The Daily Stoic - Edith Hall on Aristotelian Ethics, Intention, and Human Decency

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Ryan speaks with Edith Hall about why she wants to open up Aristotle’s works to the world at large, how Aristotle defined what a human being is and how one can be happy, the importance of doing what you’re good at and enjoying what you’re doing so long as it’s good for the social good, and more.Edith Hall, FBA is a British scholar and professor of classics at Durham University, specializing in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College, London, as well as a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research and writings have been influential in three distinct areas: (1) the understanding of the performance of literature in the ancient theater and its role in society, (2) the representation of ethnicity; (3) the uses of Classical culture in European education, identity, and political theory. She has written and been a part of many publications about Greek classics, including Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life (2018), Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition (2009), and Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (1989). ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short Passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating, and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are,

and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I remember quite vividly my introduction to Marcus Aurelis. I've told this story many times, but I happened to be taking a philosophy class at the time. I was not introduced to Marcus Aurelis in that philosophy class. No, it was called Philosophy in the Meaning of Life. I was at UCR, it was an honors seminar, and it was weirdly at the movie theater on right off campus,

the University Village. I was trying to explain to someone who goes there now, they didn't have enough classroom space. So some of the big freshman and sophomore classes would be in the movie theater, which was actually close to my apartment, which was actually right across the street. And I was reading a Aristotle, I read Nickamanschi and Ethics the street. And I was reading a Aristotle.

I read Nick Manchion ethics. That's what I was reading. And it was fascinating and I opening and I learned a lot from it. But then when I read Marx's Realist, I was like, oh, this is it. I get this. But I still remain fascinated with Aristotle.

There's a lot he can teach us. And that's what I am going to talk about with my guest today. Edith Hall, a professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University in Northeast England. She's a specialist in ancient Greek literature, but she's also an expert on Roman history, thought in society. She's an expert on Aristotle, really, and how his school and his thinking has shaped the Western world. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode.

I wanted to talk to her about Aristotle to do a briefing on Aristotle effectively. And I think you're really going to like this episode. I quite enjoyed it. And she has a fascinating book I would like to recommend. Aristotle's way how ancient wisdom can change your life. It was blurbed by one of my favorite writers Sarah Bakewell, who I'm going to have on the podcast soon. She calls it a wonderfully lively and personal guide, Read It and Flourish. I think that's very well said. I think you're going to like this

interview. Here's my chat with Professor Edith Hall talking about Aristotle and what he could teach us about modern life. It's funny. I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever. And I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you? And it's true. And almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible.

That's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from best sellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover, and as an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out Stillness is the key, the daily dad, I just recorded so that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books, so all those are available and new members can try

Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something. Obviously, I use my journal, obviously I turn to stosism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Talkspace makes it easy to find a therapist that you like.

It's convenient. It's affordable. By doing everything online, Talkspace makes getting the help you want easy and affordable. So why wait? And Talkspace can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties. It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers. As a listener of this podcast,

you can get 80 bucks off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic. To match with a license therapist today, go to Talkspace.com.sashtoic to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the daily stoic, that's Talkspace.com.sashtoic. and show your support for the videos to us. That's talkspace.com slash stoic. So talk to me about your introduction to Aristotle. Where does it begin with you? I wrote this book called Aristotle's Way because I have been trying to put into practice Aristotle's program for trying to find what he calls happiness, which is a very particular kind of happiness. I've been trying to do that for about 40 years, and I've been very frustrated as a classical scholar with how little the general public

seem to have access to Aristotle's ethics. I think they've been gate-kept by the academy and I think that they are remarkably applicable to 21st century anxieties and remarkably practicable. And for me, they offer far more than any of the other ancient secular schools of ethics of which there are at least five varieties, they're the ones that I found most congenial. Yeah, maybe Aristotle didn't do himself any favors, titling his most essential work, Nick Emancian ethics. It's like even from the jump, you're like,

what is this? How could I, how could I as a regular person read this, let alone have it applied in my life? Well, I know and it says that because Nikomicus is simply the name of his father and his son, and in the traditional Greek way that still applies today, you name your oldest son after the paternal grandfather, and so when he writes his ethics, he's thinking in terms of of hamming on his wisdom to the next generation. If he'd called it like friendly advice from a father to a son, I think we would all have been much

quicker to dive in. I think so. Was that your introduction to Aristotle? Is that was that your way into his work? Well, I went to Oxford to study classics. I was very fortunate that in my day, because I wasn't from a wealthy background. In my day, there were still scholarships for bright kids to go to basically private schools where Greek was actually taught.

