A Word in Closing
The books named here are not light reading. Some of them demand patience, and a willingness not to grasp a thought at the first attempt. But in this, philosophy is no different from music: what sounds difficult at first hearing can turn out, on the second and third time, to be the richest and most beautiful.
Philosophy does not live by being read about, but by being done — by thinking for yourself, asking for yourself, judging for yourself. The books named here are aids to that, not substitutes for it. In the end, what matters is that you yourself take reality into view: the human being standing before you, the child being born, the sick person who suffers, the dying person who departs.
And perhaps yourself.
For the question “What is the human being?” is not only a question about others. It is a question about you. And if the answer is right — the answer this book has tried to give — if every human being is a person from the very beginning, with inalienable dignity — then it holds for you too. Not because you have earned it. Not because you have worked for it. But because you are what you are.
A person.