Plato is one of the most prominent philosophers of Ancient Greece, belonging to the Classical
Period, and he is one of the pylons of the entirety of Western civilization, founding
the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the entire Western world.
His philosophy is referred to as Platonic Idealism.
Along with Socrates, his mentor, and Aristotle his student, Plato is one of the most influential
individuals in the entire history of humankind, he invented the written dialogue and the dialectic
form of philosophy.
Some of his most famous books are “The Republic”, “The Symposium”, “The Apology of Socrates”,
“Allegory of the Cave” and “The Dialogues of Plato” in which the main character is
Socrates, who influenced Plato’s philosophy to a great extent.
Even after 2400 years, Plato’s work is still popular and relevant today.
For Plato, one of the main purposes of learning philosophy is to enable one to live a fulfilled
life.
The state of fulfillment or well being was named by the ancient Greek philosophers as
eudaimonia.
For Plato, eudaimonia is strongly related to virtue.
Plato’s main ethical view is that the unjust man's soul, without virtue, is chaotic and
at war with itself.
Even if we satisfy all our desires and wishes, if we are not in harmony with ourselves and
with the community of people around us, we cannot achieve eudaimonia.
To help you better understand what Plato believed defined a fulfilled life and how can we achieve
eudaimonia, here are 9 lessons from the philosophy of Plato:
Educate yourself Plato said: “The direction in which education
starts a man, will determine his future life.”
For Plato, the founder of the Academy, education is a crucial aspect in one person’s life.
Plato gave education the highest priority, creating a curriculum for his school which
was also teaching young people how to control their emotions and their appetite.
He believed that without this self control and without a proper knowledge of how this
world works, an individual can easily engage in damaging activities that will have negative
consequences on their life and on the lives of other people.
One cannot have a fulfilled life without a proper education.
Also, Plato believed that each stage of life needs a different type of education.
He was influenced by the Spartan system of education.
The main difference between Athenian education and the Spartan ones was that in Athens, education
was not state-controlled, while in Sparta it was, although it was done much more poorly.
Plato thought that education should be compulsory and it should start at an early age and that
education should be divided into 2 parts: elementary education and higher education.
The elementary education should last ten years and it should include physical education,
musical education, storytelling and poetry but also a bit of mathematics, history and
science.
From there, students should then pass an exam to go to higher education which would then
last for another ten years.
If the student does not pass, he can still become a businessman, a clerk, a worker or
a farmer and the like.
Therefore, higher education is not compulsory, the one that is compulsory is only the elementary
part from which the physical education, musical education, storytelling and poetry are the
most important.
Musical education that takes place in the earliest years of childhood helps in shaping
the children’s souls, making them more connected with their emotions, then there is education
through tales that happens at a later stage in the childhood, when children can learn
what means good or bad and can follow the model of a hero, then comes education through
poetry or by reciting the tales which can develop the sense of rhythm and harmony in
young people, as well as the speaking skills, and there is also gymnastic education as a
healthy brain cannot reside in an unhealthy body and according to the ancient Greeks,
gymnastics prevents many kinds of illnesses.
Therefore, in order for people to achieve easier fulfillment in life, a proper education,
in different stages and types, is mandatory.
No matter what education you have achieved in life so far, you can continue educating
yourself, read books, learn to play an instrument, start practicing a sport and so on.
For example, you can start your morning routine with some gymnastics and in the evenings read
great books and play a musical instrument or learn other types of skill or craft.
The sense of harmony you would get from such a structured life around self-development
would prevent you from indulging in damaging activities in life like wasting your life
binge watching streaming show, eating unhealthy junk food, partying too much and damaging
your body, or living a sedentary life, being immoral and hurting other people, or being
stuck in your job you hate because you don’t learn a new skill and so on.
Make your own curriculum for your self-education, create your own habits which can help you
feel happier and more fulfilled.
2) Have an active life In the words of Plato: “Lack of activity
destroys the good condition of every human being.”
Physical exercise was a very important part of Greek culture.
