AC Grayling wants you to think for yourself – except on certain matters

AC Grayling, the leonine seer of the liberal middle-class, eternally seeks to make readers ask themselves the great Socratic question: “How should I live my life?”

To this end, in his latest book, he treats philosophy not as a series of technical questions, but rather a living thing. Philosophy and Life is a panoramic, sweeping affair, in which Grayling draws upon Lebensphilosophie in all its forms, from the ancient Greeks to Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre to contemporary thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum, as well as poets, artists and scientists. He’s motivated, above all, by the defence of reason, which he pits against religion and tradition of all kinds. The work of reason is, in his definition, “scrutiny, reflection, evidence, consistency, constructive scepticism, and a refusal to accept any proposition which lacks adequate grounds.”

Grayling really, really wants you to think for yourself. He notes that even the blithest among us are occasionally prompted to reflect, whenever (for instance) something terrible or unusual happens, even if much of the time we are content to follow the crowd, or rely on vague nostrums learned in our youth. He quotes Oscar Wilde: “Most people are other people.” Don’t be like other people! The great unthinking masses (as Grayling sees it) would do well to stop desiring the conceptual equivalent of “opium in the mains water supply,” that is to say, wanting not to think about such weighty matters as ethics, happiness, death, luck, evil, or the existence of others – all of which Grayling discusses in turn.

Grayling’s account is vivid: he’s particularly good at discussing some of the early Greek schools – Stoicism, Epicureanism and the Cynics – in a way that brings them to life. He notes that Stoicism, with its emphasis on living honourably and courageously, and with self-mastery over what “lies within ourselves, such as desires, appetites and fears”, has enjoyed a revival in recent years. It would be interesting to ask why this is: perhaps the only acceptable form of contemporary masculinity in an era of over-sharing, ubiquitous therapy and consumerism is an elevated form of “sucking it up”.

But cultural critique is not Grayling’s bag. The questions he raises are solely of the profound kind. He reminds us of Socrates’s claim that “to learn to philosophise is to learn to die”, and suggests that to overcome one’s fear of death is to understand the importance that meaning gives to life, “like the frame around a picture”. There are some nice reflections on old age: “Old people are beautiful, without the aid of anything other than the years they have lived.” And some not-so-nice reflections on euthanasia, which Grayling defends: “There will be difficult decisions, and mistakes, and abuses might occur.”

While Grayling provides a good overview of the history of those concerned with the “art of living”, he undermines his generosity of thought with his digs and misrepresentation of religious thought, writing about it that “the important thing is comfort”, and that “any falsehood or myth will do if it is consoling to believe it.” Bypassing all the intellectual effort (not to mention existential struggle) that comes from within religious thought of different kinds is a missed opportunity. To imagine that believers are somehow engaged in existential opium-drinking does an injustice to all those who both practise religion and think for themselves.

Indeed, perhaps the main problem of our age isn’t religion, but nihilism – the belief in nothing. Liberal culture, far more than religion, distracts us from the question of how best to live our lives, but Grayling is relatively silent on these pressures, not least because many of the views he espouses on social and political matters are largely compatible with the liberal outlook of the West. And yet, even so, it’s difficult to square Grayling’s political interventions – his claim that Brexit was politically illegitimate, for example – with his philosophical commitment to people’s capacity to think; perhaps they are only thinking correctly when in accord with him?

Think for yourself, then, but not too much. Ultimately, Grayling’s Lebensphilosophie is an individualistic, evaluative one. “The one thing that belongs absolutely and inalienably to all individuals,” he writes, “is the choice about who their lives belong to: those others or themselves.” But, we might say, there is more to life than this.

Philosophy and Life is published by Penguin at £25. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books