Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“I am fascinated by the questions philosophers raise and the answers that they offer. They bewitch me. But at the same time, I am skeptical of any philosopher who thinks he knows any absolute answer. I gather that this sequence – question, answer, skeptical response to answer….next question, please – is what professional philosophers do full time. It is like taking a hair-raising spin in a racing car only to discover that the roadway is a Mobuis strip”

Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It is the sixth non-fiction book by American author, Daniel Klein. Now in his seventies, Klein examines and comments on the philosophical quotes and aphorisms he wrote in his “Pithies” notebook during his twenties and thirties, when he was searching for guidance on how to live his life.

At this stage of his life, however, “I have to admit that in the past few decades, I don’t seem to have much interest in ferreting out my deepest self…..I know that Nietzsche would admonish me to deal with it, to keep wrestling with this endless regression of internal contradictions, but these days I would rather spend my time making peace with who, for better and for worse, I have become. In the end, instead of aspiring to be an ubermensch, I simply aspire to be a mensch”

Klein wrote the words of many men in his notebook of Pithies: philosophers, but also those better known for other roles in life. His list includes Epicurus, Aristippus, David Pearce, Schopenhauer, Camus, William James, Sartre, Nietzsche, Leopardi, Bertrand Russell, Emerson, Paul Tillich, Aristotle, David Hume, Gorgias of Leontini, Samuel Beckett, Aldous Huxley, John Barth, John Stuart Mill, Peter Singer, Machiavelli, Joshua Greene, Derek Parfit, George Santayana, Ecclesiastes, Sam Harris, Francis Bacon, A.J.Ayer, Thomas Nagel, Isaiah, Blaise Pascal, Frank Close, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Viktor Frankl, Adam Phillips, Marcus Aurelius, and finally, Reinhold Niebuhr (author of the book’s title quote).

A self-admitted agnostic, on religion, Klein tells us: “I know a great number of very bright and knowledgeable people who are believers. It sometimes makes me wonder if the skeptics have it backward: maybe I am just not wise enough to be a believer”. And that a friend once reminded him that “when an agnostic does, he goes to the Great Perhaps”. He shares some of the mental challenges he has faced: “Being a hedonist with a conscience can be demoralizing. It turns out that this business of feeling good often comes at the price of somebody else’s deprivation, and then I have to consider which is more important to me: feeling good or being good?”

On being present in the moment, he tells us: “…one way we pursue the goal of feeling intensely alive is by tempting death. We jump off cliffs to go hang gliding; we race cars at dangerous speeds; some apparently indulge in the extreme sport of volcano surfing……The payoff of these mortal risks is that they rivet us to the here and now. Facing death, we become supremely alive. Many Existentialist thinkers believe that squarely facing our mortality is the only sure way to become fully alive in the present, although I am pretty sure that Jean-Paul Sartre, with his thick glasses and frail physique, did not have volcano surfing in mind”.

Klein’s commentary touches on a myriad of subjects: happiness, free will, suicide, pessimism, friendship, humour, altruism, the herd mentality, absolute belief systems and intolerance. You would, of course, expect a book on philosophy to be filled with wise words, and this one is, but it also contains plenty of laugh-out-loud observations (even the glossary, which ought to be read at the beginning, is amusing), as well as the odd lump-in-the-throat moment. A very enjoyable read. 4.5 stars