aeon essays on philosophy

Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, profound essays from aeon magazine.

Over the last year, I have found many good articles at Aeon —a digital magazine of ideas, philosophy, and culture. I had intended to write posts about these many pieces but alas I have not found the time. So instead I will link to some of the thought-provoking pieces they’ve published that I’ve read followed by a single sentence description of their content.

“What Animals Think of Death” (Animals wrestle with the concept of death and mortality.)

“Do We Send The Goo?” (If we’re alone in the universe should we do anything about it?)

“The Mind Does Not Exist” (Why there’s no such thing as the mind and nothing is mental.)

“You Are A Network” (The self is not singular but a fluid network of identities.)

“After Neurodiversity” (Neurodiversity is not enough, we should embrace psydiversity.)

“Lies And Honest Mistakes” (Our epistemic crisis is essentially ethical and so are its solutions.)

“Ideas That Work” (Our most abstract concepts emerged as solutions to our needs.)

“We Are Nature” (Even the Anthropocene is nature at work transforming itself.)

“The Seed Of Suffering” (What the p-factor says about the root of all mental illness.)

“Authenticity Is A Sham” (A history of authenticity from Jesus to self-help and beyond.)

“Who Counts As A Victim?” (The pantomime drama of victims and villains conceals the real horrors of war.)

“Nihilism” (If you believe in nihilism do you believe in anything?)

“The Science Of Wisdom” (How psychologists have found the empirical path to wisdom.)

“The Semi-Satisfied Life” (For Schopenhauer happiness is a state of semi-satisfaction.)

“Bonfire Of The Humanities” (The role of history in a society afflicted by short-termism.)

“How Cosmic Is The Cosmos?” (Can Buddhism explain what came before the big bang?)

“Is The Universe A Conscious Mind?” (Cosmopsychism explains why the universe is fine-tuned for life.)

“Dreadful Dads” (What the childless fathers of existentialism teach real dads.)

“End of Story” (How does an atheist tell his son about death?)

“Buddhism And Self-Deception” (How Buddhism resolves the paradox of self-deception.)

“The happiness ruse” (How did feeling good become a matter of relentless, competitive work?”)

“ How to be an Epicurean” (Forget Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics; try being an Epicurean.)

“The Greatest Use of Life” (William James on whether life is worth living.)

“Anger is temporary madness: the Stoics knew how to curb it” (How to Avoid the triggers.)

“Faith: Why Is the Language of Transhumanism and Religion So Similar?” (AI and religion.)

“Endless Fun” (What will we do for all eternity after uploading?)

“There Is No Death, Only A Series of Eternal ‘Nows'” (You don’t actually die.)

“Save The Universe” (It’s only a matter of time until it dies.)

“ When Hope is a Hindrance ” (Hope in dark times is no match for action.)

Oh, to have more time to read and learn.

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Aeon essay by Marc Lange – What is a Law of Nature?

By Jo Garrett

Laws of nature are impossible to break, and nearly as difficult to define. Just what kind of necessity do they possess? Read the essay here .

A woman sits alone at a wooden desk in a modern office with large glass windows, reflecting buildings and trees outside.

Rituals and celebrations

For Plato, rationalists and mystics can walk the same path

Why did such a keen proponent of reason turn to the Eleusinian Mysteries to explain his ideas about knowledge?

by Sam Woodward

Photo of a black sign with yellow text reading ‘Way out’ and a left-pointing arrow, mounted on a white brick wall.

Emotion regulation

If feelings for an ex are troubling you, try ‘opposite action’

Acting on misguided feelings of love only fuels the emotional fire. Learn to let the fire burn out with these DBT-based tips

by Kiki Fehling

Black-and-white photograph of a person in a jacket standing outdoors in a foggy environment, looking up with eyes closed.

Spirituality and religion

How to find new spiritual practices

Even if religion isn’t for you, there’s a world of rituals and tools to lift yourself up and connect to something greater

by Morgan Shipley

Classroom of middle-school students sitting at desks with eyes closed, appearing to be meditating or focusing quietly.

Prayer and contemplation

What if we learned contemplation like we do arts or sports?

As with football or violin practice, young people could gain versatile life skills through routine contemplative training

by Michael R Sheehy

Participants in a parade carry large balloon structures spelling “LOVE” in bright colours, with spectators in the background.

Parenting and families

Radical love: how my trans child changed my identity as a mother

My child grew into a new version of himself – as all children do – and I wondered about my new role. Anger helped me grasp it

by Patricia Martin

Popular this month

How to find new spiritual practices.

Your 10-step plan for achieving a creative breakthrough

by Nick Kabrél

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For Plato, rationalists and mystics can walk the same path

Bas-relief sculpture depicting the three most important figures of the Eleusianian Mysteries: the goddess of agriculture and abundance Demeter, her daughter Persephone, queen of the Underworld, and the Eleusinian hero Triptolemus, in what appears to be a rite. Triptolemus stands in the centre, the two goddesses stand either side.

If feelings for an ex are troubling you, try ‘opposite action’

Rewilding attachment theory by recognising Earth as a caregiver

by Vanessa Chakour

Two women wearing bathing suits sit on a rock by a waterfall in nature; one has her arm around the other. Towels are draped over the rock.

