Narrator: What happens when a truly good person tries to lead? In 15th-century Florence, a fervent Christian preacher named Girolamo Savonarola rose to power, determined to create a "city of God." He drove out the corrupt Medici rulers and for a few years, led a peaceful, honest, and democratic state. But his goodness made him a threat. The ruthless Pope Alexander viewed him as a rival, and soon, Savonarola was captured, tortured, and publicly burned in the city center. His story poses a difficult question: Is being "good" in the way we're often taught—merciful, peaceful, and honest—enough to navigate the complexities of the real world? Or do we need a different kind of wisdom?

This is the central puzzle explored in Great Thinkers by The School of Life. The book argues that for centuries, the most profound ideas on how to live have been locked away in academia, treated with a reverence that makes them inaccessible. This book aims to change that. It presents a curated canon of thinkers, not for historical study, but as a practical toolkit for modern life, offering clear, relevant, and sometimes challenging insights into the dilemmas we all face.

Narrator: The book begins its journey by re-examining the very foundations of a well-lived life. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato argued that most lives go wrong because we don't think hard enough. We absorb our values from "common sense," which is often filled with errors about what will make us happy. Plato’s solution was to "know yourself," to submit our feelings and assumptions to reason. He even applied this to love, suggesting that true love isn't about finding someone who accepts you just as you are, but about finding a partner who possesses virtues you lack and can help you grow. In this view, a relationship is a form of mutual education.

While Plato offers an ideal, other thinkers provide more pragmatic tools for managing life's inherent difficulties. The Stoics, for instance, focused on achieving calm in the face of anxiety. They believed anxiety flourishes in the gap between what we fear and what we hope. The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca proposed a radical solution: to crush hope and actively practice for the worst. He would take time off to imagine his fears coming true—losing his wealth, his reputation, his home. He would practice living on stale bread and sleeping on the floor with a single blanket. The goal wasn't to be morbid, but to realize that he could cope. By confronting the worst-case scenario, he found that "very little is needed to make a happy life," and the power of anxiety began to fade.

Narrator: Moving from the individual to the collective, the book confronts the often-unpleasant realities of politics and society. Niccolò Machiavelli, observing the fate of leaders like Savonarola, argued that Christian virtues are incompatible with effective governance. A good ruler, he claimed, must be prepared to use what he called "criminal virtue." He admired the ruthless tactics of Cesare Borgia, who, after conquering a city, ordered a mercenary to impose brutal order. Once the violence had served its purpose, Borgia had the mercenary sliced in half and left in the public square, distancing himself from the cruelty while reaping its benefits. For Machiavelli, this wasn't evil for its own sake; it was a pragmatic recognition that the security of the state sometimes requires actions that a traditionally "good" person would never consider.

Centuries later, Karl Marx offered another uncomfortable truth, this time about the nature of work under capitalism. Marx believed that for work to be meaningful, we need to see a piece of ourselves in the things we create. He imagined a craftsman building a chair, pouring his skill and care into the object until it became a reflection of his best qualities. But in the modern economy, with its extreme specialization, work becomes "alienated." A worker on a factory line might spend their entire day fitting a single screw, never seeing the final product. Their labor is just a commodity, and they become a replaceable cog in a machine, leading to a profound sense of spiritual depression and a loss of purpose.

Narrator: The book also delves into the hidden psychological forces that shape our behavior, particularly through the lens of psychotherapy. John Bowlby, a pioneering psychoanalyst, developed attachment theory, which posits that our earliest experiences with caregivers create lifelong scripts for how we behave in relationships. Bowlby’s own childhood was a case study in this. Born to an upper-class British family, he was cared for by a nanny, Minnie, whom he adored. But as was common at the time, Minnie was sent away when he was just four, and he was sent to boarding school at seven. He later described this as being as traumatic as the death of a parent.

This experience of loss and emotional distance fueled his life's work. In 1952, he created a film titled A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital, which documented the profound suffering of a child separated from her parents due to restrictive hospital policies. The film was instrumental in reforming visitation rules, but its core insight was universal. Bowlby showed that when children's needs for comfort and security are unmet, they develop one of two insecure attachment styles. The "anxiously attached" adult constantly fears abandonment and seeks reassurance, while the "avoidantly attached" adult sees intimacy as dangerous and shuns emotional closeness. These patterns, formed in infancy, unconsciously dictate how we love, whom we choose, and why our relationships so often follow the same painful cycles.

Narrator: If our societies are flawed and our minds are governed by unconscious scripts, where can we find guidance? The book’s final section argues that the true purpose of culture—art, literature, and architecture—is to provide us with the tools for a better life. It’s not about escapism, but about re-focusing our attention on what truly matters. The 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, for example, chose to paint a simple serving woman pouring milk in a humble kitchen. In an age that valued grand historical and religious scenes, Vermeer used his art to "redistribute glamour." He showed that true beauty and dignity are not found in wealth or power, but in the care and focus of everyday tasks.

Similarly, the novelist Jane Austen used her stories to challenge social hierarchies. In Mansfield Park, the quiet and overlooked Fanny Price is initially seen as insignificant compared to her wealthy, fashionable cousins. But Austen invites us to judge them not by their social status, but by their moral character. By the end of the novel, it is Fanny who is revealed as the truly noble one, while her cousins have fallen into moral confusion. Both Vermeer and Austen teach us to look past superficial markers of success and to find value in the quiet virtues of ordinary life. This, the book argues, is the ultimate function of great art: to help us see the world, and ourselves, more clearly.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Great Thinkers is that culture is not a luxury but a necessity for a well-lived life. The book dismantles the wall between the ivory tower and everyday experience, arguing that the ideas of Plato, Marx, and Vermeer are not dusty relics but active, powerful tools. The true homage we can pay these thinkers is not to revere them from a distance, but to be a little "casual" with them—to pull their ideas from their original context and apply them directly to our own problems.

Its most challenging idea is the embrace of a "good bias," a deliberate search for wisdom that is, above all, helpful. It asks us to move beyond simply asking if an idea is academically "true" and to start asking a more profound question: "What can this do for me?" In a world saturated with information, Great Thinkers offers a framework for finding not just knowledge, but consolation, guidance, and a more enlightened way of being.