The Art of Manliness - #643： Life Lessons From Dead Philosophers

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Studying

00:00:11.460 philosophy can be a metaphorical journey into wisdom. My guest today experienced it not only

00:00:15.720 as that, but as a very literal journey as well. His name is Eric Weiner and he traveled thousands

00:00:20.100 of miles around the world to visit the haunts of numerous philosophers as he sought to better

00:00:24.080 understand their insights and how he might apply them to his own life. He wrote about this

00:00:27.740 philosophical pilgrimage in the Socrates Express in search of life lessons from dead philosophers.

00:00:32.800 Eric and I began our conversations why he chose to take all his trips by train and why rail travel

00:00:37.220 is particularly conducive to thoughtful reflection. We then turned to philosophical and physical

00:00:41.600 stops he made on his journey, including why Marcus Aurelius wrote so much about getting out of bed

00:00:45.980 and what ultimately motivated the emperor to start each day, what Thoreau can teach about scene,

00:00:49.960 why Gandhi was very interested in the idea of manliness, how Nietzsche's idea of eternal

00:00:53.820 recurrence can change the way we live our daily lives, and the lesson Simone Beauvoir offers us

00:00:58.140 on aging well. We end our conversation with Montaigne's insight on how to get comfortable

00:01:01.900 with death. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Socrates Express.

00:01:06.420 All right, Eric Weiner, welcome back to the show.

00:01:18.100 Thank you, Brett. Happy to be back with you.

00:01:20.120 So we had you on a few years ago to talk about your book, The Geography of Genius, where you

00:01:23.700 go to explore these clusters of genius around the world that have happened out in human history.

00:01:29.700 You got a new book out, similar sort of thing. You go this time to places where philosophers

00:01:35.600 lived, walked, worked, thought, but you get there by train. It's called The Socrates Express.

00:01:42.340 What was the impetus behind this book?

00:01:44.400 Well, first of all, I love trains, so let's get that out of the way right off the bat.

00:01:49.240 I'm not a train nerd, as some people are who really get excited about tonnage ratings and

00:01:54.860 locomotive types. I'm not that kind of train lover. I love the experience of riding trains,

00:02:00.380 of just slowing down. I feel like I can think on a train the way I cannot think on an

00:02:05.580 airplane or a bus or even drive me a car. So that was my means of transport. In terms

00:02:12.020 of the subject matter, you know, I think I got to chalk this one up to middle age, you

00:02:17.980 know, which I know sounds a bit cliched, but it's true. You start to wonder, what's it all

00:02:24.160 about? What am I doing here? And then I stumbled across this quote from a French philosopher named

00:02:30.200 Maurice Reisling, and he said, sooner or later, life makes philosophers of us all. And I thought,

00:02:36.640 huh, why wait? You know, why wait until life becomes a problem for me? It wasn't at the time.

00:02:42.800 And then that sent me on the journey of exploring philosophy. And after I tucked away the book and

00:02:49.400 sent it off to my publisher, the pandemic hit and life surely made philosophers of all of us.

00:02:56.120 That's for sure. I want to go back to this idea of trains and this connection to philosophy,

00:03:00.360 because you know this in the book, and I've seen this with, and when I've read different

00:03:04.680 philosophers, a lot of philosophers didn't like trains because they were too fast.

00:03:08.360 Right.

00:03:08.520 Of course, this was in the 19th century.

00:03:10.240 Right.

00:03:11.200 But I mean, what is it about, I mean, you said you think better on a train compared to driving. Like,

00:03:16.900 what do you think trains for you are conducive to philosophizing?

00:03:21.340 Well, you're absolutely right about some philosophers not liking trains. A lot of people

00:03:26.500 in the 19th century, when train travel really became widespread, didn't like trains because

00:03:32.360 they complained they were too fast, right? They got all nostalgic for the carriage and the

00:03:37.880 horse and buggy when you can go more slowly and feel the land. And they felt like the trains

00:03:43.660 moving at, oh, 15, 20 miles an hour back then were just, the scenery was a blur and it was all

00:03:49.220 too fast. So, I mean, that shows us how relative these things are. But compared to, you know,

00:03:54.000 hurtling through space in a tin can at 600 miles per hour, I like the slowness of a train. I find it

00:04:00.300 easier to think when I'm moving more slowly. And I like sort of this, especially, you know,

00:04:05.040 those European trains where you get your own compartment or compartment you share with some

00:04:08.960 strangers and you get this combination of coziness and expansiveness at the same time, which I just

00:04:15.440 find wonderful. And I just feel like I could just ride a train forever with a stack of books and cup

00:04:21.880 of coffee and I'm good to go. Do you get by train in the United States? I do. I took a train clear

00:04:28.580 across the U.S. from my home, Washington, D.C. to Portland, Oregon. I took four days and three nights

00:04:34.760 and it's not, okay, the fastest way to cross the country. It's not the cheapest way. In my mind,

00:04:41.240 it's the best way. So, whenever I can, I take a train. So, let's talk about the way you organize

00:04:45.740 this book. So, it's organized to three parts, dawn, noon, dusk. Am I reading too much of this,

00:04:51.820 but is this also fall like the seasons of a person's life, like youth, middle age, elderhood?

00:04:57.260 You are absolutely not reading too much into it. That was my intention exactly. It is course of our

00:05:04.480 life. And in the dawn section, you know, there are questions that as we're growing up, that skills

00:05:11.680 that we need to learn, like how to see and how to listen, how to walk, that we learn at that age.

00:05:18.160 And then when we're sort of in mid-stride of our lives, you know, we want to fight, we want to be

00:05:23.140 kind, we want to do all these other things. And then there are certain questions that we

00:05:27.840 really grapple with in the twilight of our life, you know, how to have no regrets, how to cope with

00:05:33.540 setbacks, how to grow old, and even how to die. And it was the type of philosophers that you picked

00:05:39.900 in this book, they're not like analytic philosophers or they're trying to... These are philosophers,

00:05:45.180 like the original intent of philosophy is like how to live a good life.

00:05:50.160 I mean, philosopher means literally from the ancient Greek, a lover of wisdom. Doesn't say

00:05:56.480 anything about PhD dissertations or analytical thinking or logic chopping, as it's been called.

