Stephen Scaltetti is Professor of Philosophy, the Chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department at Ole Miss, and the Director of the Center for the Study of American Freedom at the university's Declaration of Independence Center. In this episode, we discuss the founding of the center, why it exists, and what it means to be a freedom-based center.
00:00:00.000Hi everybody, this is Gad Saad, another unbelievable guest today. I've got Professor Stephen Scaltetti, who is Professor of Philosophy, the Chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department, this is at Ole Miss, and the Director where I'm housed, very proud to be housed there, precisely because Stephen rescued me from the frozen tundra of Canada,
00:00:28.720at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at Ole Miss. Welcome, Stephen.
00:00:36.000Gad, it's great to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I'm looking forward to actually having a conversation with you. This is terrific.
00:00:42.400Likewise. So, oftentimes when I've got guests that have a unique area of expertise, I like to flex at how complete my personal library is.
00:00:52.640So, will you indulge me as I try to cater to some of your research interests?
00:00:58.540No, go ahead and wow me. I'm sure I'll be impressed.
00:01:02.100I only picked three, although I could have got my personal library in this area is bigger than the three that I'll show you.
00:01:09.720For the viewers and listeners, Stephen is an expert. Everything you want to know about Aristotle and we're afraid to ask, we will cover today.
00:01:18.200So, I've got this one. Do you know this lady?
00:01:20.960You know, yeah, I do. I haven't read that book, but I know of it. So, that's great that you're reading that.
00:01:27.120I read that a couple of years ago in Portugal. Then, this is not Aristotle, but it's certainly within the genre.
00:01:36.580How to think like a Roman emperor, Donald Robertson, who is actually a very interesting guy. He's been on my show and I've been on his.
00:01:45.380He's a gentleman who applies. He's a therapist. He applies cognitive behavior theory, which is very much related to stoicism.
00:01:52.020And so, he wrote this book. So, there. And you're ready now. This one. This one has to wow you. Franklin Library. Look at this.
00:02:08.180Am I doing okay? Do I get maybe like an A- professor?
00:02:11.200Fair. Fair. Yeah. We'll get you. We'll have you start taking some philosophy classes, some ancient philosophy classes, and I can steer you in the right direction.
00:02:22.180But it's great that you're doing that, Gad.
00:02:24.740Thank you so much. Okay. So, let's start. I mean, for those of you who don't know, as I mentioned earlier, this past year, I joined Ole Miss under Stephen's leadership at the Declaration of Independence Center.
00:02:37.920So, the right place would be to start. It's a new center. Tell us about it. What was the idea for putting it together?
00:02:43.460How does it differ from some of the other centers that are sprouting in the South that are also sort of freedom-based? Tell us the whole story.
00:02:49.540Well, the basic idea is that, you know, I became chair back in 2012, and then just over the years, both still teaching and being a professor, but then also as an administrator and just kind of watching trends across higher education, but that here at Ole Miss,
00:03:10.940it just seemed to me that there were fewer and fewer people talking about just the American tradition of liberty.
00:03:22.240And really, that's the basic root of how I ended up becoming the center director.
00:03:31.780Because I tell people this all the time. I still believe it.
00:03:35.420I think most people do believe in the ideals of liberty and justice for all as kind of a part of our basic American creed.
00:03:43.600And there's no shortage of discussions about the nature of justice on university campuses, all sorts of discussions about equality, equity, social justice, environmental justice.
00:03:56.640I mean, just no matter where you come down in any of those conversations, it's just students are made to feel like, wow, justice is really something that I need to think carefully about and deeply about and really reflect on.
00:04:12.620I mean, you know, philosophers have been thinking about justice for a long time, and I think that's important.
00:04:18.040But you didn't see the same kind of emphasis on the liberty part of the liberty and justice for all part of the equation.
00:04:27.660Maybe freedom and liberty get mentioned in a class.
00:04:31.660Maybe there's a throwaway line here or there about it.
00:04:36.200But there was no kind of big emphasis.
00:04:38.720There was no explicit, sustained attempt to make sure that students were thinking about liberty as deeply and as often as they were about justice.
