Life Is Hard
How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way
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Narrated by:
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Kieran Setiya
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By:
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Kieran Setiya
About this listen
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND THE ECONOMIST
“Life Is Hard is a humane consolation for challenging times. Reading it is like speaking with a thoughtful friend who never tells you to cheer up, but, by offering gentle companionship and a change of perspective, makes you feel better anyway.”—The New York Times Book Review
There is no cure for the human condition: life is hard. But Kieran Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers us a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world.
In this profound and personal book, Setiya shows how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from Setiya’s own experience, Life Is Hard is a book for this moment—a work of solace and compassion.
Warm, accessible, and good-humored, this book is about making the best of a bad lot. It offers guidance for coping with pain and making new friends, for grieving the lost and failing with grace, for confronting injustice and searching for meaning in life. Countering pop psychologists and online influencers who admonish us to “find our bliss” and “live our best lives,” Setiya acknowledges that the best is often out of reach. Instead, he asks how we can weather life’s adversities, finding hope and living well when life is hard.
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Critic reviews
“A humane, consoling guide to this vale of tears, with a glimmer of hope.”—The Economist
“Reflects what philosophy at its most helpful and humane can do. . . . insightful and empathetic”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“An eloquent, moving, witty and above all useful demonstration of philosophy's power to help us weather the storms of being human—not with rarefied theories about the best way to live, but by making the best of life as it really is.”—Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks
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The Audible is a Train Wreck
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Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
- How to Finally, Really Grow Up
- By: James Hollis PhD
- Narrated by: Gary Galone
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
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What does it really mean to be a grown-up in today's world? We assume that once we "get it together" with the right job, marry the right person, have children, and buy a home, all is settled and well. But adulthood presents varying levels of growth and is rarely the respite of stability we expected. Turbulent emotional shifts can take place anywhere between the ages of 35 and 70 when we question the choices we've made, realize our limitations, and feel stuck - commonly known as the "midlife crisis".
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The great bait and switch.
- By real. on 12-14-19
By: James Hollis PhD
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50 Self-Help Classics
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- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
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Discover the books that have already changed the lives of millions. This award-winning, unabridged guide to the "literature of possibility" surveys 50 of the all-time classics, giving you their key ideas, insights, and applications, everything you need to know to start benefiting from these legendary works.
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Surprisingly Interesting
- By Cathy on 10-15-06
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The Spiritual Teachings of Seneca
- Ancient Philosophy for Modern Wisdom
- By: Mark Forstater, Victoria Radin
- Narrated by: David Troughton, Louisa Millwood Haig
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Seneca was dedicated to Stoicism, and in his essays and letters he explained the stoic position on many fundamental issues: pleasure and the problem of desire, happiness, and contentment; anger, fear, living in the present, how to think for yourself, anxiety and tranquillity, goodness, freedom, trusting the universe; courage, opportunity, cruelty and how to deal with it, friendship, love and trust, death and how to live, learning , chance and fate, time, aspirations, wisdom - and more.
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Odd presentation style
- By Mark on 08-03-08
By: Mark Forstater, and others
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The Way of the Heathen
- Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life
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- Narrated by: Greta Christina
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
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So you're an atheist. Now what? The way we deal with life - with love and sex, pleasure and death, reality and making stuff up - can change dramatically when we stop believing in gods, souls, and afterlives. When we leave religion - or if we never had it in the first place - where do we go? With her unique blend of compassion and humor, thoughtfulness and snark, Greta Christina most emphatically does not propose a single path to a good atheist life. She offers questions to think about, ideas that may be useful, and encouragement to choose your own way.
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Navigating the world outside of church
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By: Greta Christina
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The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
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- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
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Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
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Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Comforting Thoughts about Death That Have Nothing to Do with God
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- Narrated by: Greta Christina
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In this mini-audiobook collection of essays, prominent atheist author Greta Christina offers secular ways to handle your own mortality and the death of those you love. Blending intensely personal experience with compassionate, down-to-earth wisdom, Christina (Coming out Atheist and Why Are You Atheists So Angry?) explores a variety of natural philosophies of death.
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Nothing I hadn't thought of myself
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By: Greta Christina
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The Antidote
- Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
- By: Oliver Burkeman
- Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
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The Antidote is a series of journeys among people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. What they have in common is a hunch about human psychology: that it’s our constant effort to eliminate the negative that causes us to feel so anxious, insecure, and unhappy. And that there is an alternative "negative path" to happiness and success that involves embracing the things we spend our lives trying to avoid.
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The Antidote explores the negative path.
