The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Dr. Steven Skultety - American Freedom, Aristotle, & the Beauty of Philosophy (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_920)

00:00:00.000 Hi 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,

00:00:28.720 at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at Ole Miss. Welcome, Stephen.

00:00:36.000 Gad, it's great to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I'm looking forward to actually having a conversation with you. This is terrific.

00:00:42.400 Likewise. 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.

00:00:52.640 So, will you indulge me as I try to cater to some of your research interests?

00:00:58.540 No, go ahead and wow me. I'm sure I'll be impressed.

00:01:02.100 I only picked three, although I could have got my personal library in this area is bigger than the three that I'll show you.

00:01:09.720 For 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.

00:01:18.200 So, I've got this one. Do you know this lady? 0.99

00:01:20.960 You know, yeah, I do. I haven't read that book, but I know of it. So, that's great that you're reading that.

00:01:27.120 I read that a couple of years ago in Portugal. Then, this is not Aristotle, but it's certainly within the genre.

00:01:36.580 How 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.

00:01:45.380 He's a gentleman who applies. He's a therapist. He applies cognitive behavior theory, which is very much related to stoicism.

00:01:52.020 And 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.

00:02:01.720 Okay.

00:02:02.780 The Dialogues of Plato.

00:02:04.960 There we go. Selected Dialogues of Plato.

00:02:07.020 All right.

00:02:07.700 Good.

00:02:08.180 Am I doing okay? Do I get maybe like an A- professor?

00:02:11.200 Fair. 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.

00:02:22.180 But it's great that you're doing that, Gad.

00:02:24.740 Thank 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.

00:02:37.920 So, the right place would be to start. It's a new center. Tell us about it. What was the idea for putting it together?

00:02:43.460 How 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.

00:02:49.540 Well, 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,

00:03:10.940 it just seemed to me that there were fewer and fewer people talking about just the American tradition of liberty.

00:03:22.240 And really, that's the basic root of how I ended up becoming the center director.

00:03:31.780 Because I tell people this all the time. I still believe it.

00:03:35.420 I think most people do believe in the ideals of liberty and justice for all as kind of a part of our basic American creed.

00:03:43.600 And 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.

00:03:56.640 I 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.

00:04:10.780 And that makes sense to me.

00:04:12.620 I mean, you know, philosophers have been thinking about justice for a long time, and I think that's important.

00:04:18.040 But you didn't see the same kind of emphasis on the liberty part of the liberty and justice for all part of the equation.

00:04:27.660 Maybe freedom and liberty get mentioned in a class.

00:04:31.660 Maybe there's a throwaway line here or there about it.

00:04:36.200 But there was no kind of big emphasis.

00:04:38.720 There was no explicit, sustained attempt to make sure that students were thinking about liberty as deeply and as often as they were about justice.

00:04:49.980 So that was my basic idea for then when I became director of the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom.

00:05:00.400 That's the full name.

00:05:01.400 You 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.

00:05:21.680 And so everything we do is kind of aimed at that, although then there are reverberations outward from that.

00:05:28.740 But that was the main idea that got me started.

00:05:32.520 So 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.

00:05:47.180 Tell us a bit about that.

00:05:49.180 How many people signed up originally?

00:05:52.120 How is it growing?

00:05:53.280 Hopefully it is growing and will continue to grow.

00:05:55.340 Tell us a bit about that.

00:05:56.880 Yeah.

00:05:57.120 Well, and maybe this is a way I can answer the second question you asked, which I neglected in my first response.

00:06:06.080 So it is distinctive, I think, of our program that we really are trying to focus on the freedom side and the liberty side.

00:06:14.640 And 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.

00:06:28.600 We definitely need to be doing that.

00:06:30.660 But 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.

00:06:47.040 It really should be conserved.

00:06:48.820 It's okay to value it and to make sure you focus on that because it's good.

00:06:57.000 In 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.

00:07:07.560 So 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.

00:07:18.420 So anyway, programmatically, we then offer a freedom studies minor, which is an interdisciplinary minor that takes classes from a bunch of different disciplines.

00:07:29.080 But then the Declaration Center also staffs some freedom studies courses that we offer as part of that minor.

00:07:39.640 When we first started offering classes, let's see, I guess that was four semesters ago now, we had 26 students sign up at first.

