Marie Robert - When You Kant Figure It Out, Ask a Philosopher

How can Kant comfort you when you get ditched via text message? Can Aristotle cure your hangover? What can Heidegger say to make you feel better when your dog dies?

When You Kant Figure It Out, Ask a Philosopher offers pearls of wisdom from the greatest Western philosophers to help us face and make light of some of the daily challenges of modern life. Inside, youll find...

• advice from Epicurus on disconnecting from constant news alerts and social media updates
• Nietzsches take on getting in shape
• John Stuart Mills tips for handling bad birthday presents
• wisdom from Levinas on parenting teenagers
• and Wittgensteins strategies for dealing with horrible in-laws.

Hilarious, practical, and edifying, When You Kant Figure It Out, Ask a Philosopher enlists the best thinkers of the past so we can all make sense of a chaotic new world.

Spinoza Goes to IKEA
Or, the Problem with Desires

Aristotle and Hangovers
Or, Believing in the Experience

Nietzsche: Just Do It
Or, Winning the Race Against Yourself

No News Alerts Allowed in the Garden of Epicurus
Or, the Ethics of Mindfulness

A Blind Date with Plato
Or, Getting Sick of Feeling Lovesick

All Things Must Pas(cal)
Or, Bringing Time into Focus

Levinas Before Xanax
Or, Learning to Love the Other

A Bone to Pick with Heidegger
Or, What Happens When Your Dog Dies

When You Kant Get Over a Breakup
Or, Separating Reason and Passion

Bergson Launches a Start-Up
Or, Working to Create Yourself

Wittgenstein, Your Boyfriends Family, and You
Or, Integrating into a New Culture

Thanks a Mill-ion
Or, Treading Carefully Around the Truth

F our hours spent wandering the aisles of IKEA for nothing. All hope was lost. I was ready to slap the next person who uttered a cute Swedish word as I walked into yet another room full of boxes and began to cry.

The day had started so well. Id had a plan: I had basically learned the entire IKEA catalogue by heart and made a careful list, all set to prove to the world just how type A and efficient I could be. But now, much like the spatula display I had just knocked over, my grand plan had come crashing down. Stumbling through the aisles of that huge store, surrounded by real adults who clearly had their lives together and their furniture in a cart, I felt even more helpless and pathetic by comparison. I was in meltdown mode: lost in IKEA and lost in life.

How could I make myself feel better? I considered stretching out on a bed named after a Viking, or stealing a bottle of vodka, but then I had a better idea: Baruch Spinoza. Hes always been one of my favorite philosophers. I sat in a corner of the store and imagined my old friend Baruch handing me a cappuccino and comforting me. I pictured him reminding me that desire is what makes us alive, what drives us to move forward in lifeand I stopped crying. Suddenly IKEA, and my life, felt far less overwhelming. As I stood up and wiped my eyes, I realized that philosophy had saved my day.

In that corner of IKEA, the idea for this book was born. Its about twelve philosophers who can help us keep it together, even when everything in our lives seems to be falling apart. In the following chapters I will talk about lifes chaotic, difficult times: when were angry, embarrassed, scared, or confused. People have to find ways to get through these times day after day, year after year. What better way to deal with challenging moments than philosophy? Why not turn to the words and ideas that have been helping people make sense of their existence for centuries?

I want to get philosophy out of the library and into bars, dinner parties, offices, and peoples everyday lives so it can be what it was meant to be: wisdom that helps us navigate life, not something pretentious and abstract. Studying philosophy should not mean reading something in a book and then forgetting about it. Philosophy should make our lives more meaningful. It should comfort and free us. It should help us cope with the difficult parts of our liveswhether were getting ready for a date, arguing with a teenager, or grieving a dead pet.

Taking philosophy down from its pedestal is the best thing we can do for it, and us. If we can get acquainted with these great thinkers, when the next moment of crisis arrives, instead of freaking out and crying in IKEA, we can sit down and have a coffee with Aristotle, Plato, or Kant and hash it all out until we feel better.

I ts 9:54 a.m. on a Saturday. You wake up filled with joy, knowing you have the next forty-eight hours all to yourselftwo entire days to do whatever your heart desires. Youll catch up on your favorite Netflix shows, drink a leisurely coffee, have dinner with friends; you might even be good and go to the gym. You lie in bed for a few more moments until your gaze falls on your bookshelf. Yikes. Your little bookshelf is in big trouble: its sagging in the middle.

Its an important bookshelf, full of your most treasured possessions: the twelve books on meditation you bought last year, your high school yearbooks, the souvenirs you got on that trip to India in your twenties, and the encyclopedias you will never get rid of, no matter how much faster the internet is.

You could do some decluttering, but everything on that shelf is really special to you. You couldnt bear to part with any of it. You decide it would be better to buy a second bookshelfthen youll have more space for your mementos and knickknacks. You leap out of bed and call your boyfriend. You convince him to get brunch and do a little shopping with you at the playground for adults that is IKEA. I-K-E-A. Those four yellow letters are so familiar and comforting; they have accompanied you since you moved into your first apartment in college. You love everything about IKEA furniturethe slabs of wood, the instruction booklets, the adorable and unpronounceable names, the charming Swedish-ness of it all.

The car is ready: the trunk empty so it can be filled with IKEA treasures. You realize you could also probably do with some new saucepans and bedsheets, and maybe a new TV stand, and actually a cute coffee table would really spruce up the living room. You clutch the dog-eared IKEA catalogue like a treasure map.

You pull into the parking lot and drag your boyfriend toward the big blue box. This is what dreams are made of. The adventure begins. Its a pretty easy adventure, compared to, say, rock climbing or skydivingall you have to do is follow the little arrows on the floor. IKEA is in control, leading you down this path, and you are loving it. You round the first bend and grab an extra catalogue with childlike glee. You gaze at the model apartments, all there to show that true happiness comes from buying sleek storage containers.