The Philosophy Book (DK Publishing, 2011)

This book was my birthday gift from my mother; early in September, my family made a quick stop at a bookstore to fill in time before our dinner. Mother said that take my pick of any one book for my birthday, and I don't mind doing that at all. At that time the design of this book caught my eye right off. I took an instant liking to it. It was pleasing to my eye, as if puting a spell on me at once. So I was leafing through, standing up, paging through, and sometimes peruse this book; and the decision was simple.

Then, how come the philosophy book for my birthday gift? To get out of my limitation---that's right. I wanted to know sage's words reading it. In fact, I had no one to turn to for help other than books, and philosophy was one of them. This isn't my first philosophy book but I'd like to brush up on my thought through this. It's sobering reminder of the human limitations. They were my role model for me.

Most of all I wanted to explore how philosophy can engage with my life. I expected philosophy allows me to change my life for the better. That was its mission. However, I want to clarify that philosophy actually doesn't help us at all in most cases; there are many people who speak nonsense, inane remark pretending to be a philosopher. They are generally big on metaphysics and keep their statement vague. There are always high possibilities that their focus of the attention may leave the philosophy and move to the mysticism. How many times have you heard it said, "Philosophy helped me make positive change in my life." I think most of you never.

Then this book, I mean philosophy, has done much to advance my understanding of the world? My thought threaded through the space filled with ideas that I learned from this, and that was a real revelation to me. Well, I could say like this, using this phrase taken from Ludwig Wittgenstein: Discussion about religious and ethical values is strictly meaningless. Because the things that we are attempting to talk about when we discuss such topics are beyond the limits of the world, they also lie beyond the limits of our language. "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
No absolutely correct thing has found, indicating there isn't just one all of us have to follow.

This book itself is very cool, anyway. It's a pleasure to read, and an effort to close this book.