00:06:03.160 Lovers of wisdom. And I love that because I think that's what we should all aspire to,

00:06:10.240 to be lovers of wisdom. You know, I'm holding a device in my hand right now called an iPhone that

00:06:17.280 contains, you know, pretty much all of human knowledge and just so much information, but not

00:06:24.040 really any wisdom. And there is a difference. You know, we tend to conflate them, you know,

00:06:29.220 data, information, knowledge, wisdom. You know, information is readily accessible these days,

00:06:35.340 as I said, with the swipe of our finger. But wisdom is something else. You know, wisdom is

00:06:40.680 of a different kind. And that's what these philosophers were interested in.

00:06:45.760 Well, let's pay a visit to some of these philosophers you highlight in the book.

00:06:48.440 Sure.

00:06:48.800 And the one you start off with is Marcus Aurelius, the famous Roman emperor,

00:06:52.940 one of the last good emperors. And he was also a Stoic philosopher. And you noted this,

00:06:58.340 and I've never noted this because I've read the meditations, his sort of personal diary that he wrote,

00:07:03.460 sort of pumping himself up that we have it today. But I didn't know, but you noticed this,

00:07:09.060 is that he always talked about getting out of bed. He talks a lot about getting out of bed.

00:07:13.600 Yeah.

00:07:14.020 What do you think is going on there?

00:07:15.320 Well, I think just because you're a Roman emperor doesn't mean it's easy to get out of bed.

00:07:19.420 You know, I mean, and I found this very relatable. I thought, you know, here's this guy who is,

00:07:24.300 as you say, one of the last good Roman emperors, you know, controlled like, you know,

00:07:28.940 two fifths of the world population. Yet he had trouble falling asleep at night and trouble

00:07:34.800 getting out of bed in the morning. And he would sort of wrestle with it on the pages of meditations,

00:07:39.960 you know, should I get up? I'm lazy. You're good for nothing. Why should I get up? And it's just

00:07:45.280 seemed very modern to me and very relatable. As I said, it's my story too. I have trouble getting

00:07:50.140 out of bed in the morning. And, you know, the French philosopher Albert Camus said that the only

00:07:55.820 truly serious philosophical question is whether you should commit suicide or not.

00:08:01.380 And that's okay. We can talk about that later. But I thought, well, yeah, once you've answered

00:08:06.560 that one and you decide not to commit suicide, you still have to get out of bed. And that's the

00:08:11.560 one that Marcus wrestles with. And what I find interesting is how he ultimately answers it,

00:08:16.540 which is not, you know, I'm going to go achieve something and make my name in the history books.

00:08:20.920 It was the sense of duty, the sense of other people that I should get out of bed for others

00:08:26.820 because people in this empire are counting on me. And, you know, if you're at home with a wife and

00:08:33.280 kids and sometimes, or a dog, you know, this is what gets you out of bed. The dog needs to be fed.

00:08:39.360 Kids need to be driven to school. And Marcus had a similar revelation.

00:08:44.080 And you also use this question of, should I get out of bed in the morning to explore the idea of

00:08:48.360 is an ought? Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:08:51.760 Yeah. So this was an idea from a Scottish philosopher named David Hume. And he thought

00:08:56.480 that, you know, we can't jump from an is to an ought. In other words, we can't jump from a 0.87

00:09:02.980 factual observation, empirical observation to an ethical imperative. So with the case of getting

00:09:11.580 out of bed, you would say, well, it is a good idea to get out of bed because, you know,

00:09:17.740 you get exercise and your earning potential increases. Therefore, you ought to get out

00:09:23.040 of bed. He thought that was a mistake. And this is why it's sometimes known as Hume's

00:09:27.980 guillotine, because he severs the is from the ought. So, you know, oftentimes you would just

00:09:34.460 will make observations about something in the world, anything, you know, that red wine is good

00:09:40.200 for you or red wine is bad for you. Therefore, you ought to drink it or you ought not to drink it.

00:09:45.020 And he thought that was a mistake. You can't jump from the is to the ought.

00:09:49.480 And Marcus Aurelius, I mean, he kind of solved that problem. He's like, well,

00:09:53.140 I'm not going to say getting out of bed is good or bad. It's just like, I just got to get out of bed

00:09:58.560 because I have to. Like, it's a duty. That's it.

00:10:01.480 Yeah. It was a sense of duty to others. And even though, you know, you've read meditation,

00:10:08.120 so, you know, it can be a lot of navel gazing going on there, definitely, because, you know,

00:10:13.200 it was his diary. So we were actually eavesdropping on him. He didn't mean to publish it. But in

00:10:18.560 addition to the navel gazing is this sense of duty, you know, which was a stoic thing and a Roman thing.

00:10:24.400 But he got out of his own head, realizing there were others counting on him. And this duty really

00:10:30.560 wasn't just as, oh, I'm a Roman emperor. I have to get out of bed and help people.

00:10:34.940 So it was his duty as a human being, you know, and this is where his stoicism becomes readily

00:10:40.160 apparent. His duty as a human being to help others, because the stoics see us all as connected.

00:10:48.420 You know, if you smash your thumb with a hammer, you help the thumb because it's connected to the

00:10:55.160 rest of the hand and the rest to you. And that's how he thought, and it's a stoic idea, really,

00:11:00.160 that's how we should relate to others, not as separate entities from us, but as extensions of

00:11:05.360 us.

00:11:06.580 So we can't talk about philosophy without talking about Socrates, sort of like we consider him the

00:11:10.800 father of philosophy. And what's interesting about Socrates is that he didn't have a Socratic

00:11:16.180 doctrine, right? If you read it, even if you read his dialogues, you know, he starts off asking

00:11:21.440 these questions like, what is justice? And then you spend pages and pages.

00:11:24.940 And at the end, you're like, I still don't know what justice or even what Socrates, but

00:11:29.520 Socrates instead, he proposed like a way of engaging with the world. And so how would you describe this

00:11:35.060 Socratic engagement?

