The Art of Manliness - Can Virtue Be Taught？

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

00:00:10.760 The ancient Greeks and Romans thought a lot about what it means to live a virtuous life.

00:00:14.520 They believed that good character was essential for achieving both individual excellence and a

00:00:18.840 healthy, well-functioning society. For this reason, they also thought a lot about whether

00:00:23.060 virtue could be taught to citizens, and philosophers put this thinking into practice

00:00:26.540 by attempting to educate the moral ideals of leaders. My guest, professor of philosophy Massimo

00:00:31.680 Pelucci, explores what the Greco-Romans discovered about the nature and teachability of virtue in his

00:00:36.640 new book, The Quest for Character. Today on the show, Massimo and I discuss how the ancient Greeks

00:00:41.100 and Romans defined virtue, and what it meant to them to live with erite, or excellence. We then

00:00:45.760 look at case studies of philosophers who tried to shape men into being better leaders, including

00:00:49.800 Socrates teaching Alcibiades, Aristotle tutoring Alexander the Great, and Seneca mentoring Nero.

00:00:54.840 Massimo explains how these field experiments turned out, and the takeaways they offer on

00:00:59.020 the question of whether virtue can be taught. We're in a conversation with the ancient insights

00:01:02.840 that have been confirmed by modern research that can help us become better people. After

00:01:06.600 the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash teachvirtue.

00:01:20.780 Massimo Pellucci, welcome to the show.

00:01:22.820 Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

00:01:24.040 So you are a professor of philosophy, and you got a new book out called The Quest for

00:01:28.200 Character, with the story of Socrates and Alcibiades, teaches us about our search for

00:01:32.880 good leaders. And this is a great, very readable introduction to moral philosophy. For those

00:01:39.500 who aren't familiar with moral philosophy, how would you describe it? And you're an academic,

00:01:44.200 how does moral philosophy differ from a lot of the philosophy you see in academia today?

00:01:48.740 Oh, it differs a lot. So first of all, moral philosophy refers to, depending on who you

00:01:56.120 ask, I guess. So in modern terms, and that means for the last, let's say, two and a half

00:02:02.680 centuries, moral philosophy deals with the question of right and wrong. So if you're asking yourself,

00:02:07.780 you know, I'm about to do a particular act to carry out a particular action, is this right or

00:02:11.900 wrong thing to do? Then you're doing moral philosophy, whether you realize it or not.

00:02:16.060 And there are a number of, you know, major theories in academic philosophy that deal with

00:02:21.600 how to settle questions of right and wrong. So for instance, you could be a utilitarian. You could

00:02:27.080 say, well, you know, whatever is right is whatever has the best consequences and increases people's

00:02:32.780 happiness. And whatever is wrong is whatever does the opposite. But in the sense in which I use it in

00:02:39.940 the book, morality and ethics, which I use interchangeably, they mean the same thing to me,

00:02:46.060 it, they're really about how to live your life. So it's a much broader question than just,

00:02:51.460 is this action right or wrong? Of course, how to live your life includes questions of right and

00:02:57.560 wrong. We all face issues of, you know, should I do this or should I not do this? But it's much

00:03:02.800 broader. For the ancient Greco-Romans, ethics or morality, which is really the Latin translation

00:03:10.080 of the Greek word for ethics, means, you know, what kind of priorities should I have in life?

00:03:16.740 What is important? What is not important? How should I behave with respect to other people? And

00:03:21.240 how should I behave with respect to myself, in a sense? What are my priorities? Why am I doing what

00:03:26.360 am I doing?

00:03:27.480 Why were the Greco-Romans, the Greeks and the Romans, so concerned with these questions? Particularly,

00:03:32.340 we're going to talk about this today, particularly in regards to leadership.

00:03:37.220 I think everybody's concerned with these questions, but the Greco-Romans really put a lot of

00:03:42.180 thought into it, in a sense. And that's one of the reasons why they're still so relevant to us today.

00:03:47.680 You know, often people ask me, why bother going back, you know, two millennia, two and a half millennia?

00:03:53.720 Don't we, things have changed in the meantime. Don't we do things differently?

00:03:58.180 And the answer to that is, well, yes and no. We do things differently, as in, you know, we have a lot

00:04:02.900 of science and technology that the Greco-Romans certainly did not have. Aristotle would be stunned

00:04:07.740 by the way in which you and I are communicating right now, for instance. However, in terms of human

00:04:13.720 nature, in terms of what we want and what we don't want, what we aspire to, and what we want to stay

00:04:19.780 away from, things haven't really changed that much. We're still going after the same things, and we're

00:04:25.560 still afraid of the same things. And that is why the Greco-Romans are still relevant, because they 0.99

00:04:31.080 thought a lot about this. They were not the only ones, of course. In ancient India, for instance,

00:04:36.320 Buddha and others, or in ancient China, Confucius and others, they're pretty much similar thinking

00:04:42.600 and arrived actually often at similar conclusions. But within the Western tradition, it is the Greco-Romans

00:04:48.060 who really did most of the heavy lifting.

