The Courage to Be Disliked

Framed as a series of conversations between a strong-willed philosopher and a skeptical young man, The Courage to Be Disliked introduces the ideas of Alfred Adler — the "third giant" of modern psychology alongside Freud and Jung — to a general audience.

Over five nights of debate, the philosopher argues a set of deceptively simple and often provocative claims: that our lives are not determined by past trauma, that all problems are ultimately interpersonal, that we must separate our own tasks from those of others, and that genuine freedom requires the willingness to be disliked. The young man pushes back at every turn, voicing the reader's own objections, until the argument builds toward a vision of a life lived courageously in the present.

A phenomenon first in Japan and then around the world, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga's book is an accessible, argumentative work of practical philosophy about happiness, freedom, and taking responsibility for the life you actually want.