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Lesson 1.7: On Hunting with Dogs
13 Plays1 month ago
Topics discussed:
- The philosophical notion of bullshit
- Socratic questioning
- Socrates' motivations for engaging in Socratic questioning
- Socrates' ethics
- Xenophon on self-mastery
For more information, visit theluxuryofvirtue.com.
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Transcript
Socrates' Final Moments and Legacy
00:00:03
Speaker
Okay, picture a man, an older man, and he's in a prison cell. And he is surrounded by his friends who are distraught because he is moments away from being executed. He will be forced to drink hemlock, a sort of poisoned wine. And un understandably,
00:00:27
Speaker
His friends and followers are there absolutely torn to pieces about the loss of their beloved teacher. What do you expect his state of mind to be like? Would you guess that he was serene? That he was perfectly at ease? He was even joyful maybe to be near the end of his life?
00:00:55
Speaker
Those are the reports that we get about Socrates in his last hours. And this equanimity in the face of death set off a series of movements that have been called schools of philosophy or spiritual movements that seek to imitate this sage-like level of understanding of wisdom, this utter imperturbability this being fearless at the end of life.
The Socratic Problem: Conflicting Accounts
00:01:29
Speaker
Today, of course, we are covering Socrates' ethics, and we have a peculiar problem that we must face, whereas other philosophers that we've covered so far, there's actually a dearth of material, very little material on them.
00:01:50
Speaker
In the case of Socrates, we actually have too many accounts of what he was like and what he taught. And in fact, sometimes they conflict. This has been called the Socratic problem. And the general idea here is that it is unclear ah exactly what the historical Socrates taught and believed.
00:02:17
Speaker
We know that there are icons, the iconic Socrates, these takes on his legacy, but sometimes they conflict. So there is a little bit of an issue here when we're trying to reconstruct the actual views of the person named Socrates, not the icon, not the memory of Socrates, which set off a bunch of movements in philosophy, but the person himself.
Socratic Methods and Ethical Focus
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, like most scholars, what I'll do in this lesson is I'm going to borrow heavily from Plato. Plato's early dialogues in particular are seen by many as perhaps the most reliable source for figuring out what Socrates was really like.
00:03:04
Speaker
And by the way, the general trend seems to be that we ought to check Plato's early dialogues with reports from other people, such as Aristotle and Xenophon. Xenophon is another student of Socrates. So we typically don't just take whatever Plato says at face value, but there's a whole process behind this reconstruction of Socrates' views. So what is Socrates like according to Plato?
00:03:34
Speaker
Well, whereas the sophists that were very popular in Socrates' day were very much teachers, teachers were higher, the way that Plato paints Socrates is as more of an inquirer. In other words, he doesn't really give lessons. He has dialogues in public with people and he mostly asks questions.
00:04:01
Speaker
Now, this is not a mindless sort of questioning. This is a form of questioning that sort of betrays deep wisdom. There's almost a goal behind the questions. And if the interlocutor, the person that Socrates is speaking with, is open to it, there might even be a revelation for them at the end of it. Basically, for all who are involved in this, and those who listen as well,
00:04:30
Speaker
There is something being taught in the questioning itself, and that is sometimes called Socratic dialogue, Socratic questioning. It's a whole style unto itself. One feature of Socratic questioning that we will focus on today, and which Plato emphasizes in various dialogues of his, is called the alencus. Sometimes it's called the Socratic alencus.
00:04:58
Speaker
So what is unalencus? It's basically a strategy of dialogue where you tease out the inconsistencies in someone's position. What Socrates would do is he would ask someone to express their opinion on some definition, right? so Especially of ethical concepts. We'll come back to that in a second. Tell me what you think the definition of this is, Socrates would ask.
00:05:25
Speaker
And then he takes that definition that the person, the interlocutor, puts forward and says, well, this has various implications, x, y, z. And they keep talking. And along the way, they tease out other implications, a, b, c. But isn't it the case, Socrates would say, that a is incompatible with x and b with y and c with z?
00:05:53
Speaker
In other words, aren't your views inconsistent? And that's how Socrates would get the person to realize that there's a problem with their basic definition. There's a problem with their philosophical positions. It's not too much to say that with a little bit of labor, he would essentially get people to contradict themselves.
00:06:17
Speaker
And so that's the basic structure of the Alencus and that seems to be a fundamental property of Socratic dialogue in general. It seems like that's what Socrates did in public to public figures, important political figures and public intellectuals and even some sophists throughout much of his later life.
00:06:39
Speaker
Now, just to be clear, it's not that Socrates only engaged in Alencus. Socrates was, you know, also just having conversations with people. Sometimes I'm sure he would be very cooperative in the conversation. It wasn't always his questioning style, but that's what he apparently is most famous for. And so that's one of the things that we'll focus on.
00:07:03
Speaker
I mentioned before that he seems to have really been looking for definitions, especially about ethical concepts. This seems to be something that most people agree about. Most of the primary sources on Socrates, as well as people a generation later who didn't directly meet him, but new people who did know him, such as Aristotle,
00:07:29
Speaker
They all stress that, more than any anyone else before him, he wanted to know the definitions of ethical terms. In one dialogue by Plato, the whole point of the dialogue is to figure out what piety is. Piety is essentially how to maintain a reverent attitude towards the gods, how to make sure that we perform our duties to the gods.
00:07:54
Speaker
How are we properly religious? That's what piety means. And the whole dialogue seems to be just trying to get at, well, how do we know what piety is? Famously, at the end of that dialogue, Euthyphro, the name of the person that Socrates is having a dialogue with, just gets mad and leaves. And this happened more than once, as you can probably guess.
00:08:19
Speaker
Nonetheless, it looks like no one was really trying to define ethical terms that clearly before he was going for what you can quote unquote called the real definition. The definition that captures all cases of people using that word correctly. In another very famous dialogue called Republic by Plato,
00:08:42
Speaker
The whole point of the exercise is to figure out the definition of justice. What is justice? What is it for the individual? What is it for the state? to What is it between people?
00:08:54
Speaker
And so that's another case of Socrates looking for the definition of an ethical term. Now, just like it was the case that Socrates didn't only engage in the Alencus, right? It wasn't always just Socratic questioning. The same goes for his public conversations. It wasn't always just, you know, what is the definition of this ethical term? Sometimes he would also try to figure out whether or not morality is teachable, ethics are teachable.
