The Philosophy Prescription: Lessons from Big Thinkers for Every Stage of Life

INTRODUCTION

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
JAMES BALDWIN

When faced with life’s most difficult existential questions and milestones, we often feel alone. Who am I? What should I value? Why should I go on?

While they feel personal, however, many of the anxieties, disappointments, and uncertainties in our lives – from wondering if our occupations give us the meaning we need, to not being able to come to terms with death – are in fact universal. And philosophers have had incredibly insightful things to say about our shared existential problems for thousands of years.

This book is a collection of those insights, distilled and organised according to life’s common stages and challenges. It’s the result of a decade spent excavating nuggets of wisdom from philosophy’s 2,500-year written history – work I’ve treasured doing as the founder of Philosophy Break, an online social enterprise dedicated to making philosophy accessible. That you’ve picked up this book and begun reading these words suggests you’re someone who strives to live a happy, meaningful, and fulfilling life; and, if so, I can assure you that you’re in good company here. My hope is that the thinkers within these pages will offer you something useful, enlightening, or at least thought-provoking, no matter who or where you are in life, nor your prior exposure to philosophy.

My own route to the remedies of philosophy was more of a route back. Close to a decade ago, when I was in my late twenties, I found myself unfulfilled by my career in tech, frustrated by the perceived shallowness of daily life, and generally feeling adrift in the world. Having received great satisfaction from studying philosophy to master’s level at university, I thought re-engaging with the subject might help me address the bubbling existential angst I’d been feeling in the years since graduation. I set about re-reading the greats, researching new work, and – in the gaps around my day job – writing about my philosophical (re)discoveries online. Maybe the ideas I found particularly resonant would do something for others, too. Whether I was presenting seventeenth-century thinker Baruch Spinoza on why anything exists, or the existentialist Simone de Beauvoir on what makes for true love, I sought to offer short, reflective ‘philosophy breaks’: small clearings in which to rest, catch our breath, and wonder at being alive.

To my delight, the project struck a chord. Fast forward to today, and Philosophy Break (philosophybreak.com) now attracts millions of visits annually. Thanks to weekly discussions with the Philosophy Break community, some of whose brilliant contributions feature throughout this book, my own existential angst has quietened, for I have never felt so engaged and connected to life and humanity. It’s not so much the answers, but the shared search for answers, that is most affirming and gratifying.

The Philosophy Prescription is a celebration of that shared search: of the ongoing, millennia-spanning conversation between beings who find themselves inexplicably here, breathing oxygen on a gigantic rock. The ultimate prescription of philosophy, in my view, is that it encourages each of us to participate in this conversation. With its direct, unashamed focus on the oft-unacknowledged strangeness of everyday life, it assures us that none of us are alone with our unspoken concerns. Billions of us are here together with no clear consensus on why anything exists, no universally approved manual for what to do while we exist, and a generally mute denial about our own upcoming non-existence. Philosophy is simply the space where we commit to an honest dialogue about this situation. It’s the good-faith attempt to cut to the heart of the matter at hand. We don’t have to only dare talk about our existential curiosities and discomforts after a few drinks, or late at night, or at moments of crisis. Nor do we have to surrender to dogma, convention, or nihilism. An entire intellectual tradition awaits us: we can navigate our love lives with the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (Chapter 5); we can unpick the meaninglessness of our careers with twentieth-century thinker Hannah Arendt (Chapter 7); and we can work through our fear of death with classical Japanese sage Kenko (Chapter 16).

After all, as the Roman philosopher Seneca put it almost 2,000 years ago, ‘It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.’ Philosophy can be the starting gun to jolt us out of passing through life as if we’re only going through the motions, living only according to the expectations of others, or by norms we’ve never really scrutinised, let alone endorsed. Hearing our own half-formed thoughts echoed in the words and arguments of famous thinkers can be a powerful tonic.

I remember how emboldened I felt, for instance, reading twentieth-century French thinker Albert Camus’s articulation of the daily grind. ‘Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time,’ Camus observes. ‘But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.’ Hunched in the tube each morning and evening, I was weary and amazed. Was there a grander point to existence I’d failed to grasp? In Chapter 11, we’ll explore Camus’s famous response: that we must perpetually rebel against life’s apparent meaninglessness. ‘The realisation that life is absurd cannot be an end,’ he assures us, ‘but only a beginning . . .’

I recall, too, when a few years later I was unsure what to do at a major crossroads in my life and career, how the philosopher Laurie Ann Paul provided me with a lightbulb moment. If you cannot know the ‘best’ path forward with a major life decision, Paul advises in her 2014 work Transformative Experience, it’s often because there isn’t a best path: there are simply different paths, which you’ll adapt to as you live them. All else being equal, rather than exhausting yourself on yet more research, cost–benefit analyses, and guesses at your future happiness, the most rational approach is to opt for the path you’re most interested in discovering. Paul’s influential framework eased my anxiety around plunging into the unknown, leaving my career to pursue Philosophy Break full-time. In Chapter 9, we’ll see how Paul applies it to the transformative decision whether to have a child.

And today, whenever I feel powerless or at the mercy of global events, I bring to mind the no-nonsense advice of the ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus. In the Enchiridion, which we’ll explore in Chapter 15, Epictetus suggests that the surest method for an untroubled mind is to work out what we can and can’t change, focus on the former, and reconcile ourselves to the latter. By attaching our well-being not to wider circumstances, but to the quality of our ongoing individual contributions, we’ll be living the good life, and nobody can stop us from doing so.

