Review of Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Ideas

As I am in a reflective mood these dark, dreary days of January, a mood partially inspired by my attempts to avoid being depressed by the interminable rain we are experiencing in Ireland these days, I wish to continue by reviewing another philosophy book on the heels of Dr Nigel Warburton’s “little history” of the subject.  The book is titled Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas, Wildfire Books, 2021.

There is a saying in education circles, one that has no doubt existed since time immemorial, that the best way to really learn a subject is to teach it.  Having taught for some thirty-five years at secondary level here in Ireland, that piece of wisdom resonates well with my experience.  I have been dipping into some philosophy books on my shelves recently, and that dictum applies well to the philosopher and teacher Jonny Thomson.  Mr Thomson has taught philosophy and politics at St Edward’s Co-educational Boarding School in Oxford for some twelve years.  He introduces himself simply on his own webpage, thus: “He’s a columnist at Big Think and is the award-winning, bestselling author of three books that have been translated into 22 languages.  Jonny is also the founder of Mini Philosophy, a social network of around two million curious, intelligent minds. He's known all over the world for making philosophy accessible, relatable, and fun.”  This introduction is wonderfully clear.  Having read one of his three books, Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas, twice, I can only concur that this book is “accessible, relatable, and fun.”  He has the communication and popularising capabilities of his fellow philosopher, Nigel Warburton, with the added ability of making the subject fun, and that is no small achievement.

Jonny Thomson also runs the popular Instagram page, Mini Philosophy, in which he introduces his followers to a whole range of philosophical ideas through fun, bite-sized and thought-provoking posts.  Dr Julian Baggini, Academic Director, Royal Institute of Philosophy, speaking about the book reviewed here, succinctly sums up its power: “If this doesn’t light your philosophical fuse, you don’t have one.” 

I immediately liked this book as soon as I picked it up from the shelves in my local bookstore.  It is laid out attractively like a book of meditations.  I have long used such books, ranging from Eastern Meditations like the Tao Te Ching, Buddhist, Zen and Hindu reflections to the more Western Self-Help and Popular Psychology offerings as relaxing ways to wind down before going to sleep.  This book could be called Meditations on Philosophy.  The book offers 163 meditations on philosophical themes.  Each bite-sized gem can be read in a couple of minutes.  The topics covered are amazingly diverse.  We get entries on Plato’s invisible Ideas, Aristotle’s Middle Ground, Aquinas’s Just War theory, Singer’s speciesism, which we encountered in Warburton’s book already, Lovelock on Mother Nature or Gaia, Sartre on Bad Faith and Montaigne on Memento Mori, to list several.  Other less usual entries are Nietzsche on Eternal Recurrence, De Beauvoir on Feminism and why she believed the mothering instinct is a myth, Sun Tzu’s strategy for winning at board games, Freud’s insight into Thanatos, our inborn death drive, the Japanese philosophy of broken-beauty (reminiscent of Leonard Cohen’s crack through which the light gets in) and Schopenhauer on Music.  This last philosopher is revealed as not much fun at parties and certainly not good company.  I loved Thomson’s description of Aristotle’s catharsis as “letting off steam” as much as I delighted in my own philosophy teacher’s describing it as a “laxative to purge our system.”   He concludes his entry on this subject by enthusiastically declaring: “For us, today, there is a deep truth to catharsis.  We love dramas, tragedy, horrors and ghost trains.  They make us feel better.  So, if you’re feeling pent up or restless, maybe it’s time to embrace catharsis, and let it all hang out.” (p. 77)

It has always amazed me how easily duped we all are into believing our own propaganda and self-made myths, and I include even those who are exceedingly well qualified and knowledgeable in these gullible numbers.  For instance, Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama, an American political scientist, political economist, and international relations scholar, solemnly declared the end of history in his partially eponymous book The End of History and the Last Man (1992).  Fukuyama’s argument is essentially an application of Hegel, where history is seen as a progression towards a better, brighter future, which is, if not a perfect utopia, then definitely the best we can ever achieve, that is, Liberal Democracy.  Communism had collapsed, as had many other smaller totalitarian regimes, and liberal democracy appeared to be the only show in town or the last man standing in the political arena, according to the accepted wisdom, which even Fukuyama swallowed whole.  In other words, this scholar thought that human beings had at last come to their senses and had embraced rationality, logic and diplomacy as the universally agreed ways to prosper.  This reminds me of the myth of linear, even exponential, progress based solidly on the logical principles outlined by the Enlightenment.  However, that myth was shattered in the bloody fields of both the First and Second World Wars.  Sadly, at present, we are experiencing the inevitable rise of nationalism and fascism, where the romantic dreams of the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries are being discarded at an alarming rate and consigned to the dustbin of history.

We all sign up ever so easily to accepted myths.  A paper note or pieces of solid metal can be exchanged for goods and services.  In short, money is a “collective myth.”  According to Israeli historian Yuval Harari our collective myths are some of the defining skills that have allowed us to progress to where we are today.  He argues that creating and following such “myths” is at the very root of our humanity itself.  There are many identity myths – let’s number personal identity or self as one, and national identity as another.  If personal identity is hard to establish, national identity is still harder.  Such mutually accepted demarcation lines as the boundary lines on maps have most often been fought and paid for in the price of blood sacrifice.  As nations, then, we spin our myths in words and in blood.  

The lesson of history is simple, and that is that we actually never learn from history. We keep on recycling our costly mistakes. It seems that once the cruelties and dreadful consequences of war have been lost to living memory, we are fated to learn about those cruelties and costly outcomes the hard way in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives yet again.  Dostoevsky was right in saying that we have over-valued reason, that the human being is also heir to many irrational emotions like greed, jealousy, hatred, lust for power and so on.  There is a definite air of irrationality about in the political and social worlds today.  The rule book of the old, tried and trusted ways of interacting nation to nation is being torn up.  Writing in 2020, the year before publishing this book, Thomson wrote: “Fukuyama is no doubt right in many respects.  Liberal democracy has given unprecedented wealth and security, far beyond anything in any time before.  But is this the fairy-tale happy ending we thought? Or is some new, bigger, scarier villain rising from the unknown, ready for the Fight for History, Mark II?  And if so, who will win this one?” (p. 298) It would seem that the battle for democracy is just beginning as I pen these thoughts.

This book is at once interesting, fun, challenging and riveting.  Highly recommended.