Speaker 1: 0:25

All right, this is Anish and this is Residency Rounds. So the last episode I had discussed our path getting here and I had expressed my hesitancy in pursuing this path going forward. I was continuing to record episodes. I've been giving it some thought and what I found is that the recording of the episodes has been complimentary to my reading and it's also spurred me on to continue to read these texts. In the pursuit of examining one's life, one has to find a thread of conversation which can underpin a certain philosophy of life, and follow that thread till one understands what that philosophy is. And if one doesn't ascribe to that philosophy, after reading it and understanding it, one can then pick up a different thread. In such a way, one can eventually acquire a toolkit, a philosophical toolkit, and create for oneself a philosophical foundation on which to base one's ethics, one's morals, in the effort to ensure that one is acting in accordance with what is best for oneself. So that's been my effort. The nature of picking up a thread and following that thread is that it is difficult to do without having some guidance, and that's where the Great Conversations comes in.

Speaker 1: 3:18

The book series that was developed by Mortimer Adler spans the pretty much the entire to length of the western line of thought, and it is one single conversation that starts from the, the Iliad and the Odyssey and through Plato, aristotle, so on and so forth, all the way to Freud. And it's not that the conversation ends there, it's just that the book series ends there. There are a lot of books, 54 in total. Some of them are easy reads, some of them are hard reads, some of them are hard reads, but they're all good reads. It's just one needs a lot of stamina to be able to go through these books and understand everything, continue to follow the thread, drop it at times when life comes along, and then pick it up again and remember what one had read before. And reading it once is not enough. One has to read it a few times to get the gist of what is being discussed.

Speaker 1: 4:43

I've not read all of them. I don't think I'll be able to do so in my lifetime. I have read some of them and the Great Conversations books, again, are only limited to the Western line of thought. There's more than just the Western line of thought Philosophy. There's the Eastern line of thought line of thought. There's more than just a Western line of thought philosophy. There is the Eastern line of thought, and so the the curriculum that I prefer is the foundations of modern obligation course, the US neighbor, us Naval War College curriculum, and that has certain texts out of the Great Compensation in addition to the Eastern line of work and some other religious works as well. So that's the one that I have been reading and following.

Speaker 1: 5:40

I believe that it is. If there's a way, if there's a word for it, if easier is the word for that, it is. If there's a way, if there's a word for it, if easier is the word for it, it is easier. Take it for what that means. I've also found it to be challenging but doable.

Speaker 1: 6:13

We have started with Platonic works and we have now moved to the next author in the Great Conversation, and that is Aristotle. So we are finally at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, which is part of the Foundations of Moral Obligation course, and I'm really excited to be here. The start of Nicomachean Ethics means that we have gone through the Platonic dialogues and taken a long walk through the Republic, which has 10 chapters and is a platonic dialogue. If you've managed to come through the Republic, we have learned a lot, things like what is it? What does it mean to be good, to be just to be courageous, to be temperate, to be wise? What does it mean to have a philosophical constitution? And these are very important questions to have answers to and to understand what Plato or Socrates meant when he said the good or when he said happy.

Speaker 1: 7:41

Because English is a very practical language. We really don't have a wide breadth of words to use, to get deeper meanings out of certain words, and so we end up using the same word to mean many different things. Good is one such word, happiness is one such word, and if one is not careful, one could miss the deeper meaning for a more superficial meaning. It's important to know what the answers are. As one goes through life and as you're reading other books in the series, one has to understand that when the author says good, what do they mean? When they say justice, what do they mean? They say temperance, what do they mean? So all of these things are important. When we say happiness, what does one mean? And so the great conversation starts from from a point that did that. That defines what these words are and then carries that forward. So it's important to start from the beginning, drinking from the source, as Eddie would say and then moving forward from it. So I'm glad that we have been through the Republic and now we're going to start the Nicomachean Ethics.