00:04:49.720 So, Greco-Roman moral philosophy is all about becoming virtuous. For these Greco-Roman moral 0.73

00:04:56.640 philosophers, what did virtue mean? Because I think their idea of virtue is different from our

00:05:01.160 popular idea of virtue today.

00:05:03.800 Yeah, that's right. I mean, today, if we think about the word virtue at all, we tend to think

00:05:09.440 about the Christian version, because, of course, we come out of 2,000 years of history of Christianity.

00:05:15.200 And so, we tend to think about things like chastity and purity and things like that. That's not what

00:05:22.400 the Greco-Romans were referring to. For the Greco-Romans, virtue is a type of excellence. In fact, the Greek

00:05:29.260 word is arete, which literally means excellence. And the idea, therefore, is to be the best human

00:05:35.500 being you can be. And that, of course, means different things. And one of the important contributions

00:05:41.160 of the Greeks and the Romans was to sort of unpack what that means. But the word excellence applies

00:05:47.460 to all sorts of things, not just to human beings, for instance. I mean, you can have an excellent

00:05:51.060 knife, which is defined as a knife that cuts very well, right? Well, that's a virtuous knife, according

00:05:56.960 to this way of thinking. So, in terms of being humans, what does it mean to be virtuous? Well, it

00:06:02.520 means that you're very good at living with other human beings, because that's your job.

00:06:05.940 That is what you do. And living well with other human beings, according to the Greco-Romans,

00:06:12.520 fundamentally meant following four virtues. Practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.

00:06:21.720 Practical wisdom is the knowledge of what is and is not good, in general and for you in particular.

00:06:28.720 Justice is the knowledge of how to treat other people, you know, fairly, with respect,

00:06:34.000 the way in which you were wanting to be treated. Courage is the knowledge that you should be

00:06:41.600 behaving in a certain way, regardless of the fact that it might cost you at a personal level.

00:06:47.220 And then finally, temperance is a question of acting in the right way, in the right measure,

00:06:52.480 not too much, not too little. If you follow those four, according to the Greco-Romans, 0.58

00:06:56.720 you're going to have a good life.

00:06:58.520 Well, as you said, virtue for these guys meant excellence, being an excellent human being.

00:07:02.780 But how they figured that out, like, what does it mean to be an excellent human being?

00:07:07.100 Everyone took different approaches. So, and just to give people an idea, like,

00:07:09.960 what was the approach that Plato took? And can we maybe contrast that to how Aristotle

00:07:13.820 tried to figure out what excellence meant or virtue meant?

00:07:17.740 Well, Plato actually did follow the four virtues that I just mentioned. Aristotle actually expanded

00:07:23.660 that number because he was really into classifying things into taxonomy. And so he actually expanded the

00:07:29.180 list to about 12 virtues. But essentially, for both of them, a good human life, what they refer to as

00:07:35.540 a eudaimonic life, eudaimonia in Greek just means a good life, a life worth living, is a life that

00:07:42.300 works well for a human being. Now, let's try to figure out what that means. Let's say that

00:07:48.340 you invite me over for dinner. And as a present, I bring you a plant, let's say a cactus, right?

00:07:55.760 Okay.

00:07:56.440 And now you have to take care of the cactus, okay? Now, in order to take care of the cactus,

00:08:01.960 you have to know something about what makes cacti happy. If you just say, well, it's a plant,

00:08:08.280 wants lots of water, you're probably going to kill it because it's not a plant. It's a desert plant,

00:08:12.980 right? So it doesn't, yes, it does need water, but not too much. On the other hand, it does need a

00:08:18.240 lot of light. If you put it in the shade, it's also going to die, et cetera, et cetera. So there

00:08:22.520 are certain things that are in the nature of cacti that make a particular type of life good for them

00:08:29.720 and other kinds of lives not good. The Greco-Romans reasoned that the same goes for human beings.

00:08:36.100 Human beings are a particular kind of animal. We are social animal in doubt. We have very intelligent

00:08:41.700 social animals in doubt with the ability to reason. We tend to solve our problems by reasoning about

00:08:47.360 it. So a good human life, therefore, is a life that is social, where you interact in a positive

00:08:53.780 fashion cooperatively with other human beings. And when you get to use your brain, basically,

00:09:00.420 which is your most powerful evolutionary weapon, so to speak, in order to solve problems. So human

00:09:07.360 excellence means a high capacity to reason and a high ability to live socially.

00:09:13.880 And as you said earlier, other cultures had similar ideas. Confucianism is all about this. 0.89

00:09:19.080 That's the same conclusion. Like, we are social beings. And the way they try to express virtue was

00:09:23.660 different from how the Greco-Romans did. They had these very set rituals and social protocols you're

00:09:29.080 supposed to follow. But it was the same idea.