00:11:36.920 Yeah, it is. It's not a body of knowledge, as you say. You can't really read what Socrates

00:11:43.080 thought. All you can do is experience and observe his method. And it is, as you say, engagement. It is

00:11:51.440 a way of just engaging in conversation. I mean, I know that doesn't sound highfalutin and Nobel

00:11:57.740 prize worthy, but that's what Socrates did. You know, one contemporary philosopher says he engaged

00:12:04.040 in enlightened kibitzing, which is a great term, which I think is what he did. He would

00:12:09.100 buttonhole people in Athens, you know, a general, for instance, some fancy general, and ask him what

00:12:14.960 courage is. And it soon became readily apparent that the general didn't really know. How could a

00:12:20.460 general in an army not know what courage is? How can an artist not know what beauty is?

00:12:25.820 And so he would challenge people, but he did in this sneaky way in that he would just

00:12:30.640 sort of start to engage them in conversation and ask questions. And every question was followed by

00:12:36.480 another. It's sort of like the, you know, the five-year-old who always says, why, you know,

00:12:41.860 can we have ice cream now? No. Why? Because it's 10 a.m. Why can't we have ice cream at 10 a.m.?

00:12:48.000 Because we don't. Why? And it drives us nuts. And it drives us nuts just as Socrates drove people in

00:12:54.000 ancient Athens nuts, not because the questions are silly, but because we can't really answer them

00:12:59.880 fully. Right. Yeah. Like you call these like ultimate questions and we tend to avoid those 0.86

00:13:04.940 because we don't have any good answers for them. Or we tend not to really sit with questions. You know,

00:13:09.760 we see a question as kind of an inconvenience, a little shortcut on the way to an answer,

00:13:16.240 right? Questions must lead to answers. And Socrates basically said, whoa, you know, let's

00:13:22.960 not, let's hold on here a second. Let's experience this question fully and see where it takes us. And

00:13:29.980 we're so results oriented these days as they were back then, to be honest, that we, we always want

00:13:36.900 to get to the answer. And Socrates thought you can't get there unless you really sit with the

00:13:43.100 question, experience it. And that means questioning your assumptions. What do you mean by courage? What

00:13:51.280 do you mean by justice? You know, we just jump ahead to, okay, we need to increase earning potential

00:13:56.980 for people. Well, why, why is that good? And it's almost a childlike process. It's childlike

00:14:03.600 curiosity and more than curiosity, wonder. All philosophy begins with wonder. We have largely,

00:14:11.080 I think, lost this capacity for wonder in our lives. And like you said, Socrates is basically,

00:14:17.220 he's just, we call it dialogue, but it's just conversation. And I think we've all experienced those

00:14:21.560 late night talks with friends where you're, you're just asking questions and just sort of

00:14:26.860 spitballing and you don't ever really come to any conclusions, but you felt, I don't know,

00:14:31.840 you felt invigorated, edified by being in that conversation. Yeah. Because you've experienced the

00:14:37.360 questions and you've asked them in, in ways that you wouldn't in the classroom or in the corporate

00:14:44.620 board meeting, you know, because you would, might be laughed at, but Socrates basically gives us 0.80

00:14:50.580 permission to be a five-year-old and ask those annoying, silly questions. 0.51

00:14:55.180 And you apply this to your own life. You talk about it, you were kind of complaining to a friend 0.88

00:15:00.100 that, you know, I wish I was more successful, sold more books, whatever. And then your friend

00:15:04.440 just asks you like, what does success look like to you? Right. And you didn't really have an answer

00:15:09.980 for that. No, I didn't. And it's kind of floored me, you know, that I had just always assumed that

00:15:16.480 I needed to be more successful. However successful I was, I needed more. And she said,

00:15:24.580 she said, what does success look like? And, and the way she, something about the way she phrased it,

00:15:29.880 that just stopped me in my tracks. Like, I don't know. I don't know what would be enough. I don't

00:15:34.800 know what it would look like. Maybe it looks entirely differently from, from, from what I thought.

00:15:40.820 And, you know, a really good question is met not with an answer, but with silence. You know,

00:15:47.500 you know, you've asked a good question when the person on the other end is, is quiet. That means

00:15:52.500 that you've shaken them out of their stupor as Socrates did. And they're starting to see things

00:15:58.000 a little bit differently, not 90 degrees, maybe 10 or 20 degrees, but sometimes that's all it takes.

00:16:04.000 Did you ever, have you gotten any closer to answer to what does success look like to you?

00:16:08.780 Uh, no, I'm still working on that, but I'm wide open to the possibility that it's not

00:16:15.000 what I think it is. And whenever I find myself, you know, thinking, well, I need, need to be on,

00:16:21.680 you know, need to be on the Colbert show. I need, you know, I need this, I need that. And

00:16:27.120 I stop and, and my friend's question comes back to me, what does success look like?

00:16:32.400 And it's helpful. But the problem with these, these great questions is you have to keep asking

00:16:37.240 them over and over again. Once, once is, is not enough.

00:16:40.660 That's a good advice. I've had that moment where you're, you're doing something. Finally,

00:16:44.160 you just stop. You're like, why am I doing this? Right. And then you just like, maybe I don't

00:16:49.040 need to be doing this. Exactly. And that's helpful. All right. So the next place you go is you visit

00:16:55.220 Rousseau's, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's old tramping grounds. And I, I say tramping because this guy

00:17:00.280 apparently was a walker. What'd you take away from visiting where Rousseau walked?

00:17:05.240 Well, he, he was a walker. He was a nomad. He was sort of this sort of rootless soul. You know,

00:17:10.840 we're talking back in the 18th century when it really wasn't so easy to be, to be a rootless soul,

00:17:16.260 but he bopped all over Europe, often kicked out of places. And his favorite way to get around,

00:17:21.560 this is pre railroad time was, was by walking. And he would walk sometimes 20 miles a day.

00:17:28.600 He walked some two, 300 miles once in the course of two weeks. And he would go off on these walks,

00:17:35.180 usually in the countryside, and he'd carry a pack of playing cards with them. And he would jot down

00:17:40.760 ideas and thoughts that came to him when he walked. And he, he said that he, he, his mind only works

00:17:47.740 when his legs are active. And I thought there was great truth to that.

00:17:52.380 And like lots of other philosophers or walkers, like Socrates in his dialogues, typically he goes on

00:17:56.720 walks with people when he's engaging with them. Nietzsche was a walker as well.