Speaker 1: 9:02

I'm not going to go into Aristotle and who he was I think all of that's available on Wikipedia for someone to go into but I would say that it is important to distinguish a doer of philosophical acts versus somebody who discusses philosophy. We want to be the former and not the latter. Philosophy gets a bad rap because of this caricature of the armchair philosopher, and there are examples of people who were doers of philosophical acts. Some of them went on to write down what they did, which is rare. Most of the times what they did was chronicled by their students. So Socrates was a doer and he never wrote anything down.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Plato was a student of Socrates, and after Socrates was put to death, plato was deeply moved by it and then went on to chronicle Socrates' life through the Platonic Dialogues and continue the work of Socrates by teaching others through the university that he formed, the academy that Plato formed, and so Plato was an academician. Aristotle was Plato's student and Aristotle had a falling out from Plato and he went on to prominent people in society in Greece, so he was the teacher of Alexander the Great. So just think about that lineage. Now Alexander learns from Aristotle, who learns from Plato, who then learns from Socrates. I will tell you that the world is more concerned with acts of greatness than philosophical acts. That's the world that we live in. I knew of Alexander the Great way before I knew about Socrates, and when one reads about Socrates and his thoughts and then reads about Alexander and his thoughts and deeds, there is no comparison in quote-unquote greatness between the two, though Alexander gets the label of great despite being anything, but it's more about his conquests Than the philosophical underpinnings.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Alexander was miserable. What we know about Socrates? We can say that, yes, he was poor but happy, based on all accounts at least. Now we don't know exactly what was going on inside of Socrates' mind. That's the other problem here. Right, we are all we are. Only we ourselves are know what is what lies deep inside our own minds, whether we are truly happy or not, what we show and express outside. It may be something totally different. But by all accounts, socrates, based on at least the logical deduction, the reasonings that he gave and the fact that he thought about these things, we could say that that's what we are hoping that we eventually are. That's what we are hoping that we eventually are Happy, truly, deeply happy inside. And you can go around Trying to conquer the world and still be miserable If you haven't conquered what is inside first. Some accounts conquering what's inside Is more difficult than conquering the world, so side is more difficult than conquering the world.

Speaker 1: 14:13

So what I was trying to get at from this comparison between Socrates and Alexander is that Aristotle was concerned with making kings, and so his teachings are quote unquote more practical. They're more concerned with politics. Aristotle believed that that politics was the pinnacle of the sciences, and as opposed to Socrates and Plato, who believed that wisdom or the development of a philosophical soul is the peak Virtue, purely for the sake of examining one's life and governing oneself, that is the epitome, the pinnacle. So the difference there and what we know about leadership and being a politician or a ruler, is that the ideal ruler is the one who has conquered himself or herself first, before going on to lead others and turn them, turn others toward the path of good. And that's what the republic is, in a way, and the republic talks about how one can develop inside of them a philosophical constitution. What that means is where you have what's called the rational principle, or that's the ruler. And the rational principle is governed by wisdom and will and then rules over the, the honor seekingseeking and the appetitive or the pleasure-seeking elements of the body, and creates a harmonious constitution inside of the individual. And the way that is described to come about is by blowing up that individual into a city-state and showing how a philosophical constitution in a city-state would lead to a better city as opposed to a tyrannical constitution. And so, similarly, if that's true for a city-state, it is true for the individual.

Speaker 1: 16:56

However, a lot of folks read the Republic and think that it is about city-states and how to govern the city-state. Well, in fact that's not the case. But if one reads the Nicomachean Ethics, one can use the, the, the, the teachings of Aristotle here to if they, if they could, to use it to to help them govern a city state. But it is about politics, this is about leadership building. This is your first leadership book, in a way. Well, I say first the one that that's probably the most. There's one that that survived, I'm sure there are others. But first in the one day, that's probably the most, there's one that's the survive, I'm sure there are others. This is the one that's the life out. I just thought a little new.

Speaker 1: 17:41

Kumar can ethics is a is a is a collection of his lecture notes. So when he when he writes, it's almost like he's giving a lecture to a group of people. And so when he starts, it's almost like he's giving a lecture to a group of people. And so when he starts, he starts with this statement he says that we are here, we are trying to learn, and when it comes to learning, we have to limit our inquiry to the subject and not try to get too deep, because if we go too deep into these subjects, we will never be able to find a way out, and so we may have to leave certain conversations and come back to them. It's very different from the Republic.

Speaker 1: 18:21

In the Republic, socrates gets asked a question, he really goes deep into it and he takes these long winter tracts and comes out the other end and somehow connects everything together. Plato does a beautiful job of connecting all this together, but no question is left unanswered, logically broken down by the Socratic method of questions, and answers rapid fire. In the case of the Nicomachean ethics, that's not the case. Aristotle starts talking about a concept, he asks a few questions about, it doesn't necessarily give any answers, because I presume this is a lecture, and so his students are answering back and they're coming up with some with a reasonable answer, but they leave the conversation there and then they move on, and so he says that's.