00:09:30.680 It is the same fundamental idea. And, you know, too many times often these people are interested

00:09:37.600 in the differences between philosophies. Oh, the Confucians think this, the Buddhists think that,

00:09:42.880 the Stoics think that. Yeah, there are obviously differences. But what I think is more interesting,

00:09:47.400 in fact, are the similarities. Because if the same idea occurred to different people across the globe

00:09:53.820 and in different centuries, you know, maybe there is something to that idea. And so this notion that

00:09:59.240 we ought to behave in a virtuous fashion, meaning cooperatively with other people, you know,

00:10:05.080 be nice to other people, be cognizant of the fact that we are a society that for where the

00:10:13.560 individuals depend on others in order to not only survive, but actually thrive. Well, that idea has

00:10:20.160 occurred to a lot of different people in different times and cultures. And so, you know, probably there is

00:10:24.680 something to it.

00:10:25.240 Okay. So the Greco-Roman philosophers, they spent a lot of time thinking, debating about what is,

00:10:30.800 what is virtue? What does it mean to be an excellent human? But then after that, they started

00:10:35.060 thinking about, okay, can we teach other humans to be more virtuous? Can virtue be taught? This is an

00:10:41.420 important question. This is how civil society can exist. And there's two Socratic dialogues that

00:10:47.200 wrestle with this question. Can virtue be taught? And what's interesting is they both come to

00:10:52.480 different conclusions, which is disheartening. Can you walk us through the arguments as to whether

00:10:59.040 virtue can be taught that are found in the Mino and the Protagoras?

00:11:05.000 Yeah. So those are both, as you say, platonic dialogues. They both feature Socrates. And Socrates

00:11:11.020 comes up with two different conclusions. In fact, diametrically opposite conclusion. In the Mino,

00:11:16.400 his conclusion is that, no, you cannot teach virtue very likely. And in the Protagoras,

00:11:22.180 he arrives at the opposite conclusion. Now, what do we make of this? First of all, we need to figure

00:11:26.960 out what is it exactly that Socrates is doing there. In the Mino, Socrates is debating the question of

00:11:34.940 whether we can teach virtue. And in the end, he says, look, if teacher were the kind of thing that you

00:11:40.500 can teach, then I would expect to see teachers of it around, right? Just in the same way in which you

00:11:46.300 can teach other skills, and therefore you have teachers accordingly, you should see a lot of

00:11:53.240 teachers of wisdom. And he says, I don't see anybody. I don't see anybody that can do that sort of stuff.

00:11:58.800 So he tentatively concludes that virtue cannot be taught. However, that tentative conclusion is then

00:12:05.340 reversed in the Protagoras. Now, Protagoras is an interesting dialogue because it's named after a

00:12:11.380 sophist, and the sophists were, in a sense, the archenemies of Socrates. You know, there are several

00:12:17.100 platonic dialogues that feature the debates between Socrates and the sophists. However, in this

00:12:24.060 particular case, the sophist, Protagoras, not only argues successfully with Socrates, but Socrates, at the end of

00:12:32.340 the dialogue, actually changes his mind. And he says, yeah, you're right. I guess that's correct.

00:12:38.260 Virtue can be taught. And how does Socrates arrive to that stunning conclusion? Because he's convinced

00:12:45.780 by a number of arguments that Protagoras puts forth, one of which is that virtue is a little bit like,

00:12:52.820 let's say, learning how to play an instrument, right? It's the kind of thing that requires a little bit of

00:12:59.060 of theory. You know, you want to know a little bit about musical theory and musical notation if you

00:13:04.980 want to be successful at playing an instrument. But mostly, it requires a lot of practice.

00:13:10.740 And that practice is helped if you go and learn from somebody who is already a good practitioner of it,

00:13:17.140 right? In fact, Protagoras at some point says, look, Socrates, imagine that the survival,

00:13:23.300 the very survival of our society dependent on everybody playing music, no matter how well,

00:13:30.100 but everybody playing. What do you think would happen? We would be teaching music to everybody.

00:13:36.180 And some people would, of course, be virtuosos and would be really, really good at what they're doing.

00:13:42.180 Others would barely be able to produce a tune. But nevertheless, the skill can be taught to

00:13:48.420 everybody and everybody would improve. And the idea is the same is true for virtue. Sure,

00:13:54.740 some people are going to be naturally so much better. They're going to be much more pro-social,

00:13:59.300 much more altruistic and whatever it is than others. But we can all improve. And part of that

00:14:05.380 improvement comes through knowing what virtue is. So that's the theory, right? Knowing where you want

00:14:12.100 to go with this. But mostly it comes out of hanging around people like Socrates who are actually already

00:14:19.540 very virtuous and that you can learn from just observing them and following them and imitating

00:14:25.140 them in a sense. So the thing about Greco-Roman moral philosophers was that it wasn't just theory

00:14:30.260 for them. They didn't just talk about these things in the Agora. They actually tried to put the theory

00:14:34.340 into practice. And same thing happened with Socrates. And you use the relationship between

00:14:40.500 Socrates and an Athenian playboy slash politician named Alcibiades to explore this idea whether virtue

00:14:49.300 can be taught. So in the Protagoras, Socrates is like, yeah, virtue can be taught. We're going to see

00:14:54.180 this in action with Alcibiades. Why is Alcibiades such a great case study in whether virtue can be taught or not?