00:18:00.940 Yeah. He's, he's, Socrates is walking around the Agora, the marketplace of ancient Athens.

00:18:07.040 Nietzsche is hiking in the Swiss Alps. Immanuel Kant, who is very rigorous and disciplined,

00:18:13.100 would go on these constitutions, constitutionals at 12 45 PM exactly every day. So they all had

00:18:19.400 different styles, but they all walked. And I think, you know, there is, it's not a coincidence.

00:18:24.640 Maybe you've experienced this yourself when you're, you're stuck on a problem or looking

00:18:28.840 for some answer and you can't think of it. And you're sitting at your laptop and you're like,

00:18:33.100 F it. I'm just going to go for a walk. And you go for a walk, maybe for 10 minutes,

00:18:37.560 maybe for an hour, maybe for two hours, but something happens during that walk where the

00:18:41.680 idea comes to you and you become unstuck. Psychologists call this defocused attention,

00:18:46.520 right? So we have defocused our attention. We're no longer staring at the problem,

00:18:51.040 but we've defocused it and moved it back to our subconscious. But then by walking, you know,

00:18:57.720 we're still engaging the brain. You know, you're not just vegging out when you're walking. You have

00:19:02.360 to think about, you know, not tripping and watch where you're going. So you have just enough of that

00:19:08.440 part of the brain engaged, but the rest of it's freed up.

00:19:11.960 What was your takeaway from Rousseau? Like walk more? I mean, what was...

00:19:16.200 He was a philosopher of the heart. He was a romantic, one of the first really. And it is

00:19:23.180 walk more, but it's, God, it sounds corny and cliche to take, to say it, but follow your heart,

00:19:30.200 you know, be willing to be a rebel, be willing to walk when everyone else is running and driving

00:19:35.780 and, you know, listen to that thing beating in your chest. And, you know, he thought that people,

00:19:43.120 I'll sum up his philosophy in four words, nature, good, society, bad. That's essentially it. And

00:19:50.760 what's more natural than walking, right? So he thought basically that we are born naturally good

00:19:56.340 people and it's only society that corrupts us. So, you know, there is something to be said of that.

00:20:04.100 There's a reason we like to go for walks in the woods. There's a reason why we feel at peace when

00:20:10.320 we're off in the forest or, or on a mountaintop. And that's certainly one of the lessons of Rousseau.

00:20:17.480 And I guess this is why you included in that, that dawn section, like for the youth of our life,

00:20:21.380 right? You need to, every young person needs to figure out what they really want. Are they doing

00:20:26.120 something because your parents told them so to do it? Teachers told them to do it? Or are they

00:20:31.380 really following what's inside of them? Right. And children just do this naturally,

00:20:36.020 right? They, they tend to just follow their instincts and, and emotions move through them

00:20:42.580 quickly. You've, maybe you've seen like a four-year-old or three-year-old though. They'll

00:20:46.660 be so angry, you know, and they're just crying. And then a minute later they're okay. It's gone.

00:20:51.640 And they're happy, you know, and, and Rousseau who thought a lot about education actually would say

00:20:56.260 that they, that's because they have not yet been corrupted by society and they let their emotions

00:21:01.080 flow through them unencumbered. They don't get stuck with guilt and remorse and all these other

00:21:06.620 adult emotions. So yeah, there was something very childlike about Rousseau. And that's another reason

00:21:12.060 I included him in the dawn section. I mean, there's also, you got to balance it because Rousseau,

00:21:16.440 he, he kind of let his proclivities get like, he just like show his butt to, he'd moon people 0.88

00:21:21.220 basically. Yeah, he did. I don't think the term mooning people existed in the 18th century, 0.97

00:21:25.720 but he was doing it and he, he had a masochistic streak. He liked a good spanking. I mean, and I 0.92

00:21:31.360 think, you know, Brad, this would be a good place to point this out that these were some weird dudes 0.63

00:21:35.660 and dudettes here. Okay. And that, that my philosophers were, you know, I liked them because 0.66

00:21:41.200 they were deeply flawed human beings. You know, I mean, Socrates was weird. Rousseau moon people,

00:21:49.200 Nietzsche, don't get me started. I mean, they were all, you know, we think of the philosopher as

00:21:54.140 this almost angelic figure who's just sitting by himself thinking deep thoughts and no, these

00:21:58.760 people wrestled with how to get out of bed, you know, how to stay out of trouble, have all kinds

00:22:04.780 of stuff. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors. And now back to the

00:22:10.640 show. So another, an American kindred spirit of Rousseau, I think would be Henry David Thoreau.

00:22:16.080 He's a romantic as well. And you go visit Walden Pond where Thoreau did his experiment in self-reliance.

00:22:22.120 And it's like, I've always wanted to go to Walden Pond, but I'm afraid that if I'm going to go,

00:22:26.400 I'm going to be underwhelmed by it. Did that happen to you?

00:22:29.900 Yes, I was. I was underwhelmed before I arrived when I followed the Walden Pond state,

00:22:37.280 it's now a state park on Twitter. And, and they would send me alerts, you know, by 10 AM saying,

00:22:42.160 Walden Pond is full today, no more entry, you know, from visitors. And, you know, the irony here that

00:22:48.560 this great exercise in, in isolation, you know, Thoreau goes off to Walden Pond, builds a cabin,

00:22:55.460 lives there for a couple of years, is now overcrowded and a tourist destination. I mean,

00:23:01.020 Henry David would come back and be like, no, that's not what I had in mind. It is underwhelming.

00:23:06.240 It's a pond. It's a nice pond, nothing special about it. You can see the cabin is, is gone. They've

00:23:12.160 reconstructed a sort of a scale model, but the side of the cabin is now just some stones and a

00:23:17.460 marker, but people go there. It's a pilgrimage site. And, you know, I've talked to locals who

00:23:22.640 feel basically like, you don't need to come here, go, go find your own Walt. And that's the whole point.

00:23:29.100 So besides being underwhelmed, what was your big takeaway from, from Henry David?

