Paul - This was a deeply thought-provoking read. I appreciate how you distinguish between the possession of desirable outcomes and the integrity of how one acquires them, something our culture often confuses or bypasses entirely.
Your articulation of success as doing rather than having resonates with the ethical backbone of ancient moral philosophy and also with how I’ve seen people struggle in therapy when their achievements feel misaligned with their deeper values. When what we’ve gained doesn’t reflect who we’ve tried to become, it can leave us feeling strangely hollow, even amid outward success.
I also value your emphasis on building a personal philosophy, a life architecture rooted not in borrowed belief, but in self-examination. It reminds me that we don’t inherit a coherent framework by default. We cobble it together from lived experience, unexamined assumptions, early internalizations, and often, it’s not until something breaks or stalls that we begin the slow process of asking what truly guides us.
Thank you for offering a practical and rigorous way to begin that journey.
Wow! I'm really impressed. I'm excited for the course, although curious of the price 😅
I'm interested to see what you think of exposing implicit micro-philosophies. How do we make those implicit beliefs explicit? What about analyzing drives like the denial of death, immortality projects, and sexual reproduction?
I'm really enjoying the elegant practicality of this series! However, I think we need another word for 'success'. Like 'achievement', success is a concept so thoroughly warped by our oppressively totalizing cultural-economic system as to be meaningless to the point of solipsism. It a sum of random 'metrics', an [illusory] end state of some optimization process. The observation, 'You are the CEO of your life', while a useful simile, is an example of how Byung-Chul Han's 'achievement society' has become universally internalized. Even philosophers find it easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism!
I've known a few CEOs, and their business philosophies, strategies, goals and core values are always one and the same: Make number go up. Likewise, their 'success' is always due to some mix of luck, exploitation (including self-exploitation) and just rewards. Mostly luck and exploitation. There are better hypothetical role models for self-actualization. I'd like to nominate the great philosopher Kurt Vonnegut, whose many casually profound musings include, 'We are dancing animals...here on earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different.'
Success, like happiness, is intermittent, hyper-subjective and - since we are all Dasein! - contingent, an occasional byproduct of our farting around. I don't know how one might measure a life well-lived, or if it's even possible (if 1,000 people were to willingly show up at my funeral I'd consider my life successful, but I wouldn't be around to consider it). But I truly appreciate your wonderfully infectious, thoughtful positivity and Montaigne-like efforts to make philosophy accessible by making it useful by constantly asking, 'What do I know?' Capitalism's perversions of language and ideals is not your fault, obviously, and you're always a joy to read. Thank you, Paul!
Paul - This was a deeply thought-provoking read. I appreciate how you distinguish between the possession of desirable outcomes and the integrity of how one acquires them, something our culture often confuses or bypasses entirely.
Your articulation of success as doing rather than having resonates with the ethical backbone of ancient moral philosophy and also with how I’ve seen people struggle in therapy when their achievements feel misaligned with their deeper values. When what we’ve gained doesn’t reflect who we’ve tried to become, it can leave us feeling strangely hollow, even amid outward success.
I also value your emphasis on building a personal philosophy, a life architecture rooted not in borrowed belief, but in self-examination. It reminds me that we don’t inherit a coherent framework by default. We cobble it together from lived experience, unexamined assumptions, early internalizations, and often, it’s not until something breaks or stalls that we begin the slow process of asking what truly guides us.
Thank you for offering a practical and rigorous way to begin that journey.
Is there a link to Foundations? I can’t find it
Awesome read, enjoyed it a lot
Here, here!
Wow! I'm really impressed. I'm excited for the course, although curious of the price 😅
I'm interested to see what you think of exposing implicit micro-philosophies. How do we make those implicit beliefs explicit? What about analyzing drives like the denial of death, immortality projects, and sexual reproduction?
Great work.
I'm assuming you will send us a reminder when the course is up?
I love the archer analogy. Success is defined by our intentions and actions, not on outcomes.
I'm really enjoying the elegant practicality of this series! However, I think we need another word for 'success'. Like 'achievement', success is a concept so thoroughly warped by our oppressively totalizing cultural-economic system as to be meaningless to the point of solipsism. It a sum of random 'metrics', an [illusory] end state of some optimization process. The observation, 'You are the CEO of your life', while a useful simile, is an example of how Byung-Chul Han's 'achievement society' has become universally internalized. Even philosophers find it easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism!
I've known a few CEOs, and their business philosophies, strategies, goals and core values are always one and the same: Make number go up. Likewise, their 'success' is always due to some mix of luck, exploitation (including self-exploitation) and just rewards. Mostly luck and exploitation. There are better hypothetical role models for self-actualization. I'd like to nominate the great philosopher Kurt Vonnegut, whose many casually profound musings include, 'We are dancing animals...here on earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different.'
Success, like happiness, is intermittent, hyper-subjective and - since we are all Dasein! - contingent, an occasional byproduct of our farting around. I don't know how one might measure a life well-lived, or if it's even possible (if 1,000 people were to willingly show up at my funeral I'd consider my life successful, but I wouldn't be around to consider it). But I truly appreciate your wonderfully infectious, thoughtful positivity and Montaigne-like efforts to make philosophy accessible by making it useful by constantly asking, 'What do I know?' Capitalism's perversions of language and ideals is not your fault, obviously, and you're always a joy to read. Thank you, Paul!
Pleasure to read. Liked the structure. 👍