A Philosophy of Simple Living

Jérôme Brillaud

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781789142273
• eBook ISBN: 9781789142655
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Today, "simple living" is a rallying cry for anti-consumerists, environmentalists, and anyone concerned with humanity's effect on the planet. But what is so revolutionary about a simple life? And why are we so fascinated with simplicity today? A Philosophy of Simple Living charts the ideas, motivations, and practices of simplicity from antiquity to the present day. Bringing together an array of people, practices, and movements, from Henry David Thoreau to Steve Jobs, and from Cynics and Shakers to the "slow movement, " voluntary simplicity, and degrowth, this book is as comprehensive as it is concise. Written in elegant, spare prose, A Philosophy of Simple Living will be of great benefit to all who wish to declutter and pare back their complicated, modern lives.

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’, in Human All-Too-Human, trans. Paul V. Cohn (London, 1934), vol. II, p. 294.

2 Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago, IL, 2003), p. 3.

3 Roland Barthes, Le Neutre, cours au collège de France (1977–1978), ed. Thomas Clerc (Paris, 2002), p. 31.

4 André Comte-Sponville, A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, trans. Catherine Temerson (New York, 2001), pp. 152–3.

5 Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (London, 1995), p. 228.

6 Isaac Newton, Newton’s Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte (New York, 1846), p. 384.

7 Quoted in John L. Heilbron, ‘Wit and Wisdom’, Nature, CDLXXXIII/3 (2005), p. 29.

8 Gaston Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Boston, MA, 1984), p. 148.

9 ‘Simplicity is not a state of things but a state of mind.’ Gaston Bachelard, Essai sur la connaissance rapprochée (Paris, 1969), p. 98 (translation mine).

10 Lawrence B. Slobodkin, Simplicity and Complexity in the Games of the Intellect (Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 17.

11 See, for instance, Peter A. van der Helm, Simplicity in Vision: A Multidisciplinary Account of Perceptual Organization (Cambridge, 2014).

12 Aristotle, Politics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Oxford, 1995), vol. II, book I, 1252b30.

13 Ibid., 1278b21–30.

14 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA, 1998), p. 9.

15 François Jullien, The Philosophy of Living, trans. Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkowski (London, 2016), p. 161.

16 Ibid., pp. 161–2.

17 See ‘sem’ and ‘plek’ in American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, www.thefreedictionary.com, accessed 1 August 2018.

18 One modern example would be the Bach Remedies developed in the early twentieth century and based on the principle of simplicity. See ‘On Simplicity’ at www.bachcentre.com.

19 Goethe’s Letters to Zelter, ed. Arthur Duke Coleridge (London, 1892), pp. 282–3.

ONE SIMPLE BEGINNINGS

1 Plato, Phaedrus, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, MA, 1997), 274e. All refere...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: What’s in a Name?
• ONE Simple Beginnings
• TWO Walking in Simplicity
• THREE The ‘Gift to Be Simple’
• FOUR A Simple Reform
• FIVE Simplicity Made Simple
• Conclusion: A Simple Voice
• References
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements