Every day Philosophy has the concept for this 12 months’s decision: reside your life like a thinker. Six traditional philosophies of life, every lived for 2 months, with a number of weekly emails to maintain you knowledgeable, entertained and engaged in your journey. Come alongside to the One 12 months, Six Methods undertaking!
The issue with new 12 months resolutions
It’s that time of 12 months once more, the place everybody goes and makes their resolutions. Fewer sweets within the new 12 months. Extra train. Much less TV. Extra carrots and kale smoothies.
Many resolutions keep on this degree: small, sensible modifications which are born largely out of guilt, as a result of we’re not behaving as we all know we must always. Most of those resolutions quickly are forgotten and fall by the wayside. Come March, we’ll all be again to consuming sweets, watching TV, and steering away from kale smoothies and extreme sweating.
However does it should be like that?
This has the benefit that, at the very least initially, it may be a very non-public undertaking: our inside exploration of how life may very well be and really feel totally different. Such an exploration of 1’s inside areas doesn’t require others to agree with us, to cooperate, or to alter their methods. And due to this fact, it’s more likely to succeed. It’ll create in us an enduring change, a data and a sense of a distinct life, a life higher lived, a reminiscence that we are able to faucet into for the remainder of our days.
The philosophical new 12 months decision
So what would a philosophical new 12 months decision appear like?
For millennia, humanity’s biggest minds have thought of how we are able to enhance our lives. How we are able to reside extra fortunately and meaningfully, how we are able to really feel that our lives have goal and worth, how we are able to greatest take care of adversity, unhealthy luck, despair and sickness. The very best of philosophy has all the time been about learn how to confront life in a method that permits us to grasp it slightly than to be crushed by it; learn how to reside with energy and dignity, slightly than with concern; learn how to really feel that we’re accountable for our future, slightly than being kicked round by destiny.
How about, then, we strive a few of that out?
Let’s do that collectively.
The undertaking: One 12 months, Six Methods to seek out happiness
Within the coming 12 months, we’ll check out one traditional philosophy of life each two months; six totally different paths to knowledge over the entire 12 months.
It will give us sufficient time to get to know the fundamental ideas of every method of thought, to learn among the nice thinkers of every system, and to observe every philosophical custom ourselves, placing it to work in our personal lives. On the finish of the 12 months, we can choose for ourselves which of those theories are higher for us than others, which gave us most happiness and helped us most scale back our concern and anxiousness, which make us really feel robust, which made us really feel related to the world us and really, deeply pleased, and which we couldn’t relate to as a lot.
I’ll do that with you, and I’ll present my diary of the expertise on this weblog, on my Youtube channel, and in a podcast that I’ll announce later.
And you are welcome to do it with me, and to put up your individual expertise within the feedback! This may very well be a whole lot of enjoyable for everybody. It will additionally present how totally different all of us are, and the way one thing that works for one among us isn’t essentially the easiest way for an additional. Every one among us has their very own method via life and their very own little universe of hopes, fears, constraints and prospects, and so one answer can’t match all in the identical method. And that’s completely wonderful.
Now, let’s see. What can we strive? I’ll make some proposals right here, however I’d like to depart the ultimate choice to you, the Every day Philosophy readers! For January, clearly, I’ll choose one thing, however I hope that you’ll assist me resolve on which philosophies we’ll check out in March/April, Could/June and so forth.
By the best way, I’ve tried this already on a smaller scale with among the college students in my Philosophy of Happiness courses, and their suggestions has all the time been enthusiastic. It’s not solely a fantastic expertise to step into the sneakers of an Epicurean or a Stoic for a month – it’s additionally an exquisite solution to depart behind one’s personal, a lot too acquainted and inflexible methods of considering and reacting, and to expertise the elemental freedom that’s a part of what philosophy is about. The liberty to depart our preconceived notions behind, our fears in addition to our hopes, and to check out what else it might imply to be human.
The plan
So right here’s how this may work. As I stated, these are simply proposals. We are able to all the time modify them, and it will be nice if you happen to informed me what you suppose within the feedback!
I’ve tried to rearrange the next theories by some means in response to the seasons of the 12 months. Listed here are some ideas about how the undertaking might develop:
January/February: Eudaimonia and life’s that means
Aristotle, and his followers Bertrand Russell and Richard Taylor, give us a framework of what happiness may imply and the way one can obtain it in a human life. Aristotle emphasises the virtues: being sincere, being form, being brave; but in addition how the virtues should all the time be exercised to the correct quantity. “Sensible Knowledge,” he says, is the flexibility now we have to regulate our virtues in order that they profit ourselves and others on the identical time.
Bertrand Russell, a really influential thinker of the early twentieth century, emphasises “zest” as the most important ingredient of a happy life. To not brood and observe life from a distance, however to try to be a part of it, to reside it to the complete, within the course of virtually forgetting one’s personal self. Zest, for him, is an “urge for food for attainable issues, upon which all happiness, whether or not of males or animals, finally relies upon.” And this urge for food for all times we’ll attempt to domesticate via the darkish and miserable first two months of the 12 months.
Richard Taylor, finally, talks about creativity and the way being artistic can remodel one’s life. This doesn’t imply that everybody has to change into an artist. For Taylor, the divine spark of creativity may be in ordering a meal, in planning a vacation, and in elevating one’s youngsters.
March/April: Having and Being
Some of the influential psychologists of the twentieth century, Erich Fromm, taught complete generations of readers learn how to love along with his e-book “The Art of Loving.”
