The Beauty in This Life | Nick Riggle, PhD

Mar 19, 2024

Nick Riggle, a philosophy professor at UC San Diego and author of 'This Beauty,' delves into the essence of life’s worth. He shares his journey from pro-skater to philosopher, illustrating how aesthetics shape our understanding of life’s meaning. Riggle emphasizes the importance of beauty and aesthetic communities for human well-being, even amid suffering. He also reflects on the relevance of living in the moment and the subjective nature of art, arguing that appreciating beauty can transform our experiences.

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Intro

00:00 • 6min

Philosophy on Skates: An Aesthetic Journey

05:31 • 13min

Philosophical Reflections on Parenthood and Existence

18:53 • 2min

Embracing the Present: YOLO and Existential Reflections

21:01 • 8min

The Transformative Power of Aesthetic Community

29:13 • 10min

Finding Beauty Amidst Suffering

39:13 • 7min

We didn’t choose to live this life. In its most difficult moments, it's all too natural to ask the question, “What makes life worth living?”

This question, so central to philosophy since ancient times, is what we explore in this episode with Nick Riggle, a professor of philosophy at University of California, San Diego. Riggle is the author of several books, most recently 2022’s This Beauty: A Philosophy of Being Alive.

Over the course of our conversation, we discuss aesthetics, which is the branch of philosophy concerned with beauty and art; the various ways that we, successfully or otherwise, have attempted to find meaning in life; why finding beauty and building an aesthetic community is so crucial to human well-being; and much more.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

2:29 - Nick’s path from being a pro-skater to becoming a philosophy professor and author

8:41 - How Nick approaches surveying philosophical thought through history

10:22 - The importance that aesthetics and beauty play in Nick’s studies

19:13 - What motivated Nick to write his book This Beauty

21:04 - How Nick conceptualized answering the central question of his book

23:51 - The takeaways that Nick personally found for what makes life worth living

29:15 - What it means to pay attention to the beautiful things in life

32:18 - Are some kinds of beauty and art “better” than others?

34:47 - The value of creating an aesthetic community

39:12 - Living an aesthetic life when your physical or mental state is limited

Nick Riggle is the author of multiple books and publications, including This Beauty: A Philosophy of Being Alive (2022), Aesthetic Life and Why it Matters (2022), and On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory on How Not to Suck (2017).

Nick Riggle can be found on Instagram at @nickriggle.

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