Living a Good Life: Advice on Virtue, Love, and Action from the Ancient Greek Masters

Natural Health, Jan-Feb, 1998 by J.K. Tidmore

The word "factoid" has entered the language to mean a piece of more or less useless information detached from its context and presented for its entertainment value. Reading this book suggests that there is also a need to invent the word "quotoid," meaning a quote removed from any meaningful context and presented for no value whatsoever. Living a Good Life is a collection of such "quotoids," mostly from what might be thought of as the Big Five of Classical Greek Philosophy -- Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, and Aristotle -- and padded out to minimal book length with an additional thirty pages of quotes from non-Greek sources that seem to be included here simply because they got pulled in by the undertow.

It's likely that this book or any such book of factoids or quotoids is not intended to be read so much as it is intended to simply be dipped into now and then, while waiting for something else to happen. The problem with this concept of "dipping into" books rather than reading them, of surfing books in the same way we might surf the Internet or surf channels during a dull night of TV, is that it is completely antithetical to what these philosophers were about.

The nature of Classical Greek thought -- and probably the nature of all meaningful thought -- is that it delves into subjects, gets beneath their surfaces, explores contradictory lines of reasoning and tests competing ideas. It is ultimately not about pat little answers but about complex questions and about the means with which these questions can (and cannot) be cracked open. By removing all the depth and complexity, all the beautiful logical structures these men spent their lives creating, the quotoid approach removes everything that is important about what these men taught. Most of what remains is either stupefyingly obvious, as in "There is no taking back something you have already said or done, so be wary before that" (Pythagoras), or bafflingly meaningless, as in "How ugly are the decorations of decorators, though they imitate beautiful form! Yet sons neglect to emulate their worthy fathers!" (Socrates). Reduced to such sound bites the Big Five come across not like the great minds that they were but like contestants on some Dadaist TV game show.

Anyone who mistakes this for philosophy is in big, big trouble.