The Art of Manliness - #421： Why You Need a Philosophical Survival Kit

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:18.340 admiral james stockdale was a fighter pilot and a pow in vietnam for seven years during

00:00:22.920 his imprisonment he was regularly tortured and beaten and often held in solitary confinement

00:00:26.840 despite the emotional mental and physical trauma he faced day in and day out stockdale survived and

00:00:31.600 came home to become an influential public figure how did he do it as my guest today explains stockdale

00:00:36.580 had with him a philosophical emergency kit his name is thomas gibbons he's a retired army colonel and

00:00:41.280 a current professor at the u.s naval war college where he teaches a course founded by james stockdale

00:00:45.320 called the foundations of moral obligation today on the show tom shares how a little book of stoic

00:00:49.940 philosophy helped james stockdale endure through seven grueling years of confinement and how his

00:00:54.520 experience as a pow inspired the creation of a course on western philosophy tom then shares

00:00:59.140 why it's important for military officers and leaders of all kinds to have an understanding

00:01:02.780 philosophy and walks us through some of the topics they cover in the stockdale course including

00:01:07.140 aristotelian virtue ethics and kant's duty ethics after the show's over check out the show notes at

00:01:11.920 aom.is stockdale all right thomas gibbons welcome to the show thank you very much brett thanks for

00:01:31.860 hosting me today allowing me to talk about the foundations elective and admiral stockdale i'm an

00:01:36.260 avid listener and a fan of your podcast well thank you so much so you've got an interesting background

00:01:41.080 you are an army colonel but you teach a course as you said on it's called the stockdale course we'll

00:01:47.180 talk about who stockdale was it's the foundations of moral obligations at the u.s naval war college

00:01:52.640 so how did an army colonel end up teaching a course on basically what is essentially western

00:01:57.400 western philosophy at the u.s naval war college brett that's a great question and i tell people that i have

00:02:04.180 the best job in the navy but before i talk about myself i'd like to give your listeners some

00:02:09.420 background on the naval war college which is located here in newport rhode island many people

00:02:14.180 don't know what a war college is and they may be turned off right away by that name we're one of

00:02:18.800 the department of defense's professional military education schools pme schools and we provide

00:02:23.880 education to military officers government civilians and international officers the college was founded

00:02:29.780 in 1884 and it's one of the oldest war colleges and is the oldest war college in the u.s we're

00:02:36.000 accredited toward a master's degree we have two undergraduate programs and resident students are

00:02:41.140 here for a year we have approximately 550 resident students and almost 300 000 distance education students

00:02:49.760 which really makes us the size of a small college or university our faculty consists of civilian

00:02:55.540 academics and active duty military myself i grew up in cincinnati and graduated from west point

00:03:03.620 and i spent almost 30 years on active duty in the army flying attack helicopters i came here to the

00:03:09.340 college while active duty to teach the joint military operations course and i've been here for 15 years

00:03:15.540 i had been a student here and i tell people that the best education that i received in the military

00:03:22.280 was here at the naval war college because they actually gave us time to think and reflect about what

00:03:28.440 we were learning and then to share those ideas with others while in active duty i worked to complete

00:03:33.260 my doctorate and i was able to remain on the faculty when i finished my doctorate my dissertation was on

00:03:40.380 honor codes and ethical behavior and because of that i got involved with the folks who teach leadership

00:03:46.840 and ethics and actually started teaching the foundations course about 10 years ago i'm also a personal

00:03:52.500 trainer and i teach a hit three times a week and that's why i tell people i have the best job in

00:03:58.220 the navy i can work out twice a day and i get to teach philosophy to graduate students at the beginning

00:04:03.620 of the trimester i tell our students if you don't think differently at lesson 10 we haven't been successful

00:04:10.900 and brett i'm going to turn the tide here and i don't mean to put you on the spot but

00:04:15.820 what are your foundations of moral obligation what's important in your life a lot of people

00:04:22.660 don't ask those questions until it's almost too late and they don't take time to think about it

00:04:28.840 the beauty of the foundations course is that we read the classics we write about it and then we talk

00:04:35.280 about it and share ideas with with others and that's what's so important about the course many of

00:04:40.780 our students have either been to iraq and afghanistan or they're going to iraq and afghanistan

00:04:46.360 and they have life experiences which really makes it useful for our classroom discussion

00:04:52.460 so before we get into why the course even exists like why western why teach a course on western ethics

00:04:59.940 and philosophy how it got started is even more interesting because it involves a guy named admiral

