The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

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What is philosophy for?

7 stops

Six thinkers from Athens, China, India and Rome who saw philosophy as a way of living better, not just a set of theories, and how their answers differ.

Philosophy is often taught today as a set of puzzles to be solved. Many of its founders saw it differently: as a discipline for living better, practised every day.

This path visits six of them, in Athens, China, India and Rome, and ends with the theme that sets their answers side by side. Read each stop’s page, or just the note here, and ask yourself which answer persuades you.

The path

  1. Socrates

    c. 470 – 399 BCE · Western

    Begin in Athens, with a man who wrote nothing. Socrates questioned his fellow citizens about courage, reverence and how to live, and told the jury at his trial that “the unexamined life is not worth living”.

  2. Confucius

    c. 551 – c. 479 BCE · Chinese

    Earlier still, in China, Confucius taught that social harmony depends on the moral cultivation of individuals, above all of those who govern, through benevolence (ren), ritual and respect within the family.

  3. The Buddha

    fl. 465–435 BCE · Indian

    In India, the Buddha taught that suffering arises from craving, rooted in ignorance of how things are, and that it can be ended. His Four Noble Truths name the suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path to it.

  4. Epicurus

    341–270 BCE · Western

    Back in Greece, Epicurus argued that the goal of life is pleasure, understood as freedom from pain and mental disturbance, and that the fear of death rests on a mistake.

  5. Seneca

    c. 1 BCE – 65 CE · Western

    For the Roman Stoic Seneca, philosophy was a way of healing the soul. His letters ask readers to examine their fears, their ambitions and how they spend their time, and teach that virtue is the only good.

  6. Zhuangzi

    fl. 350–300 BCE · Chinese

    Zhuangzi asked how we can be sure our own point of view is the right one. His stories, like the butterfly dream, loosen fixed perspectives and celebrate a spontaneous, free-flowing way of life.

  7. The good life

    Theme

    The theme of the good life sets these answers beside others from across the timeline: virtue, tranquil pleasure, harmony with nature or an end to suffering.

For discussion

  1. Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living". Is that true, and what would examining your own life involve?
  2. Epicurus says death is nothing to us. Does his argument remove the fear of dying, or only the fear of being dead?
  3. The Buddha and Seneca both treat philosophy as a cure. What does each think is wrong with us, and do they agree on the remedy?
  4. Which of these answers to "How should I live?" would be hardest to put into practice, and why?

Terms on this page

ren
Humaneness or benevolence (仁), the cardinal Confucian virtue. Cheng Hao treated it as the whole of human nature, by which a person forms one body with all things and feels their pain as their own.

All terms in the glossary

Sources

  1. Debra Nails and S. Sara Monoson, Socrates, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  2. Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Confucius, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  3. Mark Siderits, Buddha, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  4. David Konstan, Epicurus, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  5. Katja Vogt, Seneca, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  6. Chad Hansen, Zhuangzi, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  7. Roger Crisp, Well-Being, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy