Reading as a Philosophical Practice

This book asks why reading matters so much to so many people. Its answer is that reading is a philosophical activity: a way of working through, and taking a stand on, fundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things.

Reading as a Philosophical Practice asks why reading—everyday reading for pleasure—matters so profoundly to so many people. Its answer is that reading is an implicitly philosophical activity. To passionate readers, it is a way of working through, and taking a stand on, certainfundamental questions about who and what we are, how we should live, and how we relate to other things.The bookexamines the lessons that the activity of reading seems to teach about selfhood, morality and ontology, and it tries to clarify the sometimes paradoxical claims that serious readers have made about it. To do so, it proposes an original theoretical framework based on Virginia Woolf’s notion of the common reader and Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of practice. It also asks whether reading can continue to play this role as paper is replaced by electronic screens.