00:04:49.980So that was my basic idea for then when I became director of the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom.
00:05:01.400You know, I took it as my main aim was just to offer a new opportunity here on the University of Mississippi campus that wasn't there before to make sure that students had opportunities to think about the complexity and the depth and the legacy of our kind of American notion of freedom.
00:05:21.680And so everything we do is kind of aimed at that, although then there are reverberations outward from that.
00:05:28.740But that was the main idea that got me started.
00:05:32.520So pedagogically, you know, there are several programs that are under the rubric of the center, one of which is, as I understand it, the only, the first major in freedom studies.
00:05:57.120Well, and maybe this is a way I can answer the second question you asked, which I neglected in my first response.
00:06:06.080So it is distinctive, I think, of our program that we really are trying to focus on the freedom side and the liberty side.
00:06:14.640And in a kind of unapologetic way, there are a lot of other centers around the country who are emphasizing a renewal of civic education and civic thought, which I think is, you know, fantastic.
00:06:30.660But the Declaration of Independence Center wants to promote civics, but it is more unapologetic in terms of just saying, you know, the ideal of freedom that's part of civic thought is a good thing.
00:06:48.820It's okay to value it and to make sure you focus on that because it's good.
00:06:57.000In the same way that in environmental studies program, you know, there's an unapologetic embrace of the idea that the environment is a good thing, that it should be sustained, it should be investigated.
00:07:07.560So we're not just sort of looking at generic civic thought, but really trying to stick up for the idea that freedom and liberty is a good thing.
00:07:18.420So anyway, programmatically, we then offer a freedom studies minor, which is an interdisciplinary minor that takes classes from a bunch of different disciplines.
00:07:29.080But then the Declaration Center also staffs some freedom studies courses that we offer as part of that minor.
00:07:39.640When we first started offering classes, let's see, I guess that was four semesters ago now, we had 26 students sign up at first.
00:07:50.660Then the next semester we did it, we had 65 students sign up.
00:07:56.300And then the third semester we had 135 students sign up.
00:08:00.860And then I believe this semester were around 150 students signed up for those freedom studies classes.
00:08:07.000And then I believe now we've got about 35 freedom studies minors.
00:08:12.900And we equally have about 30 scholarship students in our freedom studies scholars program.
00:08:19.440So just within three to four semesters, we've come a very long way very quickly.
00:08:30.260I'm also a little intimidated by it because I've done all that growth without too much advertising yet.
00:08:36.860A lot of the way we've made our mark is just by word of mouth, by grabbing students from classes that we think would be interested in this,
00:08:45.500from visiting some of the student groups on campus.
00:08:48.080But we really haven't made a sustained effort to advertise, to get the word out about what we're doing.
00:08:55.000And once we start doing that, I'm sure we're going to have far more students than the ones that have found their way to us already.
00:09:03.440From the limited data that you have so far in the last couple of years since the center was founded,
00:09:09.260do you have a sense of some of the key demographic predictors of the students that are likely to sign up?
00:09:16.900So, example, without knowing anything, I might say, oh, you know, if I'm a student in political science or history or pre-law,
00:09:24.740I'm more likely to be interested in some of the issues that would come up in the center.
00:09:29.820Is that true or do you get someone who's in pre-med and engineering and pure mathematics that's saying,
00:09:35.740wait a minute, I want to be involved in this?
00:09:37.880Yeah, no, there are a few students like that.
00:09:40.500I think right now most of our students, there's kind of three main buckets, I would say.
00:09:47.480First bucket is students who are in the kind of traditional liberal arts.
00:09:52.120So there are history majors or philosophy majors or English majors.
00:09:58.040And they're interested in different aspects of the American founding from a kind of a liberal arts perspective.
00:10:04.880Then I'd say another good third of our students are maybe in the business world.
00:10:10.500And they're interested in entrepreneurialism and that side of things.
00:10:15.060And I think the other the other Beckett then are people in who are planning to go into law school and who are maybe pre-law and really interested in policy and maybe a life in government service in some way.
00:10:30.040But the other, you know, the other predictor, I think, beyond that is most of our students are conservative philosophically, you know, and that's and I think of the center also as being OK with that.