00:05:06.380 james stockdale he's a prisoner of war in vietnam and it seemed like that was sort of the like the

00:05:12.600 origin of this it started all when he was there and then when he got back this course started

00:05:16.960 developing based on his experience in vietnam he talks a little bit about the background of how

00:05:20.620 the course even got developed sure brett stockdale was a true american hero i talked to a former

00:05:28.840 prisoner of war yesterday had some correspondence and and he wrote to me that only stockdale and a

00:05:34.060 handful of others can speak about the torture in analytical terms about repeated and sustained

00:05:39.860 torture and adaptions one make one makes to it over considerable time so he really suffered in

00:05:47.100 his time in vietnam but but growing up in illinois typical american life went to annapolis and graduated

00:05:54.580 in 1946 and he was actually part of the class of 1947 during world war ii they had early graduation so

00:06:01.500 he graduated a year early in fact um the stockdale center for leadership and ethics at annapolis is

00:06:07.540 there now and that's chaired by a good friend of mine colonel art athens after he graduated stockdale

00:06:12.620 served on ships for a couple years and then he went to flight training to become a naval aviator

00:06:16.700 in 1954 he was assigned to the naval test pilot school or ntps and he became a test pilot and that's

00:06:24.720 really the best of the best those are the test pilots in 1959 the navy sent stockdale to stanford

00:06:31.940 and he subsequently received a master's degree in international relations and while he was at stanford

00:06:37.240 he became interested in philosophy and he wandered over in the philosophy department one day

00:06:42.160 just wandering the halls and he met a guy by the name of phil rhinelander and rhinelander was a navy

00:06:49.320 world war ii veteran who took stockdale under his wing and tutored him in philosophy and stockdale

00:06:56.720 took rhinelander's courses and learned all about the different philosophers and as he was leaving

00:07:01.240 rhinelander gave him a copy of epictetus book the enciridion it's just a small book and at first

00:07:08.280 stockdale was dumbfounded he said to himself i was a fighter pilot an organizer a martini drinker

00:07:14.300 a golf player a technologist this ancient rag talked about not concerning oneself with matters

00:07:20.380 over which he had no control and he said to himself poor old rhinelander he's just gone too far

00:07:25.580 but stockdale didn't realize at the time but that small book would actually be his salvation

00:07:31.020 in vietnam in the hanoi hilton he read it and absorbed it and really made the stoic philosophy his own

00:07:38.740 he embraced it and in prison he lived in the world of epictetus and applied those lessons in order to

00:07:45.660 survive stockdale was at the gulf of tonkin in august 1964 and he wrote later that he had the best seat

00:07:53.780 in the house looking at destroyers shooting over phantom targets he said there were no vietnamese pt boats

00:07:59.700 nothing but american firepower and black water and so he really knew the truth about how the vietnam

00:08:06.160 war started and as a pow he was concerned that he could be forced to reveal that to the north vietnamese

00:08:13.000 subsequently flying over vietnam on a bombing run in september 1965 he was shot down he was severely

00:08:22.340 beaten got a broken leg and he spent the next seven and a half years in the holloa prison the hanoi

00:08:28.520 hilton as a political prisoner four and a half years of it were in solitary confinement

00:08:34.240 stockdale was the senior officer at the hanoi hilton and think about it brett he had to establish

00:08:42.420 a whole new culture they were inside a prison with rules that they couldn't communicate

00:08:47.860 so they used what's called the tap code and they had read about this in arthur kessler's book darkness

00:08:54.520 at noon and they used tin cups and hands to tap messages on the wall to their next door neighbor

00:09:02.560 stockdale also established rules for the pow's kind of a cultural rules and what to take torture for

00:09:10.920 and the rules were don't bound public stay off the air don't help the vietnamese by giving propaganda

00:09:18.960 admit to no crimes don't kiss the enemy or don't give in to the enemy and finally unity over self

00:09:27.140 the most important thing to stockdale and the other pow's was the guy in the next cell

00:09:32.260 and he said he often reflected that honesty was so important because they were tortured they had to

00:09:39.400 take the ropes it was a torture treatment that they were given and he said you could only take torture

00:09:46.040 up to a certain point and then you had to tell him something you spilled your guts and coming back

00:09:51.380 from that you felt guilt and remorse and he said we shared that with the other pow's and especially

00:09:57.920 for the new guys we try and tell them don't feel bad you should have heard what i told them

00:10:01.660 but you can only take it to the point where you just couldn't take any more torture