00:09:23
Speaker
In the Protagoras, another dialogue by Plato, Socrates is inquiring about whether or not virtue is teachable. Can we teach moral excellence? Or is it somehow innate or unteachable? And so that seems to be another interest of Socrates. But notice that it's always revolving around ethics. In fact, Socrates seems to have thought that natural philosophy what we now might call science or proto-science, the sort of thing that the Milesians like Thales and Eximander were engaging in. He thought that was independent of ethics and he didn't really get into it. He didn't find it interesting. He focused exclusively on
Wisdom, Virtue, and Happiness in Socratic Philosophy
00:10:07
Speaker
ethics, it seems. so
00:10:10
Speaker
What else do we know about Socrates from Plato? It seems like almost all the dialogues end in utter failure. As I already mentioned, Euthyphro just storms off There is no real resolution ah to some of the other dialogues like Protagoras. And maybe that's what Plato was going for. Plato was trying to be more of a teacher than just reporting Socrates' views. Nonetheless, it seems like, generally speaking, anyone that Socrates spoke to never really fulfilled what they claimed they were going to be able to do, which is provide a definition of an ethical term.
00:10:51
Speaker
Now, there is a view that we've already looked at before called it skepticism. That's the denial that some kind of knowledge is possible. One question that might arise now is, was Socrates a skeptic? Not really.
00:11:06
Speaker
It seems to be the case that he did think that through his alencus, through his questioning, he could hopefully one day find some kind of answer to the question about the definition of an ethical term.
00:11:23
Speaker
Moreover, it seems like he believed that in showing people that their philosophical positions are inconsistent, he saw that as a form of progress. He thought even establishing that some definitions just don't work out, that's also some kind of epistemic advancement.
00:11:44
Speaker
In fact, he would say that he is the wisest person, an idea that he got from an oracle, by the way. He would say he's the wisest person because he at least recognized that he didn't know. So on this way of looking at things, having false beliefs and not knowing that they're false is worse than just saying, I don't know anything. And so by getting people to realize that their false beliefs are false, that's a ah step in the right direction.
00:12:14
Speaker
Surprisingly, this is about all that we really know about what Socrates was like. ah There are other takes on him, and i I'll mention some of them in a second, but it seems to have been the case that he really stood up to authorities. He would question them in public, right? And that's quite bold. And he would say, he would affirm, I guess we should say, that he was the wisest person in existence because he realized that he didn't know.
00:12:43
Speaker
So he saw it as an improvement to at least know that you don't know and to pretend that you know or think that you know when you really don't. So when Plato was writing his dialogues, this seems to be the message that he really wanted to drive home. There's something to the Alencus, this Socratic dialoguing that Socrates was famous for, um and we should continue to use that tool as part of our mission to live in a philosophical way. Very quickly, other people emphasized on other aspects of Socrates' lifestyle and that's what they stressed.
00:13:24
Speaker
Just to give you two other ah takes on Socrates, Zeno began a movement called Stoicism, which we will cover later on in this course. And they stressed this idea that virtue or moral excellence is a form of knowledge. So they believed that moral excellence, achieving moral excellence just means getting a certain view of reality. And once you have that,
00:13:53
Speaker
Well, then behaving well would just come naturally, it will flow out of you. And so that's the part that the Stoics focused on, virtue as a form of knowledge, mortal excellence being essentially bits of information, facts about how the world works.
00:14:13
Speaker
One more take on Socrates. This is from a few generations after Socrates died, but his name is Archelaus, and he was one of the people that ran Plato's school after Plato died. And the way that Archelaus saw Socrates is as a skeptic. So he actually turned Plato's Academy, again, a few generations after Plato died,
00:14:37
Speaker
into a skeptical stronghold. They would argue for skepticism. They would say that knowledge is impossible. And of course, this skepticism of Socrates is what art delays would focus on. Okay, so there's various takes here. And in general, it seems to be the case that they are more or less compatible with each other. They're just driving home a different aspect of Socrates lifestyle.
00:15:05
Speaker
But most people sort of side with Plato as representing Socrates' views a little more truthfully, at least Plato in his early dialogues. By the time that it comes to the middle and late dialogues, then it's a different ballpark. But early Plato teaches us a lot about what Socrates was very likely like.
00:15:41
Speaker
Let's begin to get into Socrates' ethics, just so that you know what I'm taking as Socrates' ethical views. I'm getting from two different sources, Plato's early dialogues, as I've already mentioned, but also Xenophon. Xenophon is another student of Socrates. He was a little bit older than Plato.
00:16:08
Speaker
And in the second half of this lesson, I'm actually going to cover some of Xenophon's ethics too. So just get ready for that. I think a good way to start to look at Socrates' is ethics is to begin by looking at what might be his motives for teaching what he taught and teaching in the way that he taught.
00:16:30
Speaker
So let me give you a very rough summary of what Socrates' ethics are. um He found it necessary to inquire into the good life to see what goodness is, right to get moral definitions, because he saw that as a path to learning about goodness. And once you learn about goodness, you become good.
00:16:54
Speaker
All right, so you philosophize about the good life, to learn about the good life, to live the good life. Why would he want to do this? Why did he find it so important? I have three reasons that I've outlined here.
00:17:11
Speaker
and They might not be what you think. Certainly the last one is something that is typically mentioned, but the first one isn't always mentioned when we talk about Socrates. So let me begin with that one. It looks like at least part of what drove Socrates to do what he did, just good old patriotism.
00:17:34
Speaker
Remember, Socrates lived during the decline of the Athenian Empire, he was a veteran of the Peloponnesian War, and just over the last few decades of his life, he saw Athens go from glorious to destitute.
00:17:52
Speaker
The people in Athens were so poor that they had to go be mercenaries for you know Persian armies just to make ends meet. There was nothing to do in Athens. It must have been very scary and very stressful to be in Athens right around 400 BCE. So what happens when you see your city-state decline and you love your city-state? Well, you want to help it. You want to fix it, if at all possible.