Emerging therapies

What does ketamine-assisted therapy look like? Inside one firefighter’s journey

Directed by Brandon Kapelow

Two people enjoying a scenic sunset with one raising their arms and the other looking sideways, in an outdoor setting.

Three sisters craft a lyrical tribute to their mother from old family VHS tapes

Directed by Jay Stephen and Ralph Briscoe

Charlie Chaplin and Chester Conklin, dressed in overalls, scratch their heads, standing in front of large industrial gears and machinery in a black-and-white scene.

Freedom and choice

Why Charlie Chaplin was an ‘angel of peace’ for Walter Benjamin

Though a tramp and a misfit, Chaplin’s world fit him like a glove. His life of contingency appealed to the émigré Benjamin

by Eli Friedlander

A man is seen through a windowpane with blurred people and autumn foliage shown in the reflection.

Values and beliefs

What a dream helped me see about the politics of sovereignty

A moment of insight captured the danger in our widespread ‘sovereigntism’ – and how we ought to relate to each other instead

by Rupert Read

Memory and nostalgia

It’s not just youth’s happy memories that have a special weight

Mixed in with the highly memorable rites of growing up are more troubling highlights. But these, too, can have enduring value

by Çağlayan Özdemir, Michelle D Leichtman & David B Pillemer

Brightly coloured, psychedelic illustration of a boy in a field holding a prosthetic arm with a blue sky in the background.

Altered states

A boy’s universe becomes strange and wondrous in this enchanting short

Directed by Gabriel Gabriel Garble

Nature and the environment

Rewilding attachment theory by recognising Earth as a caregiver

We are raised by people, but we are also raised by the Earth – here’s what that means for our emotional development

Your 10-step plan for achieving a creative breakthrough

We often think of Aha! moments occurring by fluke, but there are evidence-based ways to make it more likely they will occur

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The body and physical health

Menopause was a French invention at a time of revolution

French doctors of the 1800s had a vested interest in pathologising women’s ageing, as do many commercial entities today

by Alison M Downham Moore

Man relaxing on a striped lounge chair with hands behind his head, outside on a lawn, flanked by other coloured chairs and an opened beer bottle nearby.

Why do so many of us blame ourselves after a loved one’s death?

After losing my father, I felt the guilt and regret that burden many other bereaved people – and found a way to carry them

by Delaney Rebernik

Silhouette of person standing before an orange light, creating a glowing halo effect on a neutral background.

Painting and sculpture

Toxic materials become sculptures of light and air in this artist’s hands

Directed by Anika Kan Grevstad

Daniel Kahneman standing on a balcony, arms crossed, with New York City skyline and buildings in the background under a clear blue sky.

Thinkers and theories

Why I’ll never forget the day I met Daniel Kahneman for lunch

He was an octogenarian Nobel-winning psychologist, I was a nervous 20-something film producer. Here’s what struck me most

by Namir Khaliq

Two women in printed dresses stand at a concrete railing, overlooking a beach and cliffs with the sea stretching into the horizon.

How to look after your emotional health

Find out which of your emotional needs you’ve been neglecting and use tips from human givens therapy to address them

by Denise Winn

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On Writing Seriously Good Philosophy

The APA Blog and Aeon magazine have launched a partnership for cross-publishing ideas. I spoke with Aeon editor Sam Dresser about writing seriously good philosophy for broad audiences, the sort of philosophy articles that Aeon wants to publish, rainbow cake controversies, and more.

Sam, we’re excited to announce our Aeon-APA partnership! For those who aren’t familiar with Aeon, could you talk a little about the publication?

I’m excited as well, and we at Aeon are huge fans of the APA, so thank you very much for all the hard work you put in! And I’m especially happy to say that our inaugural partnership piece is yours on Simone de Beauvoir ! She’s one of my favorite philosophers, I’m so glad we’ve now got such an excellent piece on her up on the site. A little introduction: Aeon is a non-profit digital-only magazine for serious thinking and seriously good writing. We publish four long essays per week, and four short ones, which we call Ideas. Aeon also has a terrific video channel , where we stream short documentaries and some original stuff too. The magazine was founded in 2012, in London, by two wonderful people, Paul and Brigid Hains. We started publishing that September. Today we’re headquartered in Melbourne, with offices in New York and London. From the beginning, we intended Aeon to be a space for critical thinking and open, intentional conversation. Ideas matter a hell of a lot, and we hope for Aeon to be a conduit to understanding and challenging them.

Can you tell me a little about you – your background and interest in philosophy, how you came to work with Aeon, and your role?

Like most people that are involved with philosophy, I became interested when I started to question religion. I sometimes like to think of religion as a bit like your metaphysical starting pack. It introduces you to deep questions about the universe while also offering incredibly unsatisfying answers. I’m not from a religious family (far from it: lapsed Quakers) but I did like to challenge religion from an early age in a sort of boring know-it-all adolescent way. My father had bought the Great Books when I was about ten and they remained unopened until I was maybe seventeen, when I read the ‘God’ entry in the Synopticon. I was floored by how little I knew and how much there was to learn. I was know-it-all no longer. From there I read Bryan Magee’s Story of Philosophy – a great book for anyone getting started – and Frederick Copleston’s History of Philosophy , which is excellent, but maddeningly he doesn’t translate the quotes from non-English speaking philosophers. I’ve often wondered at that editorial decision. I also listened to our very own Nigel Warburton ’s podcast Philosophy Bites a good deal – and I still love it!