00:10:05.060 and so what they ended up was they gave as much disinformation as they could

00:10:09.540 one pow went on a propaganda movie and told about clark kent and the vietnamese or north vietnamese

00:10:19.000 eventually found out about that and they tortured him severely stockdale himself disfigured his hair

00:10:25.240 with a razor blade on his scalp and the vietnamese put a hat on him so then he took a stool and beat his

00:10:32.120 eyes in so it would look puffy and he wouldn't be able to show him in a movie eventually after several

00:10:39.360 years he was caught with a note from another prisoner and he was put in the solitary and he

00:10:46.540 took shards of glass and cut his wrist to protect fellow prisoners so and he almost tried to commit

00:10:52.900 suicide so that he wouldn't have to think on his fellow prisoners and because of that he eventually

00:10:58.800 received the medal of honor little did stockdale know that at the same time he was doing this his

00:11:05.020 wife sybil was in paris at the vietnamese peace talks and brett real quick um sybil stockdale was

00:11:12.780 also an american hero and it's said that behind every great man there's a great woman and she truly was

00:11:19.740 a great woman she was involved with the league of american families at pow's she met with the president

00:11:24.840 the secretary of state and she actually went to paris to talk to the north of the vietnamese about the

00:11:29.900 conditions that her husband was was going through stockdale himself communicated with sybil using a

00:11:36.520 code words in his correspondence we actually got messages out to his wife that way and it was after

00:11:42.280 stockdale attempted suicide torture pretty much stopped in the hanoi hilton for all american pow's

00:11:49.740 he came to the naval war college in 1977 as our president then he went to the citadel in 79 to 80

00:11:57.960 and finally he went to the hoover institution institution at stanford for 12 years many have

00:12:03.320 heard about him as ross perot's running mate in the 1992 presidential election he was in a debate

00:12:10.420 with dan quayle and al gore and that's when stockdale said who am i why am i here and he appeared

00:12:17.500 confused and disoriented and it really looked bad for stockdale they had a special on or a

00:12:23.200 uh clip on saturday night live about that that made fun of him so this is so he gets back and i mean

00:12:30.260 when you i remember reading in the essay that you you wrote and then also the foundations of moral

00:12:34.960 well-being i mean it was i mean it was really heartbreaking like what those guys went through

00:12:39.140 but also at the same time inspiring the the courage they showed i mean they talked about whenever a guy

00:12:44.820 would um you get tortured and he would you know spill his guts and he'd come back and they would tap back

00:12:50.080 you know i love you right it's okay or they would say or the other thing that stockdale always say is

00:12:55.280 like it's okay if they break you you just have to make them break you again tomorrow because they

00:13:00.320 don't like that very much right you had to start all over again and stockdale was great at that in fact

00:13:06.520 he tells a story when he was growing up his mother taught drama and he took those lessons with him

00:13:13.080 into the interrogation room he would focus on an earlobe or something in the distance trying not to

00:13:19.560 avoid making eye contact with the interrogator if at all possible but yeah it it was really amazing

00:13:26.860 the things that they did and the torture that they underwent in the in north vietnam in fact stockdale

00:13:33.960 talks about the difference between solitary confinement and torture and which is worse and he says that

00:13:41.280 it's more difficult to spend time in solitary confinement than to go to torture because you

00:13:47.000 go to torture and it's over and you recover from that but in solitary confinement there's no human

00:13:51.940 contact nobody to to talk to and eventually what the north vietnamese did was because stockdale and

00:14:00.440 the alcatraz gang alcatraz gang or the group of 11 closest to stockdale they took those 11 and put them

00:14:09.820 away from the prison population so they couldn't communicate they were in solitary confinement

00:14:14.280 and uh stockdale says it was much more difficult to be in solitary confinement than it was to take

00:14:19.960 torture the first time i encountered stockdales and i learned about i think i read something called

00:14:24.500 the stockdale paradox right yeah the stockdale paradox for those of your listeners who have read

00:14:30.720 jim collins book good to great he talks about the stockdale paradox in there and in fact

00:14:38.140 stockdale met jim collins at stanford and he was walking along and eventually stockdale he talked

00:14:48.840 to stockdale about you know what what it was that kept him going and he said you must never lose faith

00:14:55.100 that you'll prevail in the end you can never afford to lose that with the discipline to confront the

00:14:59.560 most brutal facts of your current reality whatever they may be so the bottom line is never lose faith

00:15:04.340 that you're going to get out and stockdale didn't do that and he talked about the optimists and they

