Micro-Philosophy 2.0 (Major Update)
What Are The Minimum Requirements For Building Your Own Philosophy For Living?
It has been a while since I posted here on Substack.
The primary reason is that the final two weeks of the Spring semester were absolutely insane for me since I decided to take over two classes for a professor that got into a cycling accident.
That decision put my teaching load up to 6 courses.
I don’t recommend this!
Although I still have 100 papers to grade by May 16, once that is over, I will have zero courses to teach … until July.
But I am quite excited about teaching in July.
I will be designing a summer seminar for high school students called Philosophy As The Art Of Living.
In this seminar, we will read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations and consider the ways in which Stoicism is a philosophy to be lived and practiced, rather than just studied. I plan to have the students do various journaling exercises that imitate Marcus’s own Stoic reflections, and also discuss how to connect Stoicism with the problems of modern life.
I can’t wait to get started designing that course in the next few weeks.
By the way, on April 4th I posted this note see if anyone would be interested in a course on Marcus’s Meditations.
The responses were awesome.
Although the post didn’t reach 100 re-stacks, I was so excited to see how interested people were, that I decided to design my summer seminar in such a way that it can easily be converted into a digital course on Meditations.
I plan to finalize the details on that and make an announcement sometime in June.
*
There was a silver lining of stepping away for a few weeks, which was that it allowed me to see my past work in a new light.
This led to some fresh ideas.
On that note, I am incredibly excited to announce the first major update to the micro-philosophy framework for living since it's launch in January 2025:
Micro-Philosophy 2.0.
Micro-philosophy 2.0 simplifies the basic concept and thereby makes it easier for people to get started building and refining their micro-philosophy.
The goal is to help as many people as possible develop their own personal philosophy so that they can live with clarity, alignment, and purpose.
In January 2025, I launched version 1.0 of the micro-philosophy and it quickly became clear to me that thousands of people are starving for clarity, agency, and meaning.
After just a few months, the Micro-Philosopher publication grew from 25 subscribers to 2,000 subscribers!
(A huge shoutout to
, , , for promoting my work).
What explains this explosion of interest in the concept of a micro-philosophy?
I have been thinking about this a lot recently against the backdrop of existentialist philosophy, artificial intelligence, and stoicism.
We are facing global crisis of meaning unlike any other in human history.
According to most objective metrics, the world as a whole is safer, more prosperous, and more comfortable to live in than ever before.
AND YET, millions of people are feeling worse than ever on a daily basis (especially in the most prosperous places).
More specifically, people feel:
Stuck
Trapped
Confused
Bored
Anxious
Overstimulated
Inadequate
Restless
Unable to focus
Lonely
This is only to name a few of the emotions holding us back on a daily basis.
"Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?"
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 125
I will admit, that many people may not feel this way.
Many people feel like their life is full of purpose and meaning, and that the world is a perfect fit for them.
Perhaps those who are religious, or have a very pleasant life, do not face these problems as acutely as others.
I consider these people lucky.
The foundation of the world has changed such that even religious people who have a prescribed purpose are suffering from the loss of community, tradition, the acceleration of life, and inability to focus.
If a Christian cannot quietly read their bible for an hour they are suffering for it.
It is time for us to start doing the work of rebuilding our lives, our humanity, and reshaping our reality (both internal and external).
This is not easy.
There are major global forces that you will not be able to control or change.
But here's the good news:
You don't have to change the world.
The most important thing is that you change what you can control — which is yourself.
We all have an incredible amount of power to control and construct our own reality that serves as a counterweight to the forces of the external world.
The more you take control of your own life and reshape your own reality, the better you will be able to help others do the same.
So, how do we fight back?
We must keep one fundamental concept in our focus at all times.
A concept that everyone can value, regardless of faith or background.
The concept is agency.
Agency is the ability to act effectively in realizing your aims and intentions.
The more agency you have, the more clarity, freedom, and purpose you can generate for yourself and others.
Micro-philosophy 2.0 is designed to help people increase their agency by allowing them to take back control over the ideas in their head and reshape them into a life of freedom and conviction.
Micro-Philosophy 2.0
After reflecting on everything I have written on Substack so far, as well as the hundreds of helpful comments and criticisms that everyone has raised, I have decided that it is time to simplify the micro-philosophy concept.
One question that I have been thinking a lot about recently is "how small can a micro-philosophy be?"
What is the absolute bare minimum that someone needs to develop their own philosophy for living? And how can I help them achieve that?