In ancient Greece, your level of physical fitness would have been the same with the
level of honor within your community.
For Plato, exercise was even more.
He described it as a beautiful activity of the soul, being able to reduce the impulsivity
and prevent people from being “pulled to the ground”.
Therefore, in some way, by doing physical activity, we show how much we care about our
soul, it is a way of fighting diseases and death and stay in touch more with our spiritual
side.
When we do sports, certain hormones are released, such as endorphins, often referred to as ‘The
Happiness Hormones’, making us feel happier, and more in control.
Plato thought that practicing sports can guarantee you three types of pleasures in life:
1) material pleasure - besides the fact that sports can help us make
money if we practice it in a professional way, sports has also an indirect material
pleasure as it generally makes us healthier, fitter and more physically attractive which
can help one attract better-looking mates; 2) honor and victory -
although there are many exceptions, it is often the case that a good looking person
who is also physically fit is awarded a higher status in society and finally,
3) the pleasure of knowledge and thought - Plato, like many other ancient Greek thinkers,
believed that there is a wisdom of the body.
Through practicing sports, we expand that wisdom, we train ourselves to be more patient,
to have more courage and Plato viewed courage as a virtue of reason.
Thus, practicing sports nourishes our capacity for reasoning and acquiring knowledge.
From all the three types of pleasures derived from sports, the last type of reward is regarded
by Plato as being the most valuable as it does not depend on the behavior and recognition
of others.
By practicing sports, you get into a competition with yourself.
For Plato, self-competition is the highest union between body and soul.
When you are in competition with yourself, you practice the art of self control, you
learn to know yourself better, to know your limits and find ways to overcome them.
When you practice sports, you learn how to overcome your limits, how to control your
urges and impulses, how to release the stress in your life and, ultimately, your chance
for a long and healthy life increases.
Therefore, to have a fulfilled and long life, never go more than a day without a workout,
without trying to overcome your physical limits.
3) Avoid anger at all costs According to Plato: “There are two things
a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”
In his work “Timaeus”, Plato explained how gods sculpted the body of men around their
immortal soul and, inside the body, they created another type of soul which is mortal and is
governed by impulses oscillating between extremes, extremes like
- Pleasure and pain; - Rashness and fear;
- Anger and hope.
Therefore, anger is an extreme and it is a terrible impulse which we must avoid.
We might feel a sort of pleasure when we are angry, when we feel the urge to get revenge
for ourselves from other people, but this pleasure does not last long and it is often
followed by feelings of guilt or shame.
In order to live a fulfilled life, we need to avoid the extremes.
It would be much better to keep a sense of calm and allow ourselves to think before reacting
with anger when bad things happen.
If you can do something about the situation, then just focus on the action, don’t be
angry and waste your energy in this destructive emotion.
If you cannot do anything about it, then simply make peace with the situation and move on.
For example imagine a moment that makes you really angry.
Perhaps, your best friend betrayed you, revealing some damaging information about you to your
family, information that you fought for many years to keep a secret.
When you hear such a betrayal, do not consume yourself with anger towards your friend, shouting
at them or getting revenge in some way.
It is better to take a step back, acknowledge that the fact is done, your family now knows
your secret and the only thing you can do is to explain yourself to them, and to start
trying to repair everything that can be repaired.
And, if others decide to stay angry at you because you kept that secret for so long,
just make peace with this fact and remain calm, perhaps in time they will change their
minds.
Remember that you cannot control how others react to you, but you can control how you
behave from now on.
In this kind of situation, you might decide to break up with that friend and be more careful
from now on to not confide in untrustworthy people.
A fulfilled life is composed of fulfilled days, in which you don’t allow yourself
to be triggered by destructive emotions such as anger.
4) Be content with little Plato teaches us that: “The greatest wealth
is to live content with little.”
Plato is often considered to be one of the main founding fathers of Western spirituality
and religion.
Nowadays the Western world is focusing on how to achieve more and faster and has started
to lose its anchor in Christianity.
