A distinguished philosopher's meditation on the ocean and on sailing.

The ocean is a kind of otherness. Beneath a glittering surface, it is black. It is one. It teems with life. It is a place, but also the content of that place. It is not inexhaustible and cannot forgive everything. It is the space of doubt and a challenge to knowledge. It is not made for us human beings, yet we depend on it.

Crossing the ocean as a sailor-philosopher, Roberto Casati takes the reader on a truly initiatory journey. The sea’s otherness makes us rethink it from a new perspective, to understand the extent to which it has made us who we are and who we are destined to become. Navigating in a space of seemingly limitless freedom radically changes one's relationship to the environment, to people, and even to objects. The boat becomes a school of life that compels one to rethink everything in order to act differently. Sailing leads to new ways of knowing: a philosopher’s route.