00:15:08.940 said we'll be out by christmas and then christmas would come and christmas would go and then we'll

00:15:14.720 be out by easter and easter would come easter would go and stockdale said that it was just disappointing

00:15:19.840 for the optimist and if you look you know victor frankl says the same thing about the optimists in his

00:15:25.780 book those are the ones those are the people who have the hardest time because they lose faith

00:15:30.660 after a while when they set a deadline and it never happens so the stockdale paradox is that

00:15:35.220 sometimes being too optimistic can actually make you less resilient need a little depressive realism

00:15:41.420 exactly and so i mean the thing that we're stockdale got these ideas it all went back that little rag of

00:15:49.160 epic from epicetus the stoic philosopher exactly yeah epictetus and crudian and i'll tell you breck um

00:15:57.940 i just highlighted a couple things here that i'll that i'll point out in epictetus and what epictetus

00:16:02.700 says is there are things within our power and there are things beyond our power within our power our

00:16:07.660 opinion aim desire aversion and in what one word whatever affairs are our own beyond our power our

00:16:16.720 body property reputation office in one word wherever whatever are not properly our own and in stockdale

00:16:25.500 took those words to heart you can control what's in your power but what's outside your power you can't

00:16:32.960 control so don't be concerned about it another quote that i really like from stockdale or from epictetus

00:16:39.060 he says sickness is an impediment to the body but not to the will unless it self-pleases lameness is an

00:16:46.480 impediment to the leg but not to the will and say this to yourself with regard to everything that happens

00:16:51.560 for you will find it to be an impediment to something else but not truly to yourself while he

00:16:56.380 was in prison stockdale took this to heart you know his leg was broken when he ejected and it was

00:17:02.100 broken again when he was in torture and he tried not to focus on the pain and tried because he could

00:17:10.180 control that another passage from stockdale remember that you're an actor in a drama of such

00:17:16.080 short as the author chooses if short in a short one if long then a long one if it be his pleasure

00:17:23.100 that you should enact a poor man or a cripple or a ruler or a private citizen see that you act well

00:17:29.060 for this is your business to act well the given part but to choose it belongs to another so basically

00:17:35.300 stockdale was saying act your part in in prison and do your job and one of my favorite parts

00:17:44.120 of the enciridion is back in uh chapter 33 some rules of etiquette epictetus says if anyone tells

00:17:53.960 you a certain person speaks ill of you do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer

00:17:58.460 he was ignorant of my other faults else he would have not have mentioned these alone

00:18:03.060 and my wife tells me that all the time so stock stockdale gets back he ends up at the

00:18:10.900 naval war college how did this idea of coming up with a course on western ethics develop was was he

00:18:19.960 the guy that came up with it or was there someone else who knew about his experience and said you

00:18:24.120 know that might be useful to teach what you kind of learned on your own that might be useful to do in

00:18:29.680 a systematic way and teach it to soldiers yeah that's a great question i think the course was entirely

00:18:35.700 stockdale's idea he first caught taught the course in the fall of 1978 79 however the planning started

00:18:43.220 immediately after he took over as president of the war college he contacted his friend phil

00:18:47.660 rhinelander about coming up to newport and rhinelander turned him down but then he contacted

00:18:52.600 a guy by the name of joe brennan at columbia and he wrote to brennan he said what are the

00:18:57.560 philosophic roots of a military profession i want my students to have more than just a few slogans

00:19:02.440 when their backs are up against the wall i need a theme a reading list and a lot of time to think

00:19:06.960 we eventually invited brennan up to newport and they worked together to develop a reading list and

00:19:12.700 a syllabus over the next few months they finalized the course in the spring of 1978 and prepared to

00:19:19.080 teach it the next fall in fact stockdale used some of the material from the course in a lecture they

00:19:25.280 had given to the folks in newport rhode island for the july 4th celebration that summer

00:19:29.880 and news of the course spread quickly in fact a retired navy officer who was our provost told me

00:19:36.560 that word on the street in dc was this is a must take course if you're going to newport it was taught

00:19:41.760 by a medal of honor winner and a distinguished academic now the media moved in with cameras and

00:19:46.540 tape recorders to get the word out and brett stockdale himself only taught the course twice and that was

00:19:54.060 during the academic year 78 79 the end of 79 august 79 he moved on to become the president of the

00:20:02.860 citadel he was there for a year and his teaching partner joe brennan who had come from columbia

00:20:08.560 taught the course for the next 12 years so i mean i can't understand so i guess the question is like

