"Brave thinking about truth"

Jennifer Hecht says "brave thinking about the truth" was the secret to happiness, for the old Greeks. They thought contemplation would "transform us and let us taste what there is to taste of transcendence."


“Transcendence” is a $4 word best approached in hyphenated stages-- trans-end-dance-- meaning simply, on Peter Ackroyd’s reading of the "Plato Papers," 

the ability to move beyond the end, otherwise called the dance of death. 

So the Greeks tried to think bravely about life and death, and to make the best of things in the interval. My favorites are Aristotle and Epicurus.