Instructions for an examined life

"Logic Made Easy" is more casually paced and flush with examples. It covers the same ground as "Being Logical," and much more, including logic's history, from Aristotle and the Stoics through Lewis Carroll and on to modern-day computing. And Bennett often attempts to render logic graphically, especially "Euler circles" and Venn diagrams.

She also presents the results of studies in cognitive psychology that illustrate how people think and use language - not merely how logicians think they should. Along the way, you can try a few of the puzzles these test subjects faced. One tricky example requires determining, in the fewest number of moves, if a stated rule about four cards is true.

Christopher Phillips is the founder of the Society for Philosophical Inquiry, a nonprofit organization that facilitates the formation of community groups called Socrates Cafés to encourage philosophical thinking in a nonacademic context. Six Questions of Socrates draws from his experiences with these Socrates Cafés in various international locales.

Enabling questioners may be the Society's raison d'être, but providing answers seems to be the final goal of "Six Questions." Phillips's method is intriguing: He poses the same questions ("What are virtue, moderation, justice, good, courage, and piety?") to groups from disparate cultural backgrounds. By culling their responses, he unearths themes that he believes point to universal human excellence.

In examining virtue, for instance, he draws parallels between the Navajo concept of hozho, the classical Greek concept of arête, and the Japanese principle of Wa. These three words convey a notion of virtue grounded in harmonious interrelationships between individuals, society, and nature.

In another chapter, he explores the notion of "the good" with Arab and Israeli students in the US as well as with inmates in a maximum-security prison. Both the American inmates and the Middle Eastern students identify goodness with the refusal to deny essential humanity to any person. The vignettes serve to demonstrate that some thought processes may well find their root in human nature, irrespective of cultural background.

If "Six Questions" has a flaw, it is that Phillips never admits that his philosophical conclusions are heavily informed by his social agenda. His vision of a collectivist "excellent civilization" - in which morally upright masses reject the excesses of ambition to elevate the poor - is widely shared.

It is similarly widely rejected, among thinkers both naïve and sophisticated, yet those voices are not to be found at the Socrates Cafés chosen for this work. Does the politics follow the philosophy, or the philosophy the politics? We cannot know, but are left hoping that Phillips, by returning to the methods of the first Western philosopher, has created a template for philosophical exploration that many others will emulate.

• Darren Abrecht works on the Monitor's website.

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