Plato’s Good Life

Alfred North Whitehead said that philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived from around 428 BC to 347 BC. One of his great contributions was his theory on the good life. To live a good life, he believed, we must cultivate virtue, because once we are virtuous, we have the courage to act on our natural desire for justice and goodness. Moreover, to live a good life includes living in harmony with our inner nature and to understand the nature of reality.

When Plato was once asked how to live a good life, he answered with the simple statement “know yourself”. I would add, to live in the Ecocene, we also have to know ourselves as relation: how is our relationship to the tree in our backyard, to our neighbour, to the mosquito in our room?