Nevertheless, it is a good practice to go back to the ancient wisdom to discover what
mindset can really make us happy.
Not only Plato, but also many other ancient philosophers emphasized the importance of
knowing how to be content with little.
Most of us spend decades of our lives trying to achieve a certain position in our work,
status in our industry, or a certain financial level just to make others and/or ourselves
proud and content.
We may want to feel appreciated by others, envied by others, but unfortunately these
desires push us towards an unhealthy and unhappy lifestyle: we spend most of our time at work,
skipping social engagements with our friends and relatives, sometimes neglecting our personal
lives, living more sedentary lives, all being sacrificed to reach a distant goal which might
not even make us happy if we do achieve it!
Achieving a milestone makes us happy just for a moment.
Instead of running for prizes and fame, build a system of routines which can make you feel
happy and valuable for others at the same time.
You do not need to give up on the quest to achieve something significant in life, but
you do need to give up your unhealthy ambition to accumulate more and more and keep only
the ambition to build steadily, at a pace which allows you to take care of your health,
enjoy the view, and nurture your relationships.
5) Live honorably To quote Plato: “The man who is conscious
of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age.”
For Plato, happiness is deeply connected to ethics.
One needs to live an honorable life, a life of virtue if they want to achieve eudaimonia,
meaning to have a happy and fulfilling life.
The word eudaimonia is sometimes attributed to Plato, while other scholars say that his
followers were the ones who brought up the concept.
Nevertheless, Plato’s teachings were the base for the concept of eudaimonia as being
connected to having a life of virtue.
In his work, “The Republic”, Plato made the case against the idea that living virtuously
is actually preventing you from achieving eudaimonia.
One of the characters of “The Republic”, the sophist Thrasymachus said that if eudaimonia
is to be achieved through the satisfaction of desire, whereas being just or acting justly
requires suppression of desire, then it is not in the interests of a strong man to act
according to the dictates of conventional morality.
Plato’s argument against this premise is that being virtuous is a harmonious state
of the soul and if we lose this state, we cannot be happy.
When you know that all of your actions were sincere and you took into account both your
happiness and the happiness of others in any decision, you can sleep well at night.
However, if you did something bad which harmed other people, you know that those people will
come after you, that you will not be able to face them as before without a feeling of
guilt and, therefore, you would not be able to sleep well at night.
To have a truly fulfilling life, you need to live in harmony with other people and this
requires for you to respect the social contract you have with society and that society is
composed of all the people around you.
To be happy and have a harmonious life, always do the right thing, do not break the law,
be honest, and do not betray the people around you.
6) Be in charge of your own happiness As we learn from Plato: “The man who makes
everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself and not upon other men, has adopted
the very best plan for living happily.”
As for his teacher, Socrates, happiness is for Plato a form of personal growth.
Happiness can be assured if you stop expecting other people to make you happy, but rather
make your own happiness.
Plato believed that only that type of man who is in charge of his own happiness has
a truly manly character and wisdom.
Plato’s life is a great example of that: he lived a long life, surrounded by great
teachers such as Socrates and great students such as Aristotle, he was recognized for all
his achievements by Athenian society.
He is one of the first philosophers who came up with a rigorous philosophical system, laid
down in writings, and he is the founder of one of the earliest known organized schools
in Western Civilization - the Academia.
He was a man of great initiatives, being a first in many.
He didn’t expect others to come to him and help him, but rather he relied on himself
and did in action most of the things he planned to do.
As Plato, we should not complain of unhappiness, waiting for other people to make us happy.
If your happiness means to have success in your career and a happy family life, do not
expect others to guarantee that for you.
In your career, do not wait to get promoted, but rather learn new skills every day, increase
your performance and, if your boss does not notice you, find another company, and do not
wait for anybody.
In your personal life, if you feel you don’t have enough happiness in your relationship,
try to change your behavior, come up with pleasant surprises, cook a nice dinner, take
your partner to a new place in town or give them a thoughtful gift.
