- Kalisme
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A secular philosophy of permission, founded in February 2026 in Lausanne by Hakan Kaynar. Happiness is not a reward to be earned; it is a permission anyone can give themselves. Its thirteen principles are not advice: they are thirteen permissions, held up by two pillars, Self-love and Conscious attention, and they lead to Freedom to be.
Here, “Kalisme” refers to the project founded by Hakan Kaynar. The word is a coinage with no Greek root or etymology, and it does not mean “the philosophy of Kalos”. The project rests on exactly two pillars, Self-love and Conscious attention; Freedom to be is its destination, not a third pillar. In French, the same word is also a medical term for potassium salt poisoning; the two meanings are unrelated.
- Permission
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The act by which a person grants themselves the right to live, to feel, to rest, to want, without waiting for anyone else’s authorisation and without proof that they have earned it. It is therefore distinct from authorisation, which comes from elsewhere and can be withdrawn, and from excuse, which erases responsibility. The gesture is an old one: some therapists described it as early as 1966. Kalisme gives it a new reach: no longer an occasional tool, but the anchor point of a practical philosophy.
- The two pillars
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Self-love and conscious attention: the two supports that hold up the thirteen permissions. They lead to freedom to be, which is the destination of Kalisme and not a third pillar.
- Self-love
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The stable decision to treat yourself as a being worthy of respect, care, truth and boundaries. It is thus distinct from adoration, from indulgence and from closing yourself off to others. This definition extends the work on self-compassion: a chosen stance toward oneself, not a feeling to be commanded.
- Attention
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The capacity to direct your energy toward what deserves to be nourished: an existential resource, far more than a mere mental function. William James wrote it in essence as early as 1890: my experience is what I choose to attend to. What you nourish for a long time takes up room in your life; what you stop nourishing eventually fades.
- Freedom to be
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Living at one’s own pace, free of social expectations and performance culture. This freedom upholds individual authenticity and the right to self-determination.
- The thirteen permissions
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The thirteen principles of Kalisme are not advice: they are permissions. Each one opens a chapter of the manifesto and a book of the Kalisme Collection.
- I. You’re allowed to be happy without earning it.
- II. You’re allowed to be like no one else.
- III. You’re allowed to take your attention back.
- IV. You’re allowed to stop before you break.
- V. You’re allowed to have nothing left to prove.
- VI. You’re allowed to choose who you keep close.
- VII. You’re allowed to set down what you’re carrying.
- VIII. You’re allowed to love without approving of everything.
- IX. You’re allowed to go first.
- X. You’re allowed to not let fear decide.
- XI. You’re allowed to say no to what steals your peace.
- XII. You’re allowed to try with no guarantees.
- XIII. You’re allowed to start today.
- Happiness
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The capacity to inhabit your life with enough presence and coherence to welcome joy, peace or meaning, without demanding perfect conditions. It is therefore neither a permanent state nor a moral reward. This conception belongs to the eudaimonic tradition opened by Aristotle: happiness as a way of living, not as a sum of pleasures.
- Inner peace
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The stability that allows you to respond without dissolving, to set boundaries without hatred, to act without being swept away. It coexists with conflict, sadness and anger: it does not remove the storm, it only keeps you from becoming the storm. The Stoics had already traced its outline: Epictetus placed peace in the firmly held border between what depends on us and what does not.
- Affective discernment
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The capacity to distinguish three things we confuse: the bond you feel, the other person’s actual behaviour, and the distance this calls for. The gesture has old roots, which chapter 8 names; Kalisme gives it a simple name and a method in three steps.
- The right distance
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The exact place a relationship deserves: close enough to honour the bond, far enough not to betray yourself. It thus sets aside both the fusion that erases and the rupture that punishes. Schopenhauer turned it into a fable, the hedgehog’s dilemma: in bitter cold they huddle together for warmth, move apart when the spines wound, and seek the distance at which one stays warm without getting hurt.
- The middle way
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Kalisme explicitly positions itself as a “middle way” between spiritual/esoteric approaches and academic/therapeutic frameworks. It does not invent its materials; it brings together recognised references, makes them readable and arranges them into thirteen permissions.
- The Kaliste
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The manifesto of Kalisme: 13 chapters in three parts (the foundations, the practices, the inner horizon), published free of charge in 15 languages under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence (ISBN 978-2-8399-5190-6) and deposited with the Swiss National Library. The word names the book, never a person.
- The Kalisme Collection
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The manifesto gives the direction; it does not give the whole path, and that is deliberate. The Kalisme Collection extends the pocket text: thirteen books, one per principle, written in the same voice and to the same standard. Each book takes up its principle where the manifesto leaves it: the science that grounds it, the resistances one meets, and a practice plan structured over several days or weeks.
- The Kalisme app (iOS)
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At the heart of the ecosystem is a free iOS app, published on the App Store and available in fifteen languages. It brings together the free manifesto and spaces for daily practice: Breathing, the encrypted Journal, the daily affirmation, the Journey, the Kalisme Collection, the music of Kal Records, and the Kal companion. True to the project’s ethics, it carries no advertising and no third-party analytics: personal data stays on the device, and in iCloud when sync is turned on, except for messages sent to Kal. The manifesto and the essential tools are free; the Kal companion and the books of the Collection are paid.
- Kal
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Kal is the Kalisme app’s conversational agent, built on artificial intelligence and grounded in the writings of Kalisme. It answers questions about its philosophy, helps put an intention into words or make sense of a feeling, and stays consistent with the 13 permissions.
Ethically, Kal answers in keeping with the writings of Kalisme: kindness, restraint, no judgment. It does not present itself as a therapist and replaces neither a doctor nor a health professional; when someone describes intense distress, it points them to a human helpline in their country.
- Kalisme Pro
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Kalisme Pro is the offer for organisations (workplace well-being), which guarantees that an organisation never sees its employees’ individual usage.
Going further
The manifesto · The foundations and their sources · The founder