Pierre Hadot: The Present Alone Is our Happiness, Stanford University Press 2009

This is one of the two or three most important books on philosophy of life by an eminent academic philosopher to come out in the English language in quite some some time. Based on spirited conversations with Jeannie Carlier, an old friend, and Prof. Arnold I. Davidson who is largely responsible for introducing the French philosopher to the United States, the book is highly accessible for the general public and addresses fundamental life themes with beautiful dignity and sense of gravity. On a scale from 0 to 10, I recommend this book with 10+.

Hadot has researched and written brilliantly about philosophy as a way of life in his academic books, such as the great What is Ancient Philosophy, my personal favorite. Not worried about academic fads and fashions, Hadot represents in our times that magnificent Socratic tradition of philosophers who address the fundamentals of life with passion to make a difference to people's actual life. The present-day heir of Socrates fights against the academic philosopher's tendency "to be content with his own discourse". The point is to overcome "the partial and biased self", and "to elevate oneself to "the universality of the rational self". As Carlier puts it quoting Hadot, "morality creates itself in the unexplected and, in a sense, heroic leap that brings us from a limited perspective to a universal perspective", "from a self that sees only its own interest to a self open to other humans and to the universe."