Speaker 1: 19:11

One requirement is that one shouldn't get too deep. One should also try not to speak in in probabilities too much. So in order to come to the answer, one may have to talk about the extreme cases rather than the middle ground, where there's a lot more opinion, and so if there's too many differing opinions one may not be able to get to an answer. So it's best to look at examples that lie on the extremes of it rather than in the middle of it. Then he also lie on the extremes of it rather than in the middle of it. Then he also talks about the kind of people who make good students, who are worthy for having these kind of conversations. So he says the best are those who know and the good are those who don't know. They understand that they don't know and they are willing to learn from those who know. The worst are those who don't even know that they don't know. They believe that they do and are unwilling to learn. So Aristotle says that we are only concerned about the folks in the middle, the ones who know that they don't know and are willing to learn from those who know. So he's hoping that you and me are in that second group, and so I do believe that most of us and me included, I was in that third group.

Speaker 1: 20:51

This is the. These are the kind of people that Socrates would go up against when he would be in the marketplace. These are people who are experts in their field. Just because they're experts in one field, they believe that they know everything that is to come. And Socrates would accost these folks and ask them simple questions like you know what is justice, what is temperance, what is ethics, what is law and what is happiness? And they would be mad because he would show them that they, just by asking questions that they didn't know what they were talking about, but they were going about leading people and leading city-states, even though they didn't know the answers to these questions which he thought were important for any leader to know. And these are the kind of questions that, if one answers, they examine one's life. And if you're examining one's life, that's when you can build inside of yourself a philosophical constitution Lead yourself before you lead others. And so he found that the leaders of the day didn't have that ability, and so Aristotle says that you don't want to be in that group.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Now, I believe that people who start off in that group eventually have some sort of a crisis where these beliefs that they know get shattered. And then they find themselves, if they are fortunate, in that second group where they know that they don't know and now they are willing to learn. And that's where you pick up a thread of a conversation, like the great conversation or the foundations of moral obligation, and you start learning and you start answering. You start learning about what others have answered, about questions like what has happened, who am I and what is my purpose to be here as a human being, and so on and so forth. And that's the intent here. The intent to read New Kumakian Ethics is for us to kind of figure out who we are first, and then, if we are in a position to lead others we have. We can then go on and lead others. So so that's how he starts, and then he goes on to say that why are we here? Why are we learning about these concepts.

Speaker 1: 23:09

Asking these says well, we are all what drives action, and Aristotle believes that the reason why we are trying to do something is because we are trying to look for the good. So what he means by good is something that we are all trying to achieve. In other words, good comes from something that we believe is going to achieve. The word goods comes from something that we believe is going to be beneficial to us, and there are many definitions of good. And so then he goes down the discussion of what majority of the people believe to be good. If you ask somebody, why do you do what you do, they'll give you a reason and that reason then becomes a good. That's something that they want to do, whatever be the reason. So there's a higher then. So then, so it's giving example.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Someone could say why does, why is one studying math? Well, because they want to learn math, so that it would have them get a better grade. So better grade is a good that one is trying to achieve. Now, why does one want to get a better grade? Well, that will help them make a better case for them when it comes to applications to go to college, because that means getting a better grade is a good that leads to another bigger good. That is going to college, maybe going to MIT, whatever right, going to be an engineer in MIT. So now that becomes a hierarchical good than the good of getting a higher grade in math. So now, why does one want to go to MIT to be an engineer? Well, that would mean that I would, that the person would then go on to get a job in, you know, on fortune 500 companies, a high-paying job. So well, so then that job or that career is a higher hierarchical good, higher up in their lung. Then the good of getting into mit, and then that job is going to get you status, it's going to get you wealth. Um, it's going to get one recognition or whatever, all the honor. Uh, all of those things, then, are even more hierarchical than getting in, getting that, getting in that job. And then you keep going as to why, why do you want one wealth? Why does one want all of it, which are all considered goods? These are all goods to have.

Speaker 1: 25:40

At some point, you would say the reason I want to do this, and this is, I think we should all try it, try answering these questions as to why we do what we do, we all come to a point where we we say, well, because this is going to make us be happy, make me feel happy. Now people say satisfaction, happiness or whatever you know. There are different words that they would use, but happiness is the word that people all come down to. And then then if you ask yourself again, why do you want to be happy? Well, it turns out that there isn't really a very good answer that you can give. It becomes a circuitous answer you always keep coming back to you're doing it because you want to be happy. That makes happiness kind of the chief good. The good that all other goods are kind of leading to is happiness. Now you know, you try that and see if that works for you. It does work for me. I've kind of looked at it from different ways. Some people use satisfaction and other words for it, and that's comes back to the fact that english is a very practical language. We don't have real words to describe different types of happiness one from another. But this kind of happiness that aristotle is talking about is not the same kind of happiness that you get if you were, if you're hungry and someone gave and someone presented to you your favorite cake and then you eat that cake and you get this on, a pleasure of eating. That's not the kind of happiness he's talking about.