00:15:00.420 I think Alcibiades is a great case study because it is in the end a failure, a big failure. And we

00:15:08.340 learn often more from failure than from success. Socrates did succeed in teaching virtue to other

00:15:14.820 people. I mean, you can see not only in the Platonic dialogues, but also in dialogues by another friend

00:15:20.020 of Socrates, Xenophon, that he actually does succeed in a number of cases. But with Alcibiades,

00:15:26.580 he failed spectacularly, and he knows why he failed. And so there is this wonderful dialogue,

00:15:33.220 the Alcibiades major, which is attributed to Plato, although we don't really know whether Plato wrote

00:15:37.780 it or not. But nevertheless, it is one of our major sources on the relationship between these two.

00:15:44.260 And the dialogue features a young Alcibiades who was dashing and brave and full of himself,

00:15:51.660 of course, and handsome and rich, right? It was everything that you could possibly want to be

00:15:58.140 as a young man. And he goes to Socrates and says, look, I want to be a leader in Athens. I want to

00:16:05.500 really make an impact here, make a difference. But I understand that I need help. And I need help from

00:16:13.260 somebody like you, like my mentor, like Socrates. So the two start talking about it. And Socrates

00:16:19.140 tries to figure out what kind of ideas Alcibiades has in mind. And at the end of the dialogue,

00:16:27.260 the conclusion is stunning because Socrates says, I'm sorry, Alcibiades, you just don't have the stuff

00:16:33.240 that it takes. If you are going to do what you think, what you want to do, if you want to become a

00:16:38.400 leader in Athens, this is going to be a disaster. And the reason it's going to be a disaster is

00:16:43.300 because you don't care enough about virtue. You don't care enough about the common good. You

00:16:48.880 really care only about yourself. You are, you know, self-aggrandizing narcissist, essentially,

00:16:53.940 in modern terminology. And of course, it turns out that Socrates was right. Alcibiades ignores his

00:17:01.960 advice and goes on anyway to lead Athens during the Peloponnesian War. And it is, in fact,

00:17:07.980 the disaster of Alcibiades. I'm surprised that Alcibiades' life has not been the subject of a

00:17:15.860 movie so far, because it was really incredibly interesting. And, you know, he lived in one of

00:17:21.860 the most interesting times in the history of ancient Greece. But nevertheless, he did exactly

00:17:28.200 what Socrates predicted. It was a complete disaster that cost a lot of Athenian lives and eventually the

00:17:33.940 defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. What do you think the takeaway for Socrates, I mean,

00:17:39.200 maybe we don't know, but maybe from Socrates or Plato about Alcibiades? I mean, like, what was the

00:17:45.600 takeaway? Okay, if a guy just doesn't want enough, then you can't teach virtue?

00:17:51.420 Right. So the idea is not dissimilar to what any modern teacher in any subject will tell you.

00:17:57.920 If somebody doesn't want to be taught, there's nothing you can do about it. There's not much

00:18:02.380 you can do about it. If the person is open, if the person is at least interested in genuinely

00:18:09.320 learning something, then there is absolutely something you can do. Then you can definitely

00:18:13.080 teach people. But if there is a mental closure, it's just not going to happen. Look, the best time

00:18:19.980 to teach somebody, to start teaching somebody virtue and in general sort of how to live properly in a

00:18:26.500 human society is when they're very young, very, very young, right? Which is one of the unfortunate 0.99

00:18:31.320 tragedies of modern society. We don't teach moral philosophy. We don't teach how to behave to our

00:18:39.000 kids, by and large. We teach them a lot of other stuff, but not really anything about ethics in the

00:18:45.200 sense of how to live in a human society. Once you get to the age of Alcibiades, in your 20s, let's say,

00:18:52.540 or even later, there is not much there left to do unless the person wants to improve, unless the

00:19:00.360 person is in fact convinced that something needs to be done. It's a question, you know, Aristotle

00:19:05.760 famously said that virtue is by and large a question of habit. You get into it and then because you do it

00:19:14.700 over and over and over, it kind of eventually becomes second nature. But guess what? The best time

00:19:21.500 to learn a habit, either in a good sense or in a negative sense, is when you're a kid. If you get

00:19:28.980 used to things, you know, then you'll do it. Let me give you a completely different example that has

00:19:34.620 to do not with virtue, but let's say with physical activity, right? For years, I just wouldn't want to

00:19:43.360 listen to when people would tell me, you know, you need to get to the gym and start doing some

00:19:47.460 exercise. Like, no, because I wasn't exposed to that when I was a kid. I was not introduced to that

00:19:54.260 way of thinking. It took me years of, you know, experience and self-reflection and all that. And

00:19:59.200 finally, I said, you know what? I don't like this thing, but I guess I need to do it because it's good

00:20:03.480 for me. And now I've been doing it regularly for a long time. But it came out of me, not out of somebody

00:20:11.580 else telling me, you know, this is good for you. I wouldn't listen. It took me quite a bit of time

