Description:
From one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, and the author of the international bestseller Small Is Beautiful, the reissue of a timeless treatise on the meaning of living.
In A Guide for the Perplexed, bestselling author E. F. Schumacher explores our relation to the world: our obligations to other people, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly to ourselves. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a truly authentic relationship with the world and truly know the meaning of living.
Schumacher argues that we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker is to find for everything its proper place. For things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and their proper places are filled by other things that should not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead.
A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers in following our destined path in life s journey."
Brief description:
Born in Germany, Dr. E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977) fled to England after the rise of Nazism and, with the help of John Maynard Keynes, taught economics at Oxford University. He is the author of Small Is Beautiful, the book that "changed the way many people think about bigness and its human cost" (New York Times).
Review Quotes:
"A harvest of utterly insane, consoling, and life-affirming insight... an unapologetic defense of traditional Christian humanism." - Los Angeles Times
"A Guide for the Perplexed deserves wide reading. It deserves in fact a Place in the college curriculum, as a text for introductory courses in philosophy....It does as much for the defense of traditional civilizational values as C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man did in the last generation, and it does so on a metaphysical foundation." - Greensboro Daily News
"A Guide for the Perplexed is really a statement of the philosophical underpinnings that inform Small is Beautiful. Those who have read neither book should be wise to read the latest book first. Those who have read Small is Beautiful will benefit from careful reading of this new book. Its impact may be less immediate, but perhaps more substantial and lasting." - Chicago Tribune
"A condensation of a vast and refreshingly unorthodox system of ideas." - Arthur Koestler, Observer
"The most exciting philosophical book for ages." - Daily Mail (London)
"There is a rich store of wisdom and understanding, embedded in the religions of East and West, which our dangerous preoccupation with science has scanted and ignored. ... People may see the blindness of only seeing in one particular way." - Sunday Telegraph
"Nothing less than a Manual for Survival, concerned... with the full realization of human potential." - Newsday
"A Guide for the Perplexed offers us a harvest of utterly sane, consoling, and life-affirming insight from one of the wisest minds of our time." - Theodore Roszak, Los Angeles Times