How can we live a better life? At times life seems hard just to bare, not to say "enjoy". We prick our ears for every promise for a better life and a relief of our misery, but can we get disappointed each single time, unless we deceive ourselves into thinking that we found our solution. Attempt after attempt to either entertain ourselves to forget how cruel life can be sometimes or to find a final solution to out problem we come to realize that life will always be the way it is, and we are bound to suffer whether we admit that or not.
Going through this we might accept suffering but we try to justify it; we try to justify existence itself. In fact most illusions are mere tries to justify our existence; we try to invent causes to exist for and belief systems to make life endurable but the problem with self deception is that we know we are lying. We acquire a sense of mistrust as we get disappointed in finding someone to relieve us; we rely on many things, from psychology and anti-depression medicines to religions and holy books. But we learn we can't rely on anything, but can we rely on philosophy to show us how to live a happy life? I believe the answer is: No!! To live a better life we are not supposed to "rely on" philosophy, but philosophize.
No one can tell us how to live a better life, or how to face the terrifying existence, but we have to know that ourselves. To quote Montaigne "learned you can be with someone else's teaching, but wise you can only be on your own". And to philosophize is to try to be wiser, and thus a philosopher (a lover of wisdom) strives not only for knowledge, but also for how to view life, not only for knowing what to think but also for learning how to think, and more importantly, how to live.
It is not enough to memorize some arguments and the philosopher's birth date, not even to understand his philosophy, but -for a real lover of wisdom - one has to go further as the thought of someone can never make another wiser. Reading philosophy can only make the problems clearer, but each one of us has to find their own way of seeing life, their own philosophy. And thus instead of deceiving oneself one seeks truth, and learn to live with it, to even love it and love life the way it is, and as Nietzsche would say, would love to live it an infinite amount of times, not simply endure it.
Going through this we might accept suffering but we try to justify it; we try to justify existence itself. In fact most illusions are mere tries to justify our existence; we try to invent causes to exist for and belief systems to make life endurable but the problem with self deception is that we know we are lying. We acquire a sense of mistrust as we get disappointed in finding someone to relieve us; we rely on many things, from psychology and anti-depression medicines to religions and holy books. But we learn we can't rely on anything, but can we rely on philosophy to show us how to live a happy life? I believe the answer is: No!! To live a better life we are not supposed to "rely on" philosophy, but philosophize.
No one can tell us how to live a better life, or how to face the terrifying existence, but we have to know that ourselves. To quote Montaigne "learned you can be with someone else's teaching, but wise you can only be on your own". And to philosophize is to try to be wiser, and thus a philosopher (a lover of wisdom) strives not only for knowledge, but also for how to view life, not only for knowing what to think but also for learning how to think, and more importantly, how to live.
It is not enough to memorize some arguments and the philosopher's birth date, not even to understand his philosophy, but -for a real lover of wisdom - one has to go further as the thought of someone can never make another wiser. Reading philosophy can only make the problems clearer, but each one of us has to find their own way of seeing life, their own philosophy. And thus instead of deceiving oneself one seeks truth, and learn to live with it, to even love it and love life the way it is, and as Nietzsche would say, would love to live it an infinite amount of times, not simply endure it.