I mean, these days I would not have got to Oxford to do classics. And I was looking for secular ethics. I mean, I was quite, I knew I was. I was brought up in a very strict Christian household. My father is actually a church of England, what you would call an Episcopalian minister. And at 13, I simply lost all my religion. I just lost it. And I found my teens and young adulthood extremely bewildering because I'd lost the rule book, how to behave. So when I first started reading Aristotle University,

I actually got into him through reading Greek tragedy because he wrote this famous little book called The Poetics about tragedy. And I was very struck by this, and I asked my tutor about the moral focus of what Aristotle was saying about tragedy. He said, well, just go read the Nike Miki and Ethics, if you're interested. And you know, I really couldn't believe what I read. I felt as though I had come home. That was my experience with the Stoics. I'm almost to a T, a little bit later. I'm excited to talk to you about it, it was a little bit later. This sort of the old institutions had fallen short or I had fallen away from them.

And then I think for thousands of years, clearly human beings sort of break away from whatever, maybe their parents taught them or they're not able to just operate on implicit assumptions about how a person should be, and they ask themselves, like, how should I live? What should I live by? And I think it's remarkable and beautiful how philosophy can give us an answer to it the best of its ability to, to that sort of timeless question. I think, I think what's remarkable historically speaking is that for nine or a thousand years, these different secular systems were developed in antiquity. And it is not, of course at all, just parapetetic. That's Aristotelian philosophy. It's absolutely Stoics. Probably there were more Stoics in the ancient Mediterranean world

and there were any other ones school, but there were plateenists. So it's curious. Skeptics? Yes. There were cynics. There were skeptics, exactly. So there was a whole smogers board of things to choose from,

which thought about how should we live, how should we behave without God. And it really wasn't until the Enlightenment, and it wasn't until the middle of the 18th century that you could even think about doing that without risk of being burned to to stake. You know, and so, you know, monotheistic religion really did put the kibosh on a lot of this. So I think it's really because, certainly in the Western world, so much fewer people are really living

widely kind of strict religious code, especially since the 1960s, it's where that's where sociologists date the great secularization too. Yep, so far, greater are actually in Britain, that it is in the States. I think you'll find that statistically far more people say they are believers in God of one description or another in the USA. I think it's probably at least 50% whereas in Britain it is something like 8% or this is a godless society. And I think young people are desperately looking for principles to live by and their purpose to live for. supposed to live by and an purpose to live for. My own children and generation Z, as you call it, we call it generation Z. And they're constantly making up rules. They are actually making rules for themselves about how they should be and how they should treat each other because they don't, they feel so at sea. So this book was very much born out of the experience of my parenthood actually.

I've pushed out to, I've raised three and I've found that Aristotelian thinking has, I think, helped me parent a lot better than I would have done without it. helped me parent a lot better than I would have done without it. Yeah, I mean, I mean, when man stands alone in the universe, he has to figure out a reason to live and a methodology for living. When the answer to those questions is not because God said so,

or because you will go to hell, or you will go to heaven, right? Like in some respects, it requires a lot more work to figure out a reason and a code, and why to be good and why not to be bad. And the good news is basically the smartest people who ever lived worked on this problem for a really long time before something came along and sort of interrupted it or superseded it. And, you know, I'm just reading another book. It's funny by another Edith.

I was reading a biography of Robert F. Kennedy and he's like in his 30s or 40s when he'd obviously been raised in a very Catholic family. And someone gave him Edith Hamilton's book The Greek Way. And it opens up this whole other side of him. You know, when Martin Luther King Jr. dies, he quotes Escalus, which he gets from this book in this famous speech.

