#practical philosophy

The humanist Knigge (1752-1796) had analysed people's social behaviour, had dealt with the philosophical works of Kant, had translated texts by Rousseau and he also had wrote different essays on history, politics and society, before he published his pathbreaking guide in 1788 “Practical Philosophy of Social Life”

There are some things which we have to believe in to keep on living. These statements may not be true - but to have hope in life and to go on in the world, we have to believe in these statements. (This is particularly so if depressive realism is true.) These are statements like “everything will work out in the end,” “everyone has a purpose in life,” and “we have free will.” Some thoughts on these:

Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle: 

Live by the [harmless untruths] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

William James:

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will—"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"—need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present—until next year—that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

Ishida Sui:

At the end of the day, it's all within me. All an extension of my self. The people I want to meet. The things I want to be told. . . . As soon as I began to think that, in some part of me, I began wishing for it. Wishing that I'd live.

Colerus on Spinoza:

It happened one day that his landlady asked him whether he believed that she could be saved in the religion she professed: He answered, "Your Religion is a good one, you need not look for any other, nor doubt that you may be saved in it, provided, whilst you apply yourself to Piety, you live at the same time a peaceable and quiet life."

The idea that individuals have agency and unalienable value as individuals is the main argument that stands between us and collective punishment, scapegoating, forced marriages, honor killings, caste systems, abortion and sex work bans, slavery, show trials…