By Narayan Saimbi
This won’t be the first article you’ve read on the need for intellectual stimulation. I somehow doubt it will be the last. But the internet zeitgeist in the last few months has been full of people ditching their smartphones, embracing nature, and trying to escape from the man-made mental prison that is the Internet in 2026.
Whilst people tend to advocate for reading as a way to increase your attention span and get you off your phones, I always see the same 12-15 books and authors being brought up. Dostoyevsky, Plath, A Little Life, A Secret History– the lists go on, but they all, by and large, involve these titles and authors.
I’m not trying to hate on popular books (they’re popular for a reason, after all). But to say that these works or these authors are the ‘creme-de-la-creme’ of intellectual thought isn’t exactly true. I would like to dedicate this article to advocating for another section of literature that often gets shouted over by these same 12-15 titles that have seeped their way across all social platforms. Introducing: classical philosophy.
To be perfectly honest,‘classical philosophy’ is a bit of an umbrella term, and the works that fit into this subgenre tend to stretch over multiple periods of history. If someone is talking about a work of ‘classical philosophy’, they could be talking about work from the Ancient Greeks, the Enlightenment period, or even the 20th Century.
This article is not going to spend time diving into the metaphysics or the overall history of philosophy. However, I will simply say that the works within the term ‘classical philosophy’ all give different perspectives on important social topics in the world. Whether it’s Augustine’s commentaries on religion, Aristotle’s ideas on what constitutes good and happiness, or even Camus’ thoughts on finding meaning in a meaningless world, all the works within ‘classical philosophy’ teach us something about the world around us, and lets us see even the most mundane things in life through a multitude of different lenses.
Not every philosophical work is easy. But equally, they’re not meant to be. The whole point of these works is that they’re designed to make you think. They’re designed to challenge your personal view of the world, and make you question a lot of things that you may have mentally taken for granted.
Whilst, on paper, this does sound like a one-way ticket to an existential crisis (and for some books, it will be), I have found that I have never been more intellectually stimulated than when I’m reading a work in this subgenre. I absolutely love contemporary fiction as much as the next reader, but there’s something about these philosophical texts that makes me slow down just that much more. And in a world where everything feels like it’s going at a lightning pace, with no signs of slowing down, being able to really press pause on life and everything around me is so much more helpful than you think.
I suppose the bottom line is: if you are simply reading books because they’re popular, or just to tick off your arbitrary reading goal on Goodreads, I don’t think ‘classical philosophy’ is for you. However, if you are someone who wants to critically engage with what they read and the world around them, and, importantly, stimulate yourself intellectually, I don’t think you can find a better subgenre of literature to do it. It won’t be easy- but my God, is it worth it.
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