If what you do is not enough, have a discussion and try to find the reason, and try to fix
the issue.
Take a proactive attitude in all the sectors of your life and remember that life is too
short and you need to make your happiness a priority.
7) Find inspiration in music Plato considers that: “Music gives soul
to the universe and wings to the mind.”
Music was everywhere in ancient Greece, it was an essential part of ancient Greek culture,
being present in religious festivals, marriage and funeral rites, and banquet gatherings.
Many great thinkers of ancient Greece saw a connection between music and mathematics,
music reflecting the perfect order of the cosmos and of the human soul.
For Plato as well, music was not just a tool for entertaining.
He emphasized that the rhythm and the harmony we experience through music can make us reach
a state of grace, of divine peace - thus, music has a moral quality, connecting the
people in a community when it is shared.
We would lose so much in life if we don’t give music enough of our time.
Most of us have some knowledge of how beneficial music is, from how children can improve their
learning abilities through music therapy to how soothing it is to listen to sad songs
when our heart is broken, or how helpful music is for making introverts open up to the world,
particularly children.
Researchers proved that music gives us a boost of oxytocin, it has the power of increasing
bonding and trust between people and that is why it has such a powerful effect on our
emotions.
Thus, we should make sure to include a few minutes of music every day, be it for boosting
our energy with some happy music, or soothing ourselves when we feel sad, dancing with our
partner to our favorite song or just enjoying ourselves with some background music while
we prepare some reports for work.
A day without music is a day wasted.
8) Find your soulmate Plato believed that: “Every heart sings
a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Those who wish to sing always find a song.
At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
Plato is the most famous philosopher regarding the theory of the soulmate.
In his work “Symposium”, the character Aristophanes described how at the beginning
there were only androgynes and Zeus split them in half and, since then, we humans are
continuously looking to find our other half.
The wound caused by Zeus makes us seek love.
The loving relationships we have with other people can make us feel less suffering, but
only when we find our real half can we be whole again and we can put an end to our suffering.
Therefore, to have a fulfilled life, it is important to give enough importance to our
personal life, to invest effort into meeting new people and to never stop seeking love
until we find the right partner.
The more happiness and peace you have and the more accepted you feel in the relationship
you have, the more sure you can be that this is the right partner for you.
Although you might go through some difficult times together, if that sense of peace and
wholeness is still there, then the relationship is worth fighting for.
A real fulfillment in life cannot exist without having our soulmate beside us.
9) Care about the happiness of others In our final quote from Plato for this video,
he says: “In caring for the happiness of others, we find our own.”
Plato, like many other ancient philosophers, linked happiness with being moral.
Thus, fulfillment in life, eudaimonia, has a strong root in being virtuous and in living
an honorable life.
Although in many regards, Plato considered happiness as a self-sufficient state, everyone
being responsible to create his or her own happiness, he was also aware of the different
ways in which we can boost the feeling of being happy.
One of these ways is to care for the happiness of others.
Thus, we should not expect others to make us happy, but we need to help others be happy
in order for us to be happy.
Material pleasures such as gadgets, jewellery, apartments, cars and clothes, or physical
pleasures such as sexual pleasure and eating good food have a limited influence on our
real happiness.
The pleasures of the body are limited and real happiness should include striving to
contribute to the common good of society.
Only when we give contributions in helping others, making them happier, do we feel real
life satisfaction.
For example, if you feel anxious at your workplace because you feel that your performance is
not the same as your colleagues, instead of worrying about your lack of skills, you should
start asking yourself how you can you best contribute to the team, maybe you can come
up with new ways to help your colleagues, even if it is not technically part of your
responsibilities, you can come up with new methods to approach a certain problem that
a colleague is facing.
The more you move the focus from satisfying your personal goals to helping your team,
the more appreciated you would be and more fulfilled you would feel.
If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to check out our full philosophies for life
playlist and for more videos to help you find success and happiness using ancient philosophical
wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks so much for watching.