Meet the philosopher with secrets to becoming a better person in 2023

IF you’re struggling to keep those New Year resolutions for 2023, all those promises about being better, kinder, wiser, then start thinking like an ancient Greek from 400BC.

That is the advice from one of the world’s most renowned philosophers, Professor Massimo Pigliucci. He is on a mission to teach us to emulate Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – philosophers seen as among the wisest people who ever lived.

This is why he has written his new book, How To Be Good – a template for living a better life based on the wisdom of the ancients.

The book isn’t some wishy-washy self-help manual. Pigliucci’s book is an assault on the way we live our lives in the 21st century, a time when kindness and intelligence have been trampled by cruelty, selfishness and a rejection of fact.

The Herald on Sunday caught up with Pigliucci – a polymath who is not just a philosopher but also an esteemed evolutionary biologist specialising in genetics – in New York. His new book is currently being showered with praise from critics around the world.

Virtue

SO, can we actually learn to be “virtuous”? Yes, says Pigliucci, and he takes us straight back to Socrates to prove it. It’s easy to think virtue is unteachable, he says, as we never see anyone teaching it.

The same was true in Socrates’ time which is why the ancient Athenian started teaching “goodness” in the first place. But Socrates – and his modern-day disciple Pigliucci – have no doubt that virtue can indeed be learned. Not like maths or psychics, but like learning a language or musical instrument.

First, like music, you need a smidgen of theory. In other words: what does “being good” really mean. The four ancient values of what it means to be virtuous haven’t changed.

They are: prudence, which doesn’t mean being cautious with money but rather wise enough to do the right thing – it’s what the ancient Greeks called “phronesis”; justice, which means treating people fairly; fortitude, or being courageous enough to do the right and just thing; and temperance, which isn’t about “Dry January” but living a life of balance and moderation.

Once you have some theory, you need a teacher. That’s where Pigliucci comes in – not only is he out there teaching what it means to be good, but he wants to see philosophy taught in schools so children learn how to live better lives. Plato set up his famous Academy for that very reason.

“But mostly,” Pigliucci says, “you need practice.” Like learning an instrument, you start with easy scales then move to more complex tunes.

Happiness

TO explain “what practising virtue means”, Pigliucci turns to the ancient Roman stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus. Stoicism, incidentally, doesn’t simply mean suffering hardship. In its original sense it meant practising virtue as the path to “eudaimonia” or happiness.

Live ethically and you’ll live happily – that’s stoicism. Rufus said dinnertime was a good moment to practise one of those four cardinal virtues: temperance. “Pay attention to what you’re eating,” says Pigliucci.

How fast you eat, how slow, how much. Work out what you really need – then stop. “You’re observing your behaviour and altering it,” Pigliucci adds.

Today, we would call that “mindfulness” though the term is cloaked in self-help mumbo jumbo. When Pigliucci says “mindfulness”, he simply means engaging your brain to make the right choices to live a decent life.

Maybe you feel you should be more generous. Well, fill your pockets with change and give money to the first homeless person you meet each day. “No questions asked,” Pigliucci says.

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Once you start doing simple things better – eating more sensibly, giving what you can to the poor – “virtue” becomes habit. “It’s like learning to drive. Initially you must pay attention to everything, but after a while it’s automatic. That’s how virtue is taught.”

Attention

THESE ancient ideas don’t need massively updated for the 21st century, Pigliucci says, as the Athens of Socrates wasn’t that different to life today. They had bad rulers, wobbly democracy, boastful idiots, a society where everyone thinks they know everything, and war, poverty and cruelty abounded.

Neither the ancient nor modern world is “friendly” to ideas like mindfulness or virtue. Seneca, the stoic philosopher, complained to friends that Rome was so distracting he couldn’t keep his attention on his work. “Sounds familiar,” Pigliucci adds.

For many, these ancient values are already in everyday use without them knowing. Anyone who has had cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety, depression, eating disorders, or addiction is getting a taste of ancient wisdom. “Stoicism was the major inspiration behind CBT,” Pigliucci says, “which is one of the most successful evidence-based psychotherapies practised today.”

So ancient philosophers, he explains, were “psychologists before psychology”, adding: “They observed human behaviour and came up with techniques to improve themselves. Many techniques have lasted the test of time.”

Anxiety

MINDFULNESS, for example, is what the ancients called “prosoche”, says Pigliucci. “It’s paying attention to the here and now as opposed to being distracted by thoughts of the past and regrets, or anxiety about the future. Your agency is maximised right here, right now. You cannot change the past. It’s done. You can learn from the past – but then move on. Regret is useless.