However much more necessary for us is the excellence he makes between two other ways of residing: life as “having” and life as “being.” In his e-book “To Have Or to Be” he describes the 2 approaches to life: individuals within the “mode of getting” are targeted on, nicely, having issues, acquiring and accumulating possessions, after which they’re afraid of dropping them. Within the (for him extra worthwhile) “mode of being,” we must always reside our lives attempting to be extra, higher, happier, extra artistic individuals slightly than to focus on accumulating stuff. I’m certain that is one thing that the majority of us have typically thought of – the worldwide success of Marie Kondo and different de-stuffing gurus reveals how a lot we crave a life with fewer issues however extra that means.
Nicely, right here’s your alternative to strive it out!
In the event you’d like to purchase Fromm’s e-book that we’ll be discussing, right here it’s. That is an affiliate hyperlink. In the event you purchase via this hyperlink, Every day Philosophy will get a small fee without charge to you. Thanks!
Could/June: Epicurean Simplicity
We come into late spring, the place the world opens up in sunshine and wildflower bloom. What higher time to check out the traditional knowledge of Epicurus?
Nature is already giving us all that we have to be pleased, and all these items that we suppose that we want (like iPhones, vehicles, and well-paid jobs) are simply tying us right down to a world of slavery, day by day grind, and distress. Epicurus (and his trendy apostle, Stephanie Mills) encourages us to look laborious at what we actually want in life and what we are able to do with out. Happiness, for him, is one thing that we might all have if we simply tried to see the reality concerning the world because it actually is.
In the event you’d prefer to learn Mills’ e-book, right here you should purchase a duplicate. Please notice that that is an affiliate hyperlink. In the event you purchase via this hyperlink, Every day Philosophy will get a small fee without charge to you. Thanks!
July/August: Gratefulness
The summer season months are definitely the time to be grateful, irrespective of whether or not one is Christian, Muslim, Hindu or prefers no faith in any respect. On this interval of sunny pleasures, we wish to remind ourselves that none of us have earned summer season. Like the perfect in life, like well being, love, happiness, the sensation of peace, the laughter of a kid, summer season is one thing that we are able to solely view as a blessing, a present that we are able to gracefully settle for however by no means demand.
Brother David Steindl-Rast has made gratefulness right into a world-wide motion, and in these two months, we wish to expertise it ourselves, put it to work in our personal lives; or, maybe higher, put ourselves to work in its service. After which see what we are able to be taught from that for our personal happiness and our place in life.
September/October: Hermits and monks
With the summer season now over and the chilly days of autumn upon us, we’ll comply with the steps of those that left society with a view to discover peace in solitude. We received’t go into non secular specifics – hermits exist in all religions and likewise as a purely secular lifestyle. Additionally, you will not want to depart your private home, your job and household. We’re not about to change into actual hermits and monks, however we do wish to get a style for stillness, for the quieting of the thoughts and for the wonder and peace that may be present in day by day meditation. Because the wildness of summer season retreats and the quieter months of winter strategy us, we’ll comply with that quietness and attempt to give it a spot in our personal lives. Simply an hour within the morning will likely be sufficient – and maybe half an hour right here and there all through the day: Moments of peace, focus, and recollection.
We may also look at how a lot we actually want for all times. A hermit may be absolutely self-sufficient of their hut within the mountains, and maybe we are able to get some little a part of that feeling of self-sufficiency in our personal lives. We are able to be taught to rely much less on others and extra on our personal strengths, our personal creativity, our personal energy, our personal arms. Everybody can bake their very own bread at house. Everybody can prepare dinner a number of easy dishes. Everybody can be taught to specific their creativity. And maybe we are able to substitute an hour of senseless TV by an hour of studying and contemplation.
Let’s see the place this brings us!
November/December: The Stoic life
And we’ll end the 12 months with one other one of many nice philosophies of historical Greece and Rome: Stoicism.
November and December are months which are made for the Stoic life. These are instances the place we really feel our helplessness, the impossibility of fixing the seasons, of getting again the dear days of summer season. The sunshine is dwindling, nights are getting longer, and darkness is taking up our days; and the entire expertise culminates in a Christmas celebration that, for many people, is in equal elements pleasure and nightmare. Right here is the chance for the Stoic to shine: to be taught the refined artwork of distinguishing what we are able to affect and what we can’t. To be taught to offer our greatest with a view to higher the world; however equally, to be taught to simply accept what we’re unable to alter. We’ll learn the good Stoics, Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and we’ll attempt to see how we are able to use what they are saying to enrich our own existence and to get back control over our lives.
And far more…
Trying on the listing now, I discover how a lot is lacking. There’s a full two thousand years of philosophy in there, however nonetheless, we haven’t even scratched the floor. Maybe after that 12 months, we are able to do the entire thing once more, in 2022, with a brand new set of philosophies to check out!
Listed here are among the lacking ones, simply as an inspiration for the longer term:
- Chinese language philosophies, Confucianism and Daoism
- Buddhism
- French Existentialism
- Deep Ecology
- The Desert Fathers and Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ
As one of many best-known writers of the twentieth century stated:
“It’s a harmful enterprise, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the highway, and if you happen to don’t preserve your toes, there’s no realizing the place you may be swept off to.” (JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings)
So, let’s try this. Like Bilbo and Frodo, let’s step out onto the highway that numerous thinkers earlier than us have constructed and wandered alongside. And let’s see the place we may be swept off to.
Subscribe and keep tuned for the primary instalment on January 1st!
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