00:20:15.500 why teach military officers western philosophy i mean i can see okay the stoic stuff could come in handy

00:20:21.960 but you it's not just stoicism that gets covered in the course you're looking at aristotelian virtue

00:20:26.560 ethics you're looking at the book of job you're looking at utilitarianism so what was the goal what

00:20:33.620 what did stockdale hope officers would get out of getting this sort of overview course of western

00:20:38.820 philosophy good question stockdale was passionate about implementing changes to the curriculum he took

00:20:44.100 over as president he told the faculty that the existing curriculum didn't really address the things

00:20:51.300 that he found most useful as his time as a pow in hanoi for seven and a half years he said there's

00:20:58.560 no philosophical survivor kits issued when man goes to war and brett even today there are a lot of folks

00:21:05.020 who come here that are stem majors and we have stem majors throughout the military because most of the

00:21:10.220 weapon systems and the platforms are so complicated that you need to have a stem background in order to

00:21:15.800 understand how things work and that's one of the main reasons that the course is even so popular

00:21:21.100 because it fills a gap in the education of many of our officers there's just not as many liberal arts

00:21:28.820 majors around in the military and reading writing about and discussing the classics helps to improve

00:21:38.140 one's critical thinking skills and you just can't appreciate the value of a liberal arts education until you read

00:21:47.100 some of the classics and stockdale talked about the value of the classics classics when he was confined

00:21:53.140 in the hanoi hilton and how he thought about that when he was tortured or kept in solitary confinement

00:21:58.840 he found that the philosophy course courses he took at stanford gave him more tools to resist his

00:22:04.960 interrogators than all of his military training and he drew that strength from epictetus in particular

00:22:10.780 yeah i love that idea of a philosophical survival kit that's really cool i think that's really neat

00:22:15.800 so how has the course started over 40 years ago how has has the course changed much since it began and

00:22:23.740 and has it is it still as well received as it was when it first started good question brett the course

00:22:30.900 content is basically the same as what stockdale taught 40 years ago after stockdale's departure as i said

00:22:38.440 joe brennan kept the course the same he did limit the student to 25 students the first course that

00:22:43.600 stockdale and brennan taught they had 50 students but for just for one person it's you know yourself

00:22:49.320 it's really hard to manage that so he he kept it to 25 students and he taught it twice a year

00:22:54.080 after the fall of the berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the soviet union in 1991

00:22:59.620 they took out the lesson on lenin and soviet philosophy brennan left in 92

00:23:05.140 and a guy by the name of paul reagan a coast guard captain took over the course reagan taught

00:23:11.580 the course once a year and he taught it for 15 years he kept it going reagan developed both a

00:23:17.380 reading path and a writing path you could take either one if you read everything and you took a

00:23:24.020 final exam or you read only the primary readings and you wrote a 10 to 12 page paper and the key thing

00:23:29.680 that reagan did was he renamed the course the stockdale course and it was called foundations

00:23:35.760 of moral obligation when they changed the name to the stockdale course he saw that the numbers of

00:23:41.840 students increased dramatically because people had remembered stockdale and the importance of what he

00:23:46.920 had done after reagan i got my name and martin cook a good friend and one of my mentors took over

00:23:53.680 the course and cook brought in the great books method i'm not sure if you're familiar with that

00:23:59.300 or not brett but the great books method i'm sorry go ahead oh i am familiar it's really cool it is and

00:24:04.680 what the great books method does is you ask a leading question and the focus is not so much

00:24:12.380 a lecture type class is it's more of a discussion and you watch the discussion and when i taught with

00:24:18.340 uh with martin cook he would sit at one end of the room and i would sit at the other end of the room

00:24:22.760 and we would let the discussion go and we were more facilitators than lecturers and i think that's

00:24:29.000 key one of the other things that martin cook did is he introduced blackboard i'm not sure you're

00:24:34.340 familiar with that either brett but it's a learning management system and basically with blackboard

00:24:38.700 instead of writing a 10 to 12 page paper at the end of the trimester what we did is we told

00:24:44.300 students that they had to make postings once a week about the readings thoughts feelings impressions

00:24:50.500 that they had and then they had to comment on two other postings so you would write a posting and then

00:24:58.060 comment on two other postings and the neat thing about that brett is that if you read it and then you

00:25:06.740 write about it and then you talk about it in seminar you really own it and the other thing is that

00:25:14.220 if you're writing for your classmates i call it the pucker factor because when you're writing for

00:25:19.800 your classmates you know they're going to read it it's a lot more important than if just the