“It’s the same with the future. It’s okay to plan for the future but that means acting right here, right now as opposed to engaging in anxious thoughts about the future.”

It’s easier said than done, Pigliucci admits. “I can explain it to you in a few minutes, but then it takes practice.” One useful technique that CBT psychologists and the ancients recommend to achieve a state of prosoche or mindfulness is “journaling”, sitting down at day’s end and writing three sentences in your notebook: what I did wrong, what I did right, and what I could have done better.

Don’t spend ages on it, Pigliucci advises, and write in the second person – “you” – rather than the first person, “I”. That creates distance – you’ll be less emotional and more analytical and therefore learn more. Over time, you’ll see the same mistakes occur and learn to address them before they happen.

So, if every day you note how you get cross with colleagues, you will eventually learn to behave better. “If your mind is prepared, if you know ahead of time how you’ll react, then you’re going to handle the situation much better. You prepare yourself to live better.”

Improve

IT IS straight from Socrates’ famous quote: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” You must know yourself to improve.

The key is to start teaching children these tips on living better lives. The young mind is much more plastic and capable of change than the older mind, and it’s hard, evidently, to learn how to stop being selfish and greedy. Think of how easy it is for children to learn new languages compared to someone in midlife. “That doesn’t mean older people cannot learn, but it becomes more difficult,” Pigliucci says.

Yet we don’t teach “virtue” in schools. Modern parents aren’t just too busy and absent to fully teach children how to be good – crucially they also haven’t been taught the rudiments of what living virtuously really means. You can’t teach something unless you have learned it yourself. Perhaps the religious believe churches can teach virtue.

However, given the history of religion, it’s understandable why Pigliucci is an atheist and instead puts his hopes in getting philosophy into classrooms. There is no “us and them” in philosophy, there is in religion.

Enlightenment

PIGLIUCCI turns to the recent acclaimed documentary Young Plato about a school in post-Troubles Belfast which started teaching philosophy. It showed how kids could break the cycle of religious hatred when they were taught the meaning of being good – of how to empathise.

“We’ve a documentary showing how it can be done,” says Pigliucci, “so why don’t we do that in every damn school in the world?” Surely, Scotland – the home of the Enlightenment – could lead the way?

So, why are there no philosophy classes in schools? Partly it is ingrained anti-intellectualism in countries like America and Britain, says Pigliucci. But there is also clearly a political focus on practical subjects which “make money” like business studies or technology. Note Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s recent focus on compulsory maths until the age of 18. Yet by focusing on the material, we end up with the world we currently have, where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

With busy parents, dodgy religions, and schools failing to teach kids how to be moral, the best way for people to better themselves is by doing what the philosopher Seneca recommended. “Start a conversation with the great minds of the past,” Pigliucci says.

In other words: read, and listen to podcasts and documentaries about great thinkers ancient and modern, from Buddha to Gandhi. “Resources are there,” Pigliucci adds. “It’s up to us, first as parents then as learning human beings, to go out and find them.”

It may surprise many to discover that interest in ancient philosophy is burgeoning. A recent “Night of Philosophy” in New York saw Pigliucci give a talk at 3am, with queues around the block. He runs a Zoom discussion group for members of the public which has 6,000 members.

Ignorance

AT the heart of learning to be good is this maxim by Socrates, hailed during his life as the wisest man alive: “I know that I know nothing.” In other words, have some humility, admit you’re relatively ignorant and need to learn. Just think of the world we live in, where everyone has an opinion on vaccines, taxation or geopolitics, yet most haven’t read a book on viruses, finance or foreign affairs.

The ancients advocated “aporia”, or doubt. If we doubt ourselves, we question ourselves; if we question, we learn. Socrates was famous for debating statesmen who claimed to know everything, and then proving that they knew nothing. Getting to that stage of self-doubt “is the beginning of wisdom”, Pigliucci says. “Be more open-minded, less self-assured.”

This is where Pigliucci becomes slightly revolutionary. His advice goes completely against the grain of the modern world, symbolised by social media where everyone is screaming that they are right. “What I’m saying is there’s an alternative,” he adds. We can rediscover those cardinal virtues: prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance.

Social media is a perfect metaphor for life lived badly. Humanity invented social media simply because we could. We didn’t stop to think how to make it “good”. We acted like children, not adults. Likewise with nuclear power.

If we had applied some prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance, then matters would have been very different. We are also foolish if we believe tha people like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg want to improve society.