And that was Robert Kennedy, not John. Yes, sorry, sorry. I meant to say Robert. Yes, yes, yes. But I thought it was so interesting that, you know, it's also not necessarily in conflict with religion, it can supplement and complement and give someone a deeper understanding of, say, a moral compass or one's duty or, you know, how to process suffering and pain. Okay, so let's talk, let's start with Aristotle then. And as we're thinking of Aristotle,

walk me through his conception of happiness and the good life. Okay, well I actually always start with his question of what is it to be a human being? Sure, let's start there. So before him, you know, the biggest thinker was obviously Plato and Plato and Socrates, so they were his father and grandfather. He went to Plato's academy and was taught Socratic questions. But where Plato and Socrates start from the top down so that they construct a republic designing it as a total system,

Aristotle always starts with what it's like to be an individual anthropos, right? That's the human being. And he starts actually with animals, he says, actually, we're just another animal. Now this was revolutionary. Ancient Greeks were quite clear. – Federalist bipeds.

– Yes, that's platonic, joke. But he is absolutely clear that we are simply animals that have got certain attributes that are more developed than in other animals. Sure. And this has extraordinarily revolutionary repercussions for the whole system. So it basically starts out with the idea that things like instincts for sex and food and love and pleasure are completely natural and completely good and that your instincts will basically follow you lead you to good nutrition, good relationships, healthy reproduction. Now, that is so different from the platonic position,

which is that bodies are deeply problematic. We should be denigrating the body at the expense of this disembodied soul that's going to have lasting life. And so I like to start with this animal. And that's also very good in terms of revising Aristotle for woman, okay, because in the whole Platonic dualistic system which was inherited by Christianity, where you've got soul and then you've got body. Women tended to be denigrated to just these breeding machines, who were not as intellectual

and very much associated with physical desires and food and children and reproduction. Aristotle thinks that's wonderful, so I actually, although a lot of people think Aristotle's a sexist, I find him by far the most congenial of the ancient philosophical schools because he celebrates our animal nest. So we have to start from that. But we have got capacities that other animals don't or don't have anything like so much developed. And the most important ones amongst these for him are the capacity to deliberate. That means to make planning decisions, rational decisions about the direction of our lives. Other animals don't seem to be able to do that.

Incompanied with that, we have the capacity for discipline recollection. Now that is different from memory he knew that dogs had memory, he knew that, you know, if you take a dog around the same walk, it'll get the sense of that walk. But can a dog sit down with another dog and say, let's plan the future. Do you remember two years ago when we were in this valley and there weren't any rabbits? Whereas a human being can say, now let me try and recall what happened when I was last in this valley. So that sense of positionness in time, rational deliberation, and he also thinks that humor is rather delightful. Humor is one of the great gifts that he doesn't think

other animals have. Now, I think some zoologists would disagree with that now, especially about some of the more advanced animals, like apes and dolphins. But it is a very distinctive human skill, which allows us to deal with an awful lot of the suffering that we're more aware of, at least we're more aware of the danger of it, we're far more aware of our precarity, we probably, the only animals completely aware of our impending mortality. So there's this bunch of gifts that you have got as an anthropos. He also doesn't believe, unlike almost every other ancient Greek until his time,

that there is an afterlife. He just doesn't. He thinks that human beings will go on forever, which environmentalists would now question, but that it's my constant reproduction of ourselves. So he really, I think, originated the idea that we're in this weird waiting room for death, all of us. And it is our responsibility, as individuals, to figure out ways to make that apparently desolate situation of the human condition bearable. So we have to make our own purpose, our own plans. And it's very exciting to me that he emphasizes

the extent of our control over our destinies. He does acknowledge random bad luck as a terrible problem for humans and writes very, very interestingly about the interplay between free will and luck, bad luck, chance. But that, you know, putting you right in the cockpit of your own aeroplane at the control system to make your flight for your 70 years or whatever, if you're lucky, as constructive as possible, absolutely fits with my mindset.

You know, I've got to do it for myself. It's up to me to make happiness. If I make happiness, that may also help the people around me be more happy. And that's what genuinely sort of got me up in the morning. My life is a project. And that's what genuinely sort of got me up in the morning. My life is a project. And he also says that as animals, I guess, that we are political animals, which is somewhat unique.