00:07:50.660 Then the next semester we did it, we had 65 students sign up.

00:07:56.300 And then the third semester we had 135 students sign up.

00:08:00.860 And then I believe this semester were around 150 students signed up for those freedom studies classes.

00:08:07.000 And then I believe now we've got about 35 freedom studies minors.

00:08:12.900 And we equally have about 30 scholarship students in our freedom studies scholars program.

00:08:19.440 So just within three to four semesters, we've come a very long way very quickly.

00:08:28.000 And I'm, you know, I'm proud of that.

00:08:30.260 I'm also a little intimidated by it because I've done all that growth without too much advertising yet.

00:08:36.860 A 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,

00:08:45.500 from visiting some of the student groups on campus.

00:08:48.080 But we really haven't made a sustained effort to advertise, to get the word out about what we're doing.

00:08:55.000 And 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.

00:09:03.440 From the limited data that you have so far in the last couple of years since the center was founded,

00:09:09.260 do you have a sense of some of the key demographic predictors of the students that are likely to sign up?

00:09:16.900 So, example, without knowing anything, I might say, oh, you know, if I'm a student in political science or history or pre-law,

00:09:24.740 I'm more likely to be interested in some of the issues that would come up in the center.

00:09:29.820 Is that true or do you get someone who's in pre-med and engineering and pure mathematics that's saying,

00:09:35.740 wait a minute, I want to be involved in this?

00:09:37.880 Yeah, no, there are a few students like that.

00:09:40.500 I think right now most of our students, there's kind of three main buckets, I would say.

00:09:47.480 First bucket is students who are in the kind of traditional liberal arts.

00:09:52.120 So there are history majors or philosophy majors or English majors.

00:09:58.040 And they're interested in different aspects of the American founding from a kind of a liberal arts perspective.

00:10:04.880 Then I'd say another good third of our students are maybe in the business world.

00:10:10.500 And they're interested in entrepreneurialism and that side of things.

00:10:15.060 And 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.

00:10:30.040 But 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.

00:10:44.400 I mean, the word conservative is big tent.

00:10:47.460 A lot of things can happen in there.

00:10:49.820 But 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.

00:10:59.200 And it's OK to think that and to believe that.

00:11:02.280 And 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.

00:11:17.780 But it served its purpose and society has evolved beyond anything like constitutionalism or, you know, separation of powers and all and all of that.

00:11:30.720 One more question about demographics.

00:11:31.920 Then I want to drill down on the concept of freedom.

00:11:35.200 Yeah.

00:11:35.360 So I'm assuming there is a sex bias and that the students so far are much more skewed to being male than female.

00:11:44.640 Yeah, right now, that's right.

00:11:47.280 About 75 percent of our students, I would say, are are male, about 25 percent are female.

00:11:55.760 And, 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.

00:12:06.200 So the population at large here on our campus is, you know, kind of decidedly female.

00:12:13.180 But 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.

00:12:21.080 I 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.

00:12:36.520 But anyway, we'll work on that as time goes goes along.

00:12:41.100 Right 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.

00:12:53.780 Is 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?

00:13:06.200 Yeah, maybe.

00:13:08.520 You 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.

00:13:24.780 So I'm a big fan of, you know, philosophy, history, English, you know, political theory and things that have.

00:13:33.300 I really think it's best to get students who are committed to one of these main disciplines.

00:13:40.140 But 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.

00:13:58.600 So I just I'm not sure about this.

00:14:01.340 My thoughts might change over time.

00:14:04.460 But, 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.

00:14:19.580 I 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.

00:14:30.440 Gotcha.

00:14:30.900 OK, so as promised, I want to drill down a bit on the concept of freedom.

00:14:35.280 Yeah.

00:14:35.380 When 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.

00:14:47.700 But you could expand it to recently I've been doing a big, deep dive into, you know, the Austrian School of Economics.

00:14:55.080 And so I'm reading actually right now this guy right here, Doudicte von Mises and Hayek and the rest of that gang.

00:15:02.560 So we've got economic freedom.

00:15:03.900 But I want to expand the concept of freedom even more.

00:15:06.840 Yeah.

00:15:07.600 And let's see what you think about that.

00:15:08.980 So 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.

00:15:23.720 So, 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.

00:15:32.960 I 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.