00:25:23.180 instructor is going to read it and so i thought that was interesting but then the other thing that

00:25:28.140 martin cook did is he introduced non-western religion uh the baguva dita he had a lesson finding meaning in

00:25:34.320 one's life with reading from tolstoy frankel weisel he introduced carl marlante's book what it's like to go

00:25:41.340 to war i'm not sure if you've ever read that or not brett but it's one of the best war novels that

00:25:46.140 you'll see carl does a great job with that so the course has changed you know why is the course

00:25:52.540 successful i tell people it's a triad it's the faculty each of the men who taught the course was

00:25:58.600 passionate and willing to listen to others and passionate about what they did in the classroom

00:26:03.960 they were interested in it they were interested in hearing what students had to say and students

00:26:08.180 bring life experiences the students themselves brett as i said were different than a typical

00:26:13.060 undergraduate institution most of the students that come here to the war college they're type a

00:26:17.680 they want to be here they're motivated to learn and i tell folks that if you take a philosophy course

00:26:23.360 as a graduate student it's a lot different than taking it as an undergraduate because you have

00:26:28.420 life experiences that you can bring to discussion and you can reflect on things and see what they mean

00:26:34.260 and then the third element that makes it successful is the readings going back to what stockdale

00:26:40.120 originally started we use primary not secondary sources classical modern readings and brett i mean

00:26:46.460 you've read socrates you've read plato and these are difficult readings especially in one sittings

00:26:51.900 and some of our students say now what did i just read but they're timeless and we just don't have

00:27:00.280 enough time to go through all the different readings so on lesson 10 we give the students a

00:27:05.500 supplementary reading list with other things that they can continue continue the readings so they

00:27:10.660 become lifelong learners the current syllabus we start off with the greek and roman stoics we talk

00:27:17.040 about epictetus we read stockdale's book thoughts of philosophical fighter pilot we talk about marcus

00:27:21.880 aurelius in his book meditations the emperor's handbook we talk about the second lesson we do is greek

00:27:28.480 tradition socrates and i call it easy plato we read usufro apology and credo and we talk about the

00:27:35.880 usufro dilemma and if you've read apology you know what socrates says i don't know what i don't know

00:27:41.080 and then in credo he talks to the laws of athens week three we do plato's republic talk about you know

00:27:47.620 definition of justice and we highlight the myth of the cave and week four we talk about nicomachean

00:27:53.700 and aristotle and virtue ethics and week five we talk about western religious traditions we read the

00:28:00.520 bible the old testament the new testament and it's amazing how many folks have not read the bible in a

00:28:07.420 long time since they were small we read thomas aquinas treatise on the law and soren kirkhart's fear and

00:28:13.180 trembling and talk about what a leap of faith is in week six we talk about emmanuel kant's metaphysics

00:28:19.100 and morals and the duty concept and what it means in week seven we talk about life and society we read

00:28:25.640 mill's on liberty we read the declaration of independence the constitution and the u.n charter

00:28:31.040 and we talk about the tyranny of the majority and all the different things that mill talks about in his

00:28:36.620 work and week eight which is probably one of my favorite weeks we read tolstoy's the death of

00:28:41.680 ivan ilyich and we read knight or frankl's man's searcher meaning and brett so often in the military

00:28:50.120 folks are focused on my next assignment or my next inspection but this lesson really forces them to

00:28:56.900 think about their life and where they're at in their life and what's important to them in week nine we

00:29:02.680 look at western religious or excuse me non-western perspective we read the bhagavad-gita

00:29:07.820 and marlanti's book what it's like to go to war and as i said earlier it's probably one of the best

00:29:12.400 war novels and then ten we cover skeptical challenges we read dostoevsky's the grand inquisitors

00:29:19.440 from the brothers kazumarov we read the book of job we read ecclesiastes and we read camu so it's

00:29:27.020 pretty much a a really compact syllabus we talk about a lot of different things in a short 10-week period

00:29:34.400 no yeah it's really impressive so i uh i got my hands on a copy of like the original

00:29:39.220 textbook the foundations of moral obligation there was a used one on amazon and i'll say like i've read

00:29:46.240 a lot of like philosophy books or sort of you know broad overviews of philosophy this one is probably

00:29:51.080 the most the most readable and enjoyable that i've read the foundations of moral obligation because i

00:29:56.060 would love what i love about it is they'll they go through the the history of philosophy they give you

00:30:00.660 kind of a bio of the philosopher so you kind of get where they're coming from but then they just show