These brief examples only hint at the countless ways in which wisdom from the great philosophers has enriched my life over the years. Though I haven’t always been successful in applying their lessons, I feel incredibly fortunate that my education in philosophy has granted me access to such a dream team of teachers, ready to guide me at any time.

My hope with The Philosophy Prescription is that by offering a tasting menu of the nourishment served by great thinkers across history, more people might discover, enjoy, and benefit from philosophy’s neglected yet empowering value. We can liberate trapped worries and concerns from our minds through the revelation that, somewhere, at some point in time, from a culture like or unlike our own, a human being shared those exact same worries and concerns, and dedicated their intellectual life to making sense of them. Sometimes their arguments and theories will resonate deeply, sometimes they won’t chime with our own experience; but the cathartic element, I think, lies in engaging at all. While they might not always provide answers, philosophers can at least be relied upon to elucidate what clear thinking might look like around a particular topic. They can nudge us in the right direction. They can get the discussion moving. They can make us feel part of a shared search, rather than isolated and alone with our concerns.

There is no set guidebook for existence, but there is comfort in simply knowing there are others out there who have gone through all this, too. By engaging with how big thinkers across time and culture have been as unsettled, bewildered, and determined to find answers as we are, we can transform alienating worries into sources of union. Private, gnawing doubts might reveal themselves to be wellsprings of solidarity. We can become active participants in the compassionate, curious, millennia-spanning community that’s simply here, trying to make sense of it all.

WHAT YOU’LL ENCOUNTER IN THIS BOOK

Academic philosophy tends to break the subject into four major branches: epistemology (what we can know), metaphysics (the nature of reality), value theory (ethics and aesthetics), and logic (the study of correct reasoning). Here I offer a slightly different route into the discipline, connecting philosophical ideas to some of the common phases of a human life. Engaging with the ideas through this lens might help us tap into and revitalise our broader personal philosophies – because, crucially, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we each already have a philosophy for life.

Our personal philosophies may have been shaped by our families, cultures, religions, or perhaps we’ve formed and affirmed them ourselves. Wherever they came from, and regardless of how much we actively reflect on them, we all have sets of explanations, values, and principles that underpin everything we do: from the careers we choose, to the people we like and dislike; from the politicians we vote for, to the pursuits that fill our free time; from the way we love, to the way we mourn. Given their fundamental importance, the question is: are our personal philosophies working for us? Are they justified? Do we need to better define them? Are there any enhancements we could make that would equip us to live more meaningful, more fulfilling, more connected lives?

To philosophise means adopting a critical stance and using reason to draw conclusions. It means, for any given argument or theory, we identify its premises, consider whether those premises are sound, and judge the conclusion accordingly. And this critical process is something we can apply not only to academic topics, but to the background arguments of the philosophies that drive our everyday lives. Philosophy can be thought of as an attitude, and cultivating this attitude – this open-minded spirit of inquiry – is the overarching prescription of this book.

Socrates, one of the founding figures of Western philosophy, declared that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’5 and that life’s task is to know thyself. Later ancient Greek ­ thinkers – including Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, and ­ Epicurus – took on these principles to show us that through careful and proper use of reason, we can demonstrate that many of our common anxieties are baseless. Philosophical inquiry can be used therapeutically, to relieve ourselves of false beliefs, pointless fear, and much unnecessary suffering.

The Philosophy Prescription is inspired by this ancient therapeutic principle: that in the face of life’s challenges, thinking philosophically can bring clarity, relief, or at least a fresh perspective. My key additional premise is that, wonderfully, we don’t have to get on with this thinking on our own. Great minds have tested the water for us. We can draw upon this millennia-spanning community not to magically solve our problems, but to guide, empower, and test our thinking. In our mission to refine our personal philosophies, we can bag ourselves a head start.

Each chapter of this book is a collection of such head starts, distilling the perspectives of different thinkers – some old, some new; some famous, some lesser-known – on a common stage or challenge of life. My goal is not to promise a quick fix, nor to offer an exhaustive account of the brilliant work philosophers have done and continue to do across different domains, but simply to introduce ideas that might deepen, challenge, or fill in the gaps of our own living philosophies: to offer not conversation-enders, but starters and enhancers. While there are many more beautiful and enlightening ideas I could have featured, and even more that await my discovery, I hope this book will provide you with some enriching discoveries of your own.

HOW TO APPROACH THE CHAPTERS

While the chapters of this book are structured according to some of the common phases of a human life, that doesn’t mean you have to approach the topics in order. After all, they don’t necessarily occur in the order presented! It’s not just people in their later years who can become consumed by Reflecting on the Past (Chapter 14), for example, and it’s not just young people who are Falling in Love (Chapter 5). If you are particularly invested in a certain challenge or stage – say, Trying to Make Friends (Chapter 4), Working a Job (Chapter 7), or Handling Retirement (Chapter 13) – you are free to turn straight there.

However, I recommend beginning with Chapter 1, Arriving with Fresh Eyes. It’s more introductory in nature, reflecting on the wonder and curiosity of early childhood to get us in the philosophical mood, and prime us for the remainder of the book. Beyond Chapter 1, the chapters settle into a consistent pattern, each outlining a problem or challenge, and then exploring how a few philosophers and philosophical movements might approach it. Given their more self-contained nature, you can approach them in the order presented, or in whichever order most appeals to you. I hope you’ll find something valuable or interesting in each; and if you do, I suggest further reading for each chapter at the end of the book.

For now, though, let us begin at the beginning. Out of nowhere, we arrive into existence, and we arrive as natural philosophers: curious about the world, confounded by what we find, ready to ask ‘why’ as soon as we can . . .

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