Sorry, can you hear me? Please could you speak up a bit? Sorry, he also says that we're political animals. Yes, now that's much misquoted. Much misquoted, it was famously misquoted in a dialogue between Donald Trump and the Pope at one point because he says, man, Anthropos is a political zone. So one is a member of an animal not a plant, right? And he said we're a political observer, but he didn't mean that means we all want to get involved in horrible, controversial,

party politics, and disputations. What he meant was that we like to live in a police. And that is something that more and more Most all other animals don't do. They don't elect to live in large communities with non-kin. Right. We elect to live in very large communities with plenty of people We're not related to. And we've got to figure out the bonds that associate us as much

With our neighbors, our fellow citizens on the other side of huge cities, and indeed with people in other cities. That's all he meant. And he goes through in his biological and serological works all the ways that other animals live together and sees that, for example, bees and some birds might share a bit of that But in general animals stick with kin rather than making social relationships That is what you meant. So you really meant man is a sociable animal rather than man is a political animal Yes, or perhaps that's just the That we have an aversion to that it says something about where our politics have become, as opposed to, there's a US politician

that famously said, government is the word, is the word we made up for the things we decide to do together. And I think Aristotle meant political or social in that sense that we come together and do things, not that we belong to silly parties and fight each other over partisan issues. And at a certain level of civilization, with a range of different goods and resources and activities available to us, actually depends on that one cooperation.

Nobody can provide, you know, he has a vision of a town where some people are tradesmen, some people across, some people are teachers, you know, and together we come together to make something much bigger than the sum of the parts. And that's very inspiring in a world today where there is so much divisiveness and politics and so much denial, you know, Margaret Satcher famously said, there's no such thing as society, there are only individuals and their families. And that kind of anarcho-rightist rhetoric that there really isn't such a thing as social glue between all of us. I find it intensely depressing. between all of us. I find it intensely depressing. The Dell Technologies Black Friday in July event is on with limited quantity deals on top business PCs with Windows 11 Pro. Save on select Vostro laptops with built-in OS recovery fingerprint readers and antivirus protections. Plus, you can save on select latitude laptops with

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When you find a professional on Angie, to make your backyard the best around. Connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well. Inside to outside, repairs to renovations. Get started on the Angie app or visit Angie.com today. You can do this when you Angie that. No, it is interesting to think about what you said. So, if you take Aristotle as not believing in the afterlife, accepting that there's random bad luck and pain and suffering and that there's, you know, you could see a kind

of futility in human existence, but there's also this sort of hope and this profound purpose and meaning that comes from our tendency or ability to come together to do things. To me, I agree with your criticism of that, you're there. That is inherently, that is almost a nihilistic view of the world that we're not actually Part of this larger thing. We're all it's the war of all against all kind of thing

And we have no dream of collective progress. Yes I'm ultimately utopian I think we don't have enough utopian thinking. I think we need to imagine What a better world for us all together could be like before we can begin to make it. And certainly that belief is what is responsible for the incredible progress that we've made, not just where the Greeks got, but also where we have gotten since the Greeks. but also where we have gotten since the Greeks. Since the Renaissance, yeah. Yeah. OK, so that's Aristotle's conception of the human being.

What is the human being thriving or flourishing to him then? His conception of happiness? Well, that brings us to another key concept. I mean, there's about half a dozen really key concepts, and that is potential, human potential. Aristotle very strongly believes that we've all got what he calls our dunamis. It's actually the same word, sadly, that Nobel took

for Dynamite, which is terribly destructive, but you're dunamis. Now, all humans, he did have a sort of present awareness that there must be something like DNA. So, all humans have got the potentiality to grow up to be a mature, homo sapiens. That is something that's implanted in you with your father's semen according to Aristotle.

There's a code. But on top of that, you've got an individual potential, which is quite unlike anybody else's. And he's fascinated by talent, by natural inborn, what would be the best word for it? Well, ability, natural inborn ability. He absolutely sees it, requires lots of work and development. But that we've all got it. And you can't predict because of what someones parents do or any other fact of what it is. And you can't be happy in his book

unless you get your doonimus identified and then make a plan to fulfill it. So he takes analogies of things like acorns. So a little acorn has got a dunamis to become a glorious adult healthy oak tree. Okay? We've all got the potential to become a glorious fully formed adult. And he thinks we hit our prime in our late 40s actually, interesting me, when you've acquired a lot of practical wisdom and still got your health. But we've also got the individual one. He thinks that it's very, very easy to destroy people's chances of achieving that potential. I mean most obviously if you don't provide a human infant with love, food and an education, they will be psychotic,

starving, malnourished and illiterate. There are some things you have to do. But each individual child also really needs people to put work into helping them find out what they are good at. But the joy here is it's really easy because it's what they like doing. Pleasure is the guide to doonimus, right? So when my children, what I did was just expose them rather than be a helicopter mother who forced them to have hundreds of violin lessons, or ballet lessons, I just exposed them to as many different things as I could

