Filosofía mundana

All people have an interpretation of the world. Interpreting is already a genuinely philosophical task. Therefore, all women and all men are philosophers and cannot stop being so without resigning from their human condition. This universal philosophical activity coexists with the efforts of a small minority of individuals who write books on philosophy. The best of these philosophical works are those that, by their intelligence, depth and persuasive force, help to educate and improve that first natural philosophy of the people. The supreme mission of philosophy today is to become worldly: philosophy about the whole world but also for the whole world and, if possible, with a little of the world. A philosopher should not direct his writings only to other philosophers, but to the common, unskilled citizen, who wishes to live his life in a wiser, more meaningful way, more worth living. And he has to carry out this important task, moreover, with good literary style, as a man of the world who masters the art of delighting, intriguing and moving the grateful audience with his reasons. Mundane Philosophy is a book that ignores purely philosophical problems -those that only interest professionals in the discipline- and chooses as its subject matters that concern us all -individuality, beauty, fortune, love, happiness, the enigma of life, death- projecting on them, yes, the luminosity of a philosophical gaze. And for that purpose he cultivates a genre, the micro-essay, where brevity, amenity, personal anecdote and humor are put at the service of a modern, deep and original approach to eternal questions of human existence. This book brings together Javier Gomá's micro-essays contained in Todo a mil and en Razón: portería and completes them with others that are collected here for the first time.