00:10:44.400I mean, the word conservative is big tent.
00:10:49.820But I think most of our students like the idea that the American founding was a good thing and that there are elements in there that need to be conserved.
00:10:59.200And it's OK to think that and to believe that.
00:11:02.280And that does make the students, you know, the students realize that that's something maybe unique about them or an attribute about them that differentiates them from other people who who might think that the American founding was good at the time and place.
00:11:17.780But it served its purpose and society has evolved beyond anything like constitutionalism or, you know, separation of powers and all and all of that.
00:11:47.280About 75 percent of our students, I would say, are are male, about 25 percent are female.
00:11:55.760And, you know, that really does leap out at me all the time because the student body here at Ole Miss now is, I think, 65 percent female and 35 percent male.
00:12:06.200So the population at large here on our campus is, you know, kind of decidedly female.
00:12:13.180But in our freedom studies classes and our freedom studies minor, I think most of the or, you know, a disproportionate amount of the interest has come from males.
00:12:21.080I do think that'll change as word gets out about what we're doing and people kind of look into the specifics of what we're doing instead of just going by kind of a vague impression of it.
00:12:36.520But anyway, we'll work on that as time goes goes along.
00:12:41.100Right now, I mean, most of your sort of pedagogic related answers have been geared towards undergrads, although I know that when I've come to Ole Miss, I've interacted with some postdocs and so on.
00:12:53.780Is there a desire to expand the pedagogic scope of the Freedom Center to include, you know, a master's in freedom studies, a Ph.D. focus on freedom studies and so on?
00:13:08.520You know, I tend to be of the opinion I'm a traditionalist in a lot of ways, you know, and I'm really a fan of the major disciplines that have evolved, you know, over, you know, centuries of if not millennia of thought.
00:13:24.780So I'm a big fan of, you know, philosophy, history, English, you know, political theory and things that have.
00:13:33.300I really think it's best to get students who are committed to one of these main disciplines.
00:13:40.140But then be a resource, a unique resource for anyone whose research ends up kind of getting into one of these themes and ideas that go into either the American founding or the idea of American liberty in particular as part of that.
00:14:04.460But, you know, I'm not a fan of just creating new programs and adding to the ever expanding list of kind of titles and programs that people have never heard of.
00:14:19.580I think it's better to do a traditional discipline, but then offer as, you know, a way to do your own variation on it by studying with us.
00:14:35.380When we speak about freedom in the way that we're speaking right now, the first thing that you think about is sort of political freedom, freedom of speech, maybe freedom of inquiry, all of which, of course, are totally under the rubric of what we're talking about.
00:14:47.700But you could expand it to recently I've been doing a big, deep dive into, you know, the Austrian School of Economics.
00:14:55.080And so I'm reading actually right now this guy right here, Doudicte von Mises and Hayek and the rest of that gang.
00:15:07.600And let's see what you think about that.
00:15:08.980So in chapter one of The Parasitic Mind, where I argue that my two fundamental ideals in life are truth and freedom, there I make the point that when I use the term freedom, it goes beyond that which we're talking about right now.
00:15:23.720So, for example, when I used to be a soccer player, I used to play the number 10 position because I didn't want to be geographically constrained.
00:15:32.960I needed the freedom to be able to move around the field so that I can find those creative spaces in order to create, to be a playmaker.
00:15:42.520When I am, you know, ironed out, trace the trajectory of my career, actually, I've done the opposite.
00:16:06.180So is there a way in our grand discussion of freedom, whether it be just you and I chatting or incorporating it within the concept of the center, to talk about this freedom with a capital F?
00:16:21.800Here, I'll give you kind of my take on this.
00:16:24.280I think of freedom as really being grounded in sort of three different enterprises or maybe three different ways of life or three kind of approaches to the human condition.
00:16:39.660And I think all of these are kind of illustrated by some favorite, some great, you know, thinkers and authors.
00:16:46.220And so, you know, the first, the bucket, let's start with the one you were talking about.
