Review of "Life is Hard" by Kiernan Setiya

In "Life is Hard," Kiernan Setiya proposes that life is hard, but that studies of philosophy can help.

I found the first couple of chapters unconvincing.  It was interesting, in a somewhat academic sense, to see what the philosophers had to say about infirmity and loneliness, but it didn't really help much.

But it wasn't until chapter three, on grief, that Setiya really fell down.  Setiya, apparently, doesn't really understand grief.  He has read up on it.  He has read what a few philosophers say about it.  His experience of grief, chosen to start the examination of the subject, is of a romantic breakup in his early teenage years.  Hardly the stuff of deathly, or deathless, passion.  His mother is losing her mind to Alzheimer's.  His father-in-law has recently died, during the time that he was writing the book.  Neither of these seems to get have given him much personal insight into either the nature or the process of grief or grieving.  Some of the characteristics of grief that he considers universal, I have not experienced following Gloria's death.  I recognize some of the areas of grief that he discusses, but the strongest, and most common aspects of grief, he doesn't touch on at all.  His insistence on avoiding theodicy, or even the possibility of the existence of a spirit or soul following death physical death, limits what he can consider about the nature of grief itself.  And, nothing from the philosophers seems to be of any help at all.  He seems to tacitly acknowledge this, since the suggestions that, rather verbosely, close the first two chapters, are missing from chapter three.  He just seems to acknowledge that death sucks, and grief sucks, and that's about all that one can say.  If life is hard, and grief is hard, that is not terribly helpful.

Chapter four, on failure, is another case where a limited view of the titular subject means that the chapter as a whole fails.  Setiya notes the difference between telic activity, which has an end, and an object, and a completion; and atelic activities, which are ongoing, and essentially complete in themselves.  In terms of defining failure, he seems to see it as only telic activities in terms of failure: you try to do one particular thing, and fail to accomplish that.  His solution to this is to concentrate on the atelic activity of living well, and being a good person.  But, as Paul points out in the book of Romans, I try to do what I am supposed to do, and fail, and the things I shouldn't do, I keep doing.  So here is an atelic activity, of living well, which is also subject to failure modes.  And Setiya's recommendation that we pursue this "living well" activity, therefore fails.