Socrates' Mission and Divine Calling
00:18:21
Speaker
And how do you fix what was going on in Athens? Well, remember, this was also a democracy, a direct form of democracy, where where people would vote on war strategies and generals and all of that that I've mentioned before. The way Socrates saw it is that people were making bad choices, people were being misled by those who were persuasive speakers,
00:18:48
Speaker
that didn't really know that what they were saying would actually lead to victory, but that we're more so saying things just to keep political power, or just for personal gain, or just to get elected. There is actually a word for this in contemporary philosophy. It's called bullshitting. And so a bullshitter is is not a liar necessarily.
00:19:15
Speaker
although they usually lie to get their way, but a bullshitter is someone who just says whatever they need to say to get you to agree with them. And that's what Socrates saw in his day, right especially in the last few decades of the war and of his life. The masses of the people, the citizens, were being misled by these bullshitters, and he wanted that to end.
00:19:41
Speaker
So it seems like he just wanted to help his fellow Athenians, his fellow citizens to be good citizens, the political leaders to be good political leaders, not to be deceiving people or just saying things to get them to agree with them. And on this note, it seems to be the case that he was really, you know, I was going to say against, but he was really incensed, just absolutely irate almost.
00:20:10
Speaker
About one thing in particular, he was strongly against those who claimed that they had the expertise to make Athenian institutions thrive. Those who said they knew what was best for Athens without actually knowing what was best for Athens, those are primarily those that Socrates was against. If he could take care of them, then Athens would be all the better.
00:20:40
Speaker
This is why we see in the Socratic dialogues, he goes after public figures and public intellectuals and important figures in Athenian life. He wants to check their expertise. He wants to say, hey, you say you know, show me that you know. And again, he couldn't find a single person that seemed to know what they were talking about. That's why all the dialogues end in failure. It seems like he stumped everyone.
00:21:09
Speaker
And he just didn't want these political leaders, these public figures, just persuade people without any justification, without any actual grounds behind them. As a quick sidebar, this is not the first time we encounter this approach to philosophy.
00:21:28
Speaker
Remember Xenophanes? He was one person who called out many, many people for their lack of understanding. He distinguished between belief and knowledge and said that knowledge was for the gods and humans just had belief.
00:21:43
Speaker
and so He called out people who claimed to have knowledge that there's no way they could have had knowledge about. One of the most memorable ones that I've mentioned before is that he called out Pythagoras for claiming that he recognized the voice of a dead friend in the barking of a puppy. so That's obviously ridiculous.
00:22:03
Speaker
and That's on it though, Zenophanes also went after the poets for describing the gods and what he felt was an inaccurate way. And even just the masses in general, he just decried how the masses did not have understanding. They didn't even try. So we do see some precedent for what Socrates was doing here. He was using philosophy to question those in power. um and to call them out for claiming to be experts when in reality they really weren't. So patriotism is one reason that Socrates was motivated to do what he did. Another one that hardly gets mentioned is friendship.
00:22:51
Speaker
We learned from Xenophon that Socrates was a very good friend, and he believed that friends benefit friends. Friends help each other out. And one of the most direct ways that Socrates could help people is by teaching them how to philosophize well, how to live according to reason, and not according to the emotions that drive our behaviors sometimes.
00:23:17
Speaker
And so this is one other reason why Socrates was out there questioning people. Xenophon says that Socrates believed that this form of questioning helped you learn self-control. And when you have self-control, you can keep your emotions in check and act only in accordance with the reason. So that's what Socrates wanted to do for his friends.
00:23:43
Speaker
Last but not least, there is a very common report that Socrates felt he was divinely called to do what he was doing. He said he had a divine sign, a voice that would sort of egg him on and say, this is something that you must do.
00:24:04
Speaker
By the way, in a few centuries, some Christians would interpret this as a demon speaking to Socrates the pagan. And that's why they would reject all of Socrates' teachings. But this is something that even people in Socrates' lifetime were a bit bothered by. And one of the things that he is condemned for, or accused of, I should say, is impiety. Of course, he is eventually convicted of impiety.
00:24:32
Speaker
and As but I mentioned earlier, impiety is not observing the gods in the right way. and Some people saw Socrates you know having the gods speak to him directly through a divine sign as very unconventional, and they saw that as impiety. so This is usually the motive that people speak about. But in some, there's quite a few things that were motivating Socrates.
00:25:01
Speaker
It was for his country that he did what he did, but also for his friends. And of course, he felt that it was divinely approved, right? His divine mission. Let's get a little more granular here with Socrates' ethics. The first thing I want to focus on, I've actually already mentioned previously in this course, and even in this lesson, Socrates had very high epistemic standards.
00:25:30
Speaker
And the comparison that I made was to xenophonies, but there are other people that we've covered that similarly had very high standards. The main point here is that knowledge is hard to get. It's not the case that just, you know, you should go with your gut and and that's what the truth is. Gaining knowledge is a gradual process. Sometimes it's very challenging and difficult and it takes time.
00:25:57
Speaker
And so the so-called experts of his day, well, he didn't believe that they actually had the requisite experience to know what they claimed they knew. And for that reason, he felt the need to go out there and get in their face, you know, dialectically remove their false beliefs from their minds.
00:26:17
Speaker
I almost see it as a kind of philosophical therapy. By getting them to talk about their views and showing them their inconsistencies, hopefully they would reject their false beliefs.
00:26:31
Speaker
clearly having very high epistemic standards was a priority for Socrates. And we can see this because he even seemed to be very okay with defying authority so that he can keep his high epistemic standards.
00:26:48
Speaker
So we've already talked about how he would go out and question public figures in Athens, all these so-called experts. But he went far beyond that. At one point during the Peloponnesian War, the assembly which is basically the democratic body that makes decisions. The assembly met and they were attempting to try several generals jointly. In other words, by law, you're supposed to try you know whoever you're going to attempt to convict of a crime.
00:27:20
Speaker
You have to try them singly, right, as individuals. But the Assembly was trying to convict eight generals all at the same time through the same trial. And that, of course, is illegal. And it just happens to be the case that day Socrates was the one overseeing the procedures in the court because Athens was a democracy. They would essentially take turns doing this job and that day just happened to be the day that Socrates by lot got assigned to this task and he wouldn't let them do it. you know He didn't matter that it was 500 people screaming in his face.
00:27:59
Speaker
The law is the law, and we should not try eight generals simultaneously just because we're really upset. We still have to go by the prescribed procedures. Another way that he defied authority is the way that he stood up to the Thirty Tyrants. The Thirty Tyrants are a group of oligarchs that the Spartans put into power in Athens once they won the Peloponnesian War. The Spartans won.
