#siobhanlyons — Public Fediverse posts
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I don't have a lot of time for Alain De Botton, and much less still for attempts to portray some psychopath with an MBA as a Nietzschean ubermensch.
Yet I wonder if we should be quite as dismissive of philosophy presented as self help. After all, many of the philosophers of antiquity, whose works the author is unpleasantly surprised to find shelved with self-help books in stores, thought of themselves not as scholars working on problems or even primarily literary artists but as searchers after a better way of living.
i have not yet read Pierre Hadot's book "Philosophy As A Way Of Life", but it might well be relevant here.
3/5
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The author's view of philosophy today as divisible into narrow specialization on the one hand and vapid pop philosophy on the other seems misleading to me.
In fact, you can find philosophers teaching future managers whether they should consider the interests of shareholders alone rather than those of stakeholders, future health professionals the ramifications of informed consent, and future army officers ways to think about "proportionality" and "necessity".
In short, philosophers today practice in spots other than the ivory tower or the market place.
2/5
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I have a number of thoughts on this essay, which is definitely worth reading if you have any interest in the humanities.
🧵 1/5
Since when is philosophy a branch of the self-help industry? | Aeon Essayshttps://aeon.co/essays/since-when-is-philosophy-a-branch-of-the-self-help-industry