Philosophy Can Save Your Life

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Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born in Rome around the year 475 C.E. A learned man, he served his nation faithfully as a senator and consul. But the early sixth century was a period of perilous political instability, and Boethius was wrongly accused of treason by Ostrogoth King Theodoric. Imprisoned and sentenced to death, Boethius kept a prison diary chronicling his despair and inability to understand how such an unjust fate could make sense in a well-ordered universe.

Then help came—in the form, as Boethius tells it, of a mysterious and divine visitor to his cell: Lady Philosophy. A being of superhuman dignity and beauty, she engages Boethius in a series of philosophical discourses that raise his consciousness to a better perception of the true nature of good and the vanity of his misery. So morally elevated by his new understanding of philosophy, he could face his predicament—including his ultimate execution—with courage, peace, even joy.

What Boethius described was no symptom of carceral derangement; the lady was his metaphor for the power of philosophy to breathe life back into a deadened soul. With luck, you are not reading this column from prison; no doubt, however, you still have plenty of problems you would like to solve. Perhaps you need to invite Lady Philosophy into your own life. Here’s how.

[Arthur C. Brooks: When you can’t change the world, change your feelings]

We all know that, in general, studying and learning improve quality of life. Indeed, adopting a lifelong learning habit is one of the practices that leads to being happy and healthy in old age. And those who study philosophy enjoy particular benefits. In a large-sample 2024 survey of more than 100,000 individuals over their college years, the scholars Michael Prinzing and Michael Vazquez compared undergraduates of philosophy with peers studying other fields and found that the budding philosophers showed more enhanced “habits of mind” (curiosity, intellectual rigor, humility) and “pluralistic orientation” (tolerance, open-mindedness) than the students of other subjects. (In case you’re wondering, business majors scored the most poorly in habits of mind, and students of agriculture manifested the least pluralistic orientation.)

Neuroscientists have taken an interest in the cognitive benefits of philosophy. One theory offered by Georg Northoff in his book Neuro-Philosophy and the Healthy Mind is that we become more cognitively flexible—finding it easier to accept and employ alternative ways of thinking—when presented with different philosophical frameworks. This, in turn, improves the connection between the default mode network (which is central to self-reflection and pondering life’s meaning) and the brain’s executive network. In short, wrestling with philosophical questions makes your brain work better.

Engaging with a variety of philosophies is not the same as applying a particular one to your life. If you’re going to adopt a specific philosophical approach, some seem clearly more likely to be beneficial than others. For example, it’s hard to imagine that becoming a full-blown existential nihilist—life is meaningless and then you die—will aid much in your happiness. (You might think that posing as one, with a Gauloise cigarette in hand, might make you look more fascinating, but neither of those things is very good for your well-being.)

Evidence suggests that people who strongly embrace hedonism as a philosophy of life—the classical version of this is known as epicureanism—tend to be unhappier than people who don’t or do so moderately. In contrast, Stoicism—which focuses on the concept of a good life based on inner strength in the face of problems—is quite beneficial as a worldview: Researchers reported in 2022 that when two dozen medical students received psychotherapy that used the principles of Stoic philosophy, they became more empathic and resilient.

Certain attitudes and experiences predict which philosophy one will find most congenial. For example, researchers have shown that people who use recreational drugs are more likely than others to believe that morality is subjective; people who have had a transcendental experience are most likely to believe in God. Meanwhile, hard determinists (who believe that free will is an illusion and that all events are beyond our individual control) tend to register lower in well-being and higher in mental illness.

[From the November 1985 issue: The venerable Will]

Whether or not you decide to fully adopt a particular philosophy, simply studying different ones is good for both your intellectual prowess and your humility. Such study is also good for society insofar as it can make people less rigid and dogmatic in their beliefs. In my case, I am trained as a behavioral scientist and was educated with very little philosophy. But that changed about five years ago, after I saw evidence in research about philosophical education of its personal and social benefits. So I took to studying the great thinkers myself, from Aristotle to Zeno—and contemporary philosophers as well. Here are the rules I’ve followed for doing so.

1. Start with a lay of the land.
Rather than beginning at a random point, create your own version of an undergraduate survey course. There are many wonderful books that give you a broad sweep of philosophy, such as Nigel Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy. For a classic that is slightly denser and more demanding, try Will Durant’s 1926 work, The Story of Philosophy. Or buy an introductory textbook and do your own Philosophy 101.

2. Take big ideas in small doses.
As you turn to the original texts, you’ll find that they’re not binge-reading material. You won’t get much from the Nicomachean Ethics if you try to read it over a weekend. Like most philosophical texts, Aristotle’s seminal work requires keen attention and a lot of thought. Set a time aside each day to read for 10 to 15 minutes, taking notes as you go. This will become a treasured habit and get you through a lot of deep thought in a satisfying way as the months pass.

3. Do rely on teachers.
If you didn’t need secondary sources and annotated versions of the works of philosophy, that would be great. But I do and so, probably, will you. Right now, I am struggling with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. All I can say is, thank God others got their doctorates in this stuff and can machete through this intellectual thicket with their commentary.

4. This really is what YouTube is for.
When you decide to scroll videos to pass the time, whether at night in bed or on the treadmill at the gym, do you come away feeling empty and slightly depressed because you just blew an hour of watching utterly vacuous stuff? Don’t rely on the junk that the algorithm feeds you; search for videos made by scholars talking about their favorite philosophers. The quality is mixed, but your time will rarely be wasted.

5. Try applying what you learn.
If you really want to achieve a bone-deep understanding of a philosophical idea, try living according to its prescription for a few days, or a week, if you can. I remember being profoundly affected by Immanuel Kant’s claim that “By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man” in his 1797 treatise, The Metaphysics of Morals. Yes! cried my soul. So I tried living with his brand of radical honesty for a week. The experience was valuable, but I learned that I am not a Kantian—because I actually like being married and employed.

[Arthur C. Brooks: Are you a Platonist or an Aristotelian?]

My little autodidact’s routine for learning some philosophy is no substitute for a formal education, and I realize that I am still hopelessly ignorant and capable of gross errors. I know this because professional philosophers are never shy about pointing out my missteps among the correspondence I receive for these columns.

Still, my visits from Lady Philosophy have made an immense positive difference in the perspective I have on life. This pursuit of the mind is endlessly fascinating and—I would say, borrowing from the title of Boethius’s prison diary—even consoling. In The Consolation of Philosophy, he summarized what the lady had taught him about how to practice the good life as: “Withstand vice, practice virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to Heaven.” As valuable advice today as it was in 524.