The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

by Eric Weiner

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” Knowledge knows. Wisdom sees.

Knowledge is something you possess. Wisdom is something you do. It is a skill and, like all skills, one you can learn. But it requires effort. Expecting to acquire wisdom by luck is like expecting to learn to play the violin by luck.

good philosophers never really die; they live on in the minds of others. Wisdom is portable. It transcends space and time, and is never obsolete.

It was not the meaning of life that interested them but leading meaningful lives.

Our demons do not haunt us at nighttime. They strike in the morning. We are at our most vulnerable when we wake, for that is when the memory of who we are, and how we got here, returns.

Mornings set the tone for the day. Bad days follow bad mornings.

If you don’t like your life, chances are you don’t like your mornings.

all philosophy begins with an awareness of our weakness.

Duty comes from inside, obligation from outside. When we act out of a sense of duty, we do so voluntarily to lift ourselves, and others, higher. When we act out of obligation, we do so to shield ourselves, and only ourselves, from repercussions.

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work—as a human being.’ ”

Feelings travel in trains, too. My periodic bouts of melancholia seem as if they come from nowhere, but when I stop and investigate their origin, I discover a hidden causality. My sadness was triggered by a prior thought or feeling, which was triggered by a prior one, which was triggered by something my mother said in 1982. Feelings, like thoughts, never come out of the blue. There’s always a locomotive pulling them along.

“Our culture has generally tended to solve its problems without experiencing its questions.”

The King of the Question. Socrates didn’t invent the question, but he altered the way we ask them and, in turn, the answers they yield. You think and act differently because of Socrates, even if you know nothing about him.

Philosophy is all about questioning assumptions, rocking the boat.

For Socrates, the worst kind of ignorance was the kind that masquerades as knowledge. Better a wide and honest ignorance than a narrow and suspect knowledge.

“Every question is a cry to understand the world,”

Socrates was interested in “how” questions. How can I lead a happier, more meaningful life? How can I practice justice? How can I know myself?

Questions aren’t one-way; they move in (at least) two directions. They seek meaning, and convey it, too. Asking a friend the right question at the right time is an act of compassion, of love.

As Voltaire said, the best judge of a person is not the answers they give but the questions they ask.

For Socrates, all misdeeds, such as bad parenting, are committed not out of malice but ignorance. If we understood the ramification of our missteps—not only for our children but for ourselves, too—we wouldn’t commit them.

A serious question steps into uncharted waters. A serious question carries risk, like striking a match in a dark room. You don’t know what you’ll find when the room illuminates—monsters or miracles—but you strike the match anyway.

“Our culture has no place where the ultimate questions are honored as questions. Every institution and social form we have is devoted either to solving problems or providing pleasure,”

Solving a problem before you experience it is like trying to cook a meal before buying groceries. Yet so often we reach for the quickest solution, or the most expedient pleasure. Anything to avoid sitting with our ignorance.

The child, like Socrates, unmasks our ignorance, and while that may be beneficial in the long run, in the short run it’s annoying. “If you do not annoy anyone, you are not a philosopher,” says Peter Kreeft.

Ridicule is the price of wisdom.

A good question prompts not only a search for answers but a reevaluation of the search itself. A good question elicits not a clever reply but no reply at all.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates famously said.

The more we try to seize happiness the more it slips from our grasp. Happiness is a by-product, never an objective. It’s an unexpected windfall from a life lived well.

“All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.”

Rousseau’s philosophy can be summed up in four words: nature good, society bad.

For most of European history, people considered mountains barbaric; no sane person would voluntarily travel to one. Only in the eighteenth century did they become objects of admiration.

Walking requires none of the trappings of civilization: no domesticated animals, no carriages, no roads. The walker is free, unencumbered. Pure amour-de-soi.

The mind thrives at three miles per hour, the speed of a moderately paced walk. Freed of the pettiness of the office, the tyranny of expectations, it roams, and when the mind roams, unexpected and wonderful things happen. Not always, but more often than you’d think. Walking supplies just the right balance of stimulation and repose, exertion and idleness.

“all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”

We walk to forget, if only momentarily, a world that is “too much with us,” as William Wordsworth, another fine walker, put it.

The Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel described the Sabbath as a “sanctuary in time.” Walking is a sanctuary in motion. The peace we experience with each step adheres, and it conveys. Portable serenity.

Wilderness exists out there. Wildness resides inside us. Wildness is strong and willful.

For Thoreau, seeing and feeling were intertwined. He couldn’t see something if he didn’t feel it. How he felt determined not only how he saw but what he saw.

Seeing is deliberate. It’s always a choice, even if we don’t realize it. Proper seeing, says Thoreau, requires “a separate intention of the eye.” It’s all about the angles. No one played them better than Thoreau. Change your perspective and you change not only how you see but what you see. “From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.”

Not only does who we are determine what we see but what we see determines who we are. As the Vedas say, “What you see, you become.”

If you don’t see beauty, create some. Use your imagination. Heighten your senses.

Listening is an act of compassion, of love.

an Idealist is not someone with high ideals. It is someone who believes that everything we experience is a mental representation of the world, not the world itself. Physical objects only exist when we perceive them.

the only fate worse than being criticized is being ignored.

Anything that increases desire increases suffering. Anything that reduces desire—reduces willing, as Schopenhauer puts it—alleviates suffering. When we behold a work of art, we are not craving anything. This is why pornography is not art.

Sadness by itself isn’t painful. It is sadness about something that hurts. This is why we enjoy watching a tearjerker or listening to a Leonard Cohen song. Less invested in the drama, we experience the emotion itself, unmoored, and can appreciate the beauty in sadness.

We confuse data with information, information with knowledge, and knowledge with wisdom.

the Internet is Schopenhauer’s Will made manifest in the digital age. Like the Will, the Internet is omnipresent, and purposeless. It is always striving, never sated. It devours everything, including our most precious resource: time. It offers the illusion of happiness but delivers only suffering.

“Let nothing be done in your life, which will cause you fear if it becomes known to your neighbor,”

He considered pleasure the highest good. Everything else—fame, money, and even virtue—mattered only to the extent they furthered pleasure.