The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher - Donald Robertson - #864

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Donald Robertson. He's a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, an author and an expert on ancient philosophy. If you were to divide philosophy into two eras, it would be pre-Socratic and post-Socratic. Socrates is history's greatest philosopher. And today we get to discover new lessons about his life and his teachings. Expect to learn the benefits of thinking like Socrates, why he was so influential even today, what the Socratic method actually is, the hidden gem lessons from Socrates on how to live a good life, the insane story of how he died and much more. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce companies in the United States. They're the driving force behind Neutonic and a few other brands you've probably heard of like Gymshark and Allbirds. You can think of Shopify as your business sidekick. From setting up shop to scaling your business, they've got you covered. You're not going into business to learn about how to code or build a website or do back end inventory management. Shopify takes all of that off your hands and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do, which is designing and selling a cool product. So if you've got a killer idea and a dream to sell, Shopify is your go-to. No coding, no design skills, no problem, just pure entrepreneurial magic. Right now you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period at the link in the description below or by heading to shopify.com/modernwisdom, all lowercase. That's shopify.com/modernwisdom. Now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. This episode is brought to you by Nomatic. Traveling should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Nomatic. Nomatic has changed my entire life and their brand new method carry-on is available after selling out pretty much instantly. It's engineered to be lighter, stronger, plus it can hold up to 20% more than other carry-ons due to some wizardry that they've done inside, some sort of Harry Potter thing, I'm not too sure. But it means that you can fit a week's worth of clothes or more without stressing about space. And their products will last you literally a lifetime with their lifetime guarantee. So this is the final carry-on bag that you will ever need to buy. Plus you can return or exchange any product within 30 days for any reason. Right now you can get 20% off everything site-wide by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomadic.com/modernwisdom. That's nomatic.com/modernwisdom. I've won Whoop for over four years now. Since way before they were a partner on the show and it is the only wearable I've ever stuck with because it's the best. It's so innocuous. You don't remember that you've got it on and yet it tracks absolutely everything 24-7 via your wrist. It tracks your heart rate, your sleep, your recovery, all of your workouts, your resting heart rate, heart rate variability, how much you're even breathing throughout the night. It puts all of this into an app and spits out very simple, easy to understand and fantastically usable data. It's phenomenal. I'm a massive, massive fan of Whoop and that is why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with. And best of all, you can join for free, pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 4 strap. Plus you get your first month for free and there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they'll give you your money back. Right now you can get all of that by heading to join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Donald Robertson.
Dude, I love every time that we get to speak. I adored all of your last books, and you've done a new one about Socrates. Why would anyone want to think like Socrates?

**Donald J. Robertson** (4:08)
Why would anyone care about this old dead white guy or whatever? He, I love Socrates. I love Marcus Aurelius, but Socrates is like the next level. You know, I really am excited to be able to talk and write about him and stuff. Socrates was, I'll tell you why, this is going to seem like an odd answer, right?
There's Eric Clapton, right? And guys like that. And then there's Jimi Hendrix, right? Eric Clapton is an amazing guitarist, but Jimi Hendrix, to me anyway, sounds like he's from another planet, right? Jimi Hendrix took his guitar to bed with him. He woke up in the morning, strapped his guitar on and fried eggs wearing his guitar. He went to the lavatory wearing his guitar, right? Psychologists call that time on task, like he was constantly practicing and stuff like he was obsessed with it. Socrates reminds me, in that solitary regard of Jimi Hendrix, because the way he's described to us is that he's a guy who abandoned everything else and just spent all day, every day discussing what he considered to be the most important questions in life with anybody, the greatest intellectuals that he could find in the known world, prostitutes, politicians, slaves, you name it, everybody from all walks of life. So he was like the Jimi Hendrix of philosophizing. He never took his guitar off. He was constantly doing. I can't imagine someone in modern society spending that amount of time really analyzing the contradictions in someone else's thinking. So Socrates to me is a unique individual. And it comes through. We don't know, there's this thing called the Socratic problem, that we don't know, but we should acknowledge at the beginning, that we don't know for sure how close a representation Plato's dialogues or the other sources that we have are of the real Socrates. But I think his character comes through to some extent. Those dialogues are probably semi-fictional, like they're embellished a bit. But the real guy kind of shines through to some extent. And he must have been an extraordinary individual. He's somebody who has a tremendous capacity for thinking outside the box, for spotting logical contradictions. And he said some of the most radical things in the history of Western philosophy. Not only that, I see him as the godfather of modern self-help and self-improvement psychology, or the great-great-grandaddy of cognitive behavioral therapy. So as a psychotherapist, a cognitive behavioral therapist, I look to Socrates as somebody who stands at the very origin of our tradition. But also, I think in some ways, we've kind of gone astray in ways that he warned us about. So by going back and looking at what he originally said, I think we can figure out maybe and see beyond some of the mistakes that we might have made along the way.