Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #13 - Aristotle and the Greek Legacy

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #13 - Aristotle and the Greek Legacy

Okay, so today we will finish the Greeks by discussing Aristotle. And a lot of what I will say today will be controversial. Okay, so feel free to challenge me, feel free to ask for clarification, feel free to ask any questions, okay? So here's my argument. Aristotle is a paradox. He is one of the mysterious figures in world history. He's one of the most famous, but he's one of the most mysterious.

He's a paradox for three reasons, okay? The first reason is he is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers in human history. He's next to Plato. He's certainly as influential as Plato. But what is unique about him is we do not have anything originally written by him. Okay? We have no text that we believe was personally written by him. And that's unique in human history.

We say Shakespeare was a great writer and we can prove it or show it by reading his text. We believe Aristotle is a great thinker, a great writer, but we have no evidence, no text to show us this is the case. But we believe so, okay? So this is the first paradox of Aristotle. Second paradox of Aristotle is he was a very prolific writer and thinker. In fact, we believe he, there's about 200 works attributed to Aristotle. What is unique about his work is the range of his thinking and his research. So he's written a book on politics, right? What is the best political system?

He's written a book on poetics, theater, basically. What makes for a good tragedy? He's written a book on ethics. What is a good life? What makes a good person? He's written a book on rhetoric. How do you convince the audience that you are correct? He's also written books on

physics, he's written books on metaphysics, he's written books on biology, okay? The range is just incredible. We have no analog in human history like him. He's simply unique in the range of his curiosity. Second paradox. The third paradox is most problematic. We know that Aristotle study under Plato, for 20 years.

And so we also believe that Aristotle was Plato's most famous student. The paradox is Aristotle's understanding of the universe is radically opposed to Plato's understanding of the universe. And that's, again, is unique in human history. you would think the best student would carry on the master's work or at least build on it, right? But Aristotle, his understanding of the universe, is in conflict with Plato's work. In fact, you could also argue that Aristotle is negating Plato's worldview, okay? So let me explain how.

So we know Plato. We know that for Plato, there is a god and it's called the form of the world. good and the form of the good is what is eternal perfect and immutable okay now the form of the good emanates other perfections okay what he calls the form of ideal okay so these are concepts like justice and beauty and reason and then these concepts manifest themselves in forms like horse, right, or a woman, okay? And these are like the ideal, perfect, immutable, eternal manifestations.

Okay, so there's only one horse. It's up in heaven. Everything else is a copy of this horse or imitation of this horse, okay? So we live in a shadow realm, a shadow realm, where everything is imitation, okay? This is our reality. It's a shadow reality. And that's why art and poetry and theater are so bad,

because they are really an imitation of an imitation. So this is Plato's hierarchy. So from this hierarchy and this worldview, we can make certain extrapolations. The first extrapolation is for Plato, what is good? What is good is if you approach or return to the form of the good, what is evil, what is bad, is if you move away from the form of the good, okay? Right, so poetry is evil. Mathematics is good.

Now, why is mathematics good? Because mathematics is what allows you to approach the form of the good. All right. So let me give an example of this. Okay, let's see there's a circle, right? Now what Plato argues is no matter how hard you try, you could never ever draw a circle in this world, okay? Because a circle has an edge. So it's like literally impossible for you to create something without an edge, right? You're like, well, I can draw on a computer. But if you go at a microscopic level, you'll always find an edge. Okay, so how do you create a circle? Well, you create a circle by imagine it in your head.

Okay, so like what you're really doing is you're imagining the circle because you're accessing the realm of the forms. You're approaching from the good. Okay, so it's only pure it is only through a process of pure thought, peer philosophy, peer mathematics that you can actually start to understand this. world, all right? That's Plato's understanding of the world. Aristotle has a completely different understanding, okay? So I just sort of starts with this. God's a prime mover. So the prime mover, just imagine a big bang, right? Something explodes, boom, it moves, and it forces other things to move as well. So what Aristotle is saying is everything is really in motion.

Everything is change because it was all caused by the prime mover. And in Aristotle's world, what is good is if the thing that changes moves towards its purpose, okay? Or the word he uses is called telos. If you're moving towards your purpose, you are doing good in this world. If you're moving away from your purpose, you're doing better. bad in this world. So the example is a soldier. The purpose of a soldier is to fight and win wars.