00:30:05.300 how everything kind of builds off of each other and then they always bring it back to stockdale's

00:30:09.240 experience somehow in in in vietnam yeah and stockdale was adamant about not calling it an ethics course

00:30:18.680 if you remember in the late 70s after vietnam ethic courses were a booming business there was ethics in

00:30:26.200 business industries ethics and other professions and stockdale saw that and he really didn't want

00:30:31.900 to water it down the course he didn't like the word ethics he didn't want to teach the course

00:30:35.320 ethics for dentists that's not what he wanted he liked the term moral philosophy because it really

00:30:41.120 tied to the humanities and he often said he learned more during the philosophy course at stanford that

00:30:47.940 helped him as a pow than anything else in his education and that's why they called the course

00:30:52.520 foundations of moral obligation so it really wasn't an ethics course but it's a good primer

00:30:58.420 into several different philosophers yeah maybe we can get it we dig into a little bit give our

00:31:04.260 listeners a taste of what sort of discussions you might have so let's talk about you know aristotelian

00:31:10.340 virtue ethics what is it about that sort of type of philosophy that can help leaders or soldiers or

00:31:18.040 warriors become better what they do good question brett as many of you know or many of the readers know

00:31:24.260 aristotle was a student of plato and he did more than just philosophy he conducted research in biology

00:31:31.320 zoology botany physiology he was interested in all sciences but his ethics are teleological and what

00:31:38.060 does that mean it's based on the greek word tell us which means purpose and or goal what's the all

00:31:45.160 what's the aim of all human behavior it's a happiness or a character of virtue and like i said he

00:31:52.100 developed virtue-based ethics a person who lives a virtuous life with a better chance of achieving

00:31:56.960 happiness than one without virtues according to aristotle virtue is a disposition which is developed

00:32:03.060 over time and he talked about two different types of virtue intellectual virtues and moral virtues

00:32:08.140 moral virtues are traits of character intellectual virtues are gained by education and moral

00:32:13.940 virtues virtues virtues virtues by habit and aristotelian ethics is important to the military because

00:32:21.160 it really gives you a different perspective and a concept or tool to help develop your moral compass

00:32:29.100 and aristotle said it was he talks about the golden mean and moral behavior is the mean between two

00:32:36.100 extremes at one end is excess at the other and end is deficiency and the virtue

00:32:43.940 is a moderate position between those two extremes and the thing about originally virtue ethics there

00:32:49.020 aren't really any rules right right you have to use your kind of judgment or what fronises what he

00:32:53.940 calls to figure out what the right thing to do is in that certain circumstances there's no it's not

00:32:57.980 relativism a lot of people think it is but it's not it's like you just you you know depending on the

00:33:02.680 situation what the right thing to do because the means going to change depending on the situation like

00:33:06.940 what the middle is is going to be different in different circumstances exactly and after we talk about

00:33:12.500 aristotle uh we talk about kant and i'm sure you know this some of your readers might not may not

00:33:18.120 that god was really into duty and rules and duty is the objective what i should do inclination is what

00:33:24.800 i want to do and he talked about the hypothetical imperative and talked about the categorical imperative

00:33:29.480 and there's only one categorical imperative act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time

00:33:36.520 will that should become a universal law and it's like nike says just do it and kant does not allow

00:33:43.380 any exceptions you want to act in a way that you always treat humanity whether in your own person or the

00:33:51.640 person of any other never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end and you don't use

00:34:00.820 people to get what you want and that's one of the things that that i liked about kant and aristotle

00:34:06.520 and kant are completely different it's difficult to be both a kantian and aristotelian because again

00:34:11.860 aristotle's focused on virtues and kant was on duty or just following the rules yeah kant i remember i took

00:34:17.760 a philosophy course and you know there's some of this sort of weird paradoxes you might find yourself

00:34:21.020 in and kant's categorical imperatives don't they don't make sense like you know there's like the idea

00:34:26.640 like oh you're on a road and you see someone running for their life from a guy with a knife

00:34:32.640 and he says don't tell them where i'm going and then the the knife fielder comes like where did that

00:34:38.120 guy go like kant would say like you're supposed to tell you can't lie because no you're always

00:34:42.880 supposed to tell the truth that's what you want everyone to do in every situation but like you're

00:34:47.020 like that doesn't make any sense or they give the example in the holocaust like if you're hiding

00:34:50.920 jewish people and the nazis came like do you tell like not comment say well yeah you should tell

