[The Knowledge Project Ep. #123] William Irvine: How To Live a Stoic Life

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Shane Parrish: How did you come to write about stoicism in The Good Life?

William Irvine: Long story but here’s the short version of it. Apparently, when I turned 50, I was having a mild grade mid-life crisis and I decided I was going to become a Zen Buddhist. I mean, I got this stoicism through Zen Buddhism, which sounds like a paradox but I started reading about Zen Buddhism and it dawned on me that I could not only satisfy my curiosity and deal with this mid-life crisis but at the same time, I could get a publication out of it. Being a college professor, you try to get two for the price of one, so if I could get a publication, that would be great. So, I decided to extend this into the book that ultimately became the book on desire, why do we want what we want? To be complete, I needed to show what the alternatives were to Zen Buddhism.