What is the point of philosophy?
It's an old question, perhaps one of the oldest in the history of philosophy, and there has never been an agreed upon answer. Some people think that the point of philosophy is to make sense of the world and to show how everything is related to each other. For others, philosophy is a practical tool that tells us how to live.
If you fall into the latter camp, it's probably fair to say that you think of philosophy as a form of self-help. It's a tradition of thought that, at least in theory, can lead to a better life or something like that. And I don't think that's asking too much of philosophy. When you're anxious, depressed, or in the midst of a fearful midlife crisis, what good is ruminating if it can't provide anything useful?
Kieran Setiya is a philosopher at MIT and the author of several books. Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Path and Middle Age: A Philosophical GuideE. Setiya's work is rarely accessible and an excellent example of a philosophy that seeks to solve concrete problems of everyday life.
I recently invited Setiya. gray area It talks about the perils of midlife and how philosophy can help pull us out of the darkness. Below are portions of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. As always, there's more to the full podcast, so listen and follow along. gray area On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes are released every Monday.
Sean Ealing
You wrote a book called life is hard. It's not that you can summarize your life philosophy in three words, but if you had to sum it up in three words, would that be it?
Kieran Setiya
In my opinion, yes. Ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle thought about the ideal life and tried to provide blueprints and maps for it. And that may be unrealistic and in some ways self-punishing. Often the right way to approach an ideal life is to say, “That’s impossible. “You shouldn’t beat yourself up because it’s impossible.” Living really well—living to the best of your ability—has to do with dealing with the ways that life is hard.
Sean Ealing
How do you define a midlife crisis?
Kieran Setiya
The midlife crisis is one of those interesting cultural phenomena that has a specific origin. In 1965, Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques wrote an article titled “Death and the Midlife Crisis.”,” This is where this phrase comes from. Jacques was looking at patients and the lives of artists who were experiencing a mid-life creative crisis. These people were mostly in their 30s, which doesn't really fit today's midlife crisis stereotypes.
The way people think about midlife crises has changed. The current thinking is that people's life satisfaction takes a gentle U-shape. In other words, people tend to hit their lowest point in their 40s, even if it's not basically a crisis. This applies to both men and women and is quite widespread to varying degrees across the world.
So when people like me talk about midlife crisis, what they really have in mind is more of a midlife malaise. It may not reach crisis levels, but there seems to be something distinctly difficult about finding meaning and direction in this midlife period.
Sean Ealing
What is it about this period that is causing all this anxiety?
Kieran Setiya
There are many midlife crises. It's not just one thing. I think some of them are looking into the past. I have regrets. I feel like my options are limited. Whatever possibilities were previously open to you, whatever choices you made, you are at a point where there are many different kinds of life that may have been truly attractive to you, and now they are evident in a vivid and material way. It's just that you can't buy them.
In life, things went wrong, mistakes were made, bad things happened, and now the project also involves regret: “How am I going to live the rest of my life in this imperfect situation?” The life of our dreams is impossible for most of us.
People also have the feeling that most of their lives are filled with these daily grinds. It's just a thing, rather than something that makes life seem positively worthwhile. Then death begins to seem like something you can measure in terms you can really clearly understand. You know what 10 years is like. And I only have 3-4 years left at most.
Sean Ealing
I'm 42 and I can feel it all. When you're young, your future is pure potential. From now on there is nothing but freedom and choice. But as you get older, life shrinks, responsibilities pile up, and you become trapped by the consequences of your decisions. That's a difficult thing to wrestle with.
Kieran Setiya
I think that makes perfect sense. One of the philosophically confusing parts about this is that it's not news. No matter what choices you made when you were 20, you knew you couldn't do it all. What this suggests is that there is a profound difference between knowing which direction a situation is going to go (good or bad) and knowing the specific details of how it went well or badly.
Part of the feeling of missing out has to do with what philosophers call “incommensurable values.” If you have a choice between $50 and $100, I think you'll pick $100 and not regret it for a moment. But if you're choosing between going to a concert or staying home and spending time with your kids, either way, you're missing out on something irreplaceable. One of the things we experience in midlife is that every kind of life we don't live is different from ours and there's no real reward for it. This can be very painful.
On the other hand, I think it would be helpful to look at the other side. The only way to avoid that kind of omission is if the world suddenly became completely devoid of diversity. Or maybe you were so paranoid that you didn't care about anything but money. And you really don't want that.
That there is so much in the world that we will never be able to experience is a way of expressing something that we should not really regret, but actually cherish: the evaluative richness, variety, and variety of the world. Good stuff. And there is comfort in that.
Sean Ealing
One of the things you're arguing is how easily we can fool ourselves when we start looking for the road not taken. “What if I really did that? What if I tried to become a novelist or a musician, or what if I joined that community?” Or whatever fantasy life you had as a child.
But if you take it seriously and think about what it actually means, you might not like it. Because the things you consider most important in your life right now, like your children, wouldn't exist if you used zig instead of zag. 20 years ago. That's what it means to live an alternative life.
Kieran Setiya
Philosophy can lead us to these kinds of unhelpful abstractions, but it can also tell us what's wrong with them. The thought “I could have had a better life, things would have been better” is almost always tempting and true, but when you think about what that specifically means, what would have happened if your marriage had failed? Didn't it happen?
Often the answer is that you have never had children or have never met these people. And you might think, 'Okay, but I probably had some other unspecified friends who would have been great, and some other unspecified kids who would have been great.' But I think it's right that we evaluate our lives not just in terms of those abstract possibilities, but in terms of our attachment to particulars.
So ask yourself, “Could my life be better?” You are abandoning one of the primary sources of comfort: rational comfort. It's about clinging to the specificity of the good things in your life. Even though I admit it's not perfect and other things aren't perfect. It just got better.
Sean Ealing
But I want to tell you that when real pain comes, it is not always easy to find relief in abstract arguments. The two most difficult moments of my adult life were losing my mother suddenly a few years ago and losing my baby unexpectedly last year.
Like many people, I did things where I felt victimized, as if the world was conspiring against me. But then you go through all that anger and realize that you are not the only one who is unhappy, and that this happens to people every day. Pain and loss are part of life and, more than anything else, are at the core of life. I think good philosophy, whether it's an academic book, a novel, or a movie, can help remind us of this, and it's been helpful to me in that way.
Kieran Setiya
Both losses are unfortunate. I think what philosophy should do is what humans should do when faced with those kinds of difficulties. It doesn't shift too quickly into what I call assurance advice mode, and instead says, “Everything's going to be okay.” Or do it like this.” It's something we do in our personal interactions, but it's also a philosophical approach to life's difficulties.
There is a kind of theodicy in which philosophers claim that everything is best. They have some evidence that even though this may seem bad, it will work out well. Or, “My philosophical principle is this. There is also a theory that says, “I will apply it to your situation.” And that's not a good philosophical tactic for dealing with the kind of difficulties you describe. For reasons that are not unrelated to the fact that it is not a good interpersonal way to approach difficulties.
The starting point is to sit hard and acknowledge it, try to accept what is really happening, and really explain the specificity of it. It's connected to a kind of philosophical methodology that I've come to accept. And it goes from thinking, “Well, philosophy is about coming up with really cool arguments to prove that you should think this way,” to, “There’s a real continuity between literary and human depictions of phenomena like grief.” It switches to thinking like this. and philosophical reflection.”
Because what philosophical reflection often offers is less evidence that you should live this way and more concepts that express your experience and structure and guide your relationship with reality. Looking at it that way, we can understand how philosophy can play a self-help role.
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