What Do You Want Out of Life?: A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters

"Do you want to make a lot of money or do you want to work for justice? Do you want to run marathons or sing in a choir? Do you want to have children or travel the world? The things we care about in life - families, friendships, jobs, health, moral ideals, hobbies - tend to conflict with each other. Unresolvable conflicts make our lives worse, because they prevent us from doing what matters to us. Worse still, we don't always know what we really want, or how to define success. How can you resolve a problem you've barely identified? This is a book about how to live your own life well by identifying your values and resolving conflicts among your goals and between your goals and the world. It is a philosophical guide, rather than a self-help book. There are no top ten lists for how to be happy or get rich quick, and no proclamations about what you should care about. Instead, philosopher Valerie Tiberius aims to provide readers a way of thinking about our goals that enables us to reflect on them in an effective way throughout our lives. This way of thinking is illustrated with examples that range from the silly to the serious, from shopping to navigating sexism. We'll also see that even if no one else can decide for us what matters in life, the other people in our lives have a profound influence on our goals and how we should pursue them. The best kind of reflection acknowledges the importance of our interconnectedness"--