For more than twenty years, University of Chicago professor J. Eric Oliver has taught a legendary course—The Intelligible Self—that students routinely describe as life-changing. Now, in How to Know Your Self, he brings the best of that classroom experience to readers everywhere, guiding us through the most profound and meaningful journey of all: understanding who we really are.

With warmth, wit and an eye for the unexpected, Oliver draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, physics and ancient philosophy to explore the mystery of the self.

Drawing on decades of teaching, research and personal experience, he offers something deeper than quick fixes or life hacks: How to Know Your Self reveals a transformative new understanding of what it means to be a person–what it means to have and be a “self”–and shows how that insight can fundamentally reshape the way we live this one life we’re given.