00:15:42.520 When I am, you know, ironed out, trace the trajectory of my career, actually, I've done the opposite.

00:15:50.780 I didn't trace the trajectory.

00:15:52.060 I just go wherever I'm interested in attacking a problem.

00:15:55.480 So I'm not restricted by disciplinary constraints.

00:15:59.460 I want to just free flow wherever interesting people and interesting problems lay.

00:16:04.740 So there is that element of freedom.

00:16:06.180 So 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?

00:16:19.040 Yeah.

00:16:21.200 Yeah.

00:16:21.800 Here, I'll give you kind of my take on this.

00:16:24.280 I 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.

00:16:39.660 And I think all of these are kind of illustrated by some favorite, some great, you know, thinkers and authors.

00:16:46.220 And so, you know, the first, the bucket, let's start with the one you were talking about.

00:16:50.720 The 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.

00:17:19.940 Right. So, you know, my favorite image of this, let's call it the scientific kind of freedom.

00:17:26.600 Think about Benjamin Franklin.

00:17:28.880 You know, I just love the image of him out in a thunderstorm, flying a kite with a key on it.

00:17:36.540 I mean, that's just like a deeply American kind of idea.

00:17:40.480 Some guy out there just tinkering around, you know, no one's going to tell him what to do.

00:17:44.740 And he wants to know how the world works.

00:17:47.420 You know, he's not going to follow sort of instructions ahead of time.

00:17:51.380 Like 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.

00:18:04.920 And 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.

00:18:12.280 Let the scientists be scientific.

00:18:15.020 And also just I think of people in the entrepreneurial world like this, too.

00:18:20.000 Look, you've got to figure out how the business world works.

00:18:23.440 You've got to see if your company has what it takes.

00:18:26.480 Don't plan ahead of time.

00:18:29.560 Don't tell me ahead of time what that's going to look like.

00:18:32.960 You'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.

00:18:41.660 So that's kind of think of that as the tinkering spirit, the entrepreneurial spirit, the scientific spirit.

00:18:49.520 I think that's one component in being free.

00:18:52.020 The other, I think, component that that is really important in the American Dersion was the kind of freedom that comes from being religious.

00:19:04.240 And the the idea there, there's lots of variations of this.

00:19:08.580 But 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.

00:19:17.560 It means being a certain kind of person.

00:19:19.980 It 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.

00:19:43.020 Right. 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.

00:20:01.960 So 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.

00:20:12.080 And then the third kind of bucket, I think, and it's related to those first two.

00:20:17.820 But 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.

00:20:34.060 Even if it needs to be powerful to solve some problem, it should never be given unaccountable power.

00:20:42.480 It should never be given despotic power.

00:20:46.120 And so, you know, that's the other big component.

00:20:49.680 It's being a free person isn't just having spiritual composure in yourself.

00:20:54.800 It's not just being able to kind of do your own thing and figure out the way the world works.

00:20:59.260 It'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.

00:21:08.000 So 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.

00:21:23.180 So, you know, I think when I think about American liberty, I think about all three of those things being operative at the same time.

00:21:34.060 Some people maybe identify more just with one of the buckets.

00:21:39.620 But I kind of think that if our society ever identified with just one, the whole thing kind of goes off the rails.

00:21:46.800 You really do need sort of all three to work together and in concert.

00:21:51.940 So, sorry, that felt like I was talking for a very long time.

00:21:56.500 Go for it.

00:21:57.380 But that's kind of my idea about the nature of American liberty.

00:22:02.920 And, you know, all three of those buckets, there's historical precedence for all of those.

00:22:08.140 There's interesting debates within each of those.

00:22:10.800 And then, of course, there's debates among the parts, too, depending on who's involved.

00:22:16.360 But that would be my initial response.

00:22:20.280 That's the way I'm thinking about it right now.

00:22:21.920 Got you.

00:22:23.040 If 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.

00:22:38.120 Of 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.

00:22:48.260 If I were to take that sort of dichotomy and apply it to understanding whether the unique nature of American liberty is nature versus nurture.

00:23:00.580 And now it's not being applied at the individual level.

00:23:03.300 But the unit of analysis is the United States.

00:23:05.620 But because there is something.

00:23:07.160 I mean, the center is called Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom.

00:23:12.260 Not for freedom, implying that there is something that is unique, that is exceptional.

