Wilhelm Schmid

Wilhelm Schmid is a philosopher of the art of living who turns experiences such as unhappiness, aging, love, friendship, and composure into subjects for reflection. High on Low: Harnessing the Power of Unhappiness resists the demand to remain cheerful at all times and asks what difficult moods can disclose. What We Gain As We Grow Older: on Gelassenheit considers aging through the idea of a calmer relation to change rather than through denial or celebration alone. The two books ask how a difficult mood or a later stage of life can be approached without denial. For a first encounter, High on Low presents Schmid's direct, compact style and his refusal of easy optimism. What We Gain As We Grow Older then shifts from mood to time, showing how his philosophy works with a concrete stage of life. Together they provide a focused route into a broader body of writing on the art of living.