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This week I'm going waaay back, 2,400 years to ancient Athens, to hang out with one of the fathers of Western philosophy and, in my book, the original life coach: Socrates. I share a quick bio of this fascinating Maester, from his days walking barefoot on ice as a soldier to calling himself a "midwife of ideas." Then we dig into his idea of a healthy soul. My hope is that you walk away seeing that the body and the soul are on the same team, and that you are worth caring for, inside and out.

Quote of the Week

"You, my friend, — a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, — are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? … For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private."
— Socrates, in Plato's Apology (translated by Benjamin Jowett)

Citations:

• Plato, Apology, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 20e–23b (the Oracle at Delphi) and 29d–30b (quote of the week)
• Plato, Charmides, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 155e–157c (the headache cure and treating the whole person)
• Plato, Republic, Book IV, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 427e–444e (the four virtues, the three-part soul, and justice as inner harmony)
• Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 279b–c (Socrates' closing prayer)
• Plato, Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 220a–b (barefoot on the ice at Potidaea)
• Plato, Theaetetus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 149a–151d (Socrates as "midwife" of ideas)
• Xenophon, Memorabilia, trans. E. C. Marchant, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), 1.2.4 (care of the body), 1.3.5–6 (moderate eating and hunger as sauce), and 3.12 (Epigenes)
• Xenophon, Symposium, trans. O. J. Todd, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), 2.17–19 (Socrates dancing for exercise)
• Xenophon, Apology of Socrates, trans. O. J. Todd, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), 14 (Xenophon's version of the Oracle story)

Let’s go, let’s get it done.

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