00:23:18.540 You 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.

00:23:24.840 Now, 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?

00:23:39.740 And then it's passed on to the rest of America. 0.54

00:23:42.240 Is it something is it something that was nurtured?

00:23:45.020 So how much of it is an indelible part of the American spirit versus passed down from or maybe it's both?

00:23:54.280 Yeah.

00:23:55.580 And I wish I had, you know, I wish I had all that figured out.

00:23:59.480 I mean, that's a complicated question.

00:24:01.360 I 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.

00:24:26.980 Because 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.

00:24:39.560 The basic set of conceptual relationships and the basic set of forces at play ends up kind of getting enshrined in a certain way.

00:24:47.720 So 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.

00:25:03.960 And 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.

00:25:25.660 So I guess, you know, it really, there is a nature there that survives as the American culture goes on and develops.

00:25:36.900 But now that said, it's also the case that there's nothing guaranteeing that that survives.

00:25:46.320 There'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.

00:25:54.340 So, you know, that nature while there does need to be nurtured.

00:26:00.600 And 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.

00:26:22.120 And people understand it in a deep way rather than just kind of a superficial way.

00:26:27.680 Well, 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.

00:26:40.720 No, that's right.

00:26:41.400 So that demonstrates that even within a system that is so well entrenched within freedom and liberty, things can very quickly go awry.

00:26:52.360 As, 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?

00:27:01.680 That'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.

00:27:24.200 So 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.

00:27:36.900 So you can kind of rediscover, you know, the genius that got the whole thing started.

00:27:42.780 And you're not just inheriting things that no longer are tracking, you know, the original ideas.

00:27:47.760 And 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.

00:28:14.560 So anyway, it does require kind of active involvement to keep something going through time.

00:28:25.960 If someone wanted to do a deep dive, and then after this question, I will pivot into Aristotle and his friends.

00:28:33.740 If 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.

00:28:52.240 How would you answer such a question if I were a student in one of your classes?

00:28:55.440 Oh, brother, that's really tough.

00:28:59.900 You know, well, let me just name kind of three books kind of off the top of my head.

00:29:07.720 I 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.

00:29:20.860 There'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.

00:29:48.200 The other book that we teach here in the Declaration Center is Thomas West's book called The Political Theory of the American Founding.

00:29:59.120 That book is more advanced.

00:30:01.140 It's a little more theoretical.

00:30:03.160 It'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.

00:30:16.040 And so that's a great, another great place to start.

00:30:20.200 But then the third and final is people have got to be reading the Federalist Papers.

00:30:26.000 You 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.

00:30:41.860 You 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.

00:30:53.420 They are throwing themselves to the mat in very dicey, very difficult, very conflict-ridden times.

00:31:06.440 And, you know, they're really trying to craft these ideas in the face of stiff and unrelenting opposition.

00:31:15.580 So 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.

00:31:27.360 So, 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.

00:31:37.420 But it is remarkable just to read about, you know, there's, of course, Jefferson, and then there's Madison.

00:31:44.480 And then, you know, don't underestimate the importance of Washington and Hamilton as well.

00:31:52.520 So there's, and those people were just very different from one another.

00:31:56.040 You 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.

00:32:04.100 There's a lot of heat and tension among them.

00:32:07.460 But they really, the dynamic among them really did forge something important and lasting.

00:32:13.560 If I turn the question that I pose to you, to me, in different contexts.

00:32:19.260 So, 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?

00:32:29.160 My 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.

00:32:36.700 He is the ultimate polymath.

00:32:38.700 He is great at so many things.

00:32:40.780 And so that resonates with me.

00:32:43.000 Or 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.

00:32:51.100 Which, 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.

00:32:59.540 And I think I was sold.

00:33:00.680 But I love Marcus Aurelius, because in his own way, he was a polymath, because he was an emperor who's doing emperor-y things.

00:33:09.980 And 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.

00:33:18.620 I thought, wow, that's a cool guy, an emperor who just wants to sit and think and read.

00:33:22.720 So 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.

00:33:37.680 So now let's turn to your main man, Aristotle.

00:33:41.380 I loved when we were sitting together at dinner, when you shared some of the elements of Aristotle that you thought would resonate with me.

00:33:50.460 You 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.

00:33:58.100 Yeah.

