Practical Wisdom? - by Kieran Setiya
No post this week, but a link to an essay I wrote for The Point, on philosophy as a form of self-help:
Philosophy is an abstract field of argument and theory: this is true as much of ethics as it is of metaphysics. Why should reflection in this vein—ruthless, complex, conceptual—make us happier, more well-adjusted people? (If you’ve spent time with philosophers, you may doubt that it has such salutary effects.) And why should philosophers want to join the self-help movement, anyway?
The essay sketches my approach to philosophical self-help, as it has evolved between Midlife and Life is Hard, answering the questions “How?” and “Why?”
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Filiberto Hargett
Update: 2024-12-04