Midlife: A Philosophical Guide is an accessible, engaging book. As the author describes it, the book “is a self-help book in that it is an attempt to help myself, with the hope that what helps me will help you, too. It is an approach to the midlife crisis from the inside,” (23). As the title suggests, the book aims to address the philosophical issues surrounding the middle of life, an area under-explored philosophically. Not surprisingly, a consideration of midlife leads naturally to some considerations of death and of early life. At issue are not only the specific questions that arise at midlife, but also how these questions might reasonably be answered. The book is meant to be popular rather than academic. Satiya mixes autobiographical anecdote with academic argument in welcoming prose. The writing has a personal flavor. It does not rehearse the fine-grained details of issues that take up the pages of philosophical journals, but instead distills their relevance to (mid)life.

Setiya begins with a history of the midlife crisis—the various ways it’s been understood and explained—before diving into some of the philosophical issues surrounding it. The book offers a handful of ‘rules’ for how one might navigate said crisis. The suggestions are perfectly familiar—a few even banal. Their force comes from the examples used to illuminate them and the philosophical discussions surrounding them. The first rule, for example, runs as follows: “you have to care about something other than yourself,” (34). Some other suggestions: “Tell yourself this: while there are reasons to change one’s life—frustrating jobs, failed marriages, poor health—the appeal of change itself can be deceptive” (70); if “you are nostalgic for the indeterminacy of childhood, when almost anything was possible, tell yourself that what you long for is akin to retrograde amnesia. It would require a similar dissolution of the structure that gives meaning to your life,” (75).

Variations on these rules can be found in many places, ancient and modern. This is not an objection to their legitimacy. Quite the contrary, it may even be a point in their favor: the human condition has been basically the same for a long time. It would be astonishing if no one ever offered useful advice for how to deal with I’s challengest. In that respect, the term ‘guide’ in the book’s title is undoubtedly the right choice. Satiya’s discussion guides us through the philosophical morass to distill a set of recommendations, and more importantly, a sense of the reasonableness of those recommendations. In that respect, if one is disinclined to read through Seneca, Lucretius, Kongzi or Nagajuna but nevertheless is curious what insights might be philosophically available about how to navigate midlife and its attendant difficulties, this book certainly fits the bill.

The final chapter of the book offers a useful take on the idea of ‘living in the present.’  Setiya distinguishes between telic actions (actions that can be completed) and atelic actions (which cannot). Pursuing a college degree, for example, ends when you get the degree. The satisfactions of pursuing the degree are likewise terminal. Setiya points out that if all of our projects follow this pattern, we’re doomed to Sisyphean toil, to Schopenhauer’s pessimism, to endlessly thwarted desire. If all of our actions followed this pattern, we’d in effect live a contradiction: we’d be forever pursuing things so that we couldn’t pursue them anymore. As Setiya writes, “whatever is wrong with the pursuit of goal after worthy goal, it will not be cured by prolonging that pursuit forever” (129).

Fortunately, we also engage in atelic actions—actions that are part of some larger project we have that can’t really be completed. If I dedicate myself to learning, rather than ‘getting a degree’, my project has no expiration date. It thus avoids the disappointment attending telic action. It is in midlife that we have completed many of our long-term telic activities, and hence in midlife that we are prone to notice the limitations inherent in such future-oriented pursuits. When we focus our attention on the present, by contrast, we face no such limitations. Engaging in and valuing atelic action (or the atelic aspects of an action) is thus one way to live in the present.

Midlife: A Philosophical Guide is a worthwhile book. It offers sound guidance on difficult existential issues, along with the occasional moments of profundity. It is part of the ancient tradition of philosophy understood as a tool for navigating life rather than an academic job. In this sense and others, it is a welcome contribution.

© 2018 J. Jeremy Wisnewski

J. Jeremy Wisnewski; Professor of Philosophy, Hartwick College