00:23:34.200 Yeah. So I, I, I go off to Walden Pond thinking for sure, this chapter is going to be called, you know,

00:23:39.680 how to, how to be alone like Thoreau, or maybe how to live simply like Thoreau. But being open-minded

00:23:47.660 like Socrates, I soon realized that that wasn't really what he was about. It was how to see like

00:23:53.140 Thoreau, that all of this, you know, living alone in the woods, this isolation, simplicity stuff was

00:23:59.900 really a means to an end. And that end was better vision. He was, he was very visual. Everyone

00:24:06.080 commented about his eyes, that he had these piercing eyes, very observant eyes, and that he could in

00:24:12.860 this almost uncanny ability to like pick up a dozen pencils out of a giant bushel, exactly a dozen

00:24:18.580 each time by sight alone. So he had this almost supernatural vision, but really he had a whole

00:24:25.020 sensibility that was attuned to seeing more beauty in the everyday than most of us do. He saw beauty

00:24:32.020 everywhere. What I like about Henry David Thoreau is he's, he's a romantic, he's, he's kind of a

00:24:37.740 mystic too. I mean, because there's these stories where, you know, he just, you know, stooped down,

00:24:42.640 pick up an arrowhead that he just happened to find and said, this arrowhead belonged to some great

00:24:46.540 native chief. Right. But then at the same time, you go back to this idea of scene, he was very

00:24:51.020 scientific. I think there was a story of, you know, there's a legend that Walden Pond was endless.

00:24:56.120 There was no bottom. And so Henry David waited till the, the pond froze over and he got a plumb line

00:25:02.480 and then just dropped it down and he went, no, it's actually not, it's not bottomless. And I think

00:25:07.420 that that's, I love that little, that story of just like he, he really spent his life trying to see

00:25:13.120 what the world was really like. Yeah. And, and the thing is he, he had this combination of skill sets,

00:25:20.640 I guess we'd say that we, we rarely see today and that he, he had the mind of a scientist,

00:25:26.000 but the heart of a poet. And we don't see that very often. And you're right. He, he very much

00:25:31.660 believed in, in empirical evidence, the power of observation. He was a naturalist and a scientist

00:25:36.960 and he studied the pond and he made observations, but he was not interested in, in what is known as

00:25:43.780 the view from nowhere, which is the scientist view, you know, this idea of objectivity that we're not

00:25:50.360 we're observing the rainbow. We're not, you know, appreciating it necessarily that somehow

00:25:56.020 seeing the beauty of a rainbow is not a scientific act, but observing the, and measuring the color

00:26:02.380 hues is. Thoreau thought that was a mistake. He thought that we're always seeing things subjectively,

00:26:09.460 even when we're being scientific about it, that we're, you know, we're part of the experiment.

00:26:14.360 And so he never separated his mind from his heart, essentially.

00:26:18.720 So related to seeing is the idea of paying attention. And you highlight a philosopher that

00:26:23.380 thought a lot about paying attention. A lot of people don't know about her either. Her name is

00:26:26.720 Simone Weil. For those who aren't familiar with Weil, can you tell us about her and her philosophy?

00:26:31.240 Okay. Also a strange person. And I say that in the best sense of the word. She grew up in France, 0.52

00:26:35.940 the early 20th century, born in 1909, I believe. And she born to a very intellectual, very Jewish,

00:26:43.740 but secular family. And she studied like the Dickens when she was young. I mean, she was reading

00:26:50.300 the classics like by age eight and, you know, that sort of genius level. But she had a very

00:26:56.440 spiritual side, which she spent the rest of her too short life exploring. And she was especially 0.99

00:27:02.420 interested in attention, the quality of attention. And it really is the thread throughout her writing

00:27:09.580 that she thought that we define attention entirely wrong, and that we don't go about it the right

00:27:16.380 way. That we confuse attention and concentration, and they're not the same thing.

00:27:21.180 What's the difference between the two?

00:27:23.080 Well, if you are, are you sitting at a desk right now?

00:27:27.080 I'm actually standing in my closet, which is my slash recording studio.

00:27:31.140 Okay. See, I didn't see that coming. All right. So, you are maybe concentrating. If you were at

00:27:38.920 your desk and at your laptop, you are concentrating on the emails in front of you. You're concentrating

00:27:44.700 on a problem. And you'll notice when you're concentrating, your body sort of tenses up

00:27:49.120 with this idea of furrowed brow and tensed muscles. And you sort of contract really when you

00:27:54.900 concentrate. But when you pay attention in the Simone Weil way, it is more receptive. It's more of a

00:28:03.200 waiting than a concentrating. You sort of widen your antennae, and you are in a receptive mode, and you're

00:28:12.840 waiting for something to come to you. And that, she thought, was true attention. And it's less muscular.

00:28:19.400 It's, I would say, more yoga, less weightlifting. But she thought it was hugely important. And she

00:28:26.340 thought it was a, I don't want to say skill, but really, it's an orientation to life and to the

00:28:31.540 world that we've largely lost. And the way she described attention, it's a moral act, in a way.

00:28:38.260 It's not just about seeing what's going on in your world. It's actually, there's moral weight to paying

00:28:41.900 attention. Right. And we tend to view things like attention as just transactional, like so many other

00:28:47.920 things, that you should pay attention so that you will get better grades in your school so that you

00:28:52.980 will then earn more money. So pay attention. She thought that paying attention, especially paying

00:28:57.480 attention to the suffering of others, was a moral act. And she thought that that's really, that's all

00:29:04.100 that the suffering person wants. Really what they want is someone to give them full attention. And when

00:29:11.940 you do that, she said, it's not like an act of love. It is an act of love, giving another person

00:29:18.800 your complete attention.

00:29:20.620 I think we've, and it's not just suffering people. It's like everyone, I think everyone wants

00:29:24.140 attention. Like they just want to, they want, everyone wants, has this desire to feel noticed.

00:29:28.280 Right. And you know, these days we've really fractured our attention, you know, more than ever.

00:29:34.020 And, you know, I'm constantly getting into, I guess, fights, we would say with my, with my wife,

00:29:41.300 when she picks up her phone, when we're in mid conversation. And it really pisses me off. Like,

00:29:46.400 why are you checking your phone? You're supposed to be talking to me. And it's not that, you know,

00:29:52.000 the two seconds that it takes her to check her email or whatever it is, she has a real job.