00:28:29
Speaker
And so these oligarchs were you know not really running things very well and at a certain point they were running out of cash and so they started persecuting the wealthy and Socrates refused to go along with it.
00:28:43
Speaker
In fact, even in his trial, it seems to be the case that Socrates defied authority. We will actually go deeper into the trial itself when we cover Plato. But for now, we can say that the charges were maybe trumped up and they were just trying to get at Socrates for political reasons. And so they convict them and they allow Socrates to give a suggestion as to what his punishment should be.
00:29:13
Speaker
Now Socrates, in his mind, he's trying to help people. He's trying to help Athenian public figures be good people, and he's teaching them how to train themselves to be good through his olyncus. And so, of course, Socrates doesn't really think he deserves any real punishment. He suggests that he gets free food for life.
00:29:35
Speaker
By the way, this is what Olympic victors would get free food for life. And so he sees himself as actually being more important than all this praise that we give to the Olympians because he was actually teaching people to be good or trying to teach people to be good. And so he deserves, he thinks, free food for the rest of his life.
00:30:01
Speaker
So there is another defiance in the face of authority figures. The punchline is something like this. High epistemic standards are key for Socrates. If someone claims to know, they better have good arguments for that position. And in the absence of real justifications for a view of the view surviving rational analysis, you can't accept that view.
Virtue, Knowledge, and Community in Socratic Thought
00:30:31
Speaker
Another key idea for Socrates is the role of wisdom. For Socrates, wisdom is the highest end. In other words, wisdom leads to eudaimonia. And this word means happiness or flourishing or thriving. And so, according to Socrates, all you need to be happy is wisdom. He found it pretty obvious that everyone wants happiness, everyone wants to flourish, everyone wants eudaimonia,
00:31:03
Speaker
But people disagree about how to get it. And so here is Socrates throwing his hat in the ring and saying, I know how to get it. All you need is wisdom. Now, why did he believe this? Well, typically the word that we use to describe that which gets you to eudaimonia, to flourishing, is virtue, right? Virtue sometimes gets translated as moral excellence.
00:31:31
Speaker
The idea is that if you require the right virtues or virtue, in the case of Socrates, is one thing, you will get to Eudaimonia. And so Socrates believed you only need one virtue, actually. It's just one thing that will get you to Eudaimonia, that's wisdom, because he saw virtue or moral excellence as a form of knowledge. It really is the case that knowing what goodness is leads to being good in the way that Socrates sees things. Just having the proper understanding of what is good for us is enough to get us to be good. The reason why he thinks this is that he believes that everyone always does what they think is best for them. Now the reason why we sometimes end up doing things that aren't good for us is because of ignorance, we just don't know.
00:32:28
Speaker
Had we known, had we had all the facts, we would have done what's best for us. And so, Socrates' claim here is very simple. Anyone who truly has knowledge will be good. Anyone who has wisdom, in other words, will be good. And that will necessarily lead to good behavior, because we always do what's best for us.
00:32:53
Speaker
By the way, there is some jargon here that we could learn to kind of get our head straight on Socrates' ideas. There's something called Acresia. Acresia has no good English translation, so we just use the Greek word Acresia. And that is when you act contrary to what is actually best for you.
00:33:15
Speaker
So you can probably think of examples of a crazia in your own life or maybe in movies or whatever. If you're ever watching a show or a movie and you're basically yelling at the TV,
00:33:27
Speaker
because you're thinking to yourself, like, no, don't do that stupid, you're going to mess up your own life, you know, don't do that, don't do that. Well, that would be a crazy that is acting against your own interests. Socrates, weirdly enough, is denying that a crazy exists. He says you never willingly act against your own interests. You never do what's wrong intentionally.
00:33:54
Speaker
The only reason why you do what's wrong is because you had wrong beliefs. And so, by correcting your beliefs, that's how you always do the right thing. So, Akresya is that one term that helps us understand Socrates' views, and Socrates essentially is essentially denying the even the possibility of Akresya.
00:34:16
Speaker
And instead, the name for his view is sometimes called moral intellectualism. And so moral intellectualism has two clauses. It's basically this. A, virtue is a form of knowledge, right? Virtue is wisdom, in other words. And B, no one does wrong knowingly.
00:34:37
Speaker
So if you put those two together, the view is called moral intellectualism. And if I quit if i could put it in a nutshell for you, it's basically once you get the right beliefs, those will necessarily lead to the right action. Beliefs are central here, hence the label intellectualism.
00:34:56
Speaker
Okay, two more things I want to talk about to really truly comprehend Socrates' ethics. It's community and freedom. Now, we haven't talked about community too much yet, so I think we should dig deep on this one. But you might be thinking to yourself, what's the connection between everything that we've been saying and helping out your friends or helping out your city-state? I mean, he claims to be doing this to help out Athens, but Maybe you don't really see the connection here. well This is another one of those areas where Socrates has a bit of precedent in earlier philosophers. ah Democritus, as we saw before, saw virtue, saw behaving well as good for the individual and good for society.
00:35:45
Speaker
That's exactly what Socrates believes, and the label for this kind of view is sometimes pragmatism, although I won't really use that here, but that's sometimes what gets used to describe this view, ethical pragmatism. Here it is in a nutshell. Virtue is obviously good for the agent. We just covered that a bunch, right? If you have the right beliefs, you will behave well, and that's because Virtue is a form of knowledge, so if you have the right knowledge, it will lead to good behavior. And hopefully that's clear, but how does that lead to being good for your community? Well, Socrates holds this general principle, and I think it's very intuitive. Those that do harm to those near them will be harmed in return, and those that benefit those near them will be benefited in return.
00:36:42
Speaker
So maybe ah a good example of this is something that I've actually seen in my own life multiple times, um but I see neighbors kind of go to war with each other for some reason. So everything I'm gonna say here has happened, but I'm gonna blend it all into one example. It's been different sets of neighbors, but I'm gonna just pretend it's all the same neighbor.
