The Eudaimonist

Can reason and rational understanding alone lead to human flourishing? This question has shaped Western thought since the Enlightenment, and no philosopher embodied this ideal more powerfully than Baruch Spinoza. But is it enough? ...🧵

This is why happiness eludes you From Pascal’s Pensées:

The purpose of study is not for the sake of knowledge but for the practice of living.

Western civilization is worth preserving.

Schopenhauer had a theory about art that might go some way towards explaining why the aesthetic sensibility of modern culture has become so warped He thought that being able to create and understand great works of art takes a particular kind of genius that ordinary people just…

If thou overcome not slight and easy obstacles, how shalt thou overcome greater ones? — Thomas à Kempis