Ancient Greek · c. 428–348 BCE
Plato
The good life is a life turned toward the Good.
To live well is to orient the soul upward, past appearances, toward what is true and enduring.
Every thinker worth reading has one true sentence. This is a place to find Plato's.
On meaning
To live well is to orient the soul upward, past appearances, toward what is true and enduring.
Why this thinker still matters
The specific circumstances of Plato's life are gone. The questions they wrestled with are not. Reading them now is less like consulting an authority and more like sitting across from someone who has already done a lot of the hard work of thinking.
Key insights
- ◆Read the primary sources when you can, not summaries of summaries.
- ◆Distinguish what the thinker actually wrote from what they are commonly quoted as saying.
- ◆Notice which of their answers resonate — that is data about you as much as about them.
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