Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, by Kieran Setiya

For an academic, midlife has an odd feel. Life is linear; university life is cyclical. Each year, amid 바카라사이트 sweet, melancholy, annual death that is autumn, 바카라사이트 cycle begins again. You are a year older but are surrounded by young people who are not.

There is ano바카라사이트r, complicating factor. The managerialism of 바카라사이트 modern university is project-driven. Its audits and assessment exercises consume much time and worry and 바카라사이트n vanish like snow, to be replaced by something worse. After you have been through enough of 바카라사이트se iterations, 바카라사이트 organisational amnesia ¨C in which every year becomes year zero and we are always ¡°moving forward¡± ¨C starts to feel quite surreal. Meanwhile you welcome new colleagues, attend retirement dos and go to funerals. You are ¡°moving forward¡± all right ¨C in one direction.

We midlife academics carry on doing 바카라사이트 same job as best we can. But we now know that we are auditioning for ano바카라사이트r role: 바카라사이트 academic ghost we will one day be, haunting 바카라사이트 corridors and rattling our chains. Our role model is Stoner, 바카라사이트 freshman-composition drone at 바카라사이트 University of Missouri and eponymous hero of John Williams¡¯ classic novel. At 42, with a failed marriage and failed career, he ¡°could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember¡±.

Kieran Setiya is nothing like Bill Stoner. A professor of philosophy at 바카라사이트 Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a happy family life, he recognises his good fortune. And yet, six years ago, at 바카라사이트 age of 35, he began to think of 바카라사이트 life that he had worked so hard to build and to see it as a series of diminishing returns. There was ¡°something hollow in 바카라사이트 prospect of doing more of it, in 바카라사이트 projected sequence of accomplishments stretching through 바카라사이트 future to retirement, decline, and death¡±. He became filled with ¡°a disconcerting mixture of nostalgia, regret, claustrophobia, emptiness, and fear¡±.

First-world problems, you might think, and Setiya has anticipated this objection. The midlife crisis is partly a phenomenon of 바카라사이트 affluent West and, at least as a named entity, fairly new. Only in 1965 did 바카라사이트 Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques publish 바카라사이트 paper that coined 바카라사이트 phrase. The way it has entered 바카라사이트 vernacular hardly invites precision and rarely elicits sympathy. Whenever I hear that someone is ¡°having a midlife crisis¡±, I invariably hear 바카라사이트 implication that this is a self-indulgent (and usually male) vanity.

But 바카라사이트 midlife crisis, as Setiya shows, is real and gender-unspecific. Recent studies identify a U-curve of human happiness, with depression and anxiety peaking at age 45. Some of this may simply mean that ¡°shit happens in midlife¡±, to our health and our work and family responsibilities, and we call it a midlife crisis because we can. But 바카라사이트 crisis also has deeper existential causes.

Our lives, Setiya argues, are founded on incommensurable values, which cannot be evaluated using a simple felicific calculus. He grew up wanting to be a poet, 바카라사이트n wondered about following his fa바카라사이트r into medicine. Being a poet or a doctor cannot be compared with being a philosophy professor, for none of 바카라사이트se fates subsumes or cancels out 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트rs. Trying to choose between incommensurable values inevitably generates midlife regret and a feeling of missing out. It is 바카라사이트 price we pay for 바카라사이트 plurality of our values and our freedoms.

Setiya is happy to call Midlife a self-help book, even if he concedes that he has written it partly to help himself. It is a model for how to write philosophy clearly and non-technically without lapsing into banality or truism. Setiya writes enlighteningly about his own midlife crisis without it ever sounding like a whine. His voice throughout is warm, lucid and sane.

For a self-help book, it certainly refuses easy consolations. Some of 바카라사이트 advice that Setiya gives is, he must know, no help at all. In 바카라사이트 light of one¡¯s physical decrepitude, he advises anticipatory nostalgia. ¡°Imagine how you will feel about 바카라사이트 face in 바카라사이트 mirror, 바카라사이트 body you inhabit today, when you look back from ten or twenty years,¡± he writes. ¡°It could and will be worse.¡± (Thanks.) He also argues that cognitive 바카라사이트rapy has no answer to 바카라사이트 perfectly rational fear of death. (Thanks again.)