00:34:00.680 You know, there are so many great things about Aristotle.

00:34:05.200 There's so many great things and interesting things about ancient thought, medieval thought.

00:34:09.580 I mean, I personally have always just been fascinated by the history of philosophy.

00:34:15.980 I 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.

00:34:32.620 And I think there is something to that.

00:34:34.480 I don't want to denigrate that at all.

00:34:36.420 I 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.

00:34:44.440 I don't believe that.

00:34:45.520 The debate does change.

00:34:46.640 The ideas do change.

00:34:47.720 But 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.

00:35:08.980 And a lot of times, and a lot of times, things you take for granted turn out to be much more complicated than you thought.

00:35:16.420 Questions that seem like they should have an obvious answer don't have an obvious answer.

00:35:24.120 And as you dig into the details, you know, of the philosophical history, it gets more and more interesting, rather than less interesting.

00:35:32.880 So, 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.

00:35:54.620 And, 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.

00:36:02.840 And different people have different theories about when it starts and what were its causes.

00:36:07.360 And some people think it's been there right from the beginning.

00:36:10.120 Other people think, no, it developed later.

00:36:13.620 You don't see it really until the medieval ages.

00:36:16.560 And someone like Aquinas, other people would say, no, no, no, you can see it starting to emerge in Stoicism.

00:36:21.000 Anyway, just that's one example where you might think it's just going to be a bloody obvious.

00:36:29.320 Oh, well, you just go back in the record and you find when people start mentioning this concept.

00:36:34.980 But then when you try and do that, you find that that concept itself is much vaguer and harder to pin down.

00:36:42.520 And who's making the contributions is very difficult to tease out.

00:36:46.980 So, anyway, that's the first thing.

00:36:48.980 The history of philosophy is itself an amazingly interesting realm of inquiry.

00:36:54.480 So, 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,

00:37:13.460 which seemed to me to be, in some ways, so humble.

00:37:20.000 And it's funny because a lot of people have thought of Aristotle as sort of a system builder.

00:37:25.180 And there's a sense in which that's true. 0.72

00:37:27.280 But here's what I mean by saying he's humble.

00:37:29.620 So, first, he has this method where whenever he's starting to investigate a given area of the human condition,

00:37:39.740 he always thinks it's a good idea to identify what he calls the endoxa,

00:37:46.220 or what we might translate it as the reputable opinions,

00:37:49.500 which isn't to say every opinion someone has on the subject,

00:37:52.780 but just, you know, is there opinion that most people have about the subject?

00:37:58.680 Is there an opinion that some incredibly esteemed people have?

00:38:03.500 Is there an opinion that's gone through lots of debate and has sort of been vetted and it keeps hanging on?

00:38:10.280 And you first want to go out and map, well, what are those reasonable, sort of reputable opinions?

00:38:17.140 And the reason Aristotle thinks you should always do that is because human beings really are rational animals for Aristotle.

00:38:25.420 It doesn't mean they always get it right.

00:38:27.720 It doesn't mean they always just, you know, hit a home run as soon as they use their mind.

00:38:32.820 But if we really are rational creatures, I mean, usually there's something to what we're saying.

00:38:39.580 There's some part of what we're on to that is getting at the truth.

00:38:45.080 So Aristotle really just thinks you need to take other people's opinions, the reputable opinions, seriously.

00:38:51.200 And Aristotle thought that if you come up with the best answer to the question,

00:38:55.740 what you're going to see is not only that it answers the question based in argument

00:39:01.600 and in ways that are clear and convincing,

00:39:04.740 but your correct answer will allow you to explain where everyone else went right and wrong.

00:39:12.500 So you'll be able to see in retrospect, you'll be able to say,

00:39:15.620 okay, you know, now we can see why there was really something to that viewpoint,

00:39:21.340 even though it didn't hold the full truth.

00:39:23.080 And so just to give an example of this,

00:39:26.100 you know, Aristotle believes that eudaimonia, happiness,

00:39:29.720 the highest human good a person can have,

00:39:34.020 he thinks it's the regular activity of your rational soul done in an excellent way,

00:39:41.560 not just like a haphazard, but an excellent way over your complete life.

00:39:47.420 So not just on like a Tuesday.

00:39:49.280 You have to be regularly activating your rational soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life.