00:29:56.400 Um, it's that she's cheated me of her complete attention. Right. And, and children know this,

00:30:02.000 they can detect counterfeit attention a mile away. Now that chapter made me think about how I pay

00:30:08.120 attention to my kids and sort of, it convicted me. It's like, ah, I probably could do a better job at

00:30:13.860 that. Right. Um, but you probably should not think of it as a job. I know that's, I'm a modern

00:30:20.620 instrumentalist. Then it becomes in, you know, this sort of a concentration thing. I have to do this.

00:30:25.200 And yeah, we're, we are never fully paying attention to something, anything. We're always

00:30:33.100 divided. We're never fully committed. And where she, Simone Weil saw attention as actually more of

00:30:40.320 a passive mode and passive, you know, tends to have negative connotations. I think, especially maybe

00:30:46.820 for a podcast called the art of manliness, we might think of passive as, as negative, but she didn't see

00:30:52.240 it that way. That actually the highest thing you could do was to have this passive attention. And

00:30:56.640 it actually took great courage and great, great devotion to do it.

00:31:01.140 So another philosopher you talk about, you go to India and I like this story because I, I've,

00:31:07.020 I've heard stories about the crazy trains, train system in India, but you go to India to explore

00:31:12.640 Gandhi and his philosophy. And you had this quest to get on the yoga, the yoga train. What,

00:31:18.260 what was that? Yoga, yoga express, yoga express. So what's the yoga express? Why were you so gung

00:31:23.740 ho and trying to get on this? Oh, come on. It's called the yoga express. You've got to,

00:31:28.360 I don't do actual yoga, right? I don't bend that way, but I wanted to ride the yoga express because

00:31:34.180 I thought that would be cool. And it was going to where I wanted to go, which was the site of Gandhi's

00:31:40.240 first ashram in India, the city of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat and, you know, many hundreds

00:31:46.760 of miles from where I was at the moment in New Delhi. And I'm like, I have to get on the yoga

00:31:51.200 express. And I contorted myself in all kinds of positions to get on the yoga express, but

00:31:56.060 well, I won't spoil it, but it, it proved to be more difficult than you would think to get a

00:32:01.680 reservation on the yoga express. And how, how was that experience related to, or maybe,

00:32:07.520 was the relation to Gandhi's philosophy at all? Yes, there is. Because if you've ever dealt with

00:32:14.300 an Indian bureaucracy, could be the train system, could be anything really. Um, you know, that

00:32:20.780 there's a strong impulse toward violence because it is so difficult to get anything done in that

00:32:27.220 country. And they seem to just throw up obstacles every way. And it's a test of patience and a test

00:32:33.340 of resolve. And Gandhi was a big train rider. He loved the train. He took the train all over India

00:32:38.780 and he complained a lot about, he wrote in third class, but he complained a lot just about the

00:32:43.900 service and about Indian railways, and he was infuriated, but never got violent. But it's sort

00:32:50.040 of a test of how do you get what you want, a ticket on the yoga express. You can't just be passive,

00:32:56.940 but how do you get it without resorting to violence?

00:32:58.960 Well, let's talk about Gandhi's philosophy. He has this idea of soul force and he had this idea,

00:33:03.760 it's, it's nonviolent, but it's also, it's not passive. Like it's, it's an aggressive type of

00:33:08.780 nonviolence.

00:33:09.260 It's what, uh, uh, John Lewis was, was talking about when he talked about good trouble,

00:33:13.840 necessary trouble. That's pure Gandhi. And Lewis studied Gandhi and traveled to India as did Martin

00:33:18.680 Luther King Jr. I mean, it is getting in your opponent's face, but getting in their face nonviolently.

00:33:25.980 It's not passive. Gandhi disliked the term passive resistance. He thought there was nothing more

00:33:32.820 active than his form of nonviolent resistance, but it involves confronting your opponent. I won't say

00:33:40.000 enemy because he didn't believe in enemies. He believed in opponents confronting your opponent,

00:33:44.180 but doing it nonviolently.

00:33:46.500 And when Gandhi talked about this idea of, I'll call it aggressive nonviolence,

00:33:50.340 he spoke of it in terms of manliness. Like he used that word, like this is, he was obsessed with

00:33:54.360 manliness. The more I I've studied Gandhi for a long time. I've had sort of a weird Gandhi thing.

00:33:59.720 I've long admired him. And as I read him, I discovered that the word manliness just appears

00:34:05.520 a lot. And you're right. A lot, most people don't think of Gandhi as a manly man. He was skinny,

00:34:12.560 but you know, wiry and muscular, and he was assertive. And he wrote a lot about the need for

00:34:20.380 manliness. He felt that the British who were occupying India had emasculated India. And it

00:34:26.740 was his job to remasculate, if that's a word, India, but in a new way, in this nonviolent way.

00:34:34.200 And he, as much as he hated violence, he wrote that the only thing he hated more than violence

00:34:38.820 was cowardice. And he actually said, better to resort to violence than to be a coward.

00:34:44.480 And I guess for, in Gandhi's worldview, like conflict is not bad because conflict is what

00:34:50.840 allows problems to be, brings it to the forefront. Like you finally can see that there's a problem

00:34:56.080 there. And then from there, you can actually find a solution to the problem.

00:34:58.940 Exactly. I mean, maybe, you know, couples who over the years say, we never fight, we never fight.

00:35:04.580 And then when they announced their divorce, you're not really surprised. I mean, you are and you

00:35:08.540 aren't. Because fighting can be healthy. And, you know, Gandhi thought basically, even if you're not

00:35:15.580 fighting, there's kind of veiled violence going on beneath the surface. And that needs to be brought

00:35:21.300 to the surface and dealt with nonviolently. But yes, that was what he thought.

