Stars here), but really a central one when you want to talk about death and at least writing that is aimed directly at not wanting to live anymore in the world (yes I could have said suicide). I would have liked to seen him represented, but I guess one can't have everything they would like.