Philosophy for Life summary

Now that we understand the commonalities of ancient philosophy and CBT, let’s look at some of the main differences.

Whereas CBT focuses on short-term therapy, ancient philosophy is a lifelong discipline to be practiced every day.

In antiquity everyone faced hardships in life. But the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics were the first people to turn the overcoming of hardship into a philosophy: Stoicism.

And we’re not talking about adversities like that time your hamster died: the hardships encountered by famous Stoics ranged from the agonies of slavery to the challenges of running an empire.

A life of pleasure spent among good friends – don’t we all dream of that? The ancient Greek Epicurus aimed to make this real.

Epicurus believed in a lifestyle of hedonism and communal living – but unlike the common misconception about his philosophy, Epicurean hedonism was rational.

Have you ever seen the photos of the Earth from space? Thousands of years ago the Pythagoreans were the first to try to see their lives from a larger viewpoint that made their own lives seem short and insignificant.

From this “View from Above,” we can put our life into its true perspective and see that it consists only of small stuff.

Remember that friend, or parent, or superstar you always looked up to? How you wanted to dress like them, talk like them, be like them? The ancient philosophers already knew how much we are influenced by our role models and therefore studied great lives to elevate their own.

And since then, modern science has confirmed that we learn in a great part through imitation.

Most of us behave as if we have forgotten why we exist and mindlessly trudge through our day without reflecting: what for?

But Aristotle, the student of Plato, had a clear idea: humans are made to be happy.

Ideally, every government has the well-being of their citizens at heart. And nowadays some governments are even integrating principles of CBT into their institutions.

For example, the United Kingdom has invested £500 million into training 6,000 new CBT therapists, and most children in UK schools now follow a class in Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning, which uses techniques from CBT to develop emotional intelligence.

The key message in this book:

Self-development is about more than just reading a few books (or blinks) on the topic. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers show us it is a way of life – a daily practice – which involves asking the difficult questions of how we should live, both as individuals and as a society.