00:35:26.400 All right, let's talk about Nietzsche. You go to the Alps, because Nietzsche had to go there,

00:35:31.020 because he was a sickly guy. This is one of the things about Nietzsche, like, you know,

00:35:34.680 he wrote this very manly, muscular prose about living dangerously. But he was a sickly, 0.80

00:35:40.840 I don't know, a nerd, basically. He had to go to the Alps to recuperate. And you go on this hike 0.84

00:35:46.840 that Nietzsche went on to where he got this idea of eternal recurrence. For those who aren't familiar

00:35:52.140 with eternal recurrence, can you walk us through it? Okay, so here's the idea. It's a thought

00:35:57.240 experiment, really. One day you're visited by, let me say you get an email. They didn't have email in

00:36:04.240 Nietzsche's day. But you get an email saying, here's the secret to the universe. Your life

00:36:10.000 repeats itself exactly, forever and ever. Everything in Brett's life that's happened up

00:36:18.320 to this point will repeat itself, including a conversation with me saying everything in

00:36:24.540 Brett's life up to this point will repeat itself. That'll repeat also. And it will do this forever

00:36:30.460 and ever for all eternity. And then Nietzsche's question is, how do you respond to this email?

00:36:36.820 Do you say the recipient is just, oh, thank you for telling me this? This is great news.

00:36:42.520 Or do you see it as a curse? This is like, you know, worse than a Nigerian telemarketing scam or 1.00

00:36:49.220 whatever. This is just terrible. You know, this is terrible news. And he thought how we answered that

00:36:55.400 question determine our outlook on life and our degree of happiness, really.

00:36:59.780 And so the idea of eternal recurrence is to make you live each day, like, well, if I have to repeat

00:37:06.300 this for the rest of my life, what would I?

00:37:08.740 What is worthy of eternity? And I should say briefly that he tried to sketch it out mathematically,

00:37:15.100 and he did a bunch of research, which he never actually published, looking into, you know,

00:37:19.660 the idea that, you know, like if you take two people playing chess, maybe eventually they'll

00:37:25.320 repeat every game exactly. So there is some scientific basis for it, but it's essentially

00:37:29.600 a thought experiment. And it forces you to ask the question, what is worthy of eternity? And if

00:37:35.900 you're not living the life you want to live, not only this time around, but forever and ever,

00:37:41.000 maybe you should make a change.

00:37:42.720 But then also it helps you, I mean, it kind of forces you to confront, like, what do you do with

00:37:46.280 the suffering? Because Nietzsche would say, well, you just got to learn to love it, or

00:37:49.340 else you'll just be miserable. So he'd say embrace suffering.

00:37:53.260 Yeah, but he didn't say it with such a resigned tone of voice, to be honest. He said it with lots

00:37:58.520 of exclamation points. He loved the exclamation point. He talked about the need to dance, you know.

00:38:05.260 He was not a good dancer, but he just, he sort of dances across the page, and he thought we need to

00:38:10.820 dance. And dancing, if you think about it, is this kind of nonsensical thing we do where we

00:38:16.260 move around, sort of to the beat of music, kind of, kind of not, it's not productive. And there are

00:38:22.420 all kinds of dances, there are funeral dances in many cultures, when there's great grief and sadness.

00:38:28.200 And that's essentially Nietzsche's philosophy. It's the dance of grief. It's the dance of suffering.

00:38:35.000 It's even, you know, it's easy to dance when the music's good and everything's going well. But

00:38:41.360 what Nietzsche asks is, can you dance even when things are lousy? Can you find a way to dance?

00:38:49.160 And a sort of variation of eternal recurrence is what's been called the marriage test. And

00:38:53.820 let's say you're recently divorced after a long marriage, ended poorly, obviously, in divorce.

00:39:00.800 Would you do it again? Would you, knowing what you know, would you do it again? Would you marry that

00:39:04.740 person and go through that marriage and go through the divorce? And then that's essentially what

00:39:09.120 eternal recurrence is. You know, when you're talking about dancing to suffering, when bad

00:39:13.360 things happen, that made me think of Zorba the Greek, the end. Right. The movie where the whole,

00:39:18.240 the timber operation just crashes, and then they dance at the end. Exactly. And that's sort of,

00:39:24.580 it's not resignation, actually. It's something else. And I'm not quite there myself, but I definitely

00:39:30.920 think Nietzsche was onto something because he suffered. He, as you said, he was sickly, had terrible

00:39:34.740 headaches and stomach upset and terrible vision. And yet he accepted it all and made it, he accepted

00:39:43.280 his life, not despite the suffering, but in a way because of it.

00:39:47.980 So you go and visit where a 20th century existential philosopher hung out, Simone Beauvoir. And her

00:39:53.400 seminal work is The Second Sex, which is about the female experience. But she also wrote about the

00:39:58.500 universal experience of aging, getting old. And this section hit home for me because I'm starting to

00:40:03.960 approach 40. And, you know, I don't feel old, but every now and then I look in the mirror and think,

00:40:09.160 man, I'm getting really old. Yeah. She had that experience. She was 51 and she looked in the

00:40:15.060 mirror and she saw this stranger staring back at her. And she's like, oh my God, when did I become

00:40:20.340 old? And then she went for a walk in the street and some woman came up to her and said, you know,

00:40:25.180 you remind me of my mother. And that was it. So that's when she had her, I call it the collision

00:40:31.260 with old age that we don't, we don't brush up against old age or sideswipe it. We collide

00:40:35.380 head on with it. And like, how did she manage it? What did she suggest we do to deal with that?

00:40:40.540 Well, I should say that anyone who knows anything about Simone de Beauvoir will say, really?

00:40:44.800 You chose her for aging because she, she was on the page, very pessimistic about it. She wrote this

00:40:50.820 long tome, 500 page tome called The Coming of Age, which basically most of it was old age sucks, 0.66

00:40:57.400 you know, and there's no redeeming, nothing redeeming to it. But if you read it carefully

00:41:02.300 and you look at her life, you realize that she actually did age well. She, she was aged reluctantly,

00:41:09.980 you know, at first she, she fought it every step of the way, but she, she sort of came up with,

00:41:18.160 she didn't come up with the list, but I, I inferred the list from her writing of things you can do

00:41:24.460 to age well. And I should say that we don't have a culture of aging in our country. We have a youth

00:41:31.240 culture and an aging population desperately clinging to the youth culture. And she thought

00:41:37.020 this was a mistake. You know, if you're going to be old, act your age, essentially. In other words,

00:41:42.080 don't try to imitate a 20 year old. That's just silly and absurd. And she thought it was hugely 0.98

00:41:47.760 important to stay busy and continue with your projects. That was her favorite word

00:41:51.600 to make friends late into life. She made one of her best friends ever. Sylvie Labon was her name.