00:37:04
Speaker
so i no um I had a neighbor who essentially went into a noise war with ah someone that lived next to us. This one house is adjacent to me and then the other neighbor was on the other side of them, right so it wasn't near me. But I could sometimes hear their music and their dog and And I know they were pretty noisy. So what one person does is, you know, has their music gone really loud or lets their dog bark all night without doing anything about it. So what what does the other person do? Well, they start having really loud music. And I think they bought this machine that would make a really high pitched noise so that it would annoy the dog whenever he would bark. And so the dog was always
00:37:55
Speaker
you know, anxious and kind of running away from the machine that bothered the other neighbor. And so the other neighbor called the cops on the first neighbor, and then the first neighbor called the cops on the other neighbor. And basically it got pretty nasty, all because they just wouldn't you know talk to each other and figure out how to make amends. so Instead of trying to figure out how they could live together, instead of you know trying to benefit each other by making their community more you know respectful, they were just harming each other. and Of course, when you are a bad person and you're harming people,
00:38:34
Speaker
Well, you get more harm coming your way. You make people mad at you, and then they want to harm you. So that's the general principle that Socrates is an adherent of. He seems to believe that bad people, well, they harm people. And who do they harm? Those that are near them.
00:38:53
Speaker
And what happens to harmed people, they become bad. And so they harm those that harm them in return and others as well. And so you get this vicious cycle of the community just getting worse and worse. But there's a flip side. You can go into a virtuous cycle where the community gets better and better. You can be a good neighbor. Your neighbor will be benefited and they in turn will be good neighbors to other neighbors. And the community, you know, gets better over time instead.
00:39:24
Speaker
That seems to be what Socrates believed, and so what Socrates thought, if you combine these two ideas, is that if you get the right kind of wisdom, moral knowledge, moral excellence, you will be good, and so you will benefit those around you, and they will also improve, and then they will benefit those around them, and then over time, the community in general will grow better.
00:39:51
Speaker
So that's Socrates' basic thinking there. I hope that makes sense. And I'm not entirely against it. There seems to be something sort of right about that
Daily Philosophy and Rational Freedom
00:40:02
Speaker
approach. I'm not sure how much it could grow, but at least on the small scale, that seems to be a good approach to dealing with your you know relations that are near to you. The last thing I want to touch on of Socrates' ethics is his take on freedom.
00:40:19
Speaker
Freedom, for many people, especially political libertarians today, is sort of like being able to do whatever you want. But that's not what Socrates was thinking. Socrates thought that freedom is essentially being able to conduct yourself excellently.
00:40:38
Speaker
And what that means is that you have control over your emotions, your passions, and that allows you to act only in accordance with the reason. And once reason is in charge, that's when you have true freedom. This is very much the way Plato also viewed freedom. Plato also thought that you have to control your desires. You have to really train them and rein them in. Because if you're always just trying to fulfill your desires,
00:41:08
Speaker
then that really is almost a form of bondage. You're just going fulfilling desire after desire after desire, and that's not really freedom according to, well, not only Plato and Socrates, but many of these spiritual movements that were set off by Socrates' as example.
00:41:24
Speaker
It seems to be the case that achieving this state of freedom requires the daily practice of philosophy, according to Socrates. You need to repeatedly engage in the alencus with yourself and with others to get rid of your so your false beliefs. And once you get rid of all those, you will have essentially, I mean, just think about how much self-control it takes to have a proper dialogue with someone.
00:41:52
Speaker
So if you engage in that every single day, you are really training yourself to control your desires and your emotions. And once you get that going, well, then you will have that real freedom that Socrates is talking about.
00:42:06
Speaker
We can, I think, easily see how important this is today. It's kind of hard to have sometimes conversations without getting mad. And it almost seems like some people today just can't do it. They almost can't wait to be outraged.
00:42:25
Speaker
And this is exactly not what Socrates was advising us to do. We have to be able to rationally inquire into some position, some philosophical viewpoint, to figure out if it's any good. But if you just immediately or automatically, instinctively get mad, you're not doing it right, says Socrates.
00:42:48
Speaker
Okay, with all that set up here, we can kind of pull the threats together so we can sum up Socrates' ethics. The basic problem, we might say, is that what we think would be good for us is not always what's actually good for us. And because all of our actions are brought on by our beliefs, in other words, because it's the case that based on what we believe, that's how we choose to act, we have to get rid of our false beliefs.
00:43:18
Speaker
It turns out that our emotions often are the ones that lead to having those false beliefs. So what we have to do is monitor our our emotions, our appetites, our passions, and eventually just control them so that you can really live according to reason itself.
00:43:36
Speaker
Of course, the best way to control your passions is to sort of create a natural defense against them, right? So you always have self-control. And once you do that, you can have freedom. And by the way, the best way to do that is through dialogue, including the alencus, but in general through philosophizing.
00:43:56
Speaker
because that helps you get rid of false beliefs and hopefully develop accurate beliefs. And since virtue is a form of knowledge, in other words, since virtue is just wisdom, we can finally develop that moral knowledge and be good people and benefit those around us and create a good community. There it is in a nutshell. I think I only took one breath that whole time, but I hope that got the message across.
Xenophon's Perspective on Leadership and Virtue
00:44:52
Speaker
Okay, in these last 20 minutes or so, I do wanna cover Xenophon. ah Xenophon usually gets short shrift, right? People don't cover him in these sorts of classes. He sort of has a reputation for being, you know, not as bright as Plato, but then again, we're comparing him to Plato. I mean, no one looks that bright next to Plato. So let's do a quick dive into Xenophon. He was, of course, one of Socrates' younger followers. He was slightly older than Plato, as I said before.
00:45:24
Speaker
And earlier I mentioned that Athens was so impoverished by the war that many Athenians had to go and serve as mercenaries in foreign armies, like the Persian army. That was Xenophon I was thinking of, actually. He had to leave Socrates' group of followers in 401 BCE.
00:45:48
Speaker
to join the Persians. and There was a civil war going on in Persia, and he was on the side of Cyrus the Younger. and By the way, that side ended up losing, but yeah he felt himself compelled to go because well that was one of the few options available to him at the time.
00:46:10
Speaker
most of what Xenophon wrote was later on in his life after a very eventful life, I should say. And much of it stressed essentially trying to draw lessons from particular virtues and vices and choices made by many leaders. In other words, he would give a leader as an example and see where they went wrong and see what we can learn from that and see where they went right and see what we can learn from that.