ballet lesson. I just exposed them to as many different things as I could to see where they got excited. And you know one of them shows them lots of movies, I have to show a couple of Japanese manga. She is studying Japanese at university because she loved those movies so much. Yeah, I mean, I really mean it. The other one, um, used to take into lots of stately homes and castles and archaeological sites and museums, not forcing them, just, you know, they could go to the tea shop and the gift shop. But she, she, she just went wild for history in Red Modern History at University. But I'd have to see her hate music, hate cooking, hate, million one other things. Before I saw the rapture, actually, it worried Castle, it's one of our best castle, this rapture listening to about the kings and queens and knights and warriors of the past. So it's really not

that difficult, you know, it's a matter of keeping an open mind and not imposing your will. Because he says that people who are miserable will never fulfill their potential. And then they will end up being pretty miserable all their lives. And they'll be on their deathbed, saying, I wish I had tried to be an astronaut. I'm just going through that with... That's a two-tried and failed. I'm just going through that with my two young children now. My oldest we tried him in soccer.

He never seemed to wrap his head around the game, tried him in baseball. What's your name? Didn't seem to like it. And then last week we took him to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu wrestling basically. And it was like a light went off. He was like, I wanna come back tomorrow. He's like, I wanna come back the day after. And it was like, you know, it's so easy as a parent to be like, my kids not good at things.

They're not athletic. You know, like you jump to these conclusions and really you just need to be, you're just seeing it as a process of elimination. You're just crossing off things until you get to the one that the light turns on for them. And you know, it might be needed to think their best start is just being a very nice person.

You know, there's some people who just, some people would say they haven't done anything when they're nice, but in fact, they've been a fantastic friend and parent. Sure. And that's the first person you'd want on the desert island, because they're advanced emotional intelligence. Yes.

Right? And that's fine. Yes. That is absolutely fine. Everybody is good at something. I passionately believe that. I heard a story about a novelist who was, and I'm forgetting his name, so I feel sad about it,

but he was writing something for a fashion show or something, and he ends up taking his son to this fashion show, and his son just sort of comes alive, ends up meeting these people. He doesn't want to leave. And as they're in the car, his son sort of buzzing, talking about all this stuff. And his dad says something to him like, you found your people. That's great.

And he said, you're early. Like you found your people at 10 or 12 instead of 35. And it does seem, speaking of Aristotle, Aristotle finds his people, he falls into philosophy, like he was meant to do, to pose the question of a document. He doesn't fall, he doesn't, he isn't object lesson. Aristotle is orphaned at the age of about 13, but his parents die. And if that hadn't happened, he would probably have ended up being a moderately satisfied general practitioner of medicine in his hometown. That was his ancestral profession. And he remains very interested in medicine. But that's what he'd have done. His father died.

He was sent off to his brother-in-law who lived somewhere else and was wealthy and lived with his much older sister and his brother-in-law, and they saw that this kid had the biggest interlite anybody had ever come across, and they sent him to Plato's Academy at 17. Wow. And the white must have gone off on for him. Yes, but that's what I'm trying to say is he had he was actually lucky because he could easily have just been I think a slightly frustrated general practitioner for him when what he wanted to do was actually figure out everything about the entire world. And he's say 20 years at play tays Academy, 17 to 37. Wow. You know, that was all he wanted to do.

Well, no, it's interesting. The dial turned one degree, like, you know, a doctor is still a pretty cerebral intellectual pursuit. And he probably would have been very good at it and found lots of ways to satisfy his curiosity, but turning it just a few degrees towards what he was actually meant to do changes the course of human history. Yeah, and I think that really stayed with him though, that he had been fortunate enough that his potential was spotted and acted on. Yes, yes. And they have the finances to do it. Yes, right. Sure, and the role of luck is obviously a part of that.