(
has written about the similar, yet different, idea of a “minimum viable philosophy” here)Can someone live their life by a simple slogan or maxim and call it a philosophy?
Suppose that someone said their philosophy is simply to "Be kind".
Would that count as a micro-philosophy?
I don't think it can.
Here's why.
The philosophy of "Be kind" does not make sense on its own and provides very little to actually live by.
"Be kind" is a moral principle that only makes sense given an entire background set of assumptions.
After all, what does it even mean to "Be kind"?
Does that mean the same thing to an American as it does to an Norwegian? What about other values? Should we be kind above all else, or should we only be kind when it is appropriate? When is it appropriate?
These are just a few of the questions one could have.
One of the primary benefits of a micro-philosophy is to help people develop more clarity around their thoughts and actions by providing a deeper understanding of their own beliefs and values.
Someone might have been telling themselves that being kind is all that matters as a kind of shortcut or reminder about how they want to live.
But you can't live by a shortcut.
Eventually, you need to think more clearly and deeply about how your beliefs, values, and ethics hang together into a unified whole, otherwise you will face indecision, frustration, and anxiety throughout your moral life.
The philosophy of "Be kind" raises more questions than it does answers.
It is simply too simple.
This brings us to the following question: If a slogan or moral principle is too simple, then what do you need to have a micro-philosophy?
The Minimum Requirements For A Micro-Philosophy
Micro-philosophy 2.0 sets the following minimum requirements for a micro-philosophy.
In order to have a livable philosophy, you need at least 3 things:
You need some atomic/fundamental beliefs about what the world is like and how you relate to it.
You need some atomic/fundamental beliefs about which things are valuable in the world.
You need some atomic/fundamental beliefs about how you should act with respect to what is valuable.
In my original framework, there were 4 elements of a micro-philosophy.
They were:
Atomic Beliefs
Values
Principles
Actions
While I still this the original framework is valuable, there were certain aspects of it that were causing confusion for users. Version 2.0 of the micro-philosophy, meanwhile, will consist of a new and more simplified scheme that divides your atomic beliefs into the following three basic categories:
World
Value
Ethics
These 3 categories correspond to the three requirements above in the following way:
World: What the world is like and how you relate to it.
Value: Which things are valuable in the world.
Ethics: How you should act with respect to what is valuable.
I want to make it as easy as possible for people to start thinking for themselves and crafting their own philosophy for living.
It is always possible to add in more complexity later down the road, but simplicity is the most important thing for helping people get started.
I believe that this basic division will present a clear picture of what anyone would need to start putting together a philosophy that they can live by.
Why do I think that you need these three kinds of atomic beliefs to have a micro-philosophy?
Before I share my reasoning behind this new scheme, I want to make it clear that I invite comments and critical feedback.
Although I think my reasons are quite solid, and that it would be impossible to live by anything less than what I have outlined above, one of the things I have really enjoyed about our community here on Substack is that people are willing to respectfully disagree and, therefore, improve the quality of the ideas being circulated.
This is actually incredibly helpful to me and everyone interested in the discussions we have been having.
I read everyone's comments and take them into consideration.
That being said, here is my thought-process.
1) World
It should be quite obvious why you need beliefs about the world in order to have a micro-philosophy.
I take this to be uncontroversial.
If you did not have any beliefs about what the world is like and how you fit into it, then it is not even clear what it would mean to say that you have a philosophy at all.
Furthermore, it is impossible for someone to not have at least some beliefs about the world if they are living in it.
This does not mean that you need to have divine knowledge about the true nature of reality. At this stage of building your micro-philosophy, there is no requirement on having true beliefs about the world. The basic requirement is that you must clarify and begin to pin down simply what your beliefs about the world are.
2) Value
Many macro-philosophies in the history of philosophy start with ideas about what the world is like and how human beings relate to it, and then move on to develop ideas about which things are valuable or disvaluable.
A system of beliefs about what the world is like with no value judgments would not be a micro-philosophy because no one could live by it.
For example, the theories of modern physics are approximately true descriptions of physical reality, but you can't live these theories.
They are not philosophies for life and say nothing about what, if anything, is good, bad, beautiful, or ugly.
So much of our daily lives are governed by our values.
Values take a bland and lifeless description of the world and animate it. Values light up certain things, people, and activities as desirable and worth pursuing.
I like to imagine a worldview without value as consisting of only black and white, and then, all of a sudden, value is introduced and everything becomes colored.