I’ve actually been at Aeon since the beginning, before we started publishing, and it’s the greatest job in the world. I found Aeon in the jobs section of the Guardian , I believe, and the founders–Paul and Brigid Hains–were looking for someone with a philosophy background. I was then in my final year at the University of Edinburgh finishing up an unbelievably awful dissertation on Dennett and Nietzsche that I sincerely hope no one ever reads. I couldn’t believe that there was actually an opening in London for a philosophy grad so I quickly applied and they invited me for an interview shortly thereafter. It was pretty short notice, so I hurriedly took the ten hour bus down to London, changed into a suit at the Victoria bus depot, and made it just five minutes late to the interview. I was lucky. Right place, right time, I guess. I’m a commissioning editor now, who sometimes does auxiliary projects like I Hope This Helps .

What sorts of readers visit Aeon’s site on a regular basis?

One of the great things about Aeon is that we have readers from all over the world. It’s a very cosmopolitan readership, I’d say. I don’t have very good numbers on our demographics, but I would expect that a lot of our readers also read the New Yorker , the New York Review of Books , Times Literary Supplement , that sort of thing. To get a better sense of our readers, I’d take a look at the conversations that play out on the site (we created a bespoke commenting section). The level of dialogue on the site is high – I’m always impressed by how serious and inquiring our readers are.

Do philosophy articles at Aeon overlap with your other beats?

They do. Aeon is a very interdisciplinary magazine, as you can see from how the magazine is divided up, so there is frequent overlap between the philosophy section and the other sections. This is probably too broad, but I’d say that Aeon’s general emphasis on ideas (rather than, say, reportage) means that even pieces that are ostensibly not about philosophy at all have a philosophical component, even if glancingly.

How popular are philosophical articles on Aeon compared to the other beats that Aeon covers, that is, psychology, science, health, society, culture, and technology?

I think the philosophy section has an advantage over the others in that there aren’t as many other publications out there that focus so intently on philosophy. There are tons of technology publications, tons of psychology articles, and so on, but not as much in philosophy. That means that there’s less competition. Combine that with a real public appetite for good, clear, honest philosophy and that means our philosophy pieces end up doing quite well. You might not expect a piece on parsimony to get a lot of hits, but it did.

What unique challenges do philosophy articles on Aeon face if any as compared to the other beats?

I don’t think there are many challenges that are unique to the philosophy articles. All the essays on the site have to be clear, concise, relevant and gripping. Perhaps philosophy has a particular challenge in that it’s easy to get especially muddled, highly theoretical writing (the sort of writing that is deeply in love with itself) than other topics, but I don’t think that’s very fair. Bad writing is not confined to philosophy.

In your view, what makes for a good philosophy article?

First off, there needs to be a clear and compelling raison d’être. Why does this piece exist? To do this, to convince the reader quickly that it’s worth reading, there needs to be a propulsive question that pushes the piece forward – and this question needs to be boldly if not provocatively answered. What is the intellectual question that the piece is going to tackle? And why should the reader care? Academics need to particularly take note of the second question: what’s relevant within academia doesn’t necessarily translate to a lay audience, so writers need to be mindful of that more general relevance. (But not too relevant: we don’t publishing anything on day-to-day politics and we rarely directly reference he who must not be named.) The other thing that helps is for there to be nice tangible examples to bring the argument back to earth, something that readers can grasp onto. These pieces also shouldn’t try to do too much. It’s hard enough saying one thing clearly – don’t make it too complicated. Last, and this goes without saying, but the writing must be clear and simple. The reader isn’t going to be impressed by fancy academese.

What’s the most popular philosophy piece that you’ve published? And why do you think it was popular?

Of the Ideas, it’s probably Gordon Pennycook’s piece on bullshit . It’s got an obvious relevance considering the mountains of bullshit we’re wading through daily, it’s got a really nice, funny hook, and it’s answer is bold and persuasive (at least to me). Those are the components necessary for a successful piece. That and a bit of luck: a popular piece has got to be picked up by the right aggregators or tweeted out by folks with lots of followers. So, sometimes the number of readers is a good metric for its success, but there are also some truly outstanding pieces on the site that for whatever reason didn’t get a lot of love. That’s just part of the game.

Can you say what your favorite philosophy piece on Aeon is?

There are so many wonderful essays to choose from! Without at all denigrating the others, I would say that Eric Schwitzgebel’s Theory of jerks is among my favorites. It’s funny, beautifully written, and incisively edited by my esteemed former colleague Ed Lake. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you do.

Can you talk a little about the sorts of philosophy pieces that work well on Aeon?