00:16:50.720The more I've thought about this, you know, I think there's always been a component in American freedom that involves the pursuit of, I'll call it science, the pursuit of figuring out what the world is like without and how the world works and maybe how you could build something or go somewhere in the world without someone telling you how it has to be ahead of time.
00:17:19.940Right. So, you know, my favorite image of this, let's call it the scientific kind of freedom.
00:17:28.880You know, I just love the image of him out in a thunderstorm, flying a kite with a key on it.
00:17:36.540I mean, that's just like a deeply American kind of idea.
00:17:40.480Some guy out there just tinkering around, you know, no one's going to tell him what to do.
00:17:44.740And he wants to know how the world works.
00:17:47.420You know, he's not going to follow sort of instructions ahead of time.
00:17:51.380Like he wants to be able to figure out how the world works on his own terms, taking reality seriously, trying to be scientific and trying to be responsive, you know, to the world as you find it.
00:18:04.920And so, you know, and if you're that kind of a person, you're going to say things like, look, the scientists need to be signed.
00:18:29.560Don't tell me ahead of time what that's going to look like.
00:18:32.960You've just got to go ahead and approach the world without kind of blinders and get to the bottom of things and be open minded.
00:18:41.660So that's kind of think of that as the tinkering spirit, the entrepreneurial spirit, the scientific spirit.
00:18:49.520I think that's one component in being free.
00:18:52.020The other, I think, component that that is really important in the American Dersion was the kind of freedom that comes from being religious.
00:19:04.240And the the idea there, there's lots of variations of this.
00:19:08.580But one important idea is that to be a free person means more than just being able to go out and do whatever you want and tinker around and not have to.
00:19:17.560It means being a certain kind of person.
00:19:19.980It means kind of having your psychological house in order, being someone who has self-control, who has, you know, who's temperate, who has kind of an ability to be at peace with him or herself and not be like the slave to an addiction or a slave to desire.
00:19:43.020Right. So there's a part of freedom that really involves working on yourself to be a certain kind of person so that you're you kind of got a repertoire that makes you a free person, regardless of what goes on in the world around you.
00:20:01.960So we could call that a spiritual freedom, you know, and in America, typically people believe that it was through religion that you would find that kind of spiritual freedom.
00:20:12.080And then the third kind of bucket, I think, and it's related to those first two.
00:20:17.820But the third kind of bucket is a firm belief that government authority is something that's needed, but that you should be skeptical of and that always needs to be held accountable.
00:20:34.060Even if it needs to be powerful to solve some problem, it should never be given unaccountable power.
00:20:42.480It should never be given despotic power.
00:20:46.120And so, you know, that's the other big component.
00:20:49.680It's being a free person isn't just having spiritual composure in yourself.
00:20:54.800It's not just being able to kind of do your own thing and figure out the way the world works.
00:20:59.260It's also living in a society where you know that power isn't just going to come and change your life in an arbitrary way.
00:21:08.000So ideas about limited government, separation of powers, rule, the rule of law, all those kind of concepts, I think, are the third and sort of another crucial part of freedom.
00:21:23.180So, you know, I think when I think about American liberty, I think about all three of those things being operative at the same time.
00:21:34.060Some people maybe identify more just with one of the buckets.
00:21:39.620But I kind of think that if our society ever identified with just one, the whole thing kind of goes off the rails.
00:21:46.800You really do need sort of all three to work together and in concert.
00:21:51.940So, sorry, that felt like I was talking for a very long time.
00:22:23.040If I were to take the, I mean, at the individual level, when you're trying to determine whether a particular phenomenon is due to nature or nurture, it's something that certainly has animated debates, certainly within the social sciences.
00:22:38.120Of course, as an evolutionary psychologist, I try to study, you know, which parts of consumer behavior are biologically driven versus due to socialization and so on.
00:22:48.260If I were to take that sort of dichotomy and apply it to understanding whether the unique nature of American liberty is nature versus nurture.
00:23:00.580And now it's not being applied at the individual level.
00:23:03.300But the unit of analysis is the United States.
00:23:07.160I mean, the center is called Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom.
00:23:12.260Not for freedom, implying that there is something that is unique, that is exceptional.
