A review by geese82
Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche by James Miller

5.0

One of the best reads I've had since last year.

The entire book is like a historical biography of famous Philosophers from the so called father of Philosophy Socrates to Nietzche. I am familiar with most of them regarding the historical impact each philosophers had given us. Some I am not familiar with, it is my first time to be exposed to Emerson, Montaigne, Rousseau, and Kant. James Miller did an incredible job in telling the readers each philosopher's take on the "examined life".

The entire book itself is pretty too, the cut of each pages, the style and size of the fonts and the size of the book. I really like these kinds of books, non-fiction with outstanding quality of the make of the book itself.

This praise for the book sums up my experience and thoughts about it:

"Miller casts a welcome light on the flawed, all-too-human aspects of famed moralists... His compelling books elegantly lays bare the distance between the abstract formulation of right action and its achievement in the real world, indicating that the lives of the great philosophers can be exemplary, but not always in the ways we might have hoped" - Publishers Weekly