Yeah. So Aristotle, what's the next big concept then from Aristotle? So we have this potential, we have to fulfill, and then what is next? OK. Closely related to your dunamis is what, if you fulfill your doodling, if you get to be the best possible version of yourself, that's what we're talking about. And that sounds a bit new age, but it's the best possible you. Then you achieve your telos. Teleology is another of Aristotle's great concepts that things are

driving, they want things, even inanimate objects have a sort of drive for completion, a drive for fulfillment. So your tealos is whatever it is that you are aiming at. So it's important to have, and he actually says it's a sketch. You can't do a full color picture at 25 or 30 of what you want to be at 70. You can only do a sketch. He actually says that like an outline

because half and star circumstances who you meet, all these other things will get coloured in, but he says, you need a sketch of a live plan. And I actually, I did that and figured out with some help from a very important mentor in my life as well, that, you know, I wanted to do something to leave the world a better place. I am that utopian. I was no good at actual politics. The only thing I'd got was a first class degree from Oxford in classics.

And I did realize then very strong communication skills. I have always been able to communicate, quite complicated ideas, quite simply. But I also knew I had to be a parent. also knew I had to be a parent. I knew I had to be a parent. So I had a vision of what I'm 63 now, actually the age Aristotle died. But I had a vision of this rather contented woman

in early old age who had got these children she'd raised around her and was using her brain to bring the ancient Greeks and Romans communicatively to as many, but you know what, I've just about done it. I've just about done it. It's all gravy from here. But I did formulate that picture at about 25. Well, you formulate the picture, but you don't know what you don't know. So that's probably why he means it's a sketch because there's, there's all these things that you still have to learn.

There's things you have to discover about the world. The things can happen in the world that could, there could be a war. You know, Aristotle has no conception that the most, that the, the, the most powerful conqueror in the world will be named his student at some, that there's all the future lays before you and you can't possibly conceive everything that's going to happen, but you can have sort of your guiding principles or your sense of what your contribution is to be, and then you find a way to make it work inside that.

And he thinks that what he calls happiness, and we should probably get on to what he, his definition of it. One of the most moving things to me, he ever said, was that it's actually just doing what you're very good at, actually in the act, because you'll be getting pleasure from it. And actually, I think it's almost what you and I doing

right now. You know, just the one thing we're both good at is talking about moral philosophy. Yes. And because we're good at it, we enjoy it. And because we enjoy it, we're good at it, they go together. And it's actually in the moment that you're being you die mode. Right? You are being you dimo as you are doing it. Because his concept of happiness has got nothing to do with transient sort of physical pleasure, you know, it's not the happy hour or of cocktails or having a happy meal or any of those kinds of things or even a happy birthday. It's about continuously daily re-enacting this best version of yourself, preferably in his big-on-french-ship, in company with like-minded individuals. And if you do that repeatedly while trying to work on your character,

while trying to work on your character, your virtues and vices, then you have got the very best possible chance of being at ease on that deathbed. Does there have to be a social component or I guess a socially constructive component to it? I'm just thinking like, if someone is a really good pick pocket or if you're Aristotle, and you're

really good at reducing cities and endlessly conquering, you know, one. I'm on the side. Yeah, what one is doing, what they are really good at, but is there a hollowness to it or an emptiness to it if it's not for the social good? Yes. And this is where the relationship of happiness to virtue comes in. We talked about finding your potential, what you're really good at, in a sort of professional sense. But just as important, in fact, more important is becoming the best possible version of yourself in terms of your moral character.

And this puts people off. People don't like the word virtue. It sounds prig-ish and puts people off. I prefer to see, let's talk language of American movies, do the right thing. Human decency is it's about decency, and trying to do the right thing in all circumstances, which takes a very considerable amount of thought. But the, what I didn't believe at first when I started reading Aarostocle was that just trying to was that just trying to be a good person, trying to squash your vices and develop your virtues and treat your neighbour as yourself, really. That's what he actually does talk about that.

The different, you treat a friend with the same love that you want you should be offering yourself That you will actually get in a happiness from that now. I've tried to persuade my husband of that I have persuaded my husband. He's more likely to be happy if he's nice to people I have But he thinks it's simply generated by the fact that it becomes reciprocal and then nice back to you He thinks it's sort of external So if you're kind to your children, you're going to get a hell of a lot more out of those relationships with those children when they're older than if you're mean to them. Same with your neighbour, same with your employer, same with everybody else. That is absolutely true, but I think Aristotle is right that you actually make a battery inside yourself that is a happiness-making radiator that goes along with that because you, whatever

the world tells you, however much criticism or persecution you may face, if you know you were trying to do your best, if you know you were trying to do your best, right, if you know you were trying to do your best, even in the worst possible circumstance, if you're wrongly imprisoned, the person who's imprisoned knowing they tried to do their best is going to be a hell of a lot happier than the one who knows they're in there justifiably, because it's just this warking battery. And I genuinely do believe that now, and I didn't believe that when I was first in touch with Aristotle, because I'd been given

the Christian system of good behaviour equals reward, right, instead of it being actually self-generated. Having said that, he thinks only very, very few people can do that in isolation. I mean, maybe the greatest philosopher in the world can become a hermit because he's just generating happiness inside himself from his virtue. But he says, basically, we show our virtue in interactions with others. You've got to have an object of your virtue. So you need that family, you need those friends, you need that society. Celebrity feuds are high stakes.