00:46:39
Speaker
And so it's very interesting. It's a little bit like another historian named Herodotus that we won't really talk about much in this course, but a very interesting approach to history so that we can kind of learn practical, ethical lessons from history itself. Okay, Xenophon's ethics.
00:47:01
Speaker
Xenophon wrote extensively about leadership. If I could summarize it for you, I would say something like this. The qualities that make one a great leader also lead to success as an individual, right? And that is in every domain of your life, as a manager of your household, as you manage your finances in politics, if you choose to enter that arena with your friends,
00:47:28
Speaker
It just is the case that certain qualities make you both a good leader and a good person in general. It makes you happy in general, flourish in general, right? So Xenophon, like some of the other people we've covered, most of the people we will cover in this course,
00:47:44
Speaker
believes in a eudaimonic ethics that we should take actions that lead us towards thriving. and It just happens to be the case that those traits that make you thrive overlap considerably with those traits that make you a good leader. right so there's ah There's a significant overlap with ethics and leadership.
00:48:07
Speaker
But the part of Xenophon's ethics that I'm going to focus on today is something that he considered key, essential to thriving, and that is self-control. So he actually believed that without self-control, you can't develop any of the traits that make you a good leader or that make you flourish. So self-control is key.
00:48:29
Speaker
The way that Xenophon writes about self-control, he seems to break it up into three different facets. so Let me define those right now. I'll give you try to give you a brief example of each. so Let's break it down into these three terms. Self-mastery, endurance, and self-sufficiency.
00:48:49
Speaker
Self-mastery is the ability to withstand desire for food, drink, sex, and sleep. So occasionally, it just is the case that we have to go without food or drink or sex or sleep.
00:49:04
Speaker
And the ability to do that without too much negative emotion, without you know giving it a temptation, that would be called self-mastery. So let me give you sort of an obvious example. If you've decided that you're on a diet and you shouldn't eat certain things that go over a certain calorie limit or what have you, well, it would be self-mastery if you are able to actually stick to your meal plan.
00:49:30
Speaker
That's one example of self-mastery, but there's other situations too. Once in a while, it just is the case that you have to go a night without sleeping. Maybe you're traveling or something like that, and you have to fight off this desire to sleep. Well, that would be another example of self-mastery.
00:49:48
Speaker
The second facet, endurance, is the ability to withstand pains, including heat and cold, as well as a pain brought on by toil. So all of us, I think, know this by now. Sometimes working is hard and there's a certain pain associated with it. It's not always a physical pain. Sometimes it's more like a cognitive pain. But just imagine working on a very long project for work or school.
00:50:17
Speaker
And there's this cognitive unease, this desire to want to be done with it. Well, you have to push through and that would be endurance.
00:50:30
Speaker
Another form of endurance is literally facing up to the elements, you know, endurance against heat and cold without any kind of mental discomfort. You say, well, it's cold right now and I have to get this done and it's out in the open, so I'm going to just have to endure this cold and that's it. That would be endurance. Finally, self-sufficiency is the ability to make do with what is available.
00:50:57
Speaker
So this takes a couple of forms for Xenophon. The first one is sort of maybe an easy one, right? If it turns out that for some reason you have to go without a bed tonight, maybe you just move and you don't have a bed yet or something like that, well, then just, you know, don't complain. Don't get all frazzled. Just sleep without a bed. Today is a no-bed kind of night.
00:51:22
Speaker
That would be one example of self-deficiency. You're just kind of going with what you have. You don't have anything else. That's what's available. So that's what's going to happen. There's a sort of deeper sense that we should be self-deficient for Xenophon. I think he believes that we should be able to take care of ourselves.
00:51:42
Speaker
to a certain extent. Now, he's not a you know survivalist person who you know wants to live in a bunker or something like that, but he does think you should be able to know how to hunt at least and you know provide food for yourself, start a fire, cook your food yourself, etc.
00:51:58
Speaker
He actually has a technical manual that he wrote called On Hunting with Dogs. and In it, he describes you know just the basic things you need to know to be able to do this. and In other writings, he talks about how hunting is a good way to train yourself to have more self-control. Clearly, there's a link here between putting yourself in situations where you have to really fend for yourself and self-sufficiency, one of the three aspects of self-control.
00:52:27
Speaker
Now that we see what self-control meant for Xenophon, let's talk about why he thought it was so fundamental.
Role Models and the Learning of Self-Control
00:52:34
Speaker
He saw self-control as required in every domain of your life, right? So let's begin with philosophy. Clearly, he cares a lot about philosophy.
00:52:48
Speaker
He thought we need self-control in order to philosophize well, to come up with the right definitions of abstract concepts like virtue right and to not give up before you have you know defended your philosophical principles. So let me give you an example of what this means.
00:53:07
Speaker
Just think about the amount of self-control that it takes to have a conversation or a debate with someone about some important yet controversial topic. Think politics. Think religion. Think how to raise your children.
00:53:25
Speaker
think what career path or what major you should choose. These are important and you need to have sort of your bearings straight before you can really have a deep conversation about that. Because if you get angry too easily or if you want to brush off ideas without thinking them through, you're not really doing justice to the conversation. You're kind of going with maybe what you already believed.
00:53:50
Speaker
And that's not really to think analytically and critically about a certain topic. So for that reason, you need self-control to get through the conversation to really dialogue effectively and reflectively.
00:54:06
Speaker
But, Xenophon says, you also need self-control when you're done with that. You needed to overcome your desires when you're trying to implement whatever plan you just came up with. So there you are, you came up with a career path or a plan for how to raise your children or the choice to convert to a new religion or whatever. Now you need self-control to actually stick to that plan, to actually abide by whatever decision you came to.
00:54:35
Speaker
Otherwise, you'll just have these principles that you decided to defend and maybe you even did defend them well, but you don't stick to them. And there's something wrong with that clearly, right? If you decided it's good to do, then that is what you should do. You shouldn't let your desires and your passions and your ego get in the way. Two key points here that I should further stress about the ability for self-control.
00:55:01
Speaker
First and foremost, Xenophon thinks that you can't develop the virtues, right? Piety, justice, courage, all those things that get you to flourish without managing your desires, without self-control. And so clearly, because he believes that is the direction we should go in towards flourishing, towards eudaimonia, self-control is absolutely key.
