Books to read when you want to think about how to live: four classics of philosophy and psychology
3 min read
Writing these articles, I keep running into questions that short essays can't answer. Where is the meaning of life? What is freedom? How do you get free of other people's eyes?
From the books I've opened when I wanted to think about those questions more deeply, I've chosen four. None of them gives you an answer. But they give you somewhere to stand while you think.
Contents
Questions and books
| Question | Book | Related article |
|---|---|---|
| Where is the meaning of life? | Thus Spoke Zarathustra | God is dead. So why do we keep living? |
| Is there meaning even in suffering? | Man's Search for Meaning | God is dead. So why do we keep living? |
| What is freedom? | Escape from Freedom | I want freedom, not love |
| I want to step back from others' judgment | The Courage to Be Disliked | You don't stop caring about being disliked |
1. In a world where meaning isn't given
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra depicts, through the speeches of the prophet Zarathustra, how people might live in the world after "God is dead." It's closer to poetry or a story than to a philosophy textbook.
It lets you see how Nietzsche himself spoke about the question I explored in "God is dead. So why do we keep living?" I think it's best read without trying to understand everything at first, underlining the words that catch you. A modern translation is easier going.
2. Can meaning be found in any situation?
Viktor E. Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning is the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's record of his experience in Nazi concentration camps. With a psychologist's eye, he writes about what helped people survive in extreme conditions, and what made them break.
Where Nietzsche said meaning isn't given, Frankl held that people can find meaning in any situation. Read the two back to back, and you see both sides of the question.
3. Why is freedom heavy?
Erich Fromm
Escape from Freedom (published in the UK as The Fear of Freedom) argues that while people seek freedom, they sometimes can't bear the loneliness and anxiety that come with it, and give it up themselves. Written in 1941, it asks why people submitted to authority.
In "I want freedom, not love," I described freedom as "keeping the standard inside yourself." This book shows why that freedom is heavy.
4. How to step back from other people's judgment
Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
The Courage to Be Disliked introduces the ideas of the psychologist Alfred Adler as a dialogue between a philosopher and a young man. Using the phrase "separation of tasks," it lays out the idea that how others judge you is not your task.
In "You don't stop caring about being disliked. It just drops in priority," I revisited this book's ideas alongside psychology research. Read together, before or after the book, they help you read it without taking it too absolutely.
How to read them
You don't have to understand a classic the first time. Skip what you don't get, and take home just the one line that stops you.
When you think about where that line fits in your own life, the book becomes yours for the first time.