Kieran Setiya > Quotes

“the feeling of stillness after a life of too much motion, such as sailors experience when they walk on dry land after too long at sea, but”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“incarceration, he wrote about his own experience: “The very essence of life is human contact, and the affirmation of existence that comes with it. Losing that contact, you lose your sense of identity. You become nothing. . . . I became invisible even to myself.” We need the affirmation found in love.”
― Kieran Setiya, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way

“When the demands of life are pressing, too urgent to be ignored, it would be a mistake to devote all day to contemplation, reading Wordsworth, or playing golf. Being mortal, think of mortal things. Yet if you lose touch with existential value, if you find no place in your life for the activities of the gods - ones that make life worth living to begin with- you risk a midlife crisis not unlike John Stuart Mill's.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“The way in which you relate to the activities that matter most to you is by trying to complete them and so expel them from your life. Your days are devoted to ending, one by one, the activities that give them meaning.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“We can escape the self-destructive cycle of pursuit, resolution, and renewal, of attainments archived or unachieved. The way out is to find sufficient value in atelic activities, activities that have no point of conclusion or limit, ones whose fulfilment lies in the moment of action itself. To draw meaning from such activities is to live in the present - at least in one sense of that loaded phrase - and so to free oneself from the tyranny projects that plateau us around midlife.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“If the best we could do was to minimize injustice and human suffering, so that life was not positively bad, there would be no point in living life at all. If human life is not a mistake, there must be some things that matter not because they solve a problem or address a need that we would rather do without but because they make life positively good. They would have what I've called "existential value." Art, pure science, theoretical philosophy: they have value of this kind. But so do mundane activities like telling funny stories, amatueur painting, swimming or sailing, carpentry or cooking, playing games with family and friends—what the philosopher Zena Hitz has called "the little human things." It's not just that we need them in order to recharge so that we can get back to work, but that they are the point of being alive. A future without art or science or philosophy, or the little human things, would be utterly bleak. Since they will not survive unless we nurture them, that is our responsibility, too.”
― Kieran Setiya, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way

“the feeling of stillness after a life of too much motion, such as sailors experience when they walk on dry land after too long at sea,”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“Lo que vale para los artefactos, vale para los proyectos: su valor no es la dignidad, sino el precio.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Existe una diferencia entre saber que algo es valioso y saber qué lo hace valioso, entre saber que existen razones para el deseo y saber cuáles son esas razones.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“A medida que la vida pasa, «tienes cada vez menos que esperar, pero cada vez más que rememorar»”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“representations of the midlife crisis precede its naming in 1965, how far can we trace the thing itself? It comes as a surprise to learn that Jaques’s examples are largely drawn not from his clinical practice but from the lives of creative artists. He was struck by the frequency with which the age of thirty-seven, or thereabouts, brings either creative silence or transformation.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“stalled career, fading youth, and listless marriage.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“«Ahí donde la ignorancia es felicidad/ es una insensatez ser sabio».25”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Lo que sea que no funciona en la búsqueda de un objetivo valioso tras otro, no se curará prolongando esa búsqueda para siempre.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“La elección entre valores inconmensurables provoca, de manera potencial, la percepción de un deseo insatisfecho.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“older adults reported higher levels of positive affect, combined with lower levels of negative affect relative to young and midlife adults.”20”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“It reflects something wonderful: that there is so much to love and that it is so various that one history could not encompass it all.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“aunque los proyectos nos suponen exigencias —tienes que acabar lo que has empezado—, la mera adopción de un proyecto no aporta razones adicionales para llevarlo a cabo.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Thus Aristotle quotes the Athenian statesman, Solon, “Call no man happy until he is dead,” and worries”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“level of reported happiness by age had the shape of a gently curving U, starting high in young adulthood and ending higher in old age, with an average nadir at forty-six.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“One can look at it both ways as solace or as slight. Either way we gain from understanding what paim does, even of what’s gained is simply the truth. Pain teaches that we can’t escape our bodies or properly appreciate being pain-free, but it teaches more than that: about our relation to others and their relation to us. If anything of value has come from my experience with chronic pain, it’s a presumptive compassion for everyone else.”
― Kieran Setiya, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way

“Lo que sea que no funciona en la búsqueda de un objetivo valioso tras otro, no se curará prolongando esa búsqueda para”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“От одиночества трудно избавиться без помощи других людей: когда ты одинок, ты попадаешь в замкнутый круг. Невозможно и изменить всё в одночасье: чтобы унять социальную тревогу, вызванную одиночеством, требуются усилия. Вот почему одиночество — проблема общества, а не только отдельных людей. Как и в случае с депрессией, необходимо дестигматизировать одиночество и финансировать облегчающую его психологическую помощь. В конце своей книги Эмили Уайт описывает работу нидерландской психологини Нан Стивенс, разработавшей программу, которая, как показала практика, «снижает уровень одиночества в два раза». Программа Стивенс представляет собой еженедельные групповые занятия, которые проводятся в течение трех месяцев. Под руководством социального работника или ведущего из числа самих участников людям предлагается сделать несколько простых вещей, например, оценить свои потребности в дружбе и ожидания от нее и нарисовать схему уже существующих отношений, чтобы выявить потенциальные «спящие» дружеские связи <...> Программа действует как барьер, который не дает людям замкнуться в себе — часто это прямое последствие одиночества ”
― Kieran Setiya, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way

“«es la máxima felicidad del mayor número de personas lo que es la medida de lo bueno y de lo malo».”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“de tomar la decisión cuando sé no solo que se producirán carencias, sino cuáles son exactamente, cuando me veo forzado a enfrentar lo que no haré. Y es ahí cuando duele.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Cuando tus errores solo te hieren a ti, es más fácil asumir los detalles como una especie de recompensa; resulta mucho más difícil cuando hacen daño a los demás.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“para que la vida valga la pena, tarde o temprano hay que enfrentarse a la posibilidad de sentir un terrible y doloroso arrepentimiento.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“For men, turning forty meant saying goodbye to impossible dreams, taming and rechanneling the ambition of youth. Whatever”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“In philosophers' terms, the shift in perspective is not temporal, but "epistemic": it has to do with knowledge. Emotionally, there is a fundamental difference between knowing that I will miss out on something good and knowing what, knowing that I won't achieve all my ambitions and knowing which.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“Между индивидуализмом, развитием рыночной экономики и близкой дружбой действительно была связь, но противоположная той, которую принято представлять. Оксфордский историк Кит Томас в книге «Жизненные цели» анализирует дружбу в Англии раннего нового времени: он делит друзей на родственников, стратегических союзников и друзей как источник взаимопомощи . «Во всех этих случаях, — пишет он, — друзей ценили, потому что они были чем-то полезны. Их не обязательно было любить» . Лишь в результате разъединения экономической и личной жизни, ставшего возможным благодаря рынку, возникло пространство для личной дружбы, менее зависимой от социальных потребностей. Великими поборниками объединения ради удовольствия, а не пользы, были шотландские мыслители эпохи Просвещения , в том числе друг Юма Адам Смит, написавший «Богатство народов» — библию промышленного капитализма. «Невидимая рука» рынка была протянута для дружеского рукопожатия”
― Kieran Setiya, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way