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“The point of these people is to make money,” Pigliucci says. Tech tycoons worked out that anger and fear generate clicks and clicks generate money. They trade on the worst aspects of human nature.

Rage

IF you must use social media, then do so with temperance and prudence, Pigliucci says. Don’t doomscroll until you are enraged and post nasty comments. Instead, use social media to stay in touch with loved ones or to highlight some good cause, or promote your work. The growth of alternative social media platforms to Twitter and Facebook indicates more and more people are thinking like that, adds Pigliucci.

But can virtue really thrive in a globalised market economy? “Capitalism,” he says, “is based on the ideology of the cancer cell: continuous growth. We know how cancer ends: it eventually kills the organism.”

As with alternative social media platforms, he takes hope that there are green shoots of change emerging around economics. No one is pushing for communism but the growing discussion around more sustainable economics, spurred by the threat of climate change, shows people are starting to think differently about morality and ethics. When life gets “dire, we have to face the necessity of looking at alternatives”.

And it is those ancient and unchanged virtues which will help build an alternative, better future. Imagine how humanity could have dealt with climate change if we all tried to live by a code of prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance.

Thinking a little more like the ancient philosophers would allow us to “address any problem in a better way”. Always ask yourself, Pigliucci says, if what you are doing is “prudent, courageous, just and temperate. If the answer is ‘yes’, then do it. If the answer is ‘no’, then refrain”.

Imperfection

WE also need to realise that we can’t be perfect. If we try to live the perfect life by, for example, never flying, never buying from Amazon, and going vegan, all at the same time, then 99.9 per cent of us will fail and revert to our bad habits. So, aiming for perfection is actually a route to poor outcomes.

Rather employ some moderation: eat less meat, fly less, try to shop a little more ethically. That’s the prudent, temperate approach. It’s all about balance.

Pigliucci knows he can’t change the world on his own, but he believes he can offer people the chance to change themselves. And if people start to change, then society may well follow. That’s his great hope. Ancient philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were often concerned with teaching political leaders how to be good for that very reason: a good leader makes for a good society; a bad leader means a bad society.

There are few positive role models out there among politicians today, though. Maybe Angela Merkel acted virtuously during the refugee crisis by opening Germany’s doors to one million desperate people. But, mostly, politics is dominated by the Donald Trumps and Boris Johnsons.

Pigliucci is ruthless in his critique of such leaders. They are worse than liars, he says. “They’re bull*******s. A liar has a degree of respect for the truth, otherwise they couldn’t lie effectively. The bull*******, however, doesn’t care whether he says a truth, a lie, a half-truth. He’ll say whatever is useful for his own purposes, he’ll throw anything at you so you’re confused, and reacting emotionally. It’s not about convincing you, it’s about manipulating you.”

In democracies, however, “the buck stops with us”. We have a duty to educate ourselves and establish what “goodness” really means. If we do that, the “bull*******s” will be kicked to the curb as politics will follow the morality of the people, and leaders will have to act virtuously.

Change

START teaching philosophy in schools, watch the next generation blossom when it comes to the cardinal virtues, and then hopefully politics will bend towards the ethical views of the people. That’s Pigliucci’s thinking in a nutshell.

“We’ve become a cynical society where we tell ourselves nothing will change. That’s exactly what the current crop of politicians want because then they can manipulate us. We must resist that narrative. Real change comes from the bottom up. Humans can be improved by their own efforts.”

The final lesson is balancing emotion and reason. We can never be free of emotions – emotions make us human. But we need to apply reason to our emotions. If a plane is delayed then most people get angry and anxious.

Why, asks Pigliucci. They can’t “undelay” the plane. If you can’t change something, then accept it. He quotes the ancient stoic philosopher Epictetus who said “it’s not events that upset people, it’s how they think about events”. Now try applying that to some sad troll on Twitter and you might find your online life much better.

Embrace change is Pigliucci’s essential message, not only as a philosopher who has studied the wisdom of the ancients, but as an evolutionary biologist who sees life constantly changing wherever it is found.

“The world will only change if people change, and the best place to start change is with yourself. Why? Because you have the power to do so. I don’t have the power to convince other people to change. When it comes to myself, I’m responsible. Improving myself, trying to be a better person, trying to look at the world in a more constructive and reasonable way – that’s up to me.

“We live in a world that’s chaotic and pretty grim and over which we individually don’t have much control, but we can start change right here, right now, with ourselves.

“That gives us back agency, that gives us back hope. If we do it, maybe others will do it too and the next generation will be better.”

Now take all that advice, apply it to your New Year resolutions and see what happens.