Goal: Deepen your personal philosophy around attentiveness, joy, integrity, and moral responsibility—while letting foundational thinkers question, reframe, or sharpen your assumptions.
✅ Format
Each month includes:
1 main text
Optional lighter/adjacent piece
Reflection focus or journaling prompt
🗓️ Month-by-Month Breakdown
Month 1 – The Moral Practice of Attention
📘 Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good
➕ Optional: Her essay “On ‘God’ and ‘Good’” (available online)
✍️ Prompt: “What do I see clearly, and what do I distort? What does love require of my attention?”
Month 2 – Creating Your Own Values
📘 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
➕ Optional: Walter Kaufmann’s intro or audio lectures
✍️ Prompt: “What inherited values do I still follow, even if they no longer serve me?”
Month 3 – Feeling as Knowing
📘 Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought (intro + selected chapters on love and compassion)
➕ Optional: Her The Therapy of Desire (skim opening if you like)
✍️ Prompt: “What emotions teach me the most about how to live? When have I ignored them?”
Month 4 – On Power, Control, and Freedom
📘 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (read Part 1 & 3)
➕ Optional: YouTube series “Foucault Explained Simply”
✍️ Prompt: “Where am I internalizing control? Where do I mistake freedom for conformity?”
Month 5 – Kindness as Rebellion
📘 Albert Camus, The Plague
➕ Optional: His essay The Myth of Sisyphus
✍️ Prompt: “What do I persist in doing, even when it seems absurd or thankless?”
Month 6 – Moral Complexity in Practice
📘 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
➕ Optional: Short podcast “The Banality of Evil Explained” (BBC, In Our Time)
✍️ Prompt: “What decisions do I make thoughtlessly? What systems do I uphold?”
Month 7 – Dignity, Flourishing, and Capability
📘 Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities
➕ Optional: Compare your own values with her 10 Central Capabilities
✍️ Prompt: “What do I need—not want—to truly flourish?”
Month 8 – Sacred Simplicity
📘 Simone Weil, Waiting for God
➕ Optional: Gravity and Grace (as daily devotional fragments)
✍️ Prompt: “When was the last time I paid full attention without trying to fix anything?”
Month 9 – Play, Doubt, and Identity
📘 Zadie Smith, Feel Free (selected essays: “On Optimism and Despair,” “Northwest London Blues,” etc.)
➕ Optional: Intimations (shorter, meditative)
✍️ Prompt: “What do I know for sure? What am I still figuring out about myself?”
Month 10 – Political Joy and Personal Ethics
📘 Camus, The Rebel (skim core sections; don’t get lost in the references)
✍️ Prompt: “How do I resist harm—not with anger, but with dignity?”
Month 11 – Seeing Others Without Ego
📘 Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics (selected essays)
✍️ Prompt: “What kind of life would be good enough? Who gets to decide?”
Month 12 – Integration Month
📘 Revisit highlights, write a reflective essay or creative piece.
✍️ Prompt: “What have I kept? What have I discarded? What am I building now?”
📓 Tools for Engagement
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Journal | Keep one thread for summaries, another for personal reflections. Don’t combine. |
| Margin Method | In physical books, mark: ! (surprise), ✱ (important), ? (confusion), ♡ (resonance). |
| Quarterly Check-in | Revisit your values every 3 months. What has shifted? What’s firmer? |
🔄 Variations
If time is short:
Read the first 2 chapters and a final section of longer works.
Use audiobooks or summaries to supplement tougher texts (esp. Foucault, Arendt).
Substitute fiction (Murdoch’s The Bell or Camus’s The Fall) when in need of variety.
If time is plentiful:
Add companion thinkers: bell hooks (All About Love), Emmanuel Levinas, or Rebecca Solnit.
Would you like this turned into a printable one-pager, spreadsheet tracker, or Notion template? I can prepare that for you next.
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