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

by Eric Weiner

Mine is a body at rest but not a rested body.

life’s unalloyed pleasures.

are at our most vulnerable when we wake, for that is when the memory of who we are, and how we got here, returns.

bearded and muscular, astride a horse. His eyes possess the quiet power of someone with nothing to prove. Marcus

But Marcus (we’re on a first-name basis) was not a morning person. He lingered in bed, doing most of his work in the afternoon, after a siesta.

Marcus, thanks to his elite background, had been homeschooled.

If anything, affluence conspires with the duvet to detain you in the horizontal position.

“Late Afternoon in America.” It was his promise of “Morning in America” that catapulted him to the White House. Likewise, great ideas don’t dusk on us. They dawn on us.

The Hangover Part III. A

mornings are the border town of consciousness.

Tijuana

Simone de Beauvoir,

Marcus, alas, had no such luxury: he was born some 1,200 years before the invention of coffee.

metaphysical

claptrap.

contingent),

Let’s pull back the comforter and examine it. On one level, we’re asking can I get out of bed.

crucially, should you get out of bed.

David Hume

He divided any inquiry into two parts: an “is”...

moral “ought” never follows directly from a factual “is.” (That’s

Maybe we don’t want better blood flow and increased earning potential.

The stay-in-bed camp makes a strong case. It is warm and safe in bed, not womblike but close. Life is good, and no less a philosopher than Aristotle said the good life was all that mattered. Conversely, it is cold out there. Bad things happen out there. Wars. Pandemics. Easy-listening music.

Yet life out there beckons. We have precious little time on this planet.

Great Bed Question remains essentially unchanged.

Faustina bore at least thirteen. Fewer than half survived childhood. Marcus was

Why take time from his busy schedule to read the classics and ponder life’s imponderables? Marcus’s

Bookish, he’d rather read than go to the circus. This tendency put him in

pallium,

The Romans viewed Greek philosophy the way most of us view opera: something worthy and beautiful, and we really should go more often, but it’s so darned difficult to follow and, besides, who has time? Romans liked the idea of philosophy more than actual philosophy. This

he decreed that all tightrope walkers, often young boys, should henceforth perform over thick, spongy mattresses.

“his constant strivings to curb his natural pessimism.”

For we wannabe optimists, a half-empty glass is better than no glass at all, or one that has shattered into a hundred slivers and pierced a major artery. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Meditations is unlike any book I’ve read. It is not really a book at all. It is an exhortation. A compilation of reminders and pep talks.

man in the world confesses to insomnia and panic attacks and to his, at best, perfunctory performance as a lover. (“He

This is philosophy as therapy, with Marcus playing the role of both therapist and patient.

oenology.

“Enough of this wretched whining, monkey life.… You could be good today. But instead you chose tomorrow.”

“When I laze in bed, as I am now, I am thinking of only myself.”

“Duty” not “obligation.” There is a difference. Duty comes from inside, obligation from outside.

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.’ ” Not as a Stoic or an emperor, or even as a Roman, but as a human being.

Each one of our thoughts is connected to the next like boxcars on a freight train. They

my anxieties take a holiday.

great discoveries and personal breakthroughs began with those two words: I wonder.

The Heart of Philosophy, by Jacob Needleman. I say odd because at the time I didn’t know philosophy had a heart.

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

Jacob thinks before speaking and,

We might grapple with questions. We do not experience questions. Not even in California.

inscrutable,

Rahasyamaya