Why Study Greek Philosophy?

there's going to be some positive

outcome from from an act of intellectual

courage to actually go and challenge the

sort of lies of the time.

Welcome to another episode of the

students. Today, should you be reading

the old philosophers? So, Stephen,

you're you're uh

one of our one of our big fans at

Palladium. I remember you wrote some

great stuff for us. You were always

there supporting us. Uh I really enjoyed

that. That's kind of where we met. Uh

you did one of the earliest interesting

sort of substantive reviews of um

Costamaru's

selective breeding and the birth of

philosophy and you've definitely been

kind of a a fixture in terms of bringing

the classical philosophy angle on a lot

of topics. So, I thought it would be fun

to kind of get together and talk about

this topic that, you know, vexes me

sometimes, which is should a modern

student of the 21st century be reading

the ancient philosophers, especially

obviously we mean Aristotle, we mean

Plato, we mean Socrates, but uh I I

wanted to get to the bottom of that

matter with you. So, Stephen, welcome to

the show. Thank you for coming on.

>> Absolutely. Glad to be here. So my

initial answer would be maybe not. Um

and we should take that possibility

seriously. If uh if you are comfortable

in the warm embrace of the cathedral, if

you think our regime is basically

roughly reasonable and heading in a good

direction and just needs some writing

here and there, um no. The answer is you

probably don't need to be digging into

what Aristotle or or Plato uh thought

about that stuff. But if your

perspective is quite different, if

you're one of these people like myself

who thinks that there is a very great

deal wrong and it's not simply a

question of, you know, minor tweaking

here or there, that there's something

very fundamentally wrong at the basis of

um the kind of liberal democratic regime

that has now slid into this managerial

you know, some people would say soft

totalitarianism

and that we should really be rethinking

things more fundamentally, then my

answer is yeah, you want to be digging

into the best resources for that.

>> Mhm. So I guess part of it is at that

time in history that these guys are

writing this is 300 BC

>> uh after the Palpeneian war they're kind

of facing the decline of Greek society

right this is this is the overall

context as I understand and so you know

on that purely kind of historical

comparison basis they are trying to

understand

what makes a society be bad or good and

through through the lens of dealing with

their own time of historical decline at

least at the beginnings of it. And uh

you know for that reason maybe there's

some relevance and so I'd love to hear

though from you kind of what is it about

that context that makes them in

particular interesting? Like why why do

we care about the Greeks? Isn't that

just something, you know, a bunch of

medieval fuddy duddies kind of thought

was important because that's all they

had? Like what what is what is it about

the Greeks that makes them relevant to

our situation? So I think you're right

to say that they're writing in a period

of decline as they themselves perceived

it

>> and there's all kinds of um if you just

read you know through cities on the

pelpeneisian war you know you can see

the like total wreck of things that had

gone on and they're writing in the

aftermath of that but even prior to that

there's a lot of features of their

society where they had very clearly

declined from sort of the more

aristocratic

ideals um that an earlier generation

would have said were sources of strength

in a in a society

>> and they really are grappling with that.

So So why them? Why are they important?

Because really the they are the first

thinkers in the west to grapple with the

questions of what makes a regime good or

bad? What are the foundations of a

regime? How does politics fundamentally

work? And it really is kind of a open

exploration. So one thing that I would

really emphasize is you don't go to

Plato or Aristotle for doctrines. You're

not looking for a blueprint. You're not

looking for, you know, they said this is

how to do it in sort of concrete object

level terms.

>> That's not the point. Um the point is

that they opened up a way of exploring

of asking fundamental questions not just

about politics at its surface level but

ultimately about human life like how

should a man live? What is a good

honorable flourishing life? and and they

had a like very uh you know being a good

warrior being able to contribute to the

defense of your city was definitely a

part of that. So by no means was this

like some you know ivory tower you know

kind of thing. We we we we think of of

Socrates as this guy who just hung

around and and talked with people and he

sure did a lot of that, but we forget

that he also served as a hoplight um you

know for Athens in the Pelpeneisian War

that that he um had this very impressive

reputation. you know, Alsabides and

others uh comment on how well he served

and you know, how how powerfully he

acted in that capacity. So, you know,

there's a lot of very practical

experience that goes into this. It's not

just theoretical.

>> I mean, and people always uh

find it funny to find out that Plato was

his kind of like his wrestling name, you

know? It's like he's he's a wrestler. It

means like he's the big guy. He's like a

big, you know, plate of stone. Uh,

>> and was reputed to be an extremely good

wrestler. Not just that he did it

sometimes,

>> right? And so these guys, you know, it's

very different from today where, you

know, your average professor or

something of philosophy is is this this

kind of very pathetic creature that

that,

you know, you might read some

interesting books, but but uh doesn't

have this Marshall engagement with

reality uh the way these guys did. And

>> yeah, athletics was absolutely

presupposed as foundational to

education. um not just wrestling but a

whole array of competitive I guess you

could call them sports or athletics all

of which were intended to reflect and

prepare for skills you would actually

need on the battlefield. So like javelin

is an obvious example but running um

strength sports that that reflected what

you would have to do with armor on

chariot races. Um, some of them are a

bit archaic by the time you get to uh

their period, but nonetheless very

clearly derived from war and that was

just like that's the foundation that's

taken for granted. If you if you don't

have that, you're not in a position to

proceed further to the study of

philosophy or whatever.

>> Right. Well, that's an interesting kind

of point to make these days, right? is

is that to think coherently you have to

have some kind of strength of the body.

like the uh thought is a very it's

grounded in physicality at some level

and um

you know we don't have to pursue that

thought very far here but

>> it's interesting that it's a little bit

different than than uh I think your sort

of typical kind of

>> uh the nerd pretense or the

>> a lot a lot of nerds think like okay you

know actually the body is just this meat

bag I don't need it I don't care about

it uh I you know I'm just going to kind

of abstract myself into the realm of

thought entirely. Um and that does feel

wrong. It it does seem that they they