I think perhaps it’s easier to say what doesn’t work. We mostly stay away from really heavily theoretical pieces. There are certain continental philosophers I can think of whose writing, no matter how popular, would never appear on Aeon because it’s just too obscure and too inscrutable. That certainly doesn’t mean we eschew the Continental tradition – not at all – but that clarity is important to us, and sometimes Continental thinkers can fall short in that regard. We also don’t publish pieces that are only of interest to academic philosophers. But I need to be careful here, because some of our pieces are quite academic and quite demanding and that in itself wouldn’t preclude publication. For instance, we published this great piece by Catarina Novaes on the history of logic that I edited. There’s definitely an academic quality to it, but I think it works in its favor. It ended up doing quite well.

You have conversations attached to all your articles with a key question – what’s your thinking behind this, and how does it work differently from a standard comments section as we see in other publications?

Comments sections are a tough one for magazines. You’ve got great content that a bunch of people have spent a lot of time trying to make work. Then below that, you’ve got anonymous folks fighting over politics when the piece was about, for example, how to bake a rainbow cake . At the same time, Aeon is all about conversation and we deeply believe in the value of open debate. Getting rid of comments altogether was out of the question. What we’ve tried to do instead is create a space on the site for sincere conversation that doesn’t descend into typical internet chaos. The idea behind having a question to jumpstart the conversation is that it will drive it in a more productive direction, and that’s often what happens. (Also, a good test for prospective writers: if you were to publish you’re piece right now, what would the attendant question be? I find that if I have trouble coming up with one, then the piece isn’t working as well as it could.) The conversations on Aeon are typically rigorous and are conducted with good intent, which is wonderful to see. We also police the comments, so folks that think they can act like they do on 4chan get the boot pretty fast. It seems to be a system that works.

Why should philosophers be writing for public audiences, such as Aeon?

For one, I think a lot of philosophers would be surprised by the popular appetite for philosophy. There really is a desire for serious, unpretentious philosophy, so I think that philosophers should strive to meet that desire and not remain shuttered on the hundredth floor of the ivory tower. And I don’t want to get into a debate about the instrumental use of philosophy or its social worth, but I will say that the world really needs a hearty dose of critical thinking and philosophy by its nature provides that. Lastly, writing for the public is fun. The engagement you get with your ideas from a huge number of people spanning the globe is exhilarating and touching. If any philosophers out there are thinking about trying it, I’d say go for it.

What are your top tips for philosophers wanting to write for Aeon?

The first is a selfish one. Being edited, sometimes quite heavily, can be a bit of a bummer for academics that aren’t used to the process. So I’d be prepared for that: it’s just part of the deal. Second, read a lot of Aeon articles. It’s important to get a sense of what we’re after and what we don’t do. There are hundreds and hundreds of articles on the site now, and checking out what’s popular and what we’ve been doing lately is going to be invaluable for getting published. The last is don’t get too fancy. We want a tangible idea that can be explained clearly without resorting to obscurities.

Are there any common faux pas that writers make when pitching to or writing for you?

In terms of pitching, it’s two things. One is that the idea is just too academic, too insider-y, that the lay reader is just not going to care. The second is sort of the opposite: it’s been done before, it feels stale. We want new ideas, something that will really stick out. A pitch on free will would have to be quite creative and fresh since free will is very well covered ground. In terms of the actual writing, perhaps the most common thing I work on is giving the piece a sense of propulsion. What I mean by that is that the piece has to pull the reader along and keep her interested. If the structure of the piece doesn’t do that, something’s not working. The second is a lack of tangibility. Sometimes pieces come in and it’s all theoretical without a single reference to the real world and that tends to give pieces an ethereal, out-of-touch quality. The last recommendation is the famous line from Strunk and White: omit needless words.

What sort of philosophy pieces are you looking for?

Most days we publish a long essay and a short essay (an Idea ). The essays are perhaps 3,500 words, but that number varies. The Ideas are about 1,000 words. That’s not a lot of words to say something provocative, something developed. It’s really hard to do, believe me. But that’s precisely what we’re looking for right now: crisply written, persuasively argued Ideas.

Last question: Is it pronounced “ay-on” or “ee-on”?

Now this is controversial territory. Most say ‘ee-on’, but a few say ‘ay-on’. It’s incredibly divisive. I know of at least one marriage that has been devastated by the issue. I happen to believe it’s the former pronunciation, so I’ve severed ties with everyone that slavishly submits to the wretched ‘ay-on’ dogma. Well…. maybe it’s not that divisive. I think the pronunciation of ‘Aeon’ is mostly a matter of mood, interpretation, and the weather, like so many things.

Sam Dresser studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is interested in political philosophy and the history of atheism, and likes to take long walks to places he doesn’t particularly want to be. He can be found on Twitter @SmDrssr .

Check out Aeon’s philosophy articles here and if you’d like to write for the APA-Aeon partnership, let us know here!

Skye Cleary

Skye C. Cleary PhD MBA is a philosopher and author of How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment (2022), Existentialism and Romantic Love (2015) and co-editor of How to Live a Good Life (2020). She was a MacDowell Fellow (2021), awarded the 2021 Stanford Calderwood Fellowship, and won a New Philosopher magazine Writers’ Award (2017). She teaches at Columbia University and the City College of New York and is former Editor-in-Chief of the APA Blog.

