Announcing How to Think Like Socrates
Get 25% discount on preorders from Barnes and Noble until 19th April
Well, this is no ordinary book, and so it took a long time to finish, but it’s finally here… I am delighted to officially announce that my new book How to Think Like Socrates, published by St Martin’s Press, is now available for preorder!
Usually it takes about a year to write a book like this but How to Think Like Socrates took more like a year and a half. It’s a similar concept to How to Think Like a Roman Emperor — a combination of ancient biography, philosophy, and modern psychology woven together — but I would say that roughly four times as much work went into the new book. Check out the special offer below, which Barnes and Noble have generously agreed to, in celebration of the cover reveal. Scroll down to read some early endorsements from other authors, and a brief explanation of the unique approach adopted in writing How to Think Like Socrates.
Preorder it in any format (hardback, ebook, or audiobook) at Barnes & Noble before 19th April and get 25% off with code PREORDER25. Note: this discount is only available to B&N members but free memberships are available. Already a member? Preorder your copy now from Barnes & Noble.
If this discount doesn’t apply in your region, don’t worry — other special offers will be available in the future. You’ll also find the book listed on Amazon and on many other retailers — learn more on the website of Macmillan, the publisher.
This is no ordinary book so I hope that people enjoy it and I’m relieved that the feedback so far from authors that I respect has, as you will see below, been very positive.
One of the best books ever written on the power and practicality of philosophy for a good and successful life! — Tom Morris
What other Authors Said
This is an intriguing and original book, as well as being engagingly written and highly accessible. It is innovative both in linking the Socratic dialogues, especially those of Plato, with their historical context and in highlighting the significance of Socratic philosophical enquiry for modern readers. The connection made between Socratic method and CBT psychotherapeutic guidance is particularly suggestive. — Christopher Gill, Professor Emeritus of Ancient Thought, Exeter University, author of Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Ethics and its Modern Significance
Donald Robertson creates a wonderful semi-fictionalized Socrates to introduce modern readers to the birth of philosophy in Athens. We experience first-hand the method Socrates made famous — of subjecting our deepest beliefs to a cross-examination that jolts and stings like an electric ray. In our modern world that swirls with disinformation and unreason, we need nothing less to awaken us from our illusions. — Nancy Sherman, Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, and author of Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience
One of the best books ever written on the power and practicality of philosophy for a good and successful life! Wisdom isn’t a rulebook but a mindset. It develops from a life of honest and courageous inquiry. Donald Robertson masterfully and vividly takes us back to the Athens of Socrates and recreates the setting as well as he does the powerful ideas that one place, time, and person launched into the world forever. It’s an introduction to philosophy as a way of life that’s as gripping as any novel, and is as novel as a philosophy book can be. Highly recommended! — Tom Morris, author of Philosophy for Dummies and Stoicism for Dummies
How I Wrote this Book
Although I’ve written three books in a row about Marcus Aurelius, when people ask if he’s my favorite philosopher, I usually reply that, in fact, he’s my second favorite. Socrates has always been my favorite philosopher. So it seemed obvious to me that I should follow-up the success of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor by writing a similar kind of book about Socrates.
There were some big challenges, though. Socrates lived over five centuries before Marcus Aurelius, and our information about his life is notoriously incomplete and unreliable. The Stoics often expressed their philosophy in short maxims and simple principles, but Socrates was known for asking questions and engaging in intricate, sometimes quite lengthy, dialogues, in which his philosophical intentions are seldom made entirely explicit. Worse, although Marcus engaged in several notable wars, the story of the period in which he lived is relatively straightforward. By contrast, Socrates lived through the notoriously complex Peloponnesian War, which spanned 27 years, and involved many Greek states, most notably the birthplace of Socrates, Athens, whose political in-fighting can be quite baffling at times to modern readers.
Early on in the project, I had to make a difficult decision. The source materials with which we have to work when telling the story of Socrates, such as the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, and the later anecdotes about him, are generally taken to be semi-fictional in nature. Rather than attempting to write an academic biography, which would probably be unreadable for most non-academics, I decided to adopt a narrative style and embrace the literary character of Socrates — building upon the stories about him handed down to us in ancient sources. I simplified dialogues, combined character, added sections for clarification, and basically approached the project as if I were writing a movie script that aimed to tell the story of Socrates, in a way that captures the spirit of his character and the core of his philosophy. My overriding concern at all times was to make the life and thought of Socrates more accessible to modern readers.
I combined elements from Plato, Xenophon, and other ancient sources, in order to reconstruct the story we’re told about Socrates’ life, in a way that I could both dramatize and connect with the substance and method of his philosophy. Not only that, but I set out to make links apparent with modern psychology! Although I have degrees in philosophy, and, in fact, that’s where I started out, I am a clinician by profession, not an academic — I’m a psychotherapist, first and foremost, rather than a philosopher, historian, or classicist. To my mind, that’s an advantage in one key sense — the psychological implications of Socratic thought always stood out to me quite clearly, in ways that I felt were often completely overlooked by academics.
Socrates, as much as the Stoics, is the ancient forerunner of modern cognitive psychotherapy — and yet very little has been written about his approach to psychotherapy, although it is sometimes quite explicitly stated in the Socratic dialogues. I wanted to highlight the psychological implications of Socratic philosophy, in relation to the self-improvement concerns shared by modern readers, which were just as important to philosophy students in ancient Athens.
This is the book about Socrates that I wish I had read as a teenager, before I read anything else on philosophy.
I undertook what, at first, seemed like an almost impossible task, because I told myself that if I even made it 1% of the way toward achieving my goal, it would be worthwhile. I wrote a book about Socrates that I felt would be of benefit to the sort of people who came to me for help with problems such as anxiety and depression. Moreover, this, in a nutshell, is the book about Socrates that I wish I had read as a teenager, before I read anything else about philosophy.
Hello,
Any idea when this book will be available in Australia?
Wow, so soon after your Marcus biography came out! Looking forward to it. I’ve been reading your Philosophy of CBT book, so I’m on quite the Robertson reading binge! 😂