00:23:18.540You know, it's not as though the United States is the first to use the word freedom, but there is something unique about the American experience.
00:23:24.840Now, is that coming from the fact that the founding fathers were this unique constellation of genes that created their personhood, that made them uniquely bent to, you know, develop an architecture of freedom in the way that they did?
00:23:39.740And then it's passed on to the rest of America.
00:23:42.240Is it something is it something that was nurtured?
00:23:45.020So how much of it is an indelible part of the American spirit versus passed down from or maybe it's both?
00:23:55.580And I wish I had, you know, I wish I had all that figured out.
00:23:59.480I mean, that's a complicated question.
00:24:01.360I mean, I do think there's something to this idea, you know, Machiavelli talks about this, but he's not the only one who thinks that the early founding period of a given society and political society plays an outsized importance for the rest of the history of that civilization and culture.
00:24:26.980Because in that basic founding, there's a number of dynamics that get set up, which even though the society may change, it can improve, maybe it could do things that were erroneous.
00:24:39.560The basic set of conceptual relationships and the basic set of forces at play ends up kind of getting enshrined in a certain way.
00:24:47.720So I think there is a way in which the American nature, the essence of America, the American mind, it really was forged, I think, in those the early experience of the settlers.
00:25:03.960And then, you know, in the 18th century, when you had the Declaration and the Constitution written, which in some ways just settled the traditions that had already been developing and enunciated and kind of put them in a conceptual framework then that could kind of carry on.
00:25:25.660So I guess, you know, it really, there is a nature there that survives as the American culture goes on and develops.
00:25:36.900But now that said, it's also the case that there's nothing guaranteeing that that survives.
00:25:46.320There's nothing just built into the fabric of reality that's looking out for America and making sure it's going to work no matter what Americans do.
00:25:54.340So, you know, that nature while there does need to be nurtured.
00:26:00.600And I guess maybe that's a way of thinking about the importance of education in the ideals and traditions of your own nation is, you know, there is some stuff you can take for granted, but there's also some things you self-consciously have to nurture to make sure that that tradition stays healthy and flourishing.
00:26:22.120And people understand it in a deep way rather than just kind of a superficial way.
00:26:27.680Well, if that nature were non-malleable, literally written in stone, then I wouldn't need to be writing many of the books that I've ended up writing.
00:26:41.400So that demonstrates that even within a system that is so well entrenched within freedom and liberty, things can very quickly go awry.
00:26:52.360As, of course, Ronald Reagan explained to us in that famous quote where he said, every generation you have to be as assiduous in defending against the enemies of liberty, right?
00:27:01.680That's right. Yeah, that's right. And I mean, and there have been other thinkers. Now, I don't personally agree with this, but there have been thinkers who at least have started with that insight and thought, you know, that's why you need to kind of rip up the status quo every so often and sort of go back and recall the founding principles that started the whole thing.
00:27:24.200So Jefferson actually, you know, thought it'd be okay to just have a new constitutional convention, to rip up the old constitution and have a revolution, a new constitution every whatever it was, 20 years or so.
00:27:36.900So you can kind of rediscover, you know, the genius that got the whole thing started.
00:27:42.780And you're not just inheriting things that no longer are tracking, you know, the original ideas.
00:27:47.760And Machiavelli says this, too, you know, periodically, if a society has become too sclerotic and it's lost its way and the original thing that was working is kind of long gone, sometimes you do need to revolt and cause a revolution, not to create something brand new, but just to return to the way it got set up, to return to that original nature to begin with, to sort of restart the experiment.
00:28:14.560So anyway, it does require kind of active involvement to keep something going through time.
00:28:25.960If someone wanted to do a deep dive, and then after this question, I will pivot into Aristotle and his friends.
00:28:33.740If someone were to say, hey, Professor Scaltetti, I really want to know about the founding fathers, who was the brightest of them all, who was the most innovative, who was the most courageous, in whichever way you want to answer it, give me the sequence of folks whose biographies I should be reading.
00:28:52.240How would you answer such a question if I were a student in one of your classes?
00:28:59.900You know, well, let me just name kind of three books kind of off the top of my head.