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of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. I think the Stokes would say, being kind, uh, courteous, respectful, generous, et cetera,

you control that. Like you control whether you do it, you don't control whether it's reciprocated. So if you're doing it for the reciprocation, what Mark Sures calls the third thing in meditations, he says, why did you ask for the third thing? You're probably setting yourself up for disappointment, because you're not going to get it,

the vast majority of the time. There's huge overlap between Stoic virtue ethics and parry-potersic ethics. And it's quite funny, because I called after two different buildings, you know, in Athens, once the parry-potas, and the others, the Stoer, you know, in Athens, once the Peripitas and the others, the Stoa, you know, they're just named after these buildings. But to me, the thing I've not been able, there's lots, I mean, I read Marcus Aurelius, I do, I read

Epic Teeters. And I think in the actual thick of life, especially if the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I think those mantras can be incredibly comforting and give you strength. And I've got, I see nothing wrong with a bit of alacar, ancient philosophy. Having said that, it's the dualism of stoicism, not as it's understood so much by neo-Stoics, but I have read all the ancient Stoics in Greek and Latin every word, and they do think that desire and emotion need to be quelled and suppressed. Whereas Aristotle has this wonderful sliding scale where it's finding the right amount. And that is what makes me an Aristotelian, not a stoic.

I embrace my anger if it's in a justifiable cause. Aristotle says that, you know, I even embass, you know, when I did my review of myself, because Aristotle gives you a sort of questionnaire and the Eudemian ethics to go through all your personal characteristics and you've got to do glaringly honest, self-diagnosis on your vices. If you don't do it honestly, you won't identify them, then you won't be able to work on them, so you won't get the full happiness benefit. And I figured out that actually vindictiveness is probably my worst fault. I love revenge. Okay.

But when I read Aristotle on this, I realized it's not a matter of either having it or not having a desire for revenge. It's a matter of having it in the appropriate amount, at the appropriate time. If some guy, drunk guy, runs over my kid and they're in a wheelchair for life, right? It is perfectly right if you're a moral agent to seek at least some kind of recompense, right? So that desire for revenge is gonna get you into court

and are gonna get your kid proper funding for their wheelchair for life and it's going to get that person punished for their irresponsibility and a desire to see them call to account. In those circumstances, it's absolutely fine. What isn't fine is dwelling on every tiny slight and snub that you've ever, and obsessing on it, which means you can't think beautiful sort. So that is what makes me an Aristotelian, is that for all my strong emotions, I am actually a very emotional person,

I try to find the right amount in the appropriate context, rather than try to suppress them. And there is a lot, you have to be honest, Ryan, about beating down the flames of passion in stoicism. And I actually quite like a moderately kindled fire of passion. No, I agree with that.

There's a beautiful line in meditations that I've been thinking about recently where Marcus Realis, I think he learned it from his philosophy teacher, Sexist, he says, the key is to be free of passion, but full of love. To me, that's a slightly different take on the sort of emotionless, passionless, stoic. But I agree. I think you make a good distinction there between the early writings of the stoics and then how it seems that Marcus Aurelis and Seneca and Epic Titus actually lived their lives, which

seemed to be robust and interesting and full of relationships and engagement in life. And I wonder if one of the differences between, we were criticizing Aristotle for his poorly titled work, but one thing Aristotle really did was sit down and try to explain all these things. He was a philosopher in the sense that he was trying to wrap his arms around the universe and to communicate what he discovered. When I read meditations, I read it much more

the perspective of this is a guy writing notes to himself about what he needed help with as opposed to some comprehensive explanation of what is or isn't the good life. Exactly. And that's what I'm saying. When the proverbial hits the fan, I absolutely Absolutely. Well, I turned to Dale Carnegie, who is simply a stochasticism for the modern American. I have given you lemon, make lemonade. I mean, what wisdom is that? That's such wisdom. That's such wisdom. But it's also fairly Aristotelian. It's like, is lemonade your one talent? You know, if making lemonade is what is your doonimus, then go and be a wonderful industrialist to employ billions of people and give loads of philanthropic money back to the community and make this delicious beverage.

