A Guide For the Perplexed

(Paperback)

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Description

A reissue of EF Schumacher's classic work on the fundamental place and purpose of philosophy to celebrate the centenary of his birth. A Guide for the Perplexed is E. F. Schumacher's classic work of philosophy and a statement of the philosophies that underpin his economic masterpiece Small is Beautiful. Schumacher asserts that it is the task of philosophy to provide a map of life and knowledge, which exhibits the most important features of life in their proper prominence.

Reviews

A condensation of a vast and refreshingly unorthodox system of ideas -- Arthur Koestler * Observer *
Schumacher's arguments are invigorating, provoking, and often dramatic * New Statesman *
The most exciting philosophical book for ages * Daily Mail *
There is a rich store of wisdom and understanding, embedded in the religions of East and West, which our dangerous preoccupation with science has scanted and ignored... This book is about the different ways in which people may see and the blindness of only seeing in one particular way. * Sunday Telegraph *

Author Bio

Before the publication of Small is Beautiful, his bestselling reappraisal of Western economic attitudes, Dr E. F. Schumacher was already well known as an economist, journalist and progressive entrepreneur. Born in Germany, he first came to England in 1930 as a Rhodes Scholar to study economics at New College, Oxford. Later, at the age of twenty-two, he taught economics at Columbia University, New York. As he found theorising without practical experience unsatisfying, he then went into business, farming and journalism. He resumed the academic life for a period at Oxford during the war, afterwards serving as Economic Adviser to the British Control Commission in Germany from 1946 to 1950. In later years, his advice on problems of rural development was sought by many overseas governments. Dr Schumacher was awarded the CBE in 1974. He died in 1977.