So if you go fight and you do your best, you're doing good. But if you run away from a war, you're doing bad, okay? So this is Aristotle's worldview. And as you can understand, as you can see, these two worldviews cannot harmonize. They are in conflict with each other. You have either one or the other, okay? So let me highlight the three major differences between these two worldviews.

Okay? And again, I need to emphasize this. I am not an expert on Aristotle. I'm not expert on Plato, okay? So I am committing oversimplifications. Scholars who are experts will hear this and be outraged, okay? But for the purpose of this class, I feel these oversimplifications. provide clarity, okay?

All right? So the first oversimplification is Plato's what we call a rationalist. Aristotle is what we call an impericist. So these are two big words, but the rationalist is just someone who believes that you can access the truth through peer thought, okay, mathematics.

And imperacist is someone who believes you can only access the truth through observation and what we call induction. induction okay inductive logic so if I see a woman wearing a dress and I see another woman wearing a dress and a third I'm like okay well from this I can logically deduce or induce that all women wear dresses and that's what separates woman from men okay so for Aristotle to seek the truth you have to observe and you have to induce okay so that's the first major difference

Second major difference is Plato is what we call a dualist, and Aristotle is what called materialist. A dualist is someone who believes that there's a body and a soul, okay? And if you believe there's a body and a soul, you also believe the soul is more important because the soul is eternal, whereas the body will decay and die. Aristotle, he's materialist. So for him, the focus is on the body. and what happens to the body. There may be a soul, there may not be a soul. He doesn't really care.

For him, it doesn't really matter. What matters is what happens to the body. The third major difference is Plato believes in the idea of immutability, okay? Or we're called eternity. For Aristotle, almost nothing is immutable. Most things are mutable, okay?

The only thing that's really immutable is really God, but everything else is mutable. it will change over time. And so, for Aristotle, the concept is infinity. Things will always change, things will always move, there's no stopping movement. But for Plato, things are eternal. There's a grand design, and nothing that changes really matters.

It doesn't really affect the grand design. So for him, it's eternity. So these are the three major differences between Plato and Aristotle. Now what's really interesting for us is this conflict between Plato and Aristotle is what will inform the philosophical debate for all Western civilization.

Okay? So there are two major camps in Western philosophy. There is the rationalist camp, all right? So people like Descartes. And then there are they in Paris. So people like David Hume. And for most of Western history, philosophers will go back and forth

between these two extremes, okay, either platonic ideal or the Aestado reality, okay? Does that make sense? All right? Is this clear? Any questions? Sure, go ahead. Yeah, so that's a great question and for Plato, okay? all what we like our lives the reality we live in is not real. It's ephemeral whereas the form of the good. That's what's concrete. That's what's eternal. Okay, so I mean like I I understand that's counterintuitive to us, but the reason why it's kind of counterintuitive to us is because we're mainly influenced by Aristotle, right? We live, we are materialist, right? Science is materialistic. But back then, and I would say back then in Plato's time, and for most of human history, it was assumed that our world was

transitory or transient or ephemeral, okay? And it was a spirit world, okay, that was real. and that was eternal. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. Again, this is oversimplification, okay? Like, if you go to a scholar who understands itself, I will probably, you'll probably criticize me. But I'm saying that for the purpose of this class and for our understanding of Western civilization, this will do.

Okay? Just understand there's a major conflict between Plato and Aristotle. This will go on for thousands of years. This will inform the debate in the debate in the world. Western civilization. This is the fundamental debate in Western philosophy. So let's go back to, let's summarize where we are. Aristotle is a paradox, right? We have nothing that he wrote originally. The range of his work is just incredible. It's unique in human history.

And then lastly, even though we know Aristotle's under Plato for like 20 years, at least, Aristotle came up with a very different conceptualization of the universe. In fact, it is in direct conflict with Plato's understanding. Okay? So how is this possible? How can we resolve these paradoxes? Okay, so I'm going to make an argument, and I will slowly make this argument, but it is a controversial argument. My argument is that Aristotle was not a philosopher.

a philosopher. He was not a thinker. He was not a writer. What he was ultimately is what I refer to as a censor. Sensor. You can also use words like synthesizer, or editor, or systemizer. But basically, nothing that he thought was original to him, but he decided what would be political convenient for the moment, okay? That's what we mean by censor. And it's my argument that we understand Aristotle as a censor, then these three paradoxes go away. We can explain away these paradoxes. All right, so let me make my argument. Okay, my first piece of evidence is we need to compare and contrast the life of Phippa Sak and Massadon and Aristotle. When you do that, okay, When you put their lives side by side, interesting parallels emerge.