We go on strong with that. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like even Epic Titus is incomplete in that, like, we don't have a sense that this is what Epic Titus would have said, this is my handbook, right? This is Aryan's summary of Epic Titus. And maybe if it looking back at it, he would have said, hey, I'm missing this or this, or by highlighting this too many times, it sounds like I'm saying that's the most

important thing in the world, but actually it's more nuanced than that. Yeah. So I wanted to go back to something you mentioned earlier, which is the idea of sort of, you're talking about doing the right thing. And Aristotle so perfectly says, as you said, do the right thing and the right time and the right amount and, you know, the right emotions, all of that. I'm in the middle now of doing this series on the Cardinal Virtue. So courage, self discipline.

But when it comes to justice, I agree with you. When people hear the word justice, they think the legal system, or they think something very moralistic. When it does feel like both Aristotle and the Stokes believed it as you said, which was like doing the right thing, it just wasn't. Yes, exactly. Why do you feel like we have trouble, like there isn't a corresponding concept, I guess, in the modern world.

It seems strange. No, and it's something that troubles me a lot, is that we don't even talk about this. We don't talk about this with our teenagers, about the problems of evil and problems of suffering, and how to try and cope with that. I think intentionality is perhaps the final concept we should do. Aristotle says all actions are to be judged not on their actual outcome, but on the intention was the intention altruistic,

was the intention constructive, right? So we all make terrible mistakes. I've made some of my worst mistakes have come from very, very altruistic principles where I might have gotten better outcome if I've been more cynical or more pragmatic. But he says you can still, you know, if you deliberated it well and thought that you were coming to the best possible decision for all concerned,

then even if it goes wrong, you can take comfort from that. So intentionality, what is the intention? So people should not be punished for bad outcomes when they were trying to do good. But where does say like, erotic come in there? So if one has great intentions, but is utterly incompetent in the execution, where does confidence and skill come in? Well, that's where deliberation for Aristotle meant getting good advice as well as getting good advice as well as thinking hard for yourself. He's easy to the very collective thing. One of the great losses is he wrote a whole book on deliberation.

He wrote a whole book on how to make decisions collectively. We've got glimpses of that in book three of the Nike Mickey and Ethics, and there are some sort of rules like consider all precedents, calibrate all likelihoods, consult a disinterested, not an uninterested, a disinterested expert.

You know, there's a set of things to do when you're making a decision. And I go around high schools teaching Aristotle's way of deciding, you know, whether to leave your boyfriend or not. And you know what, they just eat it up. They just write this down. They've never realized that the worst person

to talk to is your best friend because they are thoroughly interested. Yes. Because they may want more of your time, right? The worst person to consult is your best friend. You need to go to a relationship counselor who has no vested interest whatsoever. Sure.

You need to think about how this person might react. You know, we see the sort of person who's gonna hit you, if necessary, you have to take precautions. Or, you know, there's a million of one things you do before you take an important decision. And I'm not deciding, saying what brand of baked beans you're gonna buy, but, you know, any important

life decision needs this eight point plan. The most important part of which is don't rush it on young people because of the speed of social media. You know, in the old days, if you were going to give in your, in my day, if you're going to give in your notice that work, it was made really angry one day. You went home, you wrote a letter, you put it by the front door to post in the morning and by the morning, it was 50, 50 chance that you would throw it away. You can't do it now, you shoot off the email. Right, so he would have been appalled and his number one rule is sleep on it. There was a great, great proverb.

Really? Yeah. That's why they had the Delphiocorical. Because if you're going to decide shall we go to war, you have to get the approval from the Delphiocorical. The point is not what the Oracle said. The point is that it took you three months on the waiting list to get an appointment.

Yes. By which time, whether or not to go to war might look very different indeed. And they gave you an answer that was a riddle and you really had to think about what actually needed to be done. You then spent another three months trying to figure the riddle. No, I love that.

This was amazing. Thank you so much. No, I love that. This was amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show.

We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.