00:39:53.980 And he has this analysis of what it means to activate virtue that shows that if you do that,

00:40:03.380 you're actually going to experience a kind of enjoyment.

00:40:07.040 You're going to find pleasure as you use your mind in excellent ways.

00:40:13.020 And so because of that, he's able to turn around then and say,

00:40:15.620 well, you know, those other philosophers who said that happiness was just a matter of pleasure,

00:40:21.180 it was just the experience of pleasure.

00:40:23.080 Well, now we can see that they had something going for their position.

00:40:26.900 I mean, to say that happiness is pleasure, that's not a ridiculous view in light of what,

00:40:33.320 you know, my analysis shows.

00:40:34.720 Now, that's not the correct view.

00:40:37.220 There's more to happiness than just the experience of pleasure.

00:40:40.160 But they weren't totally off the mark.

00:40:43.020 So anyway, he does that kind of thing throughout his philosophy.

00:40:46.480 He wants to not only develop his own theory and back it up with arguments and evidence,

00:40:52.520 but he wants to show you that he takes everyone else's views really seriously as well

00:40:58.500 and can show you what those other views had going for them.

00:41:01.200 And I find that just incredibly intellectually satisfying.

00:41:06.260 I think that's rather wonderful.

00:41:10.780 Now, he's not always the most accurate in representing what other people's views are.

00:41:24.600 And so sometimes, you know, we can hold him to account for his...

00:41:28.900 By design.

00:41:29.480 Well, there's some debate about that.

00:41:32.100 I mean, sometimes he'll say, well, you know, Plato thought X as his reputable.

00:41:37.560 And then when you say, well, well, that's actually not quite right there, Aristotle.

00:41:41.420 And in fact, if you read Plato is making that mistake, well, no wonder then you kind of get

00:41:45.920 to swoop in and save the day.

00:41:47.580 So there are those kind of worries.

00:41:51.480 But as a general approach, I just find that really intellectually satisfying is that you

00:41:56.400 want to take other people's rationality seriously enough where it doesn't mean you agree with

00:42:01.000 them.

00:42:01.400 You know, it doesn't mean you say their theory is right, but you're saying there's something

00:42:04.400 to what they're saying.

00:42:05.380 And it's my job to figure out what that is.

00:42:08.320 So I guess that's the first point.

00:42:09.780 And then the second point is that not only do you take other people's or the reputable

00:42:15.020 opinions seriously, but Aristotle just, he's really great about when he moves into a domain

00:42:22.140 to understand it, he tries to exhaustively understand that domain, like let's say ethics,

00:42:28.800 for example.

00:42:30.600 But he doesn't then just turn around and say, well, since now I've figured out ethics, I

00:42:36.000 know that politics is just the application of ethics.

00:42:38.820 That's easy.

00:42:39.780 Um, I, you know, he, so he, he never just takes conclusions from one area and just assumes

00:42:47.520 that then he has the key to a whole bunch of other areas as well.

00:42:51.820 Uh, he thinks that you have to move into every area and you just have to build up your knowledge

00:42:58.720 about that area one step at a time.

00:43:01.560 Um, there's no shortcuts when it comes to being someone who has great understanding.

00:43:06.940 And, um, you know, so if you want to understand rhetoric, you need to go and figure out that

00:43:12.480 realm of the human condition.

00:43:13.680 If you understand politics, you've got to go figure out that realm of the human condition.

00:43:17.940 You want to understand botany?

00:43:19.600 You have to go understand that realm of the human condition.

00:43:21.900 And you just, maybe sometimes you can step back and see interesting parallels, but that's

00:43:28.380 all you're doing.

00:43:29.140 You're just noticing similarities.

00:43:31.180 You're not, you're, you haven't concluded ahead of time that you know what the similarities

00:43:35.960 are and you're going to force that, um, into your investigation.

00:43:39.420 And again, I just find that, that kind of humility, um, very intellectually satisfying.

00:43:46.000 Would you, so I, I think we might have discussed this, I mean, privately, you and I in person,

00:43:51.180 uh, and if we haven't, then it's good that I'm repeating it here, uh, for our viewers and

00:43:56.500 listeners.

00:43:56.740 So one of the, uh, uh, constructs that most interests me in, in science, I have a very synthetic

00:44:04.340 mind, meaning that I like to synthesize things and drop, uh, bridges between areas that heretofore

00:44:11.720 had been disconnected.