00:20:17.760 to get around to that idea. But if somebody had taught me when I was a kid, that would have been

00:20:22.920 a completely different thing. And that is why, you know, unfortunately, again, we do not spend enough

00:20:29.140 time teaching our kids about these kind of things. We're going to take a quick break for your words

00:20:33.420 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay, so Socrates failed with Alcibiades. You

00:20:41.180 highlighted some other philosophers who tried to put this idea that virtue can be taught into practice

00:20:47.280 by coaching, mentoring, teaching other leaders. Another famous one was Aristotle. He famously tutored

00:20:55.000 Alexander the Great. When did that relationship start? And do you think Aristotle was successful in

00:21:01.280 teaching virtue to Alexander? Well, the relationship between Aristotle and Alexander

00:21:06.880 started fairly early, although not as early as it would have been ideal. I think Alexander was 16 or

00:21:17.060 something like that, 16 or 17, when he was being taught by Aristotle. And yes, Aristotle did have

00:21:24.280 certainly an impact on Alexander. In fact, in a sense, one could argue, and I do argue in the

00:21:31.100 book that Alexander went above and beyond what Aristotle taught him. For instance, one of the

00:21:37.320 ideas that Aristotle insisted on was the importance of Pan-Hellenism, that is, of the notion that all

00:21:44.260 agrees should be unified in order to, you know, function as a broader society and being more resistant to

00:21:55.080 invasions from the outside, like the Persians, for instance, which from time to time were 1.00

00:22:00.340 making trouble. Well, Alexander took that idea and ran with it. He actually conceived of unifying the

00:22:07.560 entire planet under his banner. And that is, in fact, a major, that was a major motivation for

00:22:14.800 building his empire. Now, of course, we today wouldn't go about unifying humanity by building an

00:22:22.320 empire, presumably. We wouldn't think that that's the right way to do it. But Alexander really was into

00:22:29.660 it, in part at least, because he thought it was a good idea to unify people of different cultures.

00:22:36.580 So, in a sense, Aristotle did have a significant impact on Alexander. Alexander kept for the rest of

00:22:44.340 his life, for instance, a copy of Homer's Iliad annotated by Aristotle. And he used it, you know,

00:22:52.500 to frequently as a guide for his own thinking and his own preparing for what he was doing. So,

00:23:02.920 yeah, that's an example of fairly positive influence by a philosopher over a, you know,

00:23:11.240 statesman. The problem there, too, however, is that I think that was a little too late again,

00:23:17.100 because by the time Aristotle got to Alexander, Alexander was already, had already been bred to

00:23:24.720 be a conqueror and had already been bred to be, you know, the heir of his father to the Macedonian

00:23:31.300 throne. And so, he already had a way of looking at things that would have been pretty difficult for

00:23:37.020 Aristotle to dramatically alter. Okay. So, on that case study, kind of successful with Alexander.

00:23:44.080 Yeah.

00:23:44.740 You highlight another one. It's a Roman Stoic philosopher, and this is in your wheelhouse. You

00:23:49.160 write a lot and research a lot about Stoicism. Seneca was an advisor to Nero. Tell us about that

00:23:57.420 relationship. And because you point out Seneca, he was a Stoic philosopher, but he was kind of a mixed

00:24:02.520 bag when it came to living up to his ideals in terms of his, you know, politics and even his

00:24:07.140 philosophy. Why is that? And then, you know, how did Seneca go about teaching Nero?

00:24:13.260 That's another interesting story in and of itself. I mean, Seneca, yes, as you just pointed out,

00:24:18.720 was a Stoic philosopher who certainly did not live up to the full expectations of a Stoic,

00:24:25.880 but he was also very aware of it. He was, in fact, in a sense, humble about it. He wrote to his

00:24:31.220 friend, Lucilius, at some point, look, don't come to me for advice. I'm just as wretched as 0.83

00:24:37.500 anybody else. I'm trying to do my best, but it's not like I can teach anybody. I'm just as sick as

00:24:43.940 anybody else, and I'm just trying to do my best. So, he actually was very aware of his own

00:24:49.660 limitations, in a sense, which is more than you can say for a lot of people, I would argue.

00:24:53.400 Yeah. Now, in terms of Nero, the standard story is that Seneca completely failed, you know, in fact,

00:25:01.920 that he was complicit in some of Nero's crimes during his regime, etc. But that's not quite,

00:25:07.300 that's a little simplistic. The reality is, as often is the case, it's a little bit more

00:25:13.240 complicated. It turns out that Seneca, together with a colleague who was the head of the Praetorian

00:25:21.040 Guard, which was the special guard of the emperor, they were actually able to pretty much reign in

00:25:26.960 Nero for the first five years. The first five years of Nero's reigns are referred to by historians

00:25:33.940 as the Quinquennium Neronis, which literally means five years of Nero. And they were a good time for 1.00

00:25:40.240 Rome. There was prosperity. There was, you know, the empire's borders were secure. People experienced a

00:25:49.720 good life, etc., etc. So things actually went pretty well in the beginning. But Nero was unhinged,

00:25:57.620 and it became more and more unhinged and difficult to control. And Seneca realized that. And in fact,

00:26:04.280 he tried to retire. And Nero didn't want Seneca to retire because he felt that he needed, the regime

00:26:13.480 needed basically the support or the endorsement of the famous philosopher and the esteemed statesman

00:26:19.480 that Seneca was. And this thing, this back and forth went on for a while until Seneca eventually

00:26:26.780 tried to bribe the emperor. And he says, look, I'm going to give you most of my fortune. I don't care.

