Quotation
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“It is not living that matters most, but living well.”
Socrates · Socratic · Ancient · 399 BCE
Part of:Ancient questions, modern life →
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that bare survival is not the highest stake, and living well means living justly and honourably. A competing reading hears a disdain for life itself, whereas Socrates is ranking values, not recommending death as such. The sentence is Crito 48b, just before he says that the only question about escape is whether it is just. 'Well' is immediately tied to finely and justly.
Did Socrates really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Plato's report of Socrates in the Crito. Grube's translation says the most important thing is not life, but the good life; this English is a close variant of that line at 48b.
Where it comes from
Plato, Crito 48b
Approximate date: 399 BCE.
How to use it
Staying in a job that pays the rent and steadily requires you to mislead clients is the sort of trade he is ranking. Living is the pay and the years. Living well is whether the work can be defended, and the line does not tell you to resign into hardship without a plan, and it tells you which question outranks the other.
A mindset reading
The habit is to put the 'well' back into decisions that have been reduced to lasting a bit longer. Duration is not nothing. It is, on this page, the lesser criterion when the two conflict, and ask what 'well' concretely excludes before you use the sentence as a mood.
Understand the philosophy
Socrates is answering Crito's list of practical reasons to flee: friends, children, reputation. Living well, eu zēn, is glossed as living finely and justly. The key term is the ranking, not a feeling of authenticity. Once Crito agrees, most of his earlier appeals are beside the point, because they concern living rather than living well.
- ethics
- meaning
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that bare survival is not the highest stake, and living well means living justly and honourably. A competing reading hears a disdain for life itself, whereas Socrates is ranking values, not recommending death as such. The sentence is Crito 48b, just before he says that the only question about escape is whether it is just. 'Well' is immediately tied to finely and justly.
Did Socrates really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Plato's report of Socrates in the Crito. Grube's translation says the most important thing is not life, but the good life; this English is a close variant of that line at 48b.
Which work is it in?
Plato, Crito 48b Approximate date: 399 BCE.