Philosophy is Back in Business. The financial and climate crises, global consumption habits, and other 21st-century challenges call for a "killer app. " I think I've found it: philosophy. Philosophy can help us address the (literally) existential challenges the world currently confronts, but only if we take it off the back burner and apply it as a burning platform in business. Philosophy explores the deepest, broadest questions of life—why we exist, how society should organize itself, how institutions should relate to society, and the purpose of human endeavor, to name just a few.
The Wealth of Nations, a book that serves as the intellectual platform for capitalism, lays out how markets should be organized and how people should behave in such markets. The book's author, Adam Smith, was not an economist, as many believe, but a philosopher. Smith was chairman of the Moral Philosophy Dept. at Glasgow University when he wrote the book. Untitled. Confucius vs Nietzsche. SlowTV | Richard Dawkins in conversation with Robyn Williams | T. Alain de Botton on Distraction.
One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is how we can relearn to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible. The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere in the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties, something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows.
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture – and in the process don't allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds. A student following a degree in the humanities can expect to run through a thousand books before graduation day. Alain de Botton is currently working on a new book. Public Talk and Panel Discussion: What is Mind? - Tibetan Buddhi. "The mind of an entrepreneur is the mind of madness"