- By Bonny on 05-15-14
By: Oliver Burkeman
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Angels and Ages
- A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
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Written 200 years after Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln shared a birthday on February 12, 1809, this insightful account sheds new light on two men who changed the way we think about the meaning of life and death. Award-winning journalist Adam Gopnik's unique perspective, combined with previously unexplored stories and figures, reveals two men planted firmly at the roots of modern views and liberal values.
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Connecting Darwin and Lincoln
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By: Adam Gopnik
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The Power of Kindness 10th Anniversary Edition
- The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life
- By: Piero Ferrucci
- Narrated by: Mitch Horowitz
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
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When The Power of Kindness first appeared in 2006 it thrilled and challenged listeners with one audacious promise: Your acts of generosity and decency are the secret to a fuller, more satisfying life. Kindness is not some squishy virtue but the very key to your own happiness. With nearly 125,000 copies sold, we're celebrating the book's tenth anniversary with this new edition, featuring a complete new chapter by Piero Ferrucci on the theme of "Harmlessness", which joins his other chapters on virtues such as "Honesty", "Warmth", and "Loyalty".
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Life changing
- By Leslie Alonso on 08-05-24
By: Piero Ferrucci
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Living Between Worlds
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What guides us when our world is changing? Discover the path to deeper meaning and purpose through depth psychology and classical thought.
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Interesting book, Woeful narration
- By Roger Morris on 07-01-20
By: James Hollis PhD
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
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Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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What listeners say about Life Is Hard
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 07-18-23
HERES TO LIFE
In the beginning of Kieran Setiva's book something seems awry. It is written by a PhD graduate of Princeton who is working as a professor at MIT. What does a philosopher who is admittedly happily married (with one child), working as a professor at a prestigious university know about life being hard? Stick with it, and by the end of the book, Setiva's point becomes clear and worth more than one listen. The "Economist" calls Setiva's book one of the best of 2022. Being an acolyte of the magazine, it seems prudent to review "Life is Hard".
Hope is the insight Setiva reveals to one who is faced with hardship in life. Whether one is a university professor, wealthy industrialist, penniless beggar, or cloistered saint, hardship is a part of their life. Hoping to grow old is all that remains, and its value seems circumspect if not useless. Setiva's book may be one of the best of 2022 but like the hope he describes in the last chapter, it's a mixed blessing.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-18-22
This book delivers the goods!!!
This book delivers on the promise of its title. The author is brilliant and humble in the way that he teaches us to use philosophy to find our way, despite life being hard.
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- Micah B.
- 10-09-22
Fantastic listen!
Probably the most relatable and interesting philosophical book I've come across. It's a deep dive into a lot of the perils and conflicts we're going through as a society given the pandemic and other world events
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- Erik C Stabell
- 10-29-22
Loved the author’s personal perspective.
Philosophy can be dry, but when applied to someone’s life experience, it becomes an enthralling story.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jason Blum
- 10-24-22
Solid
Enjoyed it. I think people who make fun of philosophy majors are doing a disservice to life and are ultimately afraid of their own mortality. If not for a life lived well, what are we here for anyway?
Jason Blum
Washington DC
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jamie jones
- 03-27-23
underwhelming
I was extremely disappointed with this book. Very little philosophy here , but if you are left of center politically, you may enjoy this book or at least find more to appreciate here. Part autobiography, part liberal talking points , all disappointing. Don't get me wrong, I usually don't care about peoples personal politics, but this was too much of that and not enough of what I paid for.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Francis
- 10-18-23
Meh Just Ok
Started off relatively strong and interesting. But by midway, for some unknown reason, the author inject his political ideology which I found to be largely irrational. Kind of the exact opposite of what philosophy should mean to humanity. The author comes across as the typical university educated ideologue and pretty much meets all stereotype characteristics. From about chapter 4 to the end of the book, one could consider the words useless. One thing the author gets right, is the immediate need for him to find more courage. I don’t write long critical reviews for fun. This one deserved it unfortunately.
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- Bart
- 05-15-23
Woke Propaganda
This book started off ok and then took a hard left into woke propaganda. Why the author did this is beyond me. Do not recommend.
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- Erin
- 10-28-24
Not Much Philosophy
The author offered shallow interpretations of ancient and premodern philosophical texts, focusing instead on boring, pop-therapeutic insights. I had high hopes for this but did not enjoy it at all.
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- Jeff
- 10-20-22
Meandering
I bought this book after listening to the author on the Making Sense podcast with Sam Harris, which was interesting.
This book, on the other hand, is much less so. I was frequently bored while listening, but soldiered on, determined to find a useful or meaningful perspective which had motivated me to purchase the book, originally. By the last chapter, I realized it was a waste of time. There is not a single memorable insight I will take away from this book, other than I should be more willing to leave one unfinished (and early on) when I find it to be this pointless.
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1 person found this helpful