Life Is Hard
How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way
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3.8 • 8 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND THE ECONOMIST
“Life Is Hard is a humane consolation for challenging times. Reading it is like speaking with a thoughtful friend who never tells you to cheer up, but, by offering gentle companionship and a change of perspective, makes you feel better anyway.” —The New York Times Book Review
There is no cure for the human condition: life is hard. But Kieran Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers us a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world.
In this profound and personal book, Setiya shows how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from Setiya’s own experience, Life Is Hard is a book for this moment—a work of solace and compassion.
Warm, accessible, and good-humored, this book is about making the best of a bad lot. It offers guidance for coping with pain and making new friends, for grieving the lost and failing with grace, for confronting injustice and searching for meaning in life. Countering pop psychologists and online influencers who admonish us to “find our bliss” and “live our best lives,” Setiya acknowledges that the best is often out of reach. Instead, he asks how we can weather life’s adversities, finding hope and living well when life is hard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MIT philosophy professor Setiya (Midlife) proffers advice for navigating suffering in this insightful guide. "What we need in our affliction is acknowledgment," Setiya contends, exploring how such philosophers as Plato, Simone Weil, and Ludwig Wittgenstein have contemplated adversity. Probing Aristotle's writings on the fundamental need for friends, Setiya suggests that friendship rests on the "reciprocal recognition of human dignity" and that readers might fight loneliness by volunteering or showing respect and curiosity toward others. Setiya critiques the contention of philosophers Daniel Dennett and Charles Taylor that humans must narrativize their lives to make sense of them and warns that "when you define your life by way of a single enterprise... its outcome will come to define you." Tackling injustice, the author criticizes Theodor Adorno's aversion to political action and urges readers to fight despair by accepting that one is likely only able to take small steps to ameliorate societal wrongs: "A protest may not change the world, but it adds its fraction to the odds of change." The critical engagement with historical philosophers gives the impression of a lively debate, and Setiya excels at discerning which ideas speak to modern maladies and which don't hold up. This thought-provoking treatise enlightens.
