Esa Saarinen lives by the maxim “Better thinking generates better life”. He defended his thesis at the age of 24 at the University of Helsinki. He was a student of Professors Oiva Ketonen and Jaakko Hintikka and was further inspired, during his study years by Professor Erik Tawaststjerna’s lectures on Sibelius and the cultural influence of University alumni such as Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Johan Vilhelm Snellman and Professors Eino Kaila and Georg Henrik von Wright.

Esa Saarinen’s lectures were legendary at the University of Helsinki, filling the largest lecture halls to capacity. When he moved in 2001 to Helsinki University of Technology (later Aalto University) to become the first Philosophy Professor of that institution, the profile of the lectures became even more elevated. Saarinen’s personal and experiential lectures on applied philosophy of life established themselves as part of the culture of the Otaniemi campus, home to many of Finland’s best technologists.

With video recordings of Saarinen’s lectures, the philosopher’s ideas have spread far beyond the University. The number of YouTube hits for the lectures rapidly exceeded 100,000.

Saarinen’s lecturing style is colourful and emotive. He steers away from traditional blueprints combining images from popular culture with learning, examples from personal experience and humour. His aim is to enhance the listener’s own way of thinking. Strikingly, the focus of the lecture is not on its objective content but on the process that emerges in the participants as individuals. Whilst lecturing, Saarinen aims to be “the conductor of thinking” rather than a “solo artist”.

In his lectures Saarinen likes to push the limits of language and to use expression such as “upscale register”, “tender and dynamic moment of meeting” or “007 philosophy”. In his Finnish lectures, Saarinen often employs unusual expressions understandable to all, but almost impossible to translate without the loss of some of the nuance. latistuksen mankeli (‘the mangle for flattening life’), kukoistuskatse (‘glance for making the other flourish’), uomakipitys (‘scuttling within the confines of the riverbanks ’).

• Kirsti Lonka: ‘Promoting flourishing and elevated thought - Reflections on E. Saarinen’s pedagogy’ Accessed June 11, 2015
• Esa Saarinen’s lecture in Finnish, with English subtitles. Accessed June 11, 2015
• Esa Saarinen’s lecture series Being Better in a World of Systems. Accessed June 11, 2015.
• James Wilk: ‘The Pageantry of the Mind: Content Philosophy and a Psychoanalytic Point of View’ Accessed June 11, 2015
• Esa Saarinen ‘The James Bond 007 Philosophy of Life’ Accessed June 11, 2015