Okay? So let's look at their lives very simple. Aristotle. He was born in year 384. Philip II was born in year 383. That's about the same age, right? Now, Philip II, he's a prince of Masson. His father is the king, right?

Aristotle, his father was the court physician to the king. He was the king's personal doctor. Right? So from these two pieces of information, what can we guess about Philip and Aristotle? They grew up together, right? Does that make sense? Aristotle's father was the personal doctor of the king. Philip was the son of the king. It would make sense. They grew up together.

It would make sense it would be educated together. All right. Second thing that's interesting is from 367 to 348, okay? Aristotle went to Athens to study in Plato. Now, around the same time, in the year 369 to 365, Philip went to Thieves to study military innovation under the best generals in Greece. All right?

And here I would extrapolate and say, the teenagers, they're going to further their education, right? And learn the best scientific and military innovations in order to bring back to Macedon. And this happens all the time, right? In the 1980s, China sent its best and brightest to America to study science. So we can also surmise that even while they were away,

they were still in contact with each other. Now, in 359, Philip became regent, or basically king. And from then on, he started this massive military campaign to conquer all of Greece. Now, one thing that was interesting about Philip's conquest of Greece was, the Athenians didn't really oppose him. Okay? And this is one of the great mysteries historians struggle with.

Why is it that Philip the second, he's going around, he's conquering all these places that are in conflict with Athens? And Athens doesn't really resist. And one possible theory is, well, Philip II just bribed all these Athenian aristocrats. In fact, the man who most opposed Philip, this Athenian statesman named Demosthenes, they actually said this in speeches. He said, listen, I'm telling you right now, Philip tried to bribe me. And I know Philip's bribing all my opponents, but I'm telling you Athenians, Philip is about menace to democracy and that's why we must oppose him right so we can surmise that Philip was bribing these Athenians to support him and that's why there's so

little Athenian resistance to Philip and that's a case then who's the middleman who's the person who's in contact with these Athenian aristocrats Aristotle right why because remember Aristotle was at the academy for 20 years the academy in Athens at that time is like hard Harvard, Oxford, today, right? It's where all the rich and powerful goal to study. So for 20 years, Aristotle was in contact and became friends with the most powerful individuals in Athens. And that's why when Philip needed to negotiate with Athenians, it would make the most sense to send Aristotle.

Does that make sense? And then we know that Philip United Greece in 338, it would make sense. in 338 and then 335, three years later, Aristotle started a new school in Athens in competition with the academy called the Lyceum. So what is the purpose of the Lyceum? So that's what I will discuss next. But does that make sense? There are direct parallels between the lives of Aristotle and Philip.

we can guess or extrapolate or deduce that Aristotle and Philip were very close throughout their lives and they were helping each other, okay? And that makes sense. Okay, so now the question then is, what was Philip going around conquering all of Greece? Well, Philip had a vision for the world. And it's called something we call the Pan-Hellenic Project. So, Pan-Hellenic project. Okay, so at this time and throughout most of its history, Greece was divided into city-states

all around the world, mainly in mainland Greece, but also across the Aegean, in Asia Minor, in Asia Minor, Anatolia, okay? Across all these different islands and into North Africa and across the Adriatic, also into Italy as well, okay? So you have this sprawling Greek world. And there were many who believed that this Greek world should unite together, because there's a common ancestry. So it was a dream of many philosophers that a great man of history would arise and unite all of Greece by basically defeating Persia.

