Do We Truly Know What's Best For Us? Socrates Says No.
An Exploration of Socrates' Powerful Weighing Analogy
We make a variety of decisions on a daily basis.
As we make these decisions however, do we truly know what’s in our best interest? Many of us, myself included, think that we know what’s ‘good’ for us, but as this post will go on to illustrate, this isn’t always the case. In today’s post, with a little help from Socrates, we’ll be exploring how the vast majority of us are actually unable to effectively measure ‘pleasure’ against ‘pain’ or ‘good’ against ‘bad’. Let’s dive in.
The platonic dialogue that we’ll be discussing today had a profound impact on how I define what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for me. On a personal level, it highlighted the fact that many of the things that I consider to be ‘pleasurable’ are actually forms of pain in disguise. You’ll understand why in a second.
A quick announcement: I recently started an account on X (formerly Twitter) as another way to stay connected with all of you and share quotes from my favourite philosophers. If you use the platform, feel free to check ou…