In this conversation, Sam speaks with Kieran Setiya about the relevance of philosophy to living a good life. They talk about the existence of objective moral truths, being happy vs. living well, meditation as a remedy for psychological suffering, how to understand the claim that the self is an illusion, the asymmetry between pain and pleasure, and other topics.
Kieran Setiya is a professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His new book, Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, comes out October 2022. He is the author of Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, The New York Times, Aeon, and The Yale Review.