Here is a modern philosopher who engages with the question, “how should we live” – or at least, makes a discussion about the discussion about it. He bewails how modern philosophy limits itself to boring nonsense (from “Modern Moral Philosophy”):
The task of moral philosophy was not to teach moral truths or to instruct one how to live, but rather to clarify the “logic of moral concepts” or “the nature of moral discourse.” Moral philosophy was not about what people ought to do; it was about “what they are doing when they talk about what they ought to do” (Hudson, 1970: 1). But there was a price to be paid for this change in the conception of moral philosophy. Substantive moral questions ceased to be either asked or answered; they appeared only by courtesy, as illustrations, and were held away at arm’s length. Moral philosophy gave the impression that “all the important issues <were> off the page somewhere” and had managed to find “an original way of being boring which <was> by not discussing moral issues at all” (Williams, 1972: 9-10; also Wilson, 1961: 1ff.).
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