The wisdom of life

What Hacker News says

1. nedsmaJul 2016
   I recommend reading Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism and Wisdom of Life to anyone interested in open-minded treatise of the subject so individually complicated as the meaning of the one's own life. It may sound gloomy, potentially distressed, yet, it offers philosophy that you'll not find consoling, but very helpful as you're growing your own meaning.
   thread
2. blahberJun 2014
   +2

   Aurelius's Philosophy is timeless.

   "The Wisdom of Life, by Arthur Schopenhauer" is another good wisdom book.

   thread
3. gls2roJan 2021
   I think it really depends on "why" or "what" do you try to gain/understand/fix with these books. If you are looking for things to inspire action in a direction you already decided you want to go then maybe self-help books can be a fuel to inspire action.

   More concrete I think most of self-help books should not exists or should only be (maybe) a long form blog post. They recycle the same ideas. Very few of them have really original, breakthrough ideas that could really be helpful or illuminating in a sense. Of course I did not read all of them and as this category of books is very large, I might be very very wrong.

   I started reading these kind of books when they began (or at least when I discovered them) like 15 years ago. And the 10 years ago I stopped. The reason for stopping is that I discovered that a lot of them contains very old ideas, ideas that can be found in mythology, religion and in the works of philosophers.

   Here are some examples of what I find inspiring:

   I reading Norse and Greek mythology and try to think about them as people trying to talk in a symbolic way about human nature. Can be seen that these gods were divine but also human. And for example the main idea I take from this is that it is normal to not be perfect, to have inspiring days and bad days.

   I am reading Stoics and finding there inspiration about how to look at hard things when they come, what is an actionable point of view (making a difference between what is in my control and what not), about how to manage emotions and what does this mean. I recommend for example reading Seneca 'Letter from a Stoic'. I covers a wide range of life matters.

   I am planning to read these days Arthur Schopenhauer "Wisdom of Life" and maybe start reading Decartes Meditations to start digging into what can be known or not.

   This is what inspires me and it might not speak the same to you. Also reading some of them multiple times in different periods of time brings me different meanings and inspiration. I trust more these works which stood the test of time written by people who were thinking about such matters for long time, than a book written in 2 months.

   I am not saying that these self-help books are bad. But rather that they are too many to have time to distinguish between them.

   Show morethread
4. ionisedFeb 2019
   Not sure who you are referring to, but there is a great Schopenhauer quote along the same lines:

   The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellow men. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

   – Arthur Schopenhauer

   Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

   Show morethread