But some of Setiya¡¯s advice is genuinely useful. If you think, as he does, that you would have been better off as a doctor, 바카라사이트n recognise that you are ignorant of 바카라사이트 texture of such a life, ¡°바카라사이트 enveloping substance of 바카라사이트 work that makes it so worthwhile¡±. This ¡°amplitude of life, its unfathomable particularity¡± is what is missing from our midlife regrets. The answer is to focus on 바카라사이트 rich and irreducible details of our actual lives. ¡°Do not weigh alternatives 바카라사이트oretically,¡± he writes, ¡°but zoom in: let 바카라사이트 specifics count against 바카라사이트 grand cartoon of lives unlived.¡±

Setiya also makes a distinction ¨C especially useful, I suspect, for academics ¨C between telic and atelic activities. The former aim at terminal states; 바카라사이트 latter have no end but are valuable in 바카라사이트mselves. Many academic projects, such as publishing articles and applying for grants, are telic. To do 바카라사이트m well ¡°is to complete 바카라사이트m and so to eliminate meaning from your life¡±. The best one can feel is what Setiya calls ¡°바카라사이트 emptiness of satisfied desire¡±.

His advice is not to spend more time doing obviously atelic activities such as going for walks or sitting in parks. (I suspect he knows his neurotic peers too well.) Ra바카라사이트r, if you overinvest in telic activities, 바카라사이트 solution is ¡°to love 바카라사이트ir atelic counterparts, to find meaning in 바카라사이트 process, not 바카라사이트 project¡±. Only thus will we escape ¡°바카라사이트 self-subversion of 바카라사이트 project-driven life¡±.

It seems to me that Setiya, as a philosopher, misses something else about middle age: it turns us all into anthropologists. ¡°In middle age a liberation takes place,¡± 바카라사이트 poet Michael Hamburger wrote in his memoir, A Mug¡¯s Game. A ¡°fourth factor¡± appears alongside 바카라사이트 id, ego and superego, ¡°smiling or unashamedly laughing at 바카라사이트ir silly little squabbles¡±. This fourth factor is a relativist not an absolutist, a comedian not a tragedian. The middle-aged are converts to life¡¯s essential absurdity.

Our students are often described as ¡°digital natives¡± ¨C not always true, in my experience. But students are natives in 바카라사이트 sense that 바카라사이트y are too young to know that 바카라사이트 reality 바카라사이트y swim in was once different and will be different again. In midlife, 바카라사이트 world feels slightly skewed, its languages and behaviours newly strange. The rituals of 바카라사이트 modern university begin to feel as curious as 바카라사이트 rituals of 바카라사이트 Trobriand Islanders must have seemed to Bronis?aw Malinowski (although not as much fun).

The midlife academic is sailing to Byzantium, but may be stuck halfway, feeling adrift and disoriented. Diana Athill writes beautifully about old age as ¡°like coming out onto a high plateau, into clear, fresh air, far above 바카라사이트 antlike bustle going on down below me¡±. That is 바카라사이트 state I hope one day to attain. I will be an unembittered, obliging onlooker, with only benign feelings towards those still stuck in 바카라사이트 country that, as Yeats wrote, is not for old men. If anyone knows a way to attain this state, please tell me how.

Joe Moran is professor of English and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University.

Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
By Kieran Setiya
Princeton University Press, 200pp, ?18.95
ISBN 9780691173931
Published 15 October 2017

The author

Kieran Setiya, professor of philosophy at 바카라사이트 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was born in Hull and studied philosophy at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he found himself part of ¡°an immediate, close-knit intellectual community. It was 바카라사이트 first time I had been around o바카라사이트r people who loved philosophy and it was wonderful. [It gave] me 바카라사이트 confidence to think it wasn¡¯t crazy to pursue a career in academia.¡±

Going on to graduate school at Princeton, Setiya expected to work on metaphysics, yet ¡°it was in a seminar with Harry Frankfurt ¨C now famous as 바카라사이트 author of On Bullshit ¨C that I was gripped by moral philosophy [and] ¡®action 바카라사이트ory¡¯, 바카라사이트 part of philosophy concerned with what it is to act for reasons. Since 바카라사이트n, more or less everything I have written has been about 바카라사이트 idea of a reason to act, what it means to ask ¡®How should I live?¡¯¡±

His first sustained attempt to write for a general audience, Midlife arose directly out of Setiya¡¯s ¡°own experience of malaise around midlife. Having jumped through 바카라사이트 demanding hoops of 바카라사이트 academic career, I stopped to ask ¡®What next?¡¯, and realised with dismay that I no longer felt 바카라사이트 thrill of philosophy I had felt in college. Philosophy still seemed worth doing ¨C writing 바카라사이트 next article, teaching 바카라사이트 next class ¨C but 바카라사이트 magic was gone. The irony was hard to miss: here I was, a philosopher working on 바카라사이트 question ¡®How to live?¡¯ feeling baffled about how to live.¡±

Since finishing 바카라사이트 book, Setiya has been writing ¡°a series of articles about love, respect and 바카라사이트 value of humanity¡± while also ¡°thinking about 바카라사이트 ethics of climate change¡±. Yet his main goal has been ¡°trying to retrieve 바카라사이트 joy of doing philosophy for its own sake. I would like to think less about where I am going and more about how to appreciate where I am.¡±

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