00:26:32.700 I just want to, you know, get out of the way. And in the end, of course, the result, the end result

00:26:39.780 was that Nero at one point suspected that Seneca was involved in a conspiracy, in a failed conspiracy

00:26:46.380 against the emperor, which he probably wasn't. But Seneca probably didn't know about the conspiracy

00:26:52.880 and didn't tell the emperor, which for all effective purposes is being involved in the

00:26:56.900 conspiracy. And so Nero ordered Seneca to commit suicide, which he did in classic Stoic fashion.

00:27:03.780 He did it sort of imitating his role model, which was Socrates. So that's another story that has a mixed

00:27:10.940 back kind of situation, right? And in fact, in the book, there are several along those lines. And the bottom

00:27:17.640 line, the end message there is like, look, if you want to try to teach somebody else, doing it late,

00:27:25.280 rather late in his life, it's not a good idea because it's not likely to succeed. The success stories

00:27:31.260 in the book tend to come from people who themselves want to improve, want to become better persons.

00:27:39.720 They want to practice philosophy in their lives. And so one classic example there is Marcus Aurelius,

00:27:46.300 one of the famous Roman emperors, right? So the bottom line, the message there is that

00:27:52.200 if we're talking about teaching somebody else, that has to be done under one of two conditions,

00:27:57.760 either very early on in their lives so that you set them in the right habits, or if they really are

00:28:04.860 prone and ready to be taught, if they want that. Otherwise, it's much better to actually bet

00:28:13.620 on somebody who is already of his own accord going into the right direction. He's striving already

00:28:21.060 on his own accord because those are the people that really want to do the right thing.

00:28:24.460 Yeah, that second approach of pick the leaders, instead of trying to train leaders to be good

00:28:29.500 leaders, because you're probably going to be too late. The idea is you pick people to be your

00:28:34.560 leaders who are already philosophers. And this is like the idea, this is going back to Plato and the

00:28:38.400 Republic, this idea we want to pick the philosopher kings to be our leaders.

00:28:43.060 Right. Now, remember that, of course, philosopher at the time in this particular context doesn't mean

00:28:50.000 somebody like me with a PhD in philosophy who does academic scholarship. It meant somebody who lives

00:28:57.060 philosophy as a way, as a practical life, right? So philosophy is the art of living. So a philosopher,

00:29:04.140 you know, it's very easy to laugh at condescendingly at Plato and say, oh yeah, sure. The last thing we want

00:29:10.840 is to have philosophers in charge. That's because we tend to think of philosophers as these people

00:29:15.620 with the head in the cloud who think about abstruse subject matters. But what Plato meant there

00:29:21.600 was a philosopher here is somebody who lives philosophically. And therefore, anybody can be

00:29:29.280 a philosopher. It doesn't require a PhD.

00:29:32.800 Yeah, you gave the example, Marcus Aurelius is an example of that. This is a young man,

00:29:36.760 he was philosophizing since he was a boy, and he carried that on through his adulthood.

00:29:42.580 Right. And another example, which I also describe in the book, is Cato the Younger,

00:29:48.100 who was a Roman senator and archenemy of Julius Caesar. And Cato was not a philosopher in the academic

00:29:56.060 sense of the term. He never wrote a book about philosophy. He wasn't spending his time thinking

00:30:01.540 about abstruse matters. What he was doing is he was living the life of a Roman senator and statesman.

00:30:06.760 And he was trying to do it with integrity. And in fact, he was so famous for that, that if in Rome

00:30:14.500 somebody slipped up and was doing something not quite right, often the excuse would be, well,

00:30:22.080 not everybody can be a Cato. So Cato was such a well-known role model that people would say,

00:30:29.780 you know, it's only Cato can be that good. I'm not, I'm not Cato. So that's another good example of

00:30:35.940 somebody who tried to live by his principles and tried to live philosophical and largely succeeded.

00:30:43.060 So, but there's also cases where it didn't succeed, right? Like Socrates wasn't a politician

00:30:50.480 per se. I don't think he'd call himself that. He was a philosopher, but he did have an influence

00:30:54.360 on the state, right? And it's why he got executed because the state thought he was causing too much

00:31:00.920 trouble. And that's one of the problems when you try to live philosophically. Sometimes it doesn't end

00:31:07.080 well for you. Yes. Unless you're an Epicurean, because if you're an Epicurean, then you close

00:31:12.820 yourself into your garden with your friends and forget the rest of the world. So you're fine.