00:29:07.720I think for students, if they've really never encountered this material before, or they've kind of heard some names, but don't have a, they'd like a little more, and they'd like a kind of a big picture.
00:29:20.860There's a great book called The Land of Hope by William McClay that sort of sets out kind of the large sweeping patterns of American history, starting in the founding period, that really kind of help introduce you to the main figures and the main thinkers, and also just the main chapters of American history that give you a sense of kind of how to think about some things.
00:29:48.200The other book that we teach here in the Declaration Center is Thomas West's book called The Political Theory of the American Founding.
00:30:03.160It's more kind of detailed and scholarly, but that really carefully goes in to a lot of the political concepts, as well as many of the ethical and moral ideas held by the founders.
00:30:16.040And so that's a great, another great place to start.
00:30:20.200But then the third and final is people have got to be reading the Federalist Papers.
00:30:26.000You just can't underestimate how good they are, how deep they are, and profound they are in terms of entering this real big debate our country had about whether the Constitution was a good idea or not.
00:30:41.860You know, that's the thing I think people don't realize is our founders were just, as I think I've told you, they're such honey badgers.
00:30:53.420They are throwing themselves to the mat in very dicey, very difficult, very conflict-ridden times.
00:31:06.440And, you know, they're really trying to craft these ideas in the face of stiff and unrelenting opposition.
00:31:15.580So reading the Federalist Papers is a great way of just kind of reminding yourself of the crucible in which many of those familiar ideas were formed and worked out.
00:31:27.360So, you know, there's, I don't know if I'm going to pick, like, a favorite founder or something like that, because there's so many people who play so many different roles.
00:31:37.420But it is remarkable just to read about, you know, there's, of course, Jefferson, and then there's Madison.
00:31:44.480And then, you know, don't underestimate the importance of Washington and Hamilton as well.
00:31:52.520So there's, and those people were just very different from one another.
00:31:56.040You know, those human beings were not just, you know, cookie-cutter versions of one another, and they're all just kind of going around saying the same kind of thing.
00:32:04.100There's a lot of heat and tension among them.
00:32:07.460But they really, the dynamic among them really did forge something important and lasting.
00:32:13.560If I turn the question that I pose to you, to me, in different contexts.
00:32:19.260So, for example, I've often played, and maybe we'll play it if you'd like, you know, who are the 10 historical figures you'd like to most invite to your next party?
00:32:29.160My number one guy, which probably won't surprise you, is Leonardo da Vinci, because he's the, I mean, he literally is the Renaissance man.
00:32:43.000Or if you were to ask me in the ancient world, you know, who's sort of the guy that I imagine, you know, I'd want to be hanging around with.
00:32:51.100Which, by the way, you did give me some answers when I was last at Ole Miss about why I should really prefer Aristotle to the others.
00:33:00.680But I love Marcus Aurelius, because in his own way, he was a polymath, because he was an emperor who's doing emperor-y things.
00:33:09.980And he's getting bothered when people are coming to see him for his duties as an emperor, because he'd rather be sitting and thinking and reading and writing.
00:33:18.620I thought, wow, that's a cool guy, an emperor who just wants to sit and think and read.
00:33:22.720So when I'm reading oftentimes a biography, there is a particular element that draws me to that individual in the way I was drawn to da Vinci or to Marcus Aurelius.
00:33:37.680So now let's turn to your main man, Aristotle.
00:33:41.380I loved when we were sitting together at dinner, when you shared some of the elements of Aristotle that you thought would resonate with me.
00:33:50.460You can either replicate that part here for our audience, or tell us why you became interested in Aristotle, because there's a lot to talk about there.
00:34:00.680You know, there are so many great things about Aristotle.
00:34:05.200There's so many great things and interesting things about ancient thought, medieval thought.
00:34:09.580I mean, I personally have always just been fascinated by the history of philosophy.
00:34:15.980I know, you know, some people think that philosophy is more like science, where, you know, the most interesting and important philosophy is just the philosophy that's being done kind of in the contemporary edge, the latest breaking philosophy, the new moves.
00:34:32.620And I think there is something to that.
00:34:34.480I don't want to denigrate that at all.
