The Greeks on The Good Life.

The Greeks seamlessly had it all figured out. When they weren't fighting and going to war, they gave us a lot of amenities or provided the perfect blueprint. 

But perhaps the biggest good that the Greeks have done for the modern world is from its philosophers. When the most famous names in the thinking world, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle are all from Greece, and then you have Pythagoras, Zeno, and Emicrious;  there is no doubt that they laid their firmest foundation for modern thinking and knowledge.

The greatest of it all was how the Greeks told us to live. And for a nation that used to fight on the smallest of occasions, it's ironic that the Greeks thought so much about how to live a good life. 

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Socrates emphasized heavily on the fact that in order to live a good, fulfilled life is to live a virtuous and meaningful life. He believed that the good life of a person is one that is led by strong beliefs, values, and virtue – he was big on ethics, you can call him the morality police of the Greeks. He believed that a human being must live in accordance with the world around him, that there must be a fulfilled balance between life, that envy was the destroyer of the soul, and that before anyone should judge another, you must look at yourself. Perhaps the harshest of extremes that he has ever gone to is when he told Plato – who was also a member of the Ancient Greece Morality Police – that it is better to suffer wrong than to commit wrong. He firmly believed that it held better honour and a more moral and valuable way of living was to suffer at the hands of injustice, rather than be the hand that was committing the injustice. 

Where Socrates saw the Good Life as a moral and virtuous entity, Plato thought of it as the striving for knowledge, developing virtual traits, seeking wisdom that goes beyond superficial appearance and selfish needs, and when an individual's morals align with their actions. 

A virtuous person is someone who possesses four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. 

Plato firmly believed that people were born to search for knowledge and try to attain it, and that that is what made us into people who lived good, virtuous lives. If you don't understand the world around you, you don't understand yourself, and what happy and good is a person if they don't know who they are?

They were also developing virtue traits. And this wasn't just being a good person, Plato believes that this was also developing the need to excel in life. He saw it as developing self-discipline, awareness, and improvement. He believed that people should focus more on the internal factor of living a good life rather than the external factors and that the inherent focus should be on how they work with their own self. 

And perhaps my favourite, he believed that you should seek wisdom beyond appearance. In his allegory of the cave, he shows that people are trapped in appearance that until they try and attempt to break free of these appearances and restraints they will be trapped in the prison of ignorance, only seeing what they are shown. Plato’s Good Life emphasised questioning your own knowledge, your own beliefs, and improving your own self. The allegory of the cave is one of his most influential pieces of work, it shows people trapped inside a cave, only allowed to look at shadows that their captors allow them to see. Then one day, a prisoner breaks free and ventures out into the open, the sun blinding his eye and the bright colours burning his consciousness. Yet, as he continues, he learns about the truths of the world. He continues despite the pain and difficulty and finds himself enlightened, he views the world beyond the appearance that he was shown his entire life and acquires greater knowledge. Upon his return to the cave, he attempts to tell his fellow prisoners about what he saw and what lies ahead, but they dismiss him, calling him a madman and refusing to seek what he saw. This is what Plato believes is the reality of the world. That we are all trapped within this cave, and that we will not live a good, fulfilled life until we break free of the cave and gain knowledge that goes beyond the appearances that we see. 

Eudaimonia

Aristotle viewed the good life quite objectively; people who are living that good life have the virtues that he deems \moral and good. The good life is the life that exercises the rational facilities. It is one where an individual is satisfied and happy, one where they have reached eudaimonia. The way he looks at it is objective, that a good life is defined by positive experiences and morality. He agrees that happiness is important, but too much happiness is a bad habit.

He believed that Eudaimonia was living well, and favoured by the gods. Eudaimonia was the ultimate happiness that a man could achieve, having fulfilled his life living as a virtuous and moral entity. 

Serene Hedonism 

Epicureas believed that people, in order to achieve tranquility and live a good life must abstain from bodily desires, have a sense of community, and friendship, live a temperate life, have moderation in all things, and live a virtuous life. 

The Greeks really loved the virtues. 

He believed that in order to be happy, there should be tranquility, ataraxia (freedom from fear), and aponia (absence of bodily pain). He believed that in order to live the Good Life, people should let go of their fear, and should stop being in constant stress of their future. He also believed that people should be minimal, that they should focus on their friendships with others, and that they should have a sense of community; living in serene harmony. 

The Greeks, in it all, believed that the real good life was a moral life. They emphasised all the moral values and virtuous traits that a human could possess, that in order to live a good life they must be living a life that is fair and just and that they should stray far away from bad or negative values. That a good life involved possessing all the cardinal values and that they were implemented. They believed in self-improvement and the need to become a better version of yourself, looking on the inside as opposed to outside appearances. They believed that a fulfilled life was one in which you sought knowledge and actively attempted to improve yourself as a person.