Catarina Dutilh Novaes
Eric Schwitzgebel
Gordon Pennycook
Nigel Warburton
Philosophy Bites
Sam Dresser

A new journal survey: the pjip operations survey, should we continue to read and honor immoral historical philosophers, treading water, or self-care and success as a graduate student, i don’t read enough, the ancient practice of rest days, finding meaning in moving: my experiences as an aussie grad student.

Way verbose. More matter with less art.

[…] For a recent interview with one of the editors, see here. […]

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Exploring the big questions with aeon.

September 10, 2019 |

A new two-year project will fund dozens of essays and longform pieces published in one of the most innovative and engaging journals of science and thought.

Founded in 2012, Aeon is a digital magazine that provides a forum for writers, thinkers, and scientists to discuss ideas at the cutting edge of science, philosophy, society, and the arts through longform essays, idea pieces, and videos. With editorial offices in Melbourne, London, and New York, Aeon is structured as an international non-profit, relying on individual donations and grant funding to make its articles freely available to an aggregate audience of about 1.3 million web viewers and social media followers.

A new grant from the John Templeton Foundation will provide support for Aeon ’s writers and editors to produce three dozen essays and videos across four general themes: the dialogue between physics and philosophy around cosmology’s leading edge; the ways that new evolutionary insights — including epigenetics, population genetics, and complex systems theory — are enriching the story of life on earth; the cognitive science of consciousness and creativity; and the neuroscience and cognitive connections between spiritual practices, ethics, and mental health.

The current project is a follow-up from a previous collaboration between Aeon and the Templeton Religion Trust, which provided funding for essays including an exploration of the paradoxes of entangled time , changes in biologists’ ideas of what constitutes an organism , an argument that consciousness is not a thing but rather a process of inference , and an essay on the positive effects of forests and other natural settings on mental health . As with the previous project, Aeon ’s editorial staff and writers retain full control over what’s written — the grant funding merely makes the writing and editing possible.

“One of the things Aeon is best at is providing a forum for truly cutting-edge thinkers to engage with a broader audience,” says John Cunningham, the John Templeton Foundation’s Program Officer for Public Engagement. “This project will allow Aeon ’s editors to work with scientists who may not have written for a popular audience before to make their work — and the important questions it raises — accessible to those outside their field.”

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Family Walking on Highway, Five Children (June 1938 ) by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy the Library of Congress

Rawls the redeemer

For john rawls, liberalism was more than a political project: it is the best way to fashion a life that is worthy of happiness.

by Alexandre Lefebvre + BIO

John Rawls, the preeminent political philosopher of the 20th century whose masterpiece, A Theory of Justice (1971), fundamentally reshaped the field, lived a quiet and – I mean this the best way – boring life. After an eventful and sometimes tragic youth (more on this later), he settled into an academic career and worked at Harvard University for nearly 40 years. There, he developed ideas that transformed our thinking about justice, fairness, democracy and liberalism, and also trained generations of students who are now leading members of the profession. He died aged 81 in 2002, the year I began my graduate studies, so I never had the chance to meet him. Yet every single account I’ve heard from his students and colleagues attests to his genuine kindness. Decent is the word that comes up time and again, in the understated sense of unshowy goodness.

Still waters can run deep, however, and from archival research I’ve discovered charming eccentricities. Every year, for instance, his family would put on a Christmas play that worked in his famous concepts as minor characters. My favourite bit of oddness, though, comes from an interview he gave to mark his retirement. In 1991, he sat down with undergraduate students to discuss his life, work, reception and teaching. But in a draft copy of the interview, included in his personal papers at Harvard, he added a weird and wonderful section that does not appear in the published version (and that, it seems, he wrote only for himself). After answering the questions from the students, he noted down a few ‘Questions They Didn’t Ask Me’ and played the role of interviewer and interviewee. Here’s the addendum in full:

There were lots of questions they didn’t ask me in [ The Harvard Review of Philosophy ( HRP )] interview. Some of those they could have asked I’ll answer here:

HRP (as imagined): You never talk about religion in your classes, although sometimes the discussion borders on it. Why is that? Do you think religion of no importance? Or that it has no role in our life?

JR: On the role of religion, put it this way. Let’s ask the question: Does life need to be redeemed? And if so, why; and what can redeem it? I would say yes: life does need to be redeemed. By life I mean the ordinary round of being born, growing up, falling in love, and marrying and having children; seeing that they grow up, go to school, and have children themselves; of supporting ourselves and carrying on day after day; of growing older and having grandchildren and eventually dying. All that and much else needs to be redeemed.

HRP : Fine, but what’s this business about being redeemed? It doesn’t say anything to me.

JR: Well, what I mean is that what I call the ordinary round of life – growing up, falling in love, having children and the rest – can seem not enough by itself. That ordinary round must be graced by something to be worthwhile. That’s what I mean by redeemed. The question is what is needed to redeem it?