The gray apple becomes red and desirable to us.
But, knowing or believing that certain things are valuable doesn't yet tell us how to live or what to do.
The simple reason is this.
Suppose there are two things that are valuable — love and work. Which one should you pursue more?
In order to answer questions like this, you need an ethics.
A mode of living that answers questions such as:
What sort of person are you going to be? How are you going to conduct yourself in this world? What does it mean to live well in this world?
3) Ethics
Virtually every great philosopher (and novelist) in history wrote about ethics in some form or other. Why?
Because they had a view of the world (or some small piece of it) and wanted to think deeply about how to live in it.
If you just construct a worldview and don't write about ethics you are not building a philosophy for living, but a theoretical account of the world.
Theoretical descriptions that explain reality are awesome.
But you can't live by them.
Sometimes people argue that philosophy is useless. That it is just abstract theorizing about unanswerable questions.
This complaint fails to distinguish between theoretical and practical philosophy.
I agree that theoretical philosophy is, by itself, useless for the same reasons that theoretical mathematics is useless.
You can't use it to directly solve your life problems.
But theoretical philosophy is not practical philosophy.
There is no reasonable case for thinking that practical philosophy is useless.
In fact, this doesn't even make any sense.
If you want to figure out the answers to your problems and radically transform your life, the simplest thing to do is to think clearly about:
What kind of world am I in? And how do I relate to it?
Which things are valuable in this world?
How should I act in order to realize those values?
One of the key insights I had in my life that led me to creating the micro-philosophy was that no amount of outsourcing will actually get you what you want.
You cannot let someone else answer these deep questions for you.
Perhaps there is a sense, then, in which philosophy is useless.
It cannot do the work for you.
Even if you knew every answer that has ever been given to the questions above, you still need to figure out what those answers mean to your life and how they should influence the specific ways in which you are living.
Take Christianity as an example.
Christianity has plenty of ready-made answers to the questions above.
But you can't simply just take those answers and start living by them, hoping that you will receive some incredible benefits in doing so.
In order for you to benefit from them, you need to understand what they mean and how they can fit into your life.
No book can do this for you — even the Bible.
In order for you to truly change yourself, you need to develop your own relationship with this body of ideas.
You cannot just consume them.
You must study them, question them, and develop a deep understanding of how they fit into your life, not how you fit into it.
But, this requires having at least some idea of who you are and what you stand for.
That is what micro-philosophy 2.0 is designed to help you figure out.
What's Next?
This basic sketch of micro-philosophy 2.0 is just the beginning of an exciting new chapter in my development and deployment of this concept.
Now that I have some more time on my hands, I am looking forward to redesigning the resources and templates that I have already put out to make things smoother and more straightforward.
I hope that this will lead to more people beginning to work on their own micro-philosophies and also sharing and discussing them with each other.
I am also hoping to meet with more of you on live calls and one-on-one’s and get to learn more about what interests you and what you need help with.
This is just the very beginning.
A micro-philosophy is a meta-project for living.
Just as you never stop changing and growing as you progress through life, your micro-philosophy changes along with you.
Over time we come to view the world differently, value different things, and aspire to be other than we are.
Your micro-philosophy is the embodiment of who you are and who you want to be.
I can’t wait to help you become who you are.
“What does your conscience say?—‘You should become who you are’”
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 270
-Paul
Questions:
If reality is relational and in a constantly fluid state, how does a micro-philosophy remain relevant without becoming dogmatic or obsolete?
2. When you speak of “your reality,” do you believe reality itself is subjective, or are you referring to a personal interpretation of a shared ontological field?
3. If Nietzsche’s “plunge in all directions” signals the collapse of orientation, how does one arrive at clarity without denying the very chaos he was naming?
4. Does the pursuit of clarity risk neutralizing the productive role of existential tension in personal growth and philosophical maturity?
5. In what way does your framework account for the unchosen, the systemic, or the traumatic; those aspects of reality that resist clarity and personal agency?
- What kind of world am I in? And how do I relate to it?
- Which things are valuable in this world?
- How should I act in order to realize those values?
As someone who supports organisations, groups and individuals with this (meta) process, I gotta say, boiling it down to these three (.5) questions is brilliant. Much more could be said about this, but let me leave that and that.
What I'm particularly interested in is how these are enacted over time, ideally in / through / as something like communities / ecologies of practice. I may have missed context here (very possible), but have you done much work on how these questions can be practices / lived in more relational settings?