00:31:18.580 Yeah, you're right. You have, you have a good point there. But then again, we're talking about

00:31:22.460 intentions. We're not talking about outcomes. We don't control outcomes. Of course, there's no

00:31:27.020 guarantee of succeeding, right? You can have, you can be the best person in the world. You can have the

00:31:33.100 best intentions and even very good skills. And nevertheless, you're not going to

00:31:36.980 succeed because the external circumstances are such that success becomes impossible. I mean,

00:31:43.080 Socrates, we have, we have to remember in historical terms, Socrates was living most of his life during

00:31:50.020 the Peloponnesian War, which was a disaster for Athens, which went on for decades, which cost a lot

00:31:57.160 of lives and resources and so on and so forth. And he lived not only during the period of democracy,

00:32:04.020 but also during the period of the 30 tyrants, which as the name implies, was not a, was not a

00:32:10.720 particularly bright and, and, and happy period for Athens. So the external circumstances are always

00:32:17.600 going to be certainly to a large extent determining the outcomes, right? But what we can do is to try

00:32:25.280 our best. And that is why the figure of Socrates is so important still two and a half millennia after

00:32:32.180 his death. I mean, yes, he did die, but he died in a sense on purpose. He knew that, uh, he could

00:32:41.180 escape, uh, his, his friends had bribed the guards in prison and it was pretty normal for people who

00:32:48.400 were condemned to death to just disappear at the last minute and move to another city and, and be

00:32:53.060 fine. He didn't want to do that. Uh, his, he, his position was one of principle. He said, you know,

00:32:59.200 I lived well and I thrived under the, the laws of Athens for most of my life. What am I going to do

00:33:06.400 now that those laws are turned against me? I'm just going to quit because I don't, I don't want

00:33:10.460 to play by the rules anymore. So he set an example essentially. Right. Uh, and it's a, it's a difficult

00:33:16.340 example, of course, to follow. It's, this is, this is a high level example, but then again, that's why

00:33:21.100 we remember Socrates and not a lot of other people. Okay. So the lessons from the Greco-Roman 0.94

00:33:26.000 moral philosophers that, uh, virtue can be taught. Um, if you try to do too late in life,

00:33:32.200 it's going to be probably too late, but are there any insights from say modern cognitive science or

00:33:39.060 modern psychology that we can combine with the insights from Greco-Roman philosophy to figure

00:33:44.700 out, you know, how can we help people be better people? Yes, there are. Uh, interestingly,

00:33:51.540 and again, another reason why the Greco-Roman is so important is because they got a lot of stuff,

00:33:57.260 not everything, but I got a lot of stuff right, uh, that modern cognitive science, modern psychology

00:34:03.640 actually in fact confirms and of course expands on. Obviously the Greco-Roman didn't carry out

00:34:09.480 systematic experiments on, you know, uh, randomized samples of people and all that sort of stuff.

00:34:14.700 But a lot of what modern psychologists are learning about virtue and about wisdom and about,

00:34:21.260 uh, you know, character, it actually does, uh, reflect the intuitions of the Greco-Romans. For

00:34:27.340 instance, one thing that does work, uh, according to modern psychologists in order to improve your

00:34:33.920 character is to pick role models. If you, uh, imagine when you have to make a decision, if you imagine

00:34:41.220 in your mind, uh, somebody who you regard highly looking over your shoulders, you're more likely

00:34:49.760 to make the right decision. And that person that you imagine could be somebody you actually know,

00:34:55.060 you know, like your grandmother, let's say, uh, it could be a fictional even, uh, role model,

00:35:00.400 or it could be somebody you don't know, but you know of, and that you admire. The point is you do that

00:35:06.080 exercise mentally. Whenever you're making a big decision, you think you ask yourself, well, what

00:35:11.060 would Socrates do? And, uh, the, the, the empirical data show that, uh, you're more likely to do the

00:35:19.000 right thing. Well, that technique of, of picking a role model is certainly a stoic technique. It's

00:35:25.260 certainly something that Aristotle would have, uh, would have approved. Another thing that we know

00:35:31.300 that works is active, uh, self-reflection. So things like keeping a philosophical journal. Uh, we

00:35:39.540 mentioned Marcus Aurelius. He's very, he's famous because of the meditations, right? This book that he

00:35:45.280 wrote, but he did not write it as a book for publication. This was his actual, his, his personal

00:35:50.860 philosophical diary. He put down his own thoughts that were meant to help him carry out some continuous

00:35:58.620 self-analysis and self-criticism in the, in the process of improving as an individual. Turns out

00:36:05.440 modern cognitive behavioral therapy will tell you that that actually is a very effective technique

00:36:09.900 to keep that kind of, of, of journal. And in fact, even to keep it in the way in which Marcus was

00:36:16.400 keeping it, that is, for instance, uh, one of the odd things from the point of view of a modern reader

00:36:21.640 about meditations is that it is within the second person. So Marcus writes to himself, but he writes

00:36:28.240 as if he were writing to a friend, you did this, or you did not do this, right? Now, what the hell is

00:36:33.740 he doing that? Uh, a modern cognitive therapist would tell you, well, the reason for that is because

00:36:39.000 he's trying to keep some distance, some cognitive distance between his own actions and the fact that he

00:36:45.440 wants to learn from his actions. So if he were to write in the first person and using very emotional

00:36:51.660 language, he would simply get caught up into the emotional component of what he, what he was doing

00:36:58.700 and not learn much from his experiences. Instead, he's using very neutral, very analytical language and

00:37:06.480 he's using the second person. And that, those, those tricks actually work. They're, they're very good.