This is bizarre for many reasons. I mean, first, who does this? Who goes home after an interview and, just for the fun of it, invents and answers hypothetical questions? But stranger still is the content. Readers of Rawls don’t expect him to speak this way. He is, after all, a political philosopher and the main question associated with his work is the following: how is it possible for an institutional order to be just? Yet, what if, when the chips were down at the end of his career, he spoke more directly and plainly, even if only to himself, to state a more fundamental question at the root of his life and thought: how is it possible for a human life – yours, mine, or any – to be worthwhile?

Ordinary life, says Rawls, needs to be redeemed. By what? It depends on what you believe in. A theist will have one response, an atheist or agnostic another. The young Rawls was a believer, and after completing his undergraduate studies had planned to become a minister. But he lost his faith as a soldier in the Second World War. Even so, he never abandoned a conviction that ordinary life needs to be elevated (‘redeemed’ or ‘graced’) by something beyond it.

I believe Rawls found that thing in liberalism and the tradition of liberal moral and political thought he devoted his life to. He never stopped trying to work out how a life based on liberal ideals can be not only happy but worthy of happiness. This makes him the perfect guru for our times.

T o see why Rawls fits this role, I need to say something about the peculiar moment we live in. As everyone knows, religion is in decline throughout the Western world. To name only the most populous Anglophone liberal democracies, surveys of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand show that 30, 53, 32, 40 and 49 per cent, respectively, of citizens in these countries claim no religion. People who tick the ‘no religion’ box on the census are the fastest-growing population of religious affiliation, or in this case, of non-affiliation.

This raises a tricky question. If you, like me, are unchurched and don’t draw your values from a religion, then where do you get them from? From what broad tradition do you acquire your sense of what is good, normal and worthwhile in life, and – if I can put it this way – your general vibe too?

When I’ve asked my non-religious friends, colleagues and students this question, they’re almost always stumped. Their impulse is to say one of three things: ‘from my experience’, ‘from friends and family’ or ‘from human nature’. But to this I reply, as politely as possible, that those are not suitable answers. Personal experience, friends and family and human nature are situated and formed within wider social, political and cultural contexts. So I ask again: ‘What society-or-civilisation-sized thing can you point to as the source of your values? I’m talking about the kind of thing that, were you Christian, you’d just say: “Ah, the Bible,” or “Oh, my Church.’’’

In my book Liberalism as a Way of Life (2024), I argue that the unchurched in the Western world should point to liberalism as the source of who they are through and through. Liberalism – with its core values of personal freedom, fairness, reciprocity, tolerance and irony – is that society-or-civilisation-sized thing that may well underlie who we are, not just in our political opinions but in all walks of life, from the family to the workplace, from friendship to enmity, from humour to outrage, and everything in between.

How can ordinary people in the modern world remain free and generous, despite new temptations not to be?

This argument will not be news for conservative critics who are keenly aware of how hegemonic liberalism has become. Ironically, though, it may surprise liberals themselves, who often fail to recognise how widely and deeply their liberalism runs. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a ‘social and political philosophy’ based on ‘support for or advocacy of individual rights, civil liberty, and reform tending towards individual freedom, democracy, or social equality’, liberals too quickly adopt this narrow institutionalist definition and assume that liberalism is an exclusively legal and political doctrine. Liberals, in other words, fail to recognise not just what liberalism has become today (a worldview and comprehensive value system) but who they are as well: living and breathing incarnations of it.

The founders of liberalism would have been disappointed in us. A newcomer by the standards of intellectual history, it was created in the 19th century by such greats as Benjamin Constant, Germaine de Staël, Alexis de Tocqueville, George Eliot and John Stuart Mill. While there are many differences between them, they all conceive of liberalism first and foremost in ethical terms – a ‘moral adventure’, as Adam Gopnik has called it, for living well in the modern world. As Helena Rosenblatt states in her excellent book , The Lost History of Liberalism (2018): ‘Today we may think that they were naive, deluded, or disingenuous. But to 19th-century liberals, being liberal meant believing in an ethical project.’

What does this mean? Then, as now, the word ‘liberal’ (with its roots in the Latin liber and liberalis ) combines two meanings: freedom ( liberty ) and generosity ( liberality ). When 19th-century thinkers (and statespersons, journalists, novelists, soldiers and more) claimed this mantle for themselves, they wrestled with a very deep question. How, they asked, can ordinary people in the modern world remain free and generous, despite all kinds of new temptations not to be? Capitalism, for example, entices us with shiny consumerism; democracy can lull us into conformity; and nationalism ensnares us in unearned partiality. These are social and political dangers to be sure. But early liberals also saw them as bedevilments apt to make us mean, restless, unhappy and just generally shitty people. Liberalism was the ethical and political doctrine they created to try to bring these new forces under political and psychological control.

Which raises an important question: what the hell happened to liberalism? If in the 19th century it was an aspirational doctrine for living well, but in the 20th and 21st century it retreated to a much more staid legal and political project, the question is why and when were its ethical guts stripped out?

