A Guide for the Perplexed

This book by E. F. Schumacher is an attempt to develop a simple, cohesive, holistic philosophy that anyone can access and use in their own thought and life. While I don't think his proposed system necessarily achieves all that much in terms of engaging with actual philosophical issues and questions, it certainly does achieve its goal of putting forward a simple, cohesive, holistic system, so props to Fritz for that - especially given that he isn't building academically on ideas from previous philosophers, but developing an entirely new "map" (as he calls them) for inquiry.

   I will only extremely briefly give an overview of the book: he starts with the conception of philosophy as the provision of maps for thought, then discusses levels of being within the natural order, then considers that everything in its own teleological context must be "adequate" to its aim or goal, then treats in turn the four fields of knowledge and how we best engage them, then finally closing on an examination of the two distinct kinds of philosophical problem/question. Schumacher's writing is as non-scholarly and accessible as it is lively and engaging, and his actual system of thought has a great spirit of generosity to it - though ethics and politics aren't directly treated in his book, there are clear linkages between his metaphysical, epistemic and methodological sections that if taken seriously and followed would lead one into a far humbler (and therefore may we assume) more morally-integrated kind of life.

   I would recommend this book to anyone, even those uninterested in philosophy, as it functions not so much as a treatise on this or that particular arcane issue but as an orientation to systemic thinking along the same lines as Schumacher himself, and while I obviously never knew the man and so cannot say exactly to what degree he was right about everything, he is clearly (going also from Small is Beautiful, another book of his on economics) a man who thinks deeply, well, and with a great optimism for what humankind may be capable of were we only to slow down once in a while.