Ep. 222: Dr. Kieran Setiya — Midlife 2. How to Think More Clearly About What Life Can and Can't Offer

My guest this week is Dr. Kieran Setiya, a philosophy professor at MIT and author of Midlife: A Philosophical Guide (affiliate link).

Topics we discussed included:

• The extent to which midlife is a time of crisis
• Elliott Jaques’s coining of the term “midlife crisis” in 1965
• Data showing that life satisfaction is U-shaped, with a low in middle age
• Common significant challenges in midlife
  • Past, Present, and Future
• The feeling of having missed out on other possible lives
• The tremendous loss we would experience if missing out were not possible
• The power of philosophy in the self-help space
• The poetic quality of Kieran’s writing and its likely origins
• The overvaluing of having options for their own sake, even if it costs us in absolute satisfaction
• Value beyond removing problems and suffering
• A vision of life beyond striving for “neutral”
• The tension between feeling like what we do matters, and yet life feels completely pointless
• The profundity of hobbies as gratuitous activities that aren’t aimed at solving problems
• What my guest has found is worth doing beyond addressing unmet needs
• The distinction between telic (project) and atelic (process) activities
• The societal pressure and value to be project-focused
• Why we’re bothered by our nonexistence after death much more than our nonexistence before birth
• Understanding what it would really mean to be immortal
• How the arc of a life is different from a movie or a book

Kieran Setiya, PhD, is professor and philosophy section head at MIT.

He works mainly in ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind.

Kieran’s other books include Practical Knowledge, Reasons without Rationalism, Knowing Right from Wrong, and Life Is Hard, which was named one of the best books of 2022 by the Economist and the New Yorker.

Kieran has also written about stand-up comedy, HP Lovecraft, baseball, free will, and the meaning of life.

Find Kieran online at his website and on Substack.

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