00:41:59.440 30 years separated them, but they were the best of friends and really in a way stopped caring what

00:42:04.700 other people think. Simone de Beauvoir observes that some of the greatest artists really had a

00:42:10.720 breakthrough late in life. After they'd achieved some success, they were able to go off in a completely

00:42:16.200 different direction because they didn't care what others thought. So she actually ended up aging

00:42:22.240 quite well and came to embrace it late in life.

00:42:27.160 And have you been able to, I don't know, live some of the stuff that she recommended?

00:42:31.540 So-so, I would say. You know, I'm sort of, I'm a little bit older than you and I'm at the

00:42:38.840 stage where it's, I'm engaged in what I call the great summing up, which is essentially you start

00:42:46.500 to look back at your life and you look for a narrative. You look for a thread to sort of make

00:42:52.140 sense of it. And this can be an act that can make you depressed or it can actually be uplifting.

00:42:59.260 And I think for most of us, it's more uplifting because we start to see this narrative arc. I mean,

00:43:04.760 really we're creating the arc in our mind, but nevermind, it's, it's there. I once met a composer

00:43:11.300 of classical music in Iceland who was older than me. And looking back, he said, well, I met everyone

00:43:18.200 I needed to meet when I needed to meet them. And I think Simone de Beauvoir would agree that with that

00:43:23.980 too. You start to see that things happened for a reason. I'm not saying that everything is faded,

00:43:30.580 but all the pieces start to fit together. So the last philosopher you visit is Montaigne.

00:43:38.400 And he famously wrote these essays just about everything could be about food, sex, but then

00:43:44.860 he also wrote a lot about dying. And he famously said, philosophy is learning how to die.

00:43:50.180 Yeah. He changed that by the end of the essays to philosophy is learning how to live and dying is

00:43:54.560 just part of it. But he, he, he wrestled with death and dying throughout his life and on the page.

00:44:02.000 I should say that he lived in a time, even though it was the 16th century in France, that it's not

00:44:07.800 that different from ours and that there was a plague, bubonic plague in Bordeaux where he was actually

00:44:13.040 mayor. And he did what a lot of people did. He escaped. His family owned a vineyard out in the

00:44:19.080 countryside. And he went there, went up to his tower, wrote his essays, in fact, invented the form of

00:44:24.080 essays and thought a lot about death and dying. And he thought about it mostly intellectually until

00:44:30.280 one day he was out riding. He was a real equestrian. He loved riding and some jerk and a big horse

00:44:36.740 knocked him down and just, you know, flattened him. And he thought he was dying. I mean, he was 0.99

00:44:42.000 coughing up globs of blood and he thought that was it. He had what today we'd call a near death

00:44:47.520 experience and changed his attitude toward death and dying. And he realized

00:44:53.300 how, well, he said it wasn't death that he was afraid of, but dying in the process. And that's

00:44:58.520 probably true for most of us. He realized that it's just, it is part of a natural process.

00:45:04.420 You know, the Greek philosopher Epicurus says, well, you didn't think about that you were nothing

00:45:09.160 before you were born. That never bothers you. So why should it bother you that you'll be nothing

00:45:13.020 after you die? And Montaigne wrestles with that. And ultimately he concludes that, you know,

00:45:20.320 we just don't know, but nature knows best that nature has your back. He says, don't, don't,

00:45:27.040 you're afraid of dying. Don't worry. Nature's got you covered.

00:45:30.420 Yeah. He says, you already know, you'll, you'll know what to do when it's time, when it's time to

00:45:34.400 happen.

00:45:34.540 You'll know what to do. And you think about childbirth. I mean, we didn't people, women 1.00

00:45:40.920 gave birth successfully, not always successfully, but you know, obviously we've propagated the

00:45:46.640 species for many centuries before modern medicine came along. And, you know, there's a healing process

00:45:53.300 in nature. If you break your bone, it will heal. And he just thought that, that we should not look

00:45:58.760 at death as something out there. There's me. And then there's death where part, you know,

00:46:04.300 you start to die the day you're born. And that's not something that necessarily needs to make you

00:46:09.580 depressed. It's just part of nature.

00:46:11.800 Has that helped you at all? Or I mean, does thinking about dying.

00:46:14.380 Again, I have, I have to give the so-so answer. You know, a lot of this is, is easier in theory

00:46:21.060 than in practice, but I liked Montaigne. I liked how he, you know, he was sort of like me in that he,

00:46:28.760 he took a little bit from here and there. He read all the philosophers and ultimately his saying was,

00:46:35.000 what do I know? You know, he had that sort of questioning what he really knew and he was just

00:46:39.960 very relatable. Um, I thought, and yeah, I mean, I keep going back to what he wrote about death and

00:46:46.580 dying and, you know, it still freaks me out. I, the idea of nothingness, I have to be honest,

00:46:52.480 but I do find not just comfort in his words, but wisdom.

00:46:56.340 And for those who want to dabble in philosophy, Montaigne's a lot, it's a fun read. I would

00:47:00.960 consider like, he was like the first blogger because you just, he wrote about whatever.

00:47:05.280 There you go. He wrote, he wrote, he wrote about thumbs. He wrote about cannibals. He wrote about 0.99

00:47:10.220 his penis. He wrote about food. And then he wrote about death and dying and religion and all these 1.00

00:47:16.060 serious topics too. And they were very personal and they, as you read them, they become increasingly

00:47:21.740 personal and you find that he's hitting his stride. Well, Eric, where can people go to learn

00:47:26.800 more about the book and your work? Well, I have a website, ericweinerbooks.com,

00:47:31.760 Weiner, W-E-I-N-E-R, all one word, or on Twitter, eric underscore Weiner, again, W-E-I-N-E-R.

00:47:40.080 Well, Eric, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:47:43.220 Thank you, Brett. I really enjoyed it.

00:47:45.540 My guest is Eric Weiner. He's the author of the book,

00:47:47.860 Socrates Express. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more

00:47:51.860 information about his book and his work at his website, ericweinerbooks.com. Also check out

00:47:55.880 our show notes at aom.is slash Socrates Express, where you can find links to resources and we delve

00:48:00.220 deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website

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The Art of Manliness - September 14, 2020

#643： Life Lessons From Dead Philosophers

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