And Philip the second said, hey, that's a great idea, and it should be me. Okay? But the problem is the Panasonic project assumes a common Greek identity and it didn't really exist at that time. In fact, Greeks probably had more common with their local cultures

than with each other, right? So if you were Greek living in Asia Minor, you were probably more Persian than you were Greek. So in other words, Philip needed someone. a sensor basically to create a Greek identity right and what you do that is by taking all this vast universe of knowledge that the Greeks created right and you

create an encyclopedia or series of textbooks that define what it means to be Greek right you standardize and you systemize Greek knowledge That makes sense. And so that's probably what Aristotle was doing when he started the Lyceum. He had lots of students. Okay? Yeah, so throughout history, all converts did this, okay? Because that was the only, because by standardizing and systemizing knowledge was the best way

for you to co-op the elite and to showcase your legitimacy, okay? Otherwise, the intellectual elite would think of you as a barbarian conqueror. All right, and the way the best way that you co-op the intellectual elite is by showcasing a new systematic knowledge. Okay, does that make sense? All right So the problem is that in 336 Philip was assassinated and his son Alexander came to a throne came to a throne and as we discussed last class, Alexander had a very different vision from his father. His father wants to unite the Greek world. Alexander wanted to conquer the entire world to show

he was superior to his father. Okay? And unbelievably, incredibly, he was able to do so conquer most of the world in about 10 years time. So now suddenly you have this sprawling empire all around the world okay so let's let's let's let's just sketch out how vast this new empire was okay so you have you know Greece and Macedon right okay so that's the Greek homeland thank you that's a Greek homeland right but hey over here you have Anatolia this is Mesopotania over here over here is Afghanistan, oh sorry, sorry, it should be Iran, sorry, Iran, Afghanistan. And you also reach as far as Pakistan, okay?

And down here, you have the Levant and you have Egypt, all right? This was not supposed to happen. Philip and the Panhellen project imagine like their conquest would extend up to, up around here, okay, because you're a united Greek world. Alexander went too far and now you've conquered most of the known world, okay? Then Alexander died and then the empire was divided into three major fragments. Over here, you have something called the Integiate Empire, okay, the Integinate dynasty, okay? So that's one peace of the empire.

Down here you have Ptolemy. Ptolemy was one of Abisanders generals and he took over Egypt. And over here, you have something called the Seleucid Empire, founded, of course, by the General Seleucus, okay? And over here you have other smaller kingdoms as well. So you have this vast empire, and this is something that was unplanned and unexpected. Now that you conquer these places,

your concern and your problem is, how do we govern? So you need a new culture. And so these different generals adopted different strategies. So for example, here the Persian culture is extremely well established, and the Seleucid king and his hearers decided a process of localization, okay? Or another word we can use is synchronization. syncretization meaning two different religions or two different cultures come together and coalesce together okay so throughout the Seleucid Empire it was really a process

of synchronization the Greeks adapted themselves to local customs and to local culture okay at the same time the Greeks were conquerors so they still need to maintain a coherent identity Okay, so it made sense for them to adopt a lot of Aristotle's work. Remember, Aristotle was creating a pan-Henellanic identity. And so he basically created a lot of textbooks. He basically created an encyclopedia. So it made sense for them to import Aristotle's works.

Also, what's important is, remember, Aristotle was Macedonian. And for the longest time, Greeks did not consider Macedonians to be Greek. This is why it's called the Pan-Hellenic project, not the pan-Greek project. Also, Greeks were very condescending towards Macedonians, because they saw Macedonians as barbarians. So it was in the best interest of these new Macedonian conquerors to exaggerate or to highlight the intellectual contributions of Aristotle. Does that make sense? Pauli-Me, Egypt was very different. Egyptian culture has been around for thousands of years.

And Egyptians are very proud of their culture. And this is a problem because you're very proud of your local culture. You don't like foreign rulers. And this is something that the Persian Empire struggled with throughout the centuries that it dominated Egypt. The Persians were famous for their openness and tolerance. Basically, you were allowed to practice your own religion. And they're very supportive of that, okay?

The most famous example are the Jews, right? The Persians supported in rebuilding the Second Temple. We'll get to the Jews later on. But because the Persians were so supportive of local culture in Egypt, the Egyptians rebelled against Persia many, many times. So Ptolemy and his hearers didn't want to make the same mistake. They wanted to impose a new culture on the Egyptians in order to show that they were superior and therefore more divine than Egyptians.

So Ptolemy, he did many things that start this process. The first thing that he did was he stole Axel's body from Babylon, where he died. and brought it back to Egypt, okay? Because Egyptians saw Alexander as a god, as a son of a god, right? So to establish legitimacy in Egypt, colony went on a military expedition and stole the body of Alexander, which started something called the war of the Diochai, okay? Basically the successor wars.

