Ancient minds, modern questions.
I write about ordinary life, the commute, the argument, the scroll, the sleepless night, with the habits of mind philosophy gives you. Not to make life abstract, but to make it clearer.
What Stoicism teaches us about doomscrolling
Marcus Aurelius never saw a feed, but he understood compulsive attention. The Stoic remedy is not willpower — it is the deliberate redirection of desire.
Arendt on why we cannot stop talking past each other
The breakdown of public discourse is not a technology problem. Arendt saw it coming: when we stop thinking together, we stop inhabiting the same world.
Modern life deserves ancient thinking.
The problems we face today, attention, meaning, justice, loneliness, were all thought through by people who had no internet, no algorithms, and far less comfort. They still got further than most of us. These essays are an attempt to close that distance.
Essays on Now
Each essay takes a question from contemporary life and follows it back to the philosopher who first asked it well. Published every Friday.
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Philosophy is not history. It is a way of looking.
Start with ordinary life
Every essay begins with something unremarkable: a commute, a difficult conversation, a habit I cannot explain. The ordinary is where the real questions hide.
Think it through myself
I do not go looking for a philosopher who already answered the question. I sit with the problem and work through it using the habits of mind ten years of philosophy has given me.
Draw on wisdom where it earns its place
Sometimes a thinker from the past said something that cuts straight to the heart of it. When that happens, I bring it in — not as an authority, but as a voice that has been here before.
Six schools of thought, one world to understand.
I draw on six philosophical traditions, each one a different way of squinting at the same urgent questions that modern life keeps throwing at us.
A philosophical eye on the week ahead.
Every Friday, one essay. A contemporary question, a classical thinker, and a clearer way of seeing. Free, considered, and written for a modern reader.