How to live your best life: ideas from history’s greatest philosophers, from Socrates and Aristotle to René Descartes, Jean-Paul Sartre and Lao Tzu
- Modern philosopher Peter Cave explains the arguments of seven of history’s most famous and sheds light on their ideas for living life to the full
- Lao Tzu accepted that what will be will be; Aristotle urged to find a ‘happy mean’; while Schopenhauer believed that we should rid ourselves of desires
Philosophy is often thought of as being detached from “real life”. The greatest philosophers, though, sought to grasp the nature of human beings and their place in the universe, and gave guidance on how best to live one’s life to the fullest.
In his 2023 book How to Think Like a Philosopher: Scholars, Dreamers and Sages Who Can Teach Us How to Live, modern philosopher Peter Cave sets out the key arguments of the major philosophers, as well as those of thinkers such as writer Samuel Beckett.
Cave – who is based in London in the UK and read philosophy at University College London and King’s College Cambridge – shows what we can learn from their theories, and also from some quirky details about their lives.
Cave spoke with the Post about some of the philosophers he writes about in his book.
1. Lao Tzu (born circa 6th century BC)
A Chinese master philosopher and the father of Taoism, Lao Tzu seems to accept that the reason for our existence will forever remain a mystery and we should not expect to find the answers to life’s big questions. This is a form of “quietism”, an acceptance of the way that things are.
