Perennial Wisdom

📮 Want tools for the art of living? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe Before we begin, it may help to name the kind of territory we’re entering—because this essay (or episode) is all about paradoxes and polarities. A paradox is two things that seem to oppose each other but are both true. Similarly

📮 Want tools for the art of living? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe In this episode of Perennial Wisdom, we explore the profound and surprising vision of happiness taught by the 13th-century theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas. Long before modern self-help, Aquinas argued that most of

📮 Want tools for the art of living? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe In this episode of Perennial Wisdom, we explore the art of boredom: a journey through ancient philosophy, psychology, and modern thinkers like David Foster Wallace. From the desert monks who believed stillness revealed the soul,

📮 Want tools for the art of living? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe In this episode of Perennial Wisdom, we trace a journey from the streets of ancient Athens to the inner life of a restless bishop. Socrates challenges us with the idea of the unexamined life, while Augustine encourages us to loo

📮 Want tools for the art of living? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe In this episode of Perennial Wisdom, we enter the world of Arthur Schopenhauer—the philosopher of pessimism, and, unexpectedly, a teacher of compassion. Schopenhauer believed that happiness cannot be found by escaping suffering

📮 Want tools for the art of living? Sign up here: https://perennial.substack.com/subscribe In this episode of Perennial Wisdom, we sit down with Søren Kierkegaard, the 19th-century Danish philosopher often considered the father of existentialism. Specifically, we explore insights from his book Either/Or, which address