Speaker 1: 27:11

The chief happiness, that the chief good, big happiness is what he says more, the happiness of the soul. It is the happiness that one gets by doing these good deeds. So in order to achieve that kind of pinnacle happiness, one has to have a soul that is ordered. One needs to have the soul that Socrates described in the republic, the philosophical king, the, the philosophical constitution. Now Socrates in Plato, in the Republic, had given us these four types of souls. The best was the philosophical soul.

Speaker 1: 28:01

The next was the democratic, that is, the honour based soul, soul that's seeking honour. So the philosophical soul seeks wisdom. The democratic soul seeks honor. The oligarchic soul seeks wealth. The democratic soul is seeking freedoms. And then the five, fifth sorry, the five and the tyrannical soul is the worst of them all and is only seeking pleasure. And so the goods then are also ordered the same way, so you can have pleasures, pleasures of, uh, you know, eating good food, or you know, from sex to drives, to, to all of those. So those are the pleasures. They are, uh, they're, they are the lowest rung, and then there's wealth, and then there's honor, and then there's wisdom. And so, and Socrates had shown how, even if the, the tyrannical soul, gets all the pleasures that it can, it is still unhappy compared to the democratic. The democratic is unhappy compared to the it's happier than tyrannical, but unhappy compared to oligarchic. Oligarchic is unhappy compared to democratic. And the happiest of them all would be the philosophical soul. So this was in the Republic, and that's why it's important to read the Republic before you read the Nicomachean Ethics.

Speaker 1: 29:33

Because in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle says well, the happiness of the soul, the chief good, the good that we are all going for. If you achieve it, you would say that you had a happy life is the one that you would say that you had a happy life, is the one that you would be able to achieve. If one had the philosophical soul, the rational principle that is aligned with the honor-seeking and the operative elements inside oneself, that individual would have the best chance of achieving this chief good of happiness. Everybody else will fall short. Now, once one has that, then that philosophical soul that has the best chance of achieving this happiness of the soul, then there are other circumstances that could befall them that could change their life trajectory.

Speaker 1: 30:30

So he talks about a more practical form of happiness as well, one that is not just internal but is also combined with all the external trappings of a good life, he says. Wouldn't somebody who has the philosophical constitution be better off if he also has all the trappings of a good life? What I mean to say is that they are. They have good health, they have, you know, family that's healthy, they have reputation, they have wealth, they have all of those things. So that should have some sort of a better effect than being deprived of all of those things.

Speaker 1: 31:19

Now, even in the Republic, socrates had described exactly how he would prove that a person who's just, a person who's just just but society believes is unjust and suffers because of what society believes, would still be happier than someone who is unjust but society believes is just. So Socrates already shown, proved how that would be the case. But at the end of that argument, in chapter 10 of the Republic, he says that if a person is just, is truly just, you know, it's more likely that society will also give him or her the trappings of the life that comes to somebody who has, in fact, you know, the benevolence of everybody because of the fact that he's just. So we talk about that individual who's just and also has the trappings of being just Now. This person, aristotle says, would be somebody who would be truly happy, because they have the philosophical constitution, the aim toward wisdom, happiness on the inside, happiness of the soul and the trappings of a good life that come with it. They're also a good leader, and now they can take this, their philosophical Constitution, and try and build a society where they can motivate others to be just, to be good, and increase that way their chances of achieving happiness. So that is the, that's the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, going over these concepts.

Speaker 1: 33:21

Then, before he ends, he says well, in order to understand how one can go about improving their chances of achieving this kind of happiness, it is important to break down how does one get there? And so, like you said, that happiness is what you get if one acts in the right way. So that means one needs to have a good soul or a philosophical constitution, and the actions that come out of that philosophical soul is what would lead to happiness. And so the actions of a good soul means that the soul has virtue, and now these are the cardinal virtues that Socrates had spoken about or Plato had spoken about, that's justice, temperance, courage, wisdom.

Speaker 1: 34:29

Aristotle breaks them down into what he calls intellectual virtues and moral virtues. He says intellectual virtues are those of philosophical wisdom, practical wisdom. So wisdom is an intellectual virtue and then the moral virtue is temperance or moderation. So those are the two big virtues of the soul that he is concerned about, and he says it's important to understand what these are in order to be able to build that philosophical constitution, in order to then act upon the philosophical constitution so that one can gain the chief good, that is capital H happiness, capital H happiness, which would then also allow one to have the trappings of a happy life and be happy across the duration of their life. So that is Nikomachin ethics, book one, and next time we will go over book two, which goes into these virtues. Thank you for listening.