00:55:28
Speaker
The second point is very interesting. We haven't really seen anything like this yet, but he thought that this ability to manage our desires, you can't really teach that the way you teach someone about geography or history or something like that. To teach someone self-control, you need to give them a role model.
00:55:53
Speaker
This is why Xenophon thinks of ethics and leadership as being inseparable, right? They're kind of two sides of the same coin. You need a role model to effectively emulate so that you can actually acquire self-control. In other words, you need a role model who actually has self-control so that you can imitate and then emulate and then maybe innovate on what they're doing, but you need their guidance at first.
00:56:22
Speaker
It is perhaps not surprising that one role model for Xenophon was Socrates, and we have some Socratic dialogues from Xenophon. Of course, the most famous Socratic dialogues are those of Plato, but Xenophon also wrote a couple of dialogues showing just how famous Socrates was for his peculiar form of questioning. In any case, in one of these dialogues, Socrates gives a criticism of pederastry.
00:56:53
Speaker
And so if you are not familiar with what that is, this is a relationship between an adult male and a usually a young teenager. And this was very common in Athens, but also throughout the ancient world and in some regions.
00:57:12
Speaker
And we might be horrified by the very mention of this today, but it seemed to be generally accepted at the time. But Socrates actually gives a criticism of that practice in one of Xenophon's dialogues, but he does it in a very careful and tactful way.
00:57:33
Speaker
He is at a drinking party. This is called the symposium. That's where you drink wine and you you know entertain each other with witty conversation. and He is trying to be a good guest, Socrates is, while giving his criticism. and He seems to pull it off. now That obviously requires a lot of skill.
00:57:55
Speaker
And, most importantly for our purposes, a lot of self-control because you can easily imagine someone in your life attempting to have a conversation about a controversial topic and not being able to keep their cool. They would just blurt out their criticism without being very strategic or diplomatic about it and essentially ruin the evening.
00:58:20
Speaker
But Socrates managed to do exactly that too with poise and with even charm, give a criticism, make people reflect on their actions, and still keep the environment lively and pleasant.
00:58:37
Speaker
Thus, for Xenophon, Socrates here is being an excellent role model as to how to live according to your principles, but do so in a controlled manner, right? He is providing his viewpoints, but not in a grating or harsh way, and that's very important. That that would demonstrate that he has self-control. Socrates is a role model in another way,
00:59:04
Speaker
In a more technical manual from Xenophon, Socrates is in conversation with a farmer, and by the way, farmers held what we might say is a humble social role in ancient Athens, not exactly a prestigious job. but But we see Socrates being very polite and being willing to learn from this farmer, right? So this might be an example of self-sufficiency. Socrates is trying to treat every situation as a learning situation. And if all you have in front of you is a farmer, well, you know what? You can learn from this farmer. And so he goes into dialogue with the farmer and something good comes out of it, right? So there's another example of how Socrates is a good role model
00:59:48
Speaker
as to how to live a philosophical life, always maintaining a high degree of self-control. Just imagine how many people today write someone off just because they don't you know like where they come from or what they look like or what t-shirt they're wearing or whatever. That's a lack of self-control, right? We know intellectually, at least, that we can possibly learn from just about anyone.
01:00:14
Speaker
but we can't get ourselves to actually do it. It takes self control to pull it off.
Contrasting Views on Virtue: Xenophon vs. Plato
01:00:21
Speaker
An interesting bit about this whole talk of developing self-control through a role model is that Xenophon seems to think that virtue is not really a destination, but like a direction almost. In other words, you have to keep striving to keep the virtue, to keep those traits that make you excel in life and as a leader, as he expresses.
01:00:47
Speaker
The analogy that I like to use here is that Xenophon sees self-control and virtue kind of like physical fitness. you have to work to maintain it. This is actually unlike other students of Socrates. Plato, for example, believed, it seems like he believed at least, that once you get moral knowledge, you sort of keep it forever, you don't forget it. But that is not at all what Xenophon seems to be saying. You need to continually work at it. It goes away, right? Like, just like muscles. If you don't use them, you lose them.
01:01:23
Speaker
I have some interesting support for this view. Xenophon, much like Plato, also wrote an apology for Socrates. What this means is that he wrote up an account of Socrates' trial and tried to describe exactly why Socrates was not guilty of the crimes he was charged with and eventually convicted of. And so, in Xenophon's apology,
01:01:50
Speaker
you can see that Socrates doesn't really defend himself very well. This is unlike you know other apologies that we have, other accounts of Socrates' trial. Xenophon's Socrates, it seems, recognizes that he's getting so old that he can't continue to improve himself.
01:02:11
Speaker
So maybe what Xenophon is trying to say is that Socrates recognizes that he's getting too old to stay fit in terms of self-control. If we're using the analogy of physical fitness for self-control, Socrates seems to think that he can no longer continue to improve himself, that he doesn't have the same capacity for self-control anymore. And so on this view,
01:02:36
Speaker
What Xenophon seems to be saying is that without the ability to continually examine your life without this cognitive ability for self-control, then maybe life is not worth living anymore.
01:02:51
Speaker
That might be the message that Xenophon is is sending us. And that's something for you to think about, right? Is that a good signal for when you should start to get your affairs in order and start to begin the process of checking out? When you no longer have any self-control, is that you that is going away at that point? too That's an interesting thought there, but clearly self-control matters for Xenophon to the degree that if you no longer have it, maybe that is a life no longer worth living. Socrates, of course, had this famous phrase, the unexamined life is not worth living. Maybe Xenophon would make a little amendment to that. The life without the ability for examining yourself is not worth living.
01:03:39
Speaker
Okay, let me now move on to discuss self-control versus asceticism. As I've mentioned before, asceticism is the view that you have to deny your bodily pleasures as much as possible. And some students of Socrates actually interpreted Socrates as saying primarily that, that you have to be an ascetic. You have to deny your bodily pleasures.
01:04:05
Speaker
in particular, Antisthenes believed in this, but Xenophon did not see self-mastery as asceticism. He actually thought you should develop self-control and, of course, work really hard at that, but that that means you can still occasionally enjoy you know delicacies and maybe a banquet, of course, always in moderation, though.
