Telic vs atelic activities, and the meaning of life
I’ve recently read an interesting review of a new book by philosopher Kieran Setiya, entitled Midlife: A Philosophical Guide (Princeton University Press). Like me, Setiya is an academic philosopher who has rediscovered the ancient notion that philosophy ought to matter to people. It’s fine and dandy to publish abstruse but “fun” technical papers that will be read by a few dozen people and that will get you tenure and promotion, but are you making a difference in your own and other people’s lives? If the answer is negative (and it is for many academics, not just in philosophy) then you may want to reconsider what you are doing and why.
I will not comment on Setiya’s book, which begins with a premise — a personal midlife crisis — very much like my own How to Be a Stoic. Rather, the reviewer, Anil Gomes, reminded me of an all-important distinction among activities that make our life meaningful, one that in turn showed me once again just how much the Stoics got right about the human condition.
Said distinction was introduced by Aristotle, who I think got it exactly right. And yet, in my mind, the Stoics (and, to be fair, others, like the Epicureans) were the ones that actually put it into practice. Aristotle said that there are two broad categories of activities that may make life meaningful: telic and atelic.