That's the first thing he did. Something that he did was he established a new capital in Alexandria called Alexandria. Okay? So this was mainly a Greek city. It was a new Greek city, found by Alexander. And this is where they house Alexander's body. The third thing that he did was he started

to sponsor something called, we call today the Musion. The Musion is the root of the English word, museum. But the museum was really the world's first research university. So Ptolemy and his hearers brought together the greatest Greek scholars in the world to basically continue the work of Aristotle, to standardize and systemize Greek culture so that they can impose it on the local Egyptian culture. Does that make sense? All right? And the most famous aspect of the Muzian is the Library of Exandria. And the autonomy spent a lot of money on the Library of Exandria,

mainly by going around and collecting original manuscripts. So a representative went to Athens and said, we at the Library of Exandria would like the original copies, the original manuscripts, for Isulis, Sophocles, and the three great playwrights and the Athenians are like we can't do that because they're like gods here okay we're not going to give you original manuscripts and the Egyptians said all we're going to do is want to take these manuscripts back to the library of Alexandria where our scribes will copy them out okay oh that's all

we're going to do and then we'll give it back to you and as a guarantee we're going to you like 15 talents of silver okay and that's like that's like a billion dollars back there but it's I've never seen so much money so Athenians will say well okay well if it's just to spread great culture we can actually deal with that okay so we'll take the positive talents we'll give you the manuscripts the Egyptians took the manuscripts placed it in the library of Alexandria and said hey Athenians keep the money okay because the Egyptians under Ptolemy were focused on turning the library of Exandria and Exandria into the intellectual capital of the Greek world.

All right? And so what happened was that after Exeter died and the generals took over, the Panhellenic project really became what we call the Panhellenistic project. It went from the United Greek world into spreading Greek culture all around the world. the world and that's why we have Greek culture still with us today okay because of this process so let's go back to the original paradox all right why there are three paradoxes right the first paradox is why do you have nothing original from from Aristotle the answer is because Aristotle didn't write anything

original he stole everything from other thinkers and had his students copy it out in nanscript form it doesn't make sense second is why is his why are his works so diverse why is the range so great and the answer is because he was trying to capture the essence of Greek knowledge okay you're trying to unify Greek knowledge into an encyclopedia for dissemination around the world okay and the third thing is okay most interesting thing is Why is Aristotle's philosophy so different from Plato's worldview? Okay, that's a really interesting question.

Why are they so different? So let's switch our perspective and ask yourselves. If you were a king of Mastermind, if you're Philip Alexander, what's your problem with Plato's philosophy? You have a problem. What is it? Any guesses? You're Alexander, your Philip. You really hate Plato. Why? Why? Well, the problem of Plato is, you go to Plato,

you're ex-a- You go to Plato and says, I want to conquer the world, right? Plato would say, what's the point? It's all not real, Alexander. You're just wasting your time. You can conquer the world, but all you're doing is conquer a shadow. What's real is the form of the good, right? Right? Alexander, study mathematics, man. Okay? Do more math. Stop going around and killing people. Do more math. Right? And we know what Alexander would do here, right?

Alexander would probably cut off Plato's head. So Alexander would hate this thing, right? This thing is idiotic. I wouldn't call it the world, but this philosophy is telling me it's pointless. What matters is mathematics. What matters is philosophy. All right? Now, let's now compare this with Aristotle's prime mover theory, right? What Aristotle is saying is evidence motion, and what is good is we fulfill your purpose. Right? Now, if you're Alexander or Philip, this makes more sense. I'm Philip. My purpose is to unite the Greek world. And the more I unite, the more good I'm doing for this world. world, right?

Also, if you're a king, you want your citizens, your soldiers, your workers to work hard, right? Well, for Plato, working hard is just useless. You're imitating an imitation, right? When you create art. But here, working hard is what gives you purpose, it's what gives you happiness. So Aristotle also promoted two major concepts. The first is erete, second is eudaimonia.

Eritay is just excellence. Your Alexander has Eritay, he is an excellent general. When you have Eritay and you are achieving your purpose and you achieve eudaimonia, which is just flourishing or happiness. And that's the purpose of life, to have Eritay and to achieve eudaimonia. So work hard, fight for Alexander, support him as he conquests the world. Because he's making the world better. Does that make sense?