00:37:11.620 Uh, modern cognitive science also tells us that some of the things that this, the ancient

00:37:17.840 Greco-Romans thought did not work, do not in fact work. Uh, one of the big ones is do nothing. Now you

00:37:26.320 would say, yeah, of course doing nothing doesn't, doesn't work. But we, a lot of people today think

00:37:31.940 that, uh, or seem to think that, uh, you know, the way you get old, you get wiser is just by getting

00:37:38.140 older, uh, older people become wiser. But in fact, that's simply not the case. Becoming old is

00:37:46.180 necessary, but not sufficient condition as philosophers would, would put it for, for becoming

00:37:51.520 wise. Just, just because time passes, that doesn't mean you're learning anything from your

00:37:56.440 experiences. You have to learn actively. You have to pay attention to your experiences and then you're

00:38:02.360 learning. So it turns out that in order to be wise, you do need age because you need experience.

00:38:07.360 Uh, it's hard to imagine a, you know, 15 year old who is wise, uh, 15 year old may be in, you know,

00:38:14.420 ahead of his own age or her age or more mature, et cetera. But wise is kind of hard because they

00:38:20.240 haven't had enough life experiences to reflect on, uh, to actually be wise. But then again, you know,

00:38:27.700 I'm sure you like myself know a lot of people in their fifties, sixties, or seventies were definitely

00:38:33.340 not wise because they have experience, but they didn't pay attention to it. So not doing anything,

00:38:39.240 uh, you know, not reflecting critically on your own experiences, not learning actively from what

00:38:44.740 you're doing. Uh, it's certainly a problematic, it, it gets in the way of, of developing wisdom.

00:38:51.080 And I think something else that the Greco-Romans got right, that's being confirmed by cognitive

00:38:55.020 psychology. You, um, highlight research by a guy named Miller. Uh, we had on a podcast,

00:39:01.120 wrote the book called the character gap. And he just talked about different studies that show that

00:39:04.720 when people in positions of power, um, they tend to think that they're good because they're in

00:39:10.160 charge. Like, well, if I'm in charge, it must be good. The Greco-Romans be like, you know, 1.00

00:39:14.300 Socrates would be like, well, no, you might be in charge. It doesn't necessarily mean you're a good

00:39:18.380 person. So that's where that self-reflection comes along, having role models to kind of put you in

00:39:23.360 check. Like, I guess the, the, the Renaissance or medieval, um, philosophers would call it a mirror,

00:39:28.820 right? You want a mirror that you can look into to see what you really are.

00:39:32.420 That's right. That's right. And another kind of mirror, which again, was, uh, very much at the

00:39:37.940 forefront of, uh, the, uh, the minds of the Greco-Romans. And it is confirmed by research

00:39:43.300 like the one that Christian Miller, uh, wrote about is friendships, good friends, right? So

00:39:50.580 what helps you improve, uh, is in fact, hanging around the right people. Uh, this is probably not

00:39:57.980 very surprising, right? It's, it's what your mom probably told you when you were a kid, you know,

00:40:01.940 just be careful who you hang around with. Uh, but it does work. If you hang around people who are not

00:40:07.540 good, who are not virtuous, who are not trying to improve themselves, then you're probably going to

00:40:12.340 slide down into, you know, uh, dangerous territory. Well, on the other hand, if you surround yourself

00:40:18.120 with people who are, uh, you know, at least as good or even better than, than, than, than

00:40:22.920 yourself, and they're trying to strive to go in the right direction, then you will as well. So

00:40:29.160 who you frequent is very important. And I took this to heart. I mean, in, in, you know, at some

00:40:34.220 point a few years ago, I started looking at the kind of people I was hanging around and I saw,

00:40:38.180 okay, some people are really in that category, others, not so much. And I need to make decisions.

00:40:43.880 I need to figure out, do I really want to do certain things or hang around certain people? Because if it's

00:40:48.920 not good for either me or them, as it turns out, uh, then why are you doing it?

00:40:55.120 Well, Massimo, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:40:58.280 and your work?

00:41:00.060 Well, it's easy. There is a site called massimopulucci.org and everything about my work,

00:41:06.080 my podcasting, my essays, and my books is there.

00:41:09.560 Fantastic. Well, Massimo, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:41:11.860 It has been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:41:14.100 My guest today was Massimo Pulucci. He's the author of the book, The Quest for Character. It's

00:41:17.660 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

00:41:21.120 his website, massimopulucci.org. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash teachvirtue,

00:41:26.420 where you can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:41:31.600 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

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The Art of Manliness - October 03, 2022

Can Virtue Be Taught？

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