Or so the thought goes.Īs Setiya reminds us, this picture of philosophy is at best a very partial one. While politicians and self-help gurus may be justified in peddling “noble lies,” the philosopher must follow her arguments to their conclusions, however debasing or ignoble these might be. But philosophy, one might think, should seek to understand the truth, without concern for its positive or negative consequences for the reader. After all, the purpose of self-help literature is, well, self-improvement. And the idea of a “philosophical self-help guide” - as Midlife bills itself - may seem especially suspect. So Setiya is ideally suited to exploring the philosophical dimensions of the midlife crisis - and not just because he is plainly someone with extensive personal experience of his topic.īut popular philosophy is a strange beast - invariably looked upon by professional philosophers with some mix of disdain and poorly concealed envy.
And like Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel from an earlier generation, his work is characterized by a broad humanistic concern that reminds us that analytic philosophy can be something more than a pedantic accumulation of distinctions. Setiya is one of the very best moral philosophers working in the broadly analytic tradition. Even confining ourselves to the modest universe of my social media feed, this past fall alone offered us a philosophical analysis of misogyny, a defense of the “ethics of awesomeness,” a meditation on surfing and existentialism, a philosophical conversation about the later stages of life - and, our topic, a philosophical guide to middle age, Kieran Setiya’s Midlife. POPULAR PHILOSOPHY SEEMS to be in season.
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