Okay, that's a great question. Okay, thanks Doug. Okay, all right. So the question then is, if I'm a soldier and I'm, you know, working hard and winning battles, am I not approaching from the good? the answer is for Plato it's not the reason why is what if you do in this material world is pointless okay because this material world it's not real so whatever you do is not real does that make sense okay so what you need to do is return to the form of the good but your

body can't do that your soul can do that so you're you use of the body is pointless. You have to use your soul, you have to use your mind. Therefore, you have to be a good person. Therefore, you have to engage in philosophy and mathematics. And that's how you return to the form of the good. You're used to the body, you're just in a, you're just deluding yourself, okay? Right? And if you engage in art, then you are deluding others, and that's more evil. If you're Alexander and you're conquering others and forcing them to believe your fake philosophy then you're committing the most evil in the world. Does that make sense? All right. All right. So, yeah. All right. So this is what I, this is my theory

of how to best resolve the three paradoxes of Aristotle. Okay, does that make sense? He was basically a censor who is working for Philip and Alexander and he was trying to develop a pan-Hellenistic idea in order to unite the world they conquer. So that's my argument. Any questions about this overall argument? Does it make sense to you guys? Go ahead. Yeah, thank you. All right, go ahead.

That's a great question. Yeah, okay. All right. So how do we know he didn't write any of his works? The answer is this. When you write something, you're actually manifesting your thought, right?

But your thought comes from your personality. So if you look at any work of genius, it's original and unique. Does that make sense? In other words, if you reach Shakespeare, guess what? There's no other Shakespeare in the world. If you're trying to imitate Shakespeare, you look like an idiot. Homer is unique.

Plato is unique. There's no point in trying to imitate them. You can't do it because you are not them. Okay? Now, when you look at Aristotle, there's something unique about Aristotle. So, you know, when you read Plato, the Republic, there are certain ideas that stand out, like, I'd like go to the cave, okay? There's certain phrases that capture your imagination.

That doesn't exist with Aristotle's text. They're really like textbooks. So the argument for the longest time was Aristotle did write his own books. but they were lost to us. And his students had to reassemble his thinking from their own memory. Okay? So yeah, that's how we know.

But this is generally agreed upon. We have nothing that Aristotle wrote originally. That's right. Okay, so thank you, Doug. Okay. Yeah, so there are many different possibilities of how Aristotle can become so influential, okay? The first possibility is,

As I argue, he was actually a partner of Phillips, that they were both trying to promote the pan-Henelic project. Okay, that's the first possibility. But another possibility is, as Doug says, he was just a philosopher, he was a student of Plato's. He was very smart, and he was a very good teacher. And after Alexander, his generals, conquered the world, they needed like a symbol of Macedonian cultural superiority.

And they just decided upon Aristotle because it was most convenient, right? So that's another possibility. Okay? That's right. Yep, exactly. So yeah. So it is entirely possible that Aristotle was a materialist because that was just his personality, right? The influence from his father, who was a physician, okay?

But that creates another problem, which is, if you are so opposed to Plato's understanding of the world, right? Because you're a materialist and he's a dualist. Why were you studying under Plato for 20 years? Does that make sense? So that creates another problem. All right. So the other thing I want to point out is, okay, how we have aerosolus works today. There are three different possibilities.

The first possibility is that Aristotle in his lifetime, he organized his students and created this encyclopedia. It's no different from professors at university today, right? Professors who are scientists, they actually do very little of the original research. They have the students do it. They want to supervise the entire process, okay? So it's possible, that's the first possibility. Aristotle was supervising the work of creating a Greek identity. The second possibility is after Aristotle died,

his students start to remember, recall his lectures. And that's why so much of his work is fragmentary, we don't have complete manuscripts. And the third possibility, okay? And this entire possible is Aristotle is a fiction created by scholars at the Library of Exandria, okay? So it's really the scholars at the Library of Exandria who created Aristotle.

And they did so by synthesizing all this work. And then they gave it to, they accredited to, attributed to Aristotle in order to create the legend of this philosopher. Okay? Does that make sense? Okay, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, let's have an argument about confusion,

let's let's have this case about confusions, okay? But I want to very quickly talk about the Greek legacy, because even though, um, we can argue back and forth about Aristotle and his providence, what is not debatable is the profound influence that Aristotle had on the world. Okay? We can argue if Aristotle was the original writer or the original thinker, well, what is not debatable is the tremendous influence he had on the entire world. Okay? So there are three aspects of the Greek legacy I want to discuss.

