The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers
4.5 | 1,072 ratings
Price: 17.71
Last update: 11-30-2025
Top reviews from the United States
- Paul MchughLucid, amusing, accessibleWhy fall in love with wisdom? (Philo = I love. Sophia = wisdom.)
Well, ‘cos maybe it can do one a heap o' good. Philosophy’s key premise works like this: If human thoughts can be induced to rhyme with reality, then reality might be much easier to bear. To handle. Since life ought to be an alliance with reality, not a struggle to subdue it.
That’s my grand takeaway from the latest book from Eric Weiner.
I’ve just finished reading Weiner’s “The Socrates Express,” and recommend it unhesitatingly as a perhaps unusual yet potentially satisfying Xmas gift.
The book’s subtitle roughly explains its core: “In search of life lessons from dead philosophers.” But that line alone doesn’t manage to communicate the book’s very attractive tone, which is both quizzical and humorous. The book is less a trek through the history of philosophy’s leading lights, more a romp through that both far and recent past.
Weiner seems to present himself as a fretful, impatient, grumpy, even neurotic narrator. However, I see him much more as a deadpan comedian. A dry humorist in the tradition of Jack Benny and Bob Newhart – albeit one whose jokes are more cerebral and whose general bent is more academic.
Four sub-themes animate “The Socrates Express.” The first is travel – truly no surprise for an author who made his bones with books such as, “The Geography of Bliss” and “The Geography of Genius.” Each of the 14 chapters opens with a train journey to a locale that exerted significant influence upon a given thinker. Another thread is formed by Weiner’s lucid and economic summary of each philosopher’s principal suppositions.
His third and fourth themes are the ones I found most interesting. Weiner tracks these key thoughts or postures as they shaped the progress of a philosopher’s life; and then he tries them out on his own life, usually with entirely mixed results. (Once in a while, he treats us with a bit of acerbic yet piercing side-commentary from his teenage daughter.) The net result is that Weiner greatly humanizes the highbrows, and shows us that, when all is said and done, philosophy at its best is a sincere effort to grapple with life and next, at minimum, to wrestle it to a draw.
I have on my shelf several types of “introduction to philosophy” books. And I’ve made a deep dive into a few formal mindsets, primarily Stoicism. I keep the general summaries around to remind me of the full spectrum of major cognitive systems humanity has churned out over the ages. And to endow my present thinking with perspective.
Of that introductory lot, I’d judge Weiner’s book as by far the best.
It is the deftest, the most creative, the most communicative, the most experimental, and the wittiest. This is not to say he succeeds in every instance. His chapter on Gandhi I found superlative. But his chapter on Confucius seemed surprisingly dull and empty – I wished he’d selected an Asian seer with whom he felt a greater affinity. Buddha, perhaps. However, he more than makes up for a rare flub with other brilliant commentary – such as his chapter on Simone Weil. I confess I’d never heard of the dame before reading Weiner, and I wound up feeling grateful for this introduction.
It’s no secret, as we draw to the close of 2020, that we live in hard times. And they may turn harder still.
So if you presently seek to nurture and bolster your own thoughts, postures and attitudes (as well as those of your pals) in order to better cope with life in our times, this book could provide a useful boost (for you and/or for them). Yes, it deals in philosophy. But the text is lucid, amusing, and accessible. And that’s why I think “The Socrates Express” would make an awesome Xmas gift during this quite peculiar and outstandingly particular year in which we do find ourselves.
Or not… - Gary Moreau, AuthorAll aboard!This is the most approachable book of philosophy you are bound to find. Weiner’s writing is simple, to the point, and often humorous. He covers many of history’s most notable philosophers and schools of philosophy without resorting to the language of modern academic philosophy. There is no need to stare at your navel.
Weiner notes that few schools today teach philosophy. At best they teach about philosophers. But although there are differences, philosophy and science are essentially the same thing. The words, in fact, centuries ago were used concurrently and many of the greatest philosophers in history would be considered both scientists and philosophers today. Newton’s most famous paper, which is often assigned a prominent role in kicking off the Scientific Revolution, actually had the word philosophy in its title.
We are today enamored with science. ‘What the science says’ is the journalistic phrase of the day. The suggestion, of course, is that if this is what the science says, it must be true. This is the source of many of our current social, political, and cultural ills, however. Science is not a body of knowledge. It is a methodology for collecting data. But data are dumb. They can tell us virtually nothing without further questioning. As the author notes, “We confuse data with information, information with knowledge, and knowledge with wisdom.”
“Philosophy, unlike science, is prescriptive.” It is the study of questions. But without the questions we have no idea if the reality the science gives us is true or not. Which is why so many scientific “discoveries” turn out to be false. There weren’t enough questions asked.
At the core of the LEAN management system, the most advanced operations management system currently in use, one of the core concepts is the 5 Whys. When you confront a problem you can’t resolve it until you know why the problem exists. Your first answer to the question of why, however, will seldom be the root cause and root causes are what you need to fix. You must ask why at least five times before you even get close to the root cause.
That is essentially what Socrates told us a long, long time ago. These subsequent questions are what I think of as discovering the context. We can’t understand the answers until we understand the context. And that’s why there is such a strong need for prescriptive thinking. That is where the context resides.
This, in my opinion, is why technology is currently doing us far more harm than good. It ignores context, which is why AI will never replace the human mind. However complex it becomes it is still binary. No number of algorithms can ever replace the questions of philosophy. The algorithms can destroy us, of course, but that does not require understanding. We’re doing just fine on that front without the understanding that philosophy can provide.
This is a great book by a very skillful writer. I highly recommend it. I guarantee you will feel better for having read it.