HeyJaredHumaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help
Exploring the philosophy in everyday experiences for the reflective and curious--because philosophy is everywhere, and it matters. Essay posts on Thursdays from your friendly neighborhood philosophy professor. Grab a cup and come sit with me!
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- Sep 24, 2026
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How to live well in a [crappy] world, part 2 (opens the original)
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When our lives unfold within rotten systems not of our making, what does living well look like?Working through this question last week, I considered a system-level approach. We’re not fully responsible for morally corrupt systems, but we’re not entirely off the hook, either, and should do what we can to reform or dismantle them. This would be amazing, but it’s a long and heavy haul, hard but important to get right. It won’t happen overnight. How should we manage as individuals in the meantime? G
How to live well in a [crappy] world, part 1 (opens the original)
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The universe seems to be poking me to think about how to live in an imperfect world.This theme has hit me in multiple different ways in the past couple of months:I read It’s On You: How How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society’s Deepest Problems by Nick Chater and George Loewenstein. More on that below.A conversation with a friend (another moral philosopher) during a road trip about moral purity and fanaticism, buying from Amazon, eating mea
Philosophy that shaped how we think about thinking, Part 2: The tripartite soul (opens the original)
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The world Western philosophy made is dominated by reason. I observed in Part 1 of this series that mainstream philosophy’s narrative has functioned in ways that serve patriarchy. To explore how this plays out, I’m sampling pieces of Western work that can help us understand the story, its effects, and the counternarratives that complicate it. Background: PlatoAs histories of Western philosop
How to appreciate beauty (opens the original)
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Beauty matters and doesn’t matter at the same time.This idea has been ghost-ily drifting around my mind for several months now. It coalesced a little more as I wrote about grace this summer, and now I need to give it some shape.Antionomies of beautyAs is so often the case, philosophy begins with tension.On the one hand, beauty—in people, objects, landscapes, motion, actions—seems gratuitous. It isn’t n
Philosophy: An escape room adventure (opens the original)
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If you’ve heard of the “Socratic method,” you may not think fondly of it. The name comes from the way Socrates conducted philosophical inquiry. In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is typically questioning one or more interlocutors about some concept they’re supposed to know something about: piety, justice, virtue, and so on. Professing ignorance, he asks the person to teach him what they know about the subject. He then questions them in ways that show they don’t actually know what they’re talking abo
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