The first aspect is the Greeks created a new way of being human. All right, so let's look at the major thinkers. You have Homer, you have the playwrights, Ischelis, Sophocles, and Euryst, and Euryrdes, and you have the philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle. All right, so the Greeks created a new way of being human. What do I mean by that? Homer was an oral bard, okay? He would get up in front of audiences, and he would for hours recite this beautiful, poetry about the Georgian War, the Elyat, okay?

And in the process, listening to Homer created empathy and imagination, right? Because the point of listening to Homer was to enter Homer's world and become Achilles or Odysseus. And through this process, you became a different person, and therefore you learn empathy, but you also expanded your imagination okay so that's what that's what's what Homer did for the Greeks then you have Ishlii Sophomedes and UPDs and what they

did that was different is rather than sync directly at the audience they had the characters face each other in a dialogue and a debate okay and by doing this what happens is you create the capacity for perspective and inner debate, right? Because before you were part of the story. Now you have to step back and judge the story, okay? There's a debate going on. You have to switch perspectives in order to understand the characters.

And this creates the capacity for an inner monologue, okay? in a debate in you. And then you have Plato and Aristotle. What Plato did, that was unique, was he took all the dialogue in the play, and he transported onto the page. But now you're reading it by yourself, and you have the benefit of time. Okay? And so this creates a capacity for reason and reflection.

Okay? You can sort of reason out if the words make sense to you. You are no longer influenced by the crowd or the emotions of the actor. You can just look at the words himself and judge them on their own merit. You also have the capacity now to reflect, meaning you can go back to the words over and over the course of your lifetime to constantly reflect on their meaning and logic, okay? You understand? So when you add these three things together Homer create the capacity for empathy and imagination the playwright create the capacity for in a debate and perspective the philosophers create the capacity for reason and reflection you now have a new human mind okay

and when you study all of them this is what we call ultimately a liberal arts education all right and guess what Our greatest thinkers came to us through the liberal arts. All right? So in the future, we'll study people like Kant, Hume, Hegel, just the greatest thinkers of the past 20 years. They all, what was common about them is, they all read the Greeks.

And now it's just their education. All right, so this is the first legacy of the Greeks, a new way of being, and seeing, okay? Does that make sense? Second thing is, now that you have this Greek world, the Greeks need to establish a cohesive cultural identity. And they did that by promoting a Greek education.

But not only that, but they had to bring in local people into this education. So one major function of the library of education, Alexandria was to standardize and systemize Greek knowledge. And they did this by standardizing the text. So they're different texts of Homer. The text of Homer that we have today was developed by the people at the Library of Alexandria,

standardization. They also take something called commentaries. So commentaries are basically like teacher handbooks, okay? They teach you how to teach this stuff. And they create like footnotes and chapters, chapters and page numbers, codices, indexes. So the point was to make Greek education available and accessible to anyone.

All right? And what this means is we in China now can actually read Homer, issue list, and Plato, for ourselves, even though we are not culturally Greek. And that's the benefit of the Pan-Helenistic project. All right. And the third major benefit is Greek knowledge meant a global revolution in innovation, okay? What I mean by that is, remember, Greek knowledge is being spread around the world,

and they're enacting with powerful local cultures. And through the process of synchronization, new forms of knowledge, are being created. Okay? So the Greeks spread the knowledge of India and now it's enacting with local Indian philosophy and religion including new ideas, right? So the most famous synchronization is in the Levant, Greek knowledge was being spread to the Jews. Okay, and so when you put the Greeks and the Jews together, you have a new idea that would forever revolutionize human history and it's called Christianity. So Christianity would not have been possible if it were not for the work of Aristotle.

Okay. All right. So those are three major legacies of the Greeks. And so it is, I think it's perfectly fair to say the Greeks were the most influential and consequential civilization of all time. They're certainly the most creative. No other civilization even comes close to their creativity. Okay, so that's it. Any questions? Okay, so we are finished with the Greeks. Next class, we start a new unit on Rome, Roman history. All right, so great.