Iris Murdoch

Think yourself better: 10 rules of philosophy to live by

From Aristotle to Iris Murdoch: what the greatest minds of the past 2,500 years have to tell us about the good life

Julian Baggini
Saturday 4 February 2023

The thing that separates human beings from other animals is our extraordinary capacity for complex, abstract thought. This is what has given rise to our diverse cultures, our scientific achievements, our ability to envisage the future and, hopefully, make it better than what has gone before. But our imperfect minds have also generated terrible mistakes and dangerous ideologies. If we don’t know how to distinguish bad thinking from good, we can end up believing what we shouldn’t, and behaving in ways that are harmful to ourselves, to others, and to the planet.