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Articles

Tidying Up With Socrates

Freya Mobus compares Socrates’ method of enquiry with a fashionable way to achieve domestic harmony.

Let me present to you the ultimate life-coaching team: Marie Kondo and Socrates. Marie Kondo, the modern Japanese consultant devoted to uncluttering our households; Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher devoted to uncluttering our minds. If we open ourselves to their methods of tidying up, we will live a happier life, they promise.

Kondo’s ‘KonMari’ method, presented in her Netflix show based on her bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014), and Socrates’ ‘Elenchus’ method, presented in Plato’s dialogues starring him, work in similar ways, although Kondo is much more popular with her clients. (Eventually, the Athenians got so sick of Socrates’ attempts at tidying up their minds that they executed him.

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