Historians and philosophers blame different and complementary causes. Rosenblatt points to early 20th-century thinkers who, dissatisfied with New Deal progressivism, invented a retrenched ‘classical liberalism’. In Liberalism Against Itself (2023), Samuel Moyn names the Cold War liberals who repudiated the progressivism and perfectionism of their forebearers. For my part, I focus on a branch of contemporary political philosophy (‘political liberalism’ – founded, ironically, by Rawls’s 1993 work of the same name, after A Theory of Justice ) that eschews questions of the good life to work out a conception of liberalism fit for a pluralist society divided by disagreements between citizens on questions of value and meaning.

Whatever the reason for why liberalism’s ethical side vanished, it is high time to reclaim it. Let me be blunt: liberals are awful at defending themselves. First of all, the global conversation about the current crisis of liberalism tends to fixate on the opponents of liberalism, and how horrible populists, nativists and authoritarians are. Rarely are the strengths and virtues of liberalism talked up. Moreover, when liberalism is defended, the reasons given are almost exclusively legal or political. Politicians and journalists insist on the indispensability of such institutions as division of powers, rule of law and individual rights. Certainly, that kind of defence is crucial. But by claiming that liberalism not only can be, in general, a way of life, but much more pointedly, may already be the basis of your own, I am drawing attention to a whole other set of reasons – call it ‘spiritual’ or ‘existential’, no matter how jittery such terms make liberals – for why we should care deeply about the fate of our creed.

T here is no better guide to this endeavour than Rawls. To use an old-fashioned word, he is a superb moralist, gifted at detecting the underlying moral commitments of a liberal democratic society and showing how we, as its members, understand and comport ourselves. It is as if he speaks directly to our conscience to say: ‘OK, if you see your society and yourself in a liberal kind of way, here is what you can do to live up to it.’ Then he adds: ‘Oh, I almost forgot, great joys and benefits come from living this way. Let me show you.’

We’ll get to these joys in a moment. Every guru, however, has an origin story and Rawls’s is worth telling. A few years before he died, he wrote a short, unpublished autobiography titled ‘Just Jack’. ‘Jack’ was what friends and family called him, and ‘just’ was a play on the meanings of justice and simply . As I said, in contrast to his tranquil decades as a Harvard professor, his youth was eventful and at times tragic. On two separate occasions as a child, he passed fatal illnesses to his younger brothers (diphtheria to Bobby Rawls in 1928, and then pneumonia to Tommy Rawls in 1929) and developed a stammer from the trauma. In 1944, he served as an infantryman in the Pacific, was nearly killed in battle, and got a Bronze Star for bravery. Yet in telling his life story, Rawls dwells on a minor incident from his early 20s, when he had to go out and get a real job. While an undergraduate at Princeton in 1941, he had wanted to go on a sailing trip with friends and expected his family would pay. To his chagrin, his father had other ideas, telling Jack to work if he wanted a holiday. He did, and the experience was formative:

Jobs were hard to find in those days. The depression was beginning to ease by that time, of course, but the best I could do on short notice was a 12-hour job – 6 am to 6 pm, six days a week – in a doughnut factory somewhere in downtown Baltimore, whose location I have conveniently repressed. I was the helper of an older man named Ernie who operated one of the mixing machines. He had been there for 18 years and had three children to support, and it seemed he’d be there forever, breathing flour dust all his life …

Ernie was decent and considerate, and never spoke harshly to me. He seemed resigned to the fact that he would always have that sort of job. There was no prospect of advance, really, or much hope of anything better for him. As for me, I decided to look elsewhere. There must be jobs easier than this, I thought, and 12 hours a day breathing flour dust was too much …

I came to feel very sorry for Ernie. Often I’ve felt my days at the doughnut factory and Ernie’s decency and stoicism in view of his fate – or so it seemed to me – made a lasting impression. So that was how most people spent their lives, of course not literally, but to all practical purposes: pointless labour for not much pay, and even if well paid it led nowhere. Even business and law struck me as dead ends. While trying not to forget the plight of the Ernies of this world, I had to find my place in life in some other way. Did these things influence me in proposing the difference principle years later? I wouldn’t claim so. But how would I know?

Who am I to gainsay Rawls? Still, his thought makes a lot of sense when viewed through the prism of this experience. It might even help us learn how to live liberally in the 21st century.

Fairness is the most important concept of Rawls’s philosophy. It is, negatively speaking, the precise quality missing when a person like Ernie must toil endlessly at a job that a college student like Jack can quit after six weeks because he finds it difficult and demeaning. And decades later, when it came time to write A Theory of Justice , Rawls crowned it as the defining ideal of liberal democracy. Society , he states, should be conceived of and run as a fair system of cooperation . Or in the words of one contemporary acolyte, Leif Wenar: ‘Our country is built for everyone.’

H ow Rawls arrives at this notion is significant. Crucially, he doesn’t claim it as his own insight. Nor does he derive it from first moral or philosophical principles. He believes instead that citizens of liberal democracies by and large already see and structure their societies as fair systems of cooperation. They have, after all, grown up in countries where all major public institutions profess to advance the freedom, dignity and equal opportunity of all citizens. In Australia, for example, politicians of all stripes insist on the importance of a ‘fair go’. That’s why the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation is accessible to a wide readership: not merely because Rawls’s readers ‘know’ or ‘understand’ what he’s talking about, but much more powerfully because they already affirm it as expressing something essential about themselves and their society. It is no surprise that some of Rawls’s best interpreters, such as Samuel Freeman, report that reading him for the first time can elicit strong feelings of déjà vu, a recognition of what we already know.

