Lucy Eyre set out to present philosophical ideas in an accessible manner. The result is an engaging and thought-provoking first book, writes Sorcha Hamilton.
If there is fruit on an inaccessible mountain, does it still have a taste? Would you kill one person to save the lives of hundreds of others? How do your dreams connect with reality? These are just some of the conundrums posed in Lucy Eyre's quirky philosophical novel If Minds Had Toes, which takes the reader on a fantastical journey through arguments about morality, the meaning of life and free will.
"I don't claim to have any of the answers," says Eyre, who is on her first visit to Dublin. The point is to ask questions and get people thinking, she says. In the novel, 15-year-old Ben is drawn into the bizarre afterlife called the World of Ideas, where Socrates is teased by his arch-rival, Wittgenstein; Aristotle and Simone de Beauvoir play backgammon by the fire, and the mind-body problem, or dualist-versus-reductionist debates, are small talk. When Wittgenstein challenges Socrates to prove that philosophy can make life better, young Ben is recruited to investigate whether the "unexamined life is worth living".
"The idea was to explore philosophical ideas through dialogues, where the main protagonist, Ben, is like the reader. Each person in the dialogue would represent a broad strand in the history of philosophy," says Eyre. As Ben wanders through the World of Ideas, he encounters many weird and eccentric characters who urge him to think about some of the fundamental philosophical questions. Although initially befuddled by many of the debates, he slowly begins to value the art of curiosity.
Picking up a copy of Descartes' Meditations or Kant's critiques is a daunting idea for most, but If Minds Had Toes takes a simple, and often humorous, approach to philosophy. Eyre, who studied philosophy at Oxford University, wanted to present philosophical ideas in an accessible manner. "Initially I felt restricted - if you write about free will there are certain arguments you have to talk about. But at one point I stopped looking at it from the view of the philosophers and instead began thinking, If you don't know about any of this, what are the things you want to hear about, or start with? Then I felt liberated."
At a first glance the book's tone and style seem to be aimed at younger readers, with witty drawings to illustrate debates, but it frequently enters into serious philosophical debate. "It started off being a bit more for children," Eyre says, "but I like to think it's an adult book now, and I hope that teenagers would enjoy it, too."
Eyre currently lives in Ethiopia with her partner, but she was brought up in London, where she wrote If Minds Had Toes, her first book. "I don't think I could have written it in Ethiopia," she says, adding that in Ethiopia, where most people need to think about food and shelter, philosophy seems like a luxury. "In that context it's hard for philosophy not to feel trivial." She also believes, though, that debates about what life is about, or right and wrong, apply in any context. "Socrates argues that people assume that buying food and building houses is more important than philosophy because it's more basic - and it's true in a sense. But that's not the point. Having a home and food should free you up to think about philosophy, or music, or falling in love," she says.
Eyre comes from an artistic family. Her father, Sir Richard Eyre, directed the film Iris, as well as numerous theatre and BBC productions. She wanted to write for many years, but it was only when she was forced to give up work, due to an illness, that she began to consider writing a book. "I decided to give myself two years - and by that stage I'd know if I was kidding myself. Two years and two months later I had a publisher, so it all worked out really well."
Eyre is now halfway through a first draft of a novel set in Ethiopia, and she is also working on a non-fiction project that may become a satire of diplomatic life.
One of the most interesting parts of the book comes during a rowdy debate about happiness, where participants are given a minute to have their say before the crowd starts to heckle and boo. The reader is forced to ponder the meaning of happiness - is it a myth, an absence of pain or just about deciding to be happy?
"I do think we're obsessed with chasing after happiness, which is never a way of getting it." People are always looking for some kind of help, Eyre says. She believes that in an increasingly consumerist, globalised society, our sense of morals and ethics are constantly changing. "But I'm not trying to do Alain de Botton-style "help through philosophy" - it sounds a bit trite to say what we need is more philosophy and then we'll sort out our lives." There is something to be gained by asking ourselves these kind of questions, she says. "One of the characters in the book says part of being happy is being able to recognise when you are happy, not constantly looking for something else and assuming you're not happy. I think that's quite a refreshing thought."
If Minds Had Toes, by Lucy Eyre, is published by Bloomsbury Publishing, £12.99 in UK