{"product_id":"9781439186893","title":"Driving with Plato: The Meaning of Life's Milestones","description":"\u003cb\u003eLearn to ride a bicycle with Einstein, have your first kiss with Kant, get your first job with Adam Smith, and weather midlife with Dante. Let history’s greatest minds illuminate life’s turning points.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eBreakfast with Socrates, \u003c\/i\u003eRobert Rowland Smith brought the power of philosophy down to earth by proving, in a very engaging and entertaining way, that human moments meet big ideas on a regular basis. Now Smith offers the natural offspring of that book, expanding the “day in a life” concept to life as a whole in \u003ci\u003eDriving with Plato\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStart with being born. For some, like Sartre, you get off to a bad start: You didn’t ask to be born, and there’s little point to it anyway, as life is meaningless. And yet for Martin Heidegger, if you hadn’t been born, you’d have no sense of your own being, and that would be a tragic loss. How about midlife crisis? When Dante wrote \u003ci\u003eThe Divine Comedy, \u003c\/i\u003ehe deliberately set his story of spiritual transformation at the halfway point of his life. Nietzsche, too, in his autobiography, spoke of burying his forty-fifth year as he went on to yet higher forms of actualization as a self-styled superman. Drawing on the great philosophers, as well as on literature, art, politics, and psychology, Smith creates the richest possible range of ideas for readers to contemplate, all in a warm, humorous voice that revels both in life’s absurdities and in the pure delight of discovery. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGrounding abstract ideas in concrete experience, \u003ci\u003eDriving with Plato \u003c\/i\u003ehelps us think more deeply about the key events in our lives even as it provides a philosophical education that everyone can appreciate and enjoy.","brand":"Free Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47156841808112,"sku":"9781439186893","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781439186893_p0.jpg?v=1763756146","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781439186893","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}