6 Philosophers on How to Live Life

By Daniel Coxson

We often turn to philosophy for answers, to better understand ourselves and the world in which we have found ourselves. Perhaps most often of all philosophical questions, people look to the words of past thinkers to identify what they are supposed to do with their life. Is what I’m doing right? How can I make the world better than how I found it? The good news is that there are hundreds of people who want to help you answer these questions. The bad news is that nearly all of them disagree.

In this article live a handful of philosophers from a plethora of philosophical schools and backgrounds. I have chosen the philosophers I find especially fascinating, which essentially means that I think most of them are a bit unhinged. I have also sorted them alphabetically because any other way would be utterly inexcusable…or would it?

David Benatar

“The one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of...children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place”

David Benatar is an “anti-natalist." His primary argument is that, morally, no one should have children. Existence is inherently worse than non-existence, so it is barbaric to bring another person into the world.

You can look at morality through pain and pleasure. Pain is bad and pleasure is good. Thus, the absence of pain is also good. The absence of pleasure is not harmful unless there is someone who feels deprived of it. Thus, we can look at the morality of having a child. The virtue of the action is determined by how much pleasure and pain it produces. That child could either have more pleasure (which makes it moral) or more pain (which makes it immoral). If you don’t have a child, there is no chance of pain (which is positive) and no chance of pleasure (which is not bad). It naturally follows that the safest bet pleasure-wise, and thus the more moral option, is to abstain from children. That’s it.

Albert Camus

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy"

Albert Camus was an existentialist and an absurdist. The first means that he believes life has no inherent meaning, which couples with the second, which posits that though life has no meaning, humans will always strive to find meaning, which is inherently absurd.

One famous example that Camus uses to exemplify the meaninglessness of life is the Myth of Sisyphus. The story of Sisyphus is that he must eternally push a boulder up a hill, and when he gets it to the top, it rolls back down again, and he must repeat the whole ordeal. It appears to be a neverending fruitless effort, devoid of purpose. 

However, Camus says that we must imagine Sisyphus as happy. He needs to have some personal meaning for the entire process, even if there is no external meaning.

The universe is devoid of meaning. We toil through life much like Sisyphus. We can choose to give in to the depressing idea of such an existence, but Camus suggests that we give ourselves our meaning. It’s what you do that determines the significance of your existence. Thus, the right thing to do is to do what you want with your life. If you want to become a carpenter, then you should. If you wish to live alone with your dog, completely cut off from society, you can do that. It’s as simple as that.

Arthur Desmond

(AKA Ragnar Redbeard)

“If one man smite you on the cheek, / Don’t turn the other, soft and meek, / But smash him back, and lay him low. / War for war, and blow for blow”

Arthur Desmond, also known by his pen name of Ragnar Redbeard, was a bit peculiar. For most of his life, he worked as a leftist politician and activist in New Zealand and Australia, and then he wrote Might is Right, a book that lays out Social Darwinist and elitist values such as “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong." It might have been a piece of satire, but it has become his philosophical legacy.

According to the book, the way to be moral is to be strong. Only the strong conquerors of the world have human rights. If you are weak and let others walk over you, you will and should die. You cannot be weak or promote weakness. If you do, the world will destroy you. This includes spreading “weak” religious views, which would be any beliefs advocating “turning the other cheek” or otherwise allowing yourself to be below others. Desmond attacked Christianity and Judaism for this reason.

Immanuel Kant

“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness”

Immanuel Kant is so influential in ethics that he lends his name to Kantian ethics. His ethical ideology centers around the idea of what’s called a Categorical Imperative. Essentially, there are universal moral principles that we should live by. Any action that would become destructive when universalized is immoral. To clarify through an example, you might be considering stealing a bag of chips from a multi-million dollar superstore. We've all been in that situation. You think, “I will gain lots of pleasure from stealing, as this is my favorite type of chip, and the corporation won’t be hurt at all because it’s one of millions that they sell.” Kant would disapprove. He would ask you to consider a world where everyone stole a bag of chips. The world would be mayhem, and that action would not seem harmless anymore. This is how you can know that it is immoral.

By going through all actions like this and weeding out the destructive ones, we can determine what universal moral principles we must hold to.

John Stuart Mill

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury”

Alongside Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill was one of the primary founders of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the idea that morality comes from providing the greatest possible benefit to the largest possible number of people.

For example, a classic utilitarian conundrum arises in the Trolley Problem. For those unfamiliar, this thought experiment posits that there is a train barreling down the train tracks. At one point ahead, the tracks branch, so there are two different ways the train can go. You are standing next to the lever at the branching point. If you choose to, you can cause the train to diverge from its current path on Track A to go onto Track B by pulling the lever. The problem is that there are people tied to the tracks, all ahead of the branch-off. There are five people tied to Track A and one person tied to Track B. You are incapable of untying them, you can only control the lever. If you do nothing, the train will barrel over the five people on Track A, killing them, but the train will kill the one person on Track B if you pull the lever. The question is What is the right thing to do: To pull the lever or to leave it alone? Either way, at least one person dies, but it’s a question of five versus one. A utilitarian would likely argue that you should pull the lever, since it would end with the least possible death, thus helping the greatest number of people.

It’s this same principle you should apply to your own life when making ethical decisions.

Ayn Rand

“My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose”

Ayn Rand founded the philosophy of Objectivism, which states that a person’s supreme source of information is reason and that their moral purpose is to pursue personal happiness. Rand believed that reason is the best way to gain knowledge about the world. It is what tells us what we can know, and thus what our values are. When you use correct reasoning, you will know what your values are.

Rand’s most well-known ethical proposition is that a person’s primary moral obligation is to promote their well-being. You should not be altruistic, placing other people's needs equal to or above your own. You should also not be hedonistic, which Rand believed was to live in a “subhuman” manner. You should care about yourself first, but not fall into “selfishness-without-a-self”.

This is not to say that you can abuse other people. You must respect other people’s obligation to pursue their self-interest as well. Rand believed that this also meant that the best economic system is laissez-faire capitalism.

In conclusion, if you put yourself first while respecting others’ right to do so, you’re living a moral life.