Rawls isn’t oblivious to real-world injustices. He knows that no society lives up to this ideal. Nor does he think that citizens of liberal democracies wear rose-coloured (or, worse, ideologically tinted) glasses. Still, he bases his theory on the assumption that his fellow citizens recognise that the key purpose of their main public institutions is to ensure that society is seen as, and remains, a fair system of cooperation. Virtually everyone can be expected to know, on his account, that the purpose of a legal constitution is to establish equal and reciprocal rights, the job of the police is to protect them, and progressive taxation is meant to ensure a level playing field.

Rawls is enjoying a renaissance in public philosophy, with several authors applying his conception of fairness to different domains. In Free and Equal (2023), Daniel Chandler investigates education, workplace democracy and universal basic income, while in his recent essay for Aeon, Matthew McManus calls for a revival of liberal socialism on Rawlsian principles. And I’ve tried to bring this notion to bear on psychology and culture to help liberals unlock the best part of themselves.

Consider Rawls’s most famous concept: the original position. Perhaps the most influential thought experiment of contemporary philosophy, it goes like this: imagine you are with a group of people who are tasked to select principles of justice to regulate the fundamental institutions of society. The plot twist, however, is you don’t know anything about yourself. You agree to step behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ and pretend that you don’t know your sex, gender, class, race, religion, able-bodiedness or anything that might distinguish you from others.

There are great spiritual goods – great joys – that come from living up to liberal principles

Which principles would you pick? It’s a no-brainer for Rawls: those that favour fairness when it comes to basic rights, self-respect, and resources and opportunities. Why? Prudence, in part: the pie should be divided as equally as possible lest it be revealed that you’re in a less-advantaged position. But the moral oomph of the original position is to remind citizens of liberal democracies – particularly those of privilege – that the dumb luck of social position and natural abilities shouldn’t bear on issues of justice. A liberal person should leave all that at the door.

This may be fine in theory but let’s make it concrete. Suppose this hypothetical society has only two members. Their names are Ernie and Jack, and they’ve been asked to play the game of the original position.

Ernie goes first and, frankly, he’s got nothing to lose. He can happily pretend not to know who he is because, under fair principles of justice, he stands to gain a much better deal in life. No fuss, no muss for Ernie.

Now it’s Jack’s turn. This involves a different calculation. Why should he – pampered Princeton princeling that he is – ever agree to bracket the positional advantages that have worked out so well for him thus far in life? Disgraced or not, a remark by the comic Louis CK is painfully apt. On whether it is better to be Black or white in the United States, the answer for him is obvious: ‘I’m not saying that white people are better. I’m saying that being white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option, I would re-up every year: “Oh yeah, I’ll take white again absolutely, I’ve been enjoying that. I’m gonna stick with white, thank you.’’’ For Jack to suspend knowledge of his advantages – his good looks, impeccable WASP credentials, upper-middle-classness and all the rest – in reflecting on which principles of social cooperation to affirm might seem positively irrational.

So why do it? What’s in it for Jack? First, it’s the right thing to do. But second, just as importantly, there are great spiritual goods – great joys – that come from living up to liberal principles.

By engaging in the original position, Jack embraces impartiality and autonomy as core virtues. This means liberating himself from the narrow confines of self-interest and positional bias. In a world rife with inequality and injustice, impartiality allows Jack to see beyond his own perspective, fostering empathy and understanding for others. Autonomy, on the other hand, empowers him to act in accordance with his values, free from external coercion or undue influence.

By embodying impartiality and autonomy, Jack also cultivates resilience in the face of temptation and adversity. In a consumer culture where self-restraint and stalwartness are often tested, adherence to liberal principles instils moral fortitude. And if Jack gets good at navigating such ethical dilemmas, we might even say that he will become graceful. He will fulfil the requirements of justice with pleasure and relative ease.

In short, Jack’s decision – and our decision, which can be made at any time – to embrace the original position is not just a thought experiment but a transformative spiritual practice. And now we return to where we began with Rawls: on redemption. Liberalism, it is true, has no metaphysics to speak of. The soul? The Great Beyond? The purpose of it all? ‘Pfffftt,’ goes the liberal. Yet we’ve never given up on the core of religion: to seek meaning in life through something beyond us. Our Beyond is found not on another plane of existence but instead in something worldly just beyond our grasp – an ideal of becoming a free and generous person in a fair and just society. Redemption is not found only in a liberal way of life. Heaven forbid. Yet it’s there too, waiting for liberals to answer its call.

Adapted from Liberalism as a Way of Life (2024) by Alexandre Lefebvre, published by Princeton University Press.

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The Zen View Of Morals

The Zen View Of Life

The Zen View Of The World

Instinctual Versus Intentional Behavior

Western Versus Eastern Philosophy

Alan Watts’ Take On Buddhism

Thomas Hendricks's ideas are part of this journey:

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