00:44:13.040 And the term that I love so much, which is not mine, uh, it's one that was reintroduced

00:44:17.960 into the lexicon by E.O.

00:44:19.180 Wilson, the Harvard biologist, consilience, right?

00:44:22.120 So unity of knowledge.

00:44:23.500 And so, uh, he argued, and I've argued in, in my own work that evolutionary theory serves

00:44:31.400 as the meta framework that allows us to, for example, draw bridges between the natural

00:44:36.220 sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.

00:44:38.780 So I, so I can study, uh, the, the psychology of aesthetics that will be typically studied,

00:44:45.420 say within the fine arts, uh, using an evolutionary understanding of why our perceptual system would

00:44:50.740 have evolved to be that way.

00:44:51.820 I can study political science using certain evolutionary principles.

00:44:56.000 So here I'm applying evolutionary theory to the social sciences.

00:44:58.620 Of course, evolutionary medicine is a field that would be within the natural sciences that

00:45:03.040 applies evolutionary theory.

00:45:05.540 So would it be correct, from what I remember in our conversation, I think you had mentioned

00:45:09.500 that given my, you know, penchant towards interdisciplinarity and consilience, Aristotle

00:45:15.780 would be the guy who scores the highest of sort of the grades on consilience.

00:45:21.540 Is that, is that true or am I misremembering this?

00:45:24.820 Um, I think maybe you're misremembering a little bit.

00:45:28.100 I mean, there's some, but I mean, there's, look, listen to me, there's something to what

00:45:31.260 you're saying.

00:45:32.720 Um, um, but you are right, uh, that, um, Aristotle was interested and did find, um, all sorts of

00:45:44.920 patterns, um, that would, you know, run across many different sorts of things that people beforehand

00:45:51.580 had thought were discreet.

00:45:52.800 Yes.

00:45:53.280 Um, and separate.

00:45:54.360 Um, and I, and I should say that, you know, that, that move that Aristotle is doing is

00:46:00.360 not unique to him.

00:46:01.500 Actually, that's one of the distinctive things about many of the, uh, pre-Socratic, um, philosophers,

00:46:10.140 as well as Plato.

00:46:11.060 You know, they were trying to take those first steps of philosophy, uh, against the backdrop

00:46:17.940 of a, of an ancient Greek world that was controlled by lots of different warring, unpredictable,

00:46:24.220 unpredictable, discreet and particular gods and goddesses.

00:46:28.900 Right.

00:46:29.280 And so with that kind of Homeric, uh, Hesiodic backdrop, you know, the world is someplace that

00:46:36.680 doesn't admit of a lot of consistency.

00:46:39.140 It's a world in which you can't, um, uh, find some insight from one discipline and then

00:46:45.080 think it's going to apply over here because the place over there is run by a different

00:46:49.840 God who's also unpredictable.

00:46:51.500 There's no kind of, um, uh, uh, system that you could see.

00:46:56.200 And so the very first Western philosophers usually identified as Thales, you know, when

00:47:01.280 he had this idea, um, that all is water, um, and that sounds somewhat simplistic, uh, and

00:47:09.740 in some ways it is, but you can see even in his attempt to formulate that, notice what he's

00:47:16.220 trying to do.

00:47:17.660 He's trying to find something, something that would have explanatory power across all these

00:47:24.780 different domains.

00:47:26.000 Um, and it's interesting that his candidate for that is something that you could understand

00:47:31.360 how it could take different shapes.

00:47:33.080 You know, when water's heated up, it turns to gas, when it's cooled, it freezes and turns

00:47:37.640 to ice.

00:47:38.040 So it can be a solid, it can be a liquid, it can be a gas.

00:47:40.940 So his candidate for that was, and it, in some ways you can see his thought was that's

00:47:45.800 the kind of thing that could really be, um, across many different places in, in a nondiscreet

00:47:52.520 way.

00:47:52.800 So Plato, uh, Aristotle, they all are kind of working in Thales's, um, uh, initial insight,

00:48:01.140 uh, even though they're all sort of doing their different versions of how to, how to do that

00:48:06.600 in the best, uh, the best way.

