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What Is Socratic Ignorance?
The Importance of Socratic Ignorance
The best way to change dogmatically held beliefs is to start with a skeptical attitude and ask questions, assuming you know nothing.
However, it is questionable how feasible it is to keep an attitude of Socratic ignorance on all matters. Even Socrates says, for instance, that he is sure that no real harm can befall a good man. He is equally confident that "the unexamined life is not worth living."
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Key Ideas
Live Every Day as If It Were Your Last
Death doesn’t make life pointless, death makes life worth living. Sometimes the discussion about the meaning of life serves no purpose besides distracting you from the answer, which is found...
Food as a Test Of Self-Control
Although eating food is pleasurable, digesting it is our main purpose. We should eat to live rather than live to eat.
To practice this principle, one can eat plain foods without sauces or try intermittent fasting.
Pursuing happiness
We all say we want to be happy, but happiness is often out of our grasp. Maybe the problem is not so much with us, but with the concept of happiness.
A better concept i...
Eudaimonia
Unlike happiness, eudaimonia is not an emotion: It is a state of being or doing. It is more stable and cannot so quickly be taken away from us.
Eudaimonia is a much deeper and richer concept than happiness and is viewed in terms of living a worthwhile life. It has everything to do with hard work.
Socrates and Plato on Eudaimonia
Socrates equated eudaimonia with wisdom and virtue, stating that he who is not wise cannot be happy.
Plato broadly agreed with Socrates. Plato writes that justice and injustice are to the soul as health and disease are to the body. For Plato, an unjust man cannot be happy because he is not in ordered control of himself.
Defining Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia is a term which comes from Aristotle’s work called ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ and means individual well-being and happiness. It combines the prefix eu (meaning good) ...
Plato And Eudaimonism
- Plato believed that because we feel unhappy internally when we do something wrong, eudaimonia is the highest feeling of moral thought and behaviour where there is real happiness from within. Happiness, according to him, was about living in the pursuit of various virtues, central to flourishing.
- Plato never mentioned the term eudaimonia, but his writings on the concept of courage, justice, wisdom and moderation point towards the same domain of wellbeing.
Aristotle And Eudaimonism
Aristotle in his many works has provided numerous interpretations of eudaimonia, explaining it as something reflecting the pursuit of virtue, excellence and the best within us. According to him, eudaimonia is a rational activity aimed at the pursuit of what is worthwhile in life.
Having an intention to be virtuous was an important factor for eudaimonia.