Kieran Setiya is the Peter de Florez Professor of Philosophy at MIT, where he works on ethics and related questions about human agency and human knowledge. He is the author of Midlife: A Philosophical Guide and Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. He also maintains a Substack newsletter, Under the Net.
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The big takeaway
MIT philosopher Kieran Setiya shares his compassionate, philosophical approach to living well—even when life includes pain, failure, loss, or uncertainty. Rather than trying to eliminate life’s difficulties, Setiya argues the good life means learning to face hardship, adapt, and find meaning amid what’s realistically possible.
How to Live Well—Even When Life Is Hard
Key takeaways:
Living well doesn’t mean constant happiness: Kieran highlights that a good life isn’t the absence of grief, failure, or pain. The real goal is to engage honestly with reality, and learn to navigate its messiness with resilience and self-compassion.
Missing out is inevitable—don’t sweat it: FOMO (fear of missing out) happens because the world gives us countless valuable, often incommensurate choices. Missing out is simply the price of living in a rich, meaningful world.
Grief and adversity as part of love and meaning: Experiencing loss deeply isn’t evidence of weakness, but of attachment and love. Painful emotions often reflect what we value most, and trying to numb or detach from them means cutting ourselves off from life itself.
Pivoting matters more than perfection: Obstacles and changing circumstances are inevitable, so the way we reset expectations, adapt goals, and “expect adversity” is what makes for a well-lived life—not rigid pursuit of an ideal.
6 practical ways to face failure, change, and loss (and still lead a good life):
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