01:04:30
Speaker
And once again, he gives the example of Socrates. Socrates, Xenophon says, could go to a banquet and it wouldn't corrupt him. He wouldn't expect every meal after that to be a banquet. He would go right back to a simple life. So once you develop that self-control, you can be polite. And if you're invited to a banquet, go to your banquet. Sure.
01:04:53
Speaker
But then always return to your simple life, right a life of self-control. Keep your values straight, in other words. Maybe a good example of this is something like this. I sometimes talk with students about their use of their devices, right? Their cell phones or their iPads or whatever. Here is what an aesthetic might say. I don't want a smartphone. I don't want any kind of smart device. I want to go old school, right? Because these things are bad for us. I reject it entirely. I don't want any of it.
01:05:26
Speaker
Okay, well, that's an aesthetic. Someone who's very indulgent, I mean, you you know these people, right? They absolutely freak out when their phone dies. They think that every single moment of the day, they have to be entertained. Otherwise, it is a catastrophe. The person who needs their phone at every minute of the day, well, that's obviously not self-control. You don't really need it, right? It's not essential.
01:05:50
Speaker
ah You might think it's essential, but it's really not. But the person who also says, well, I don't need any of these pleasures. I can do completely without it. That would be more of an ascetic, like a digital ascetic, right? Xenophon is not saying that you should do either of these things. You should, sure, use your device, right, but have some self-control. Don't see it as a necessary constituent of your happiness. It's just a tool that you use.
01:06:17
Speaker
and you should always maintain mastery over yourself when using this tool. Just as earlier, I spoke about the role of pleasure in Socrates' ethics. We should talk about pleasure for Xenophon. Remember, Socrates didn't think that goodness is equal to human pleasure. He thought that goodness leads to human pleasure. Xenophon thinks something very similar.
01:06:46
Speaker
He saw that the greatest pleasure is not things like luxurious feasting or anything like that, but the praise of good people. If you know good people and they're telling you, hey man, you're doing really good, or hey girl, you're you're really killing it right now, that, for Xenophon, is the highest pleasure.
01:07:08
Speaker
because that is an awareness that you are constantly improving that you are developing self-control and getting those qualities that get you to flourish. So that for Xenophon is the greatest pleasure. Okay, let's talk about what you should do to develop those qualities, those traits that get you to flourish and to be a good leader as Xenophon stresses.
01:07:34
Speaker
It seems like one of the key things that Xenophon talks about is developing mental toughness. And he actually lists a couple of activities that get you to do this. One of them, of course, is philosophy. But I've already talked about that, right? It takes a lot of self-control to actually see a philosophical conversation through.
01:07:55
Speaker
Let me give you a different example from Xenophon. He saw hunting as conducive to developing character and getting those traits that get you to flourish.
01:08:07
Speaker
Now, for the record, I am not a hunter. I know basically nothing about this, but i you know I can't really say I did some research. I didn't go and find a bunch of books. I guess I did a different kind of research for this particular lesson or this section on hunting. Here's what I did. I watched an entire season of one of these survivalist shows on Netflix to see how it is that these survivalists actually make it through a winter.
01:08:37
Speaker
just with nothing other than what they carry on their backs. And I gotta say, well, two things. A, that was actually really cool. The the skills as these people know, the way that they can tell which berries are poisonous, which mushrooms will nourish you and which ones will kill you, how to preserve food, how to smoke trout, how to fish you know without a fishing rod, just with a hook that you made out of some stuff you found.
01:09:05
Speaker
These people are incredible, right? And I can kind of see what Xenophon is trying to say. The degree of preparation that these survivalists engage in before they you know go out into the wild is sort of mind-boggling. It's not a couple of weeks or months. like It's years of learning all these skills and honing them so that they can, on their own,
01:09:32
Speaker
build a shelter, and get water, get food, to preserve their food. I mean, if you were to give me a bone arrow and say, you got to get your own dinner tonight, I'm going a bit hungry. i just I don't know how to do that stuff. But that's exactly what these people are very skilled at. And the number one thing that I saw, the whole premise of the show, it's called Alone, by the way. and The whole premise of the show is that they drop you off, you're completely alone, and you have to just last longer than everyone else.
01:10:02
Speaker
Well, the number one thing that essentially led people to you know getting eliminated from the show, from tapping out, is the mental game. They just no longer had it in them to stay out there by themselves. The loneliness got to them. The monotony got to them. They started feeling sorry for themselves.
01:10:25
Speaker
And that's when they tap out. So I kind of see what Xenophon means when he says that things like hunting help you develop self-control. You have to go out there. You have to face the elements. It's cold or it's hot. You have to walk a whole lot of time. You have to stay focused when you're hunting.
01:10:46
Speaker
Hunting itself is probably very exhilarating and you have to maintain your cool during that process. Then you have to do all the work of skinning the animal and cooking it and preserving whatever you can't eat that day. And all of this obviously would all go to hell in a hand basket if you lose your cool at some point. If you forget some tool that you need or something that ah doesn't exactly go your way, you could just lose your cool and then the whole thing goes awry.
01:11:17
Speaker
And so throughout the entire process, you gotta remain level-headed. Self-control, right? Very interesting idea from Xenophon. Of course, many, many different skills and activities require that self-control. So there's all sorts of things you can do to develop mental toughness. I think physical exercise or being part of some organized sport is another form of this.
01:11:44
Speaker
but you can think of, I'm sure, countless other ways to develop that toughness.
01:11:50
Speaker
So let me summarize here then what we've learned from Xenophon. According to Xenophon, the best thing you can do for yourself is continually improve yourself. That is the highest good. The highest pleasure, by the way, is awareness of this improvement.
01:12:09
Speaker
And the way that you ensure that you are constantly improving yourself is, of course, self-control. Self-control is key. You need it to figure out you know who you want to be. If you have to figure out your philosophy of life, self-control is necessary for sorting out what you want your values to be. What can you actually defend? What do you want your legacy to be? How do you want people to think of you?
01:12:39
Speaker
And then once you've used self-control to develop a philosophy of life, you still need it. You need it to implement your plan. As we all know, a good plan is no good at all if you don't stick to it. And so the take home message from Xenophon, I love it. Develop that mental toughness. Get that self-control.
01:13:05
Speaker
engage in activities that allow you to work out that self-control muscle so that it gets nice and strong. And that should help you in literally every domain of your life, says Xenophon. Time to hunt.