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Philosophy vs. Self-Help

The difference between “a philosophy” and “Philosophy”.

Steven Gambardella
5 min readNov 20, 2021
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This isn’t going to be an anti-self-help tirade.

In fact, I read a lot of self-help and there are a lot of great authors who work in that genre. The point of this post is really to distinguish philosophy from self-help.

Good, honest self-help is life advice that allows you to navigate life smoothly and maybe find some success. It’s a body of information that you tap into to empower and entertain yourself.

Commonly regarded as the all-time greatest self-help book is Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s a great source of advice for anybody starting out in adult life. Every kid should get a copy for their eighteenth birthday because it’s a wholesome and benevolent approach to life to start on a roll with.

One of the habits, for example, is “Think win-win”, that is — always be looking for an outcome to be mutually beneficial in a discussion or negotiation.

I can’t think of a piece of pithy life-advice that tops this. It’s the angelic cousin of the Prisoner Dilemma. It says that if you have a bit of courage and an “abundance mentality” you can build cooperative relationships rather than stew in needless antagonisms.

These ideas seem like philosophy, don’t they? You could legitimately say I have a “win-win philosophy when it comes to negotiations”. This is because the idea of “win-win” is an ethical idea or rule: it guides our conduct for a positive outcome either for ourselves or others (in this case, both). It’s good for us and, to some extent, good for society.

Join thousands of others and subscribe to my mailing list to learn how 2000 years of philosophy can help you find clarity, inspiration and wisdom. Click here to sign up. You’ll get monthly philosophy content and a free copy of my forthcoming book.

But that’s a philosophy, it’s not Philosophy. Philosophy is trying to understand the world and our place in it.

Self-help is about adjusting to the world. It’s about acceptance. That’s fine, there’s a place for that. We can learn to be more productive and emotionally resilient with advice.

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