Driving with Plato

Smith (former Prize Fellow, All Souls Coll., Oxford Univ.; Breakfast with Socrates) was trained and has worked in academic philosophy, although he is now an independent management consultant. As with his previous book, he presents philosophy here with a general readership in mind. Using life milestones that we are all familiar with—birth, beginning school, learning to ride a bike, earning a driver's license, having children, divorcing—Smith demonstrates how we function as both "natural and cultural creatures." While some of these milestones are "natural" and others have evolved through cultural generations, some are clearly relevant only to our own time and only to some cultures within our time. For readers who share these cultural norms, this can be a wholly engaging work, as Smith smoothly informs his discussion of what may seem mundanely personal (e.g., moving from one house to another) with lessons from Western philosophy and literature.