THINKING OF ANSWERS
Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life
By A.C. Grayling. Bloomsbury. 352 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978-1-4088-0598-5
Dr. Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. According to the blurb on the book, he is a multi-talented author, and Britain’s most eminent publicly-engaged philosopher. He is certainly a prolific author and a regular broadcaster and columnist. Some readers of this newspaper are likely to have come across him.
Thinking of Answers is a collection of his journalism, and the result is as near as it gets to a secular humanist book of daily readings, though it has to be said that there is not a great tradition of this particular form of literature. Rummaging among the books in a secondhand shop, one is not likely to come across a thumbed copy of Day by Day with T.H. Huxley, or New Every Morning with Richard Dawkins, or even The Wit and Wisdom of Tom Paine, any more than one may find a humanist promise box among the ‘collectables’.