00:34:36.420I mean, I'm certainly not someone who just thinks, oh, we're just always repeating the ideas from the past, and it's the same debate over and over again.
00:34:47.720But that said, the history of philosophy, and just the, you know, I think the history for me of Western culture and thought, it's such a wide open, fascinating place to ask all sorts of interesting questions.
00:35:08.980And a lot of times, and a lot of times, things you take for granted turn out to be much more complicated than you thought.
00:35:16.420Questions that seem like they should have an obvious answer don't have an obvious answer.
00:35:24.120And as you dig into the details, you know, of the philosophical history, it gets more and more interesting, rather than less interesting.
00:35:32.880So, I could give you a million examples of this, but it really is an interesting debate about when the notion of free will started being recognized and widely embraced by not just, you know, ordinary folks, but even among philosophers.
00:35:54.620And, you know, when you try to say, okay, well, I'm going to go back and just figure out, well, where can you find it, it's hard to figure out.
00:36:02.840And different people have different theories about when it starts and what were its causes.
00:36:07.360And some people think it's been there right from the beginning.
00:36:10.120Other people think, no, it developed later.
00:36:13.620You don't see it really until the medieval ages.
00:36:16.560And someone like Aquinas, other people would say, no, no, no, you can see it starting to emerge in Stoicism.
00:36:21.000Anyway, just that's one example where you might think it's just going to be a bloody obvious.
00:36:29.320Oh, well, you just go back in the record and you find when people start mentioning this concept.
00:36:34.980But then when you try and do that, you find that that concept itself is much vaguer and harder to pin down.
00:36:42.520And who's making the contributions is very difficult to tease out.
00:36:48.980The history of philosophy is itself an amazingly interesting realm of inquiry.
00:36:54.480So, and I think, I guess early on, I got interested in Aristotle in particular because I became more and more enamored by his approach to philosophy,
00:37:13.460which seemed to me to be, in some ways, so humble.
00:37:20.000And it's funny because a lot of people have thought of Aristotle as sort of a system builder.
00:37:25.180And there's a sense in which that's true.
00:37:27.280But here's what I mean by saying he's humble.
00:37:29.620So, first, he has this method where whenever he's starting to investigate a given area of the human condition,
00:37:39.740he always thinks it's a good idea to identify what he calls the endoxa,
00:37:46.220or what we might translate it as the reputable opinions,
00:37:49.500which isn't to say every opinion someone has on the subject,
00:37:52.780but just, you know, is there opinion that most people have about the subject?
00:37:58.680Is there an opinion that some incredibly esteemed people have?
00:38:03.500Is there an opinion that's gone through lots of debate and has sort of been vetted and it keeps hanging on?
00:38:10.280And you first want to go out and map, well, what are those reasonable, sort of reputable opinions?
00:38:17.140And the reason Aristotle thinks you should always do that is because human beings really are rational animals for Aristotle.
00:38:25.420It doesn't mean they always get it right.
00:38:27.720It doesn't mean they always just, you know, hit a home run as soon as they use their mind.
00:38:32.820But if we really are rational creatures, I mean, usually there's something to what we're saying.
00:38:39.580There's some part of what we're on to that is getting at the truth.
00:38:45.080So Aristotle really just thinks you need to take other people's opinions, the reputable opinions, seriously.
00:38:51.200And Aristotle thought that if you come up with the best answer to the question,
00:38:55.740what you're going to see is not only that it answers the question based in argument
00:39:01.600and in ways that are clear and convincing,
00:39:04.740but your correct answer will allow you to explain where everyone else went right and wrong.
00:39:12.500So you'll be able to see in retrospect, you'll be able to say,
00:39:15.620okay, you know, now we can see why there was really something to that viewpoint,
00:39:21.340even though it didn't hold the full truth.
00:39:23.080And so just to give an example of this,
00:39:26.100you know, Aristotle believes that eudaimonia, happiness,
00:39:29.720the highest human good a person can have,
00:39:34.020he thinks it's the regular activity of your rational soul done in an excellent way,
00:39:41.560not just like a haphazard, but an excellent way over your complete life.