00:34:56.320 maybe you maybe you tell the people you're hiding like you maybe need to get out get a head start

00:35:01.240 but you still have to you can't lie no and see brett that's that's one of the things about kant

00:35:06.060 that that you know that's one of the anomalies about kant there's no exceptions and it really makes

00:35:12.020 it hard to accept kant to apply in our daily lives because there's exceptions to almost everything we do

00:35:17.080 right but i do like i agree with you i do like the his idea of don't treat people as

00:35:21.440 means you treat them as ends right and see brent we're talking about you know when kant was alive

00:35:29.020 this is you know several hundred years ago so he was really ahead of his time you know to talk about

00:35:34.820 stuff like that and uh you know it's so applicable today no and i can see why this would be a useful

00:35:40.560 course for officers you know even if you don't go with the kantian view of like you do your duty no

00:35:45.800 matter what like it raises that might happen you might encounter that in the military like i don't know

00:35:50.180 this is probably really super cliche it makes me think of a few good men right did you order the

00:35:55.360 code red well the dude who said yes i did and you have to do it because i said so you know aristotle

00:36:01.360 would be like well no that's maybe that's not the the the virtuous thing to do and that's a good

00:36:07.600 example brent you know it's we don't just follow rules we have to think about the consequences of

00:36:13.200 those rules and is it a moral order that you're taking you know what's the reason for it so that that's

00:36:19.920 it's so important hello it's interesting to you so you talk about the book of job and how that's a

00:36:24.740 way to sort of explore the problem of evil in in life yeah stockdale used the book of job

00:36:32.380 extensively in fact whenever he talked to students he always started his presentations with life is not

00:36:40.640 fair get over it and the book of job really brings that message home you know job was a great christian

00:36:49.260 and followed everything that god had told him and he's loses everything and he questions god

00:36:56.340 and in the end you know job ends up getting everything back but the lesson that stockdale

00:37:02.300 got from that is that life is not fair and people question why me why is this happening to me you know

00:37:08.440 what did i do and the bottom line is that life is not fair and that things happen and you have to be

00:37:14.800 prepared to accept that in your life and then to move on and to make the best of a given situation

00:37:19.220 which is exactly what stockdale did when he was locked up as a prisoner for almost seven and a half

00:37:24.100 years yeah i know the book of job was a favorite of abraham lincoln's as well that he would go to

00:37:30.120 over and over again during the civil war yeah i know that whole question like you know why me why me

00:37:34.420 it's like well why not you right exactly you know i mean is there so this is a course for

00:37:42.440 military officers are there places where civilians can go where they can learn more about the content

00:37:49.080 yeah that's a good question brett we have active duty military we have international officers and we

00:37:57.020 have a lot of civilians that come here they're government civilians in fact one of my best students from the

00:38:02.260 last trimester worked for the defense nuclear agency he's a nuclear engineer and took the stockdale

00:38:07.720 course so government civilians actually come here to our course we have people from the state department

00:38:12.960 we have people from the fbi the national park service who actually can come here and take this course

00:38:17.360 other civilians can learn more about the course from the naval war college website you can contact me

00:38:23.060 and i'd be glad to send them any information about the course or our syllabus and what we do like i said

00:38:29.260 it's a good course to force you to think about primary questions what are my moral obligations

00:38:36.480 you know what's important to me in life and it goes back to the classics the value of taking the course

00:38:43.480 here is that we read it write about it and then talk about it and you can tell students when that light

00:38:51.740 goes on in the classroom when they actually get it and one of the neat things i think is that they bring

00:38:57.200 up concepts we've talked about earlier later in the course for instance we talk about socrates earlier

00:39:02.000 they bring that up later in the course and compare it to aristotle or they'll compare aristotle to

00:39:06.960 kant and so they really get it and they can talk about it really for a long time after we actually do

00:39:12.900 that lesson right it's a great conversation it goes spans thousands of years exactly well tom

00:39:18.320 this has been an interesting discussion thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:39:21.220 brent thank you very much again i'm a fan a fan of your podcast and thanks for all you do

00:39:26.800 have a great day my guest today is thomas gibbons he is the professor of the foundations of moral

00:39:32.240 obligation at the u.s naval war college you can find out more information about his work at our show notes

00:39:36.720 at aom.is stockdale well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more

00:39:54.940 manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if

00:39:58.860 you enjoy the podcast you've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give

00:40:02.320 a review on itunes or stitcher helps that a lot as always thank you for your continued support

00:40:06.080 until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#421： Why You Need a Philosophical Survival Kit

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