Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek

Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (1975- ) is a professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Łódź, Poland. For the last 20 years she has studied the subject of well-being, happiness and pleasure. Philosophically, she argues for the maximization of pleasure and diminishing of pain among as many beings as possible. She believes she is on a mission to help others to live a good and enjoyable life based on philosophical, psychological and neurobiological research.

Her main research interest focuses on the thought of a late Victorian philosopher, Henry Sidgwick. Together with Peter Singer she wrote two books: The Point of View of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Utilitarianism - A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2017) and edited J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism (Norton, 2021). In May 2024 Routledge published her The Philosophy of Pleasure, the first introductory text of this kind on the subject of pleasure.

In addition to her academic work, she is keen to convey philosophical ideas to a popular audience, and has written for popular magazines on how to live a good life. Since May 2024 together with Peter Singer, she runs a podcast called Lives Well Lived, in which remarkable guests talk about what it is to have a good life. So far, they have interviewed, among others: Daniel Kahneman, Yuval Harari, Jane Goodall, Judy Collins, Neil de Grasse Tyson and Ingrid Newkirk.