Also of interest ... in the big questions

The Soul Hypothesis

edited by Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz

(Continuum, $20)

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For philosophers, “the soul has been frustratingly hard to locate,” said Andrew Stark in The Wall Street Journal. In this collection of essays, various thinkers set aside the idea of an immortal soul and investigate the evidence for the existence of a “stripped-down version”—one that consists entirely of the human capacities “for voluntary action and mental consciousness.” Their conclusion, that our mental life “will never be fully translatable into the actions of neurons and synapses,” poses interesting challenges to science.

Examined Lives

by James Miller

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)

The 12 short biographies in James Miller’s new book are intended to salvage an old goal of philosophy, said Michael Sandlin in Bookforum. By recounting the lives of Aristotle, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and nine other giants of the field, Miller hopes to revive the notion that philosophy should be “a way of life” rather than merely an ivory-tower “logician’s sport.” His arguments in this vein could be stronger, but the book “succinctly outlines” the development of each man’s “core beliefs.”

Fate, Time and Language

by David Foster Wallace

(Columbia, $20)

As a philosophy undergraduate at Amherst, the late novelist David Foster Wallace became obsessed with the possibility that all of our choices are fated, said Daniel Menaker in Salon.com. This finely edited collection is built around Wallace’s 78-page undergraduate thesis, a passionate argument against philosopher Richard Taylor’s idea that “the future is as set in stone as the past.” Challenges abound for lay readers, but the contributors open a window on Wallace’s fiction and help create an “excellent” introduction to the topic of human responsibility.

Which ‘Aesthetics’ Do You Mean?

by Leonard Koren

(Imperfect, $16)

A straight description of this slim new treatise on the subject of beauty “does scant justice to the charisma exuded” by its pages, said Matthew Battles in BarnesandNobleReview.com. It uses just 50 pages of text to trot out 10 definitions of aesthetics, but folds in a series of compelling images ranging from “charred bone fragments” to crayon scribbles from the author’s toddler son. Viewed whole, the book suggests that the “impulse to beauty” predates any debate we might create about it.