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This book provides a concise and comprehensive guide to the fundamental philosophical questions that arise when writing a literary work about one’s own life. What is memoir? Is all memoir ultimately fiction? Should memoirists aim to tell the truth, and if so, what kind of truth, how much of it, and why? What do memoirists owe the people they write about? What value does memoir have, for writers, readers and others? In addressing these questions, the book delves into a wide range of issues in philosophy, including the definition of literature, the nature of the self, the limits of knowledge, the concept of truth, the responsibilities of friendship, the relationship between ethics and art, and the question of what makes a life meaningful. The book takes the many philosophical challenges directed at memoirists seriously, but is ultimately a defense of a genre that, for all its perplexities—and maybe because of them—is rich in value and widely loved. The book is mainly aimed at writers, teachers, students and readers of autobiography, as well as readers of philosophy, and is written in a style accessible to a general audience.

Thought does not happen naturally, or easily. It emerges slowly and with difficulty. It is constantly involved in a struggle against demons or “vices” that stop it from it achieving its potential, and inhibit human beings’ ability to flourish. The problem of thought is thus indistinguishable from ethics as concerned with the conditions under which, and the ways in which, human life can flourish. This book examines three vices of the mind (stupidity, spite, and superstition) that diminish the power and role of critical thinking. The book analyzes the way these vices grow and spread, such as through political and corporate hogwash; the forms, past and present, they take; the institutions on which they rely; and the forms of rationality they find refuge in. It also suggests ways of overcoming those vices, through self-examination, generosity of spirit, and an eye for the construction of problems. At stake with the threat to thought is the possibility of replacing the (conformist) consensus with the (problematizing, questioning) dissensus.