The Mountain Dog School for Living Philosophy¹ is a pedagogical and spiritual initiative. We are rooted in the belief that philosophy is not merely an academic discipline but a way of life.

The “School” invites seekers—of all backgrounds—to reawaken their capacity to wonder and to question. We encourage individuals to live authentically in the face of a disoriented and often dehumanizing world. Rather than offering doctrines or final answers, the “School” nurtures existential exploration through dialogue, solitude, poetic reflection, and critical awareness. We cultivate existential literacy: the ability to dwell meaningfully within ambiguity, freedom, suffering, and love.

The mission of the Mountain Dog School is simple but radical: to get people philosophizing. We are not performing philosophy as technical jargon or detached debate. Instead, we are engaging it as living practice. It’s a process of showing up. It involves making sense of one’s life and committing to one’s becoming. Such philosophizing is deeply personal yet never private. It opens out into shared spaces of care, rebellion, and creative responsibility.

In a world dominated by algorithmic distraction, ideological entrenchment, and spiritual fatigue, our challenges are many. The Mountain Dog School dares to insist that the life of the mind matters. It matters not in abstraction, but in how we live. It matters in how we suffer. It is also about how we decide and how we relate. Mountain dogs emphasize self-actualization not “self-improvement.” Instead, we improvise an ongoing, unfinished journey. We respond to the mystery of existence with clarity, courage, and compassion.

To commit to an existential project of self-actualization is to embrace both the risk and gift of freedom. Therefore, we enter the hunt for meaning not with rigid certainties, but with a willingness to be transformed. The Mountain Dog School welcomes all who feel this call. We invite all to join us who wish to philosophize and live truthfully. We encourage all we meet to walk the undulating path of the human condition with vision and depth.

1. I use the name freely as a joke. I am writing a book about the mythological founding of the School among the “Ancient” ancestors. But it is just a way to have fun in an ever increasingly authoritarian society. Really… I live at the edge of hill country in North Texas where the prairie lands start. I cannot stress enough that this is tongue-in-cheek. ↩︎