PAPERBACK PUBLICATION

From yesterday, I am in paperback in all good bookshops - The Infinite Wisdom of Harriet Rose is now selling throughout the UK and in dozens of countries worldwide. Which in turn makes me ask myself the following question:

"What is it about my Meditations and the story of their success that makes them so popular?"

I do not pretend to be a philosopher of Kantian proportions, although it is true to say that the great man has had a huge influence on my thinking. Like my hero, Marcus Aurelius, I didn't set out to have my Meditations published - it never occurred to me when I wrote them that others would find them so interesting or that they would one day appear on London Underground posters. And as 'why' is extremely important to me, I need an answer to my question.

It was once suggested (by the father of one of my more envious classmates) that I was doing no more than repeating the theories of far greater philosophers and that as a fourteen year old I lacked the experience to do so. Now that I've had time to reflect on that accusation in the solitude of my bedroom, my response to this is as follows:

Many people study philosophy and some are then able to summarise and regurgitate it. But to be a true philosopher you need to be able to think for yourself rather than to depend upon someone else to do it for you. Like a good conversation, it's important to read and discuss what other philosophers have to say and to reflect on their views, but you need also to be adding your own views and, most important of all, to have the capacity to express the inquiring mind. I do not look to Kant or Descartes or Marcus Aurelius to tell me how to think or act or speak. I do not seek to apply their beliefs on a daily basis to my everyday life. The great philosophers are not counsellors or psychologists. They are people who are capable of intellectual inquiry. Experience of life is not necessary for that - an intelligent, reflective, creative, ordered mind is. So it matters not that I am only fourteen any more than it hindered Mozart that he began to compose at the age of four. It's all about natural inclination - not to repeat parrot-fashion, but to know how to use your brain, and to want to ask 'why' and 'how' rather than 'who' or 'when'. And that, I believe, is what makes my Meditations so popular.