Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life [Paperback]

Roger-Pol Droit (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 29, 2003

Say your name aloud to yourself in a quiet room. Imagine peeling an apple in your mind. Take the subway without trying to get anywhere. The simple meditations in this book have the potential to shake us awake from our preconceived certainties: our own identity, the stability of the outside world, the meanings of words. At once entertaining and startling, irreverent and wise, this book will provoke moments of awareness for readers in any situation and in all walks of life. Enter the space of your favorite painting. Watch someone sleeping. The world won't look the same again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Philosopher and Le Monde columnist Droit's strange and delightful little volume explores some of the biggest questions in philosophy with exercises instead of terminology-laden tracts, by encouraging readers to discover the ways in which small or familiar acts-fasting, prowling, playing, telling a stranger she's beautiful-can become "the starting point for that astonishment which gives rise to philosophy." Each of the 101 exercises is carefully, even lovingly explained, with duration, necessary props and intended effect listed first. Exercise #31, for example, instructs readers to "Watch dust in the sun": it should take about 15 minutes, a room and sunlight are needed, and its effect is "reassuring." When a ray of sunlight enters a dark room, an "invisible world" of sparkling dust reveals itself-a symbol of the "stratum of existence that is both invisible and present" always. There are other worlds within ours, Droit reminds us, worlds that we might be able to see with only a metaphoric readjustment of shutters. There are exercises to calm, to disorient, to humanize, to displace; for instance, listening to shortwave radio at night, Droit writes, will help readers realize that "perpetually around you, woven into the air...are these hundreds of voices murmuring, in dozens of unknown or unrecognizable languages, of which you know nothing, expect that they spread an obscure and changing human crust, unendingly, over everything." Already a bestseller in Europe, this volume should appeal to anyone who has ever asked questions about perception or identity, or wanted a new way to see the world and the self.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Roger Pol-Droit was born in Paris in 1949 and is a philosopher, a researcher at the Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, and a columnist for the French daily newspaper Le Monde.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); 1 edition (July 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142003131
• ISBN-13: 978-0142003138
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shifting Awareness, May 13, 2006

By 

C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (Paperback)

This is a very strange book, but in the end, a useful one.

Experts of the mind and human behaviour have proposed that most of us carry on throughout our lives on automatic pilot. Because of habit, daily routine and repetition, we inadvertently create mental machinery to do our tasks without too much effort. As we grow older, too, our perceptions of the world have a tendency to dull, our opinions on matters political and otherwise refuse to see other perspectives, we are less inclined to learn new things, in other words, we become set in our ways. As the old saying goes: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks". This text provides us with some absurd and interesting exercises designed to break down our mental machinery, shake up our preconceived notions of the world, our fixed ideas, and perhaps see the world from a clean slate. In some cases, as the title suggests, the outcomes can be astonishing.

For example, number 15, "Walk in the Dark". The duration should only be a few minutes and the effect is that uncomfortable sensation of disorientation. Interestingly, the world actually changes when we attempt to orient ourselves in pitch-black conditions. We cannot depend on the light and must use our other senses to move around. This exercise hones your other senses, changing your views on "reality" and pushes you to move into present time.

One of the exercises that I found most rewarding is number 67, "Watch someone Sleeping". Having been with my partner for some years now, I believed I knew everything about her from her eyebrows to that tiny mole on her left shoulder. Time and familiarity has a tendency to make one take for granted those things and people that we depend on the most. Watching her sleep, listening to her slow and rhythmic breathing, suddenly I perceive a kind of "innocence", a face that somehow appears different, more beautiful, much less familiar. I no longer take her for granted because I've seen her in a different way.

A more banal exercise, and one most of us have experienced at one point or another is number 77, "Listen to your own voice". More often than not, our response is, "That doesn't sound like me!" If you are not used to hearing yourself, it can be a dislocating experience, which is the point. The exercise tends to impose an objective point of view on us, hearing yourself as possibly others see or hear you. It breaks up our preconceived notions, providing a fresh look at "I".

As the author has stated, this book is about entertainment. These exercises can be fun, however, they also can shift your awareness slightly, creating astonishing feelings, seeing the world from different points of view.

To my way of thinking, this can only be worthwhile.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Experiments with your head, June 16, 2004

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"[e-mail]" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (Paperback)

This book serves two purposes:

(1) It is a talking point. Leave it somewhere visible, say on your coffee table, and just wait for the reactions: incredulous, unbelieving, provoking fascinated expressions, engrossed furrowed foreheads and wry smiles.

(2) It is a book of practical experiments. There is something for everyone. Count to a thousand - seems simple? Try it. Its not the monotonous regular task simple mathmatics might suggest. It is more of a rollercoaster ride, with clickety click ups, exhilerating downs, mind numbing bends... And what do we learn? According to Pol Droit - that 1,000 is a very, very big number. And 1,000,000 is emotionally incomprehensible. He's right. Call to yourself, play the animal, imagine a pile of human organs, empty a word of its meaning, kill people in your head, take the tube without going anywhere specific. This is self-help without the Oprah factor, and with lashings of delicious humour. Pol Droit's experiments are designed to help committed experimenters see the world, and their experience of it, in a context slightly out of the ordinary. Freeze frame a moment, an action, a thought and, like watching someone dancing to music without the music, the fragile architecture on which our experience of the world rests is exposed.

Try it, you might even like it. Better (or worse) still, you might discover a dark corner of yourself you never wanted to know about.

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Play, December 3, 2004

By 

Mel N. Jolly "Melanjolly" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (Paperback)

This book is like propaganda for the existentially playful. If you are neither existentially inclined nor playful, this book will do nothing for you. If, however, you are both, you will like it a lot. If you have read and enjoyed Walker Percy, that will probably help.

This is not a self-help book. If you are odd, it will probably help to make you odder.