00:48:08.640 So, I mean, I agree with you that there is that component in Aristotle, like his predecessors,

00:48:14.580 um, where he is, uh, using a method that can be, uh, used in a bunch of disciplines.

00:48:20.980 He is finding parallels in a bunch.

00:48:24.040 The, the only place I'd push back, um, and maybe, you know, you would never do this, but

00:48:29.400 you just want to be sure that if you take something like evolutionary psychology and apply it in

00:48:34.380 a given realm, aesthetics, um, the thing Aristotle, Aristotle would be fine with that.

00:48:39.980 The thing he wouldn't be fine with is then you, if you said, well, therefore, you know,

00:48:44.180 all of aesthetics then could be reduced to the, uh, the application you just used, um,

00:48:49.740 Aristotle's path would be like, well, you've got to go in and develop a fully fledged aesthetic

00:48:54.780 theory based on all of the views and aesthetics, all the reputable views, have an independent,

00:49:01.780 freestanding theory of aesthetics.

00:49:03.600 Um, and then we can step back and we can say, well, now, now that we know all that in what

00:49:10.860 dimensions or in what aspects, uh, can we see evolutionary theory at play?

00:49:16.100 And you just have to be ready for the idea that maybe it explains some aspects, but it

00:49:21.020 doesn't give you the whole, um, the whole story.

00:49:23.700 Using the current parlance, what you, what you just mentioned about Aristotle, he would

00:49:30.180 be saying that it is a form of greedy reductionism, right?

00:49:34.380 You're right.

00:49:35.360 You're, you're reducing too much to the level of just evolutionary theory explains it all.

00:49:41.240 There must be some other mechanisms that are also explanatory in their capabilities.

00:49:45.720 Yes.

00:49:46.460 Yeah, that's, that's right.

00:49:47.660 That's right.

00:49:48.100 And just even to understand what it is you're explaining with evolutionary theory, you would

00:49:53.200 need to develop up, um, an independent aesthetic theory to, to begin with.

00:49:58.480 Um, you might think you're applying it in a way that you weren't.

00:50:02.660 Um, so you have to know the material to which the theory is being applied as well.

00:50:06.440 So, but yeah, that's, that's right.

00:50:08.260 Um, uh, Aristotle is not, he's sort of the opposite of a reductionist in some ways.

00:50:14.280 Um, in fact, in fact, that's why some people don't enjoy reading Aristotle.

00:50:18.720 Um, because, you know, we're used to reading things where there's just kind of one

00:50:22.920 idea and it's explicated and, and, um, it kind of is a nice whole and you feel like you're

00:50:28.700 a glide, you're on a glide path of the argument the whole time.

00:50:31.720 And, you know, I tell people reading Aristotle's like falling into a, um, uh, like a thorn bush

00:50:38.320 or something like there's just a, a thousand different things, a thousand different observations.

00:50:43.120 He doesn't want to edit out any of them or just say, okay, look, at the end of the day,

00:50:48.160 all of this boils down to this.

00:50:50.120 He's very reluctant, uh, ever to just boil things down to just a, a simple thing.

00:50:55.800 He likes to keep as much of the complexity, uh, in there as, as he can.

00:51:00.720 So he's not, not ready to reduce unless he absolutely has to.

00:51:04.900 Uh, one more question about Aristotle et al.

00:51:07.100 Then I'll end our chat.

00:51:08.760 Although of course I could keep you here for another five hours on a, a personal question

00:51:12.760 that I, I hope you'll enjoy answering.

00:51:15.280 Uh, so this is actually a, an anecdote that I, uh, first shared in my happiness book.

00:51:23.320 And it was in a conversation I had had with, uh, do you know the fellow Lebanese author

00:51:28.400 Nassim Talib?

00:51:29.640 Do you know?

00:51:30.160 Uh-huh.

00:51:30.840 I can't remember if I shared this with you, uh, the story personally, uh, when we were together

00:51:35.840 in, and at Oxford, but one day I was, I was sitting with Nassim and he looked at me somewhat

00:51:41.880 jokingly, but I think there was some truth to what he was saying.

00:51:45.020 He goes, you know, again, I don't really understand what you guys study in psychology because I

00:51:49.640 thought that the ancient Greeks have already discovered all that there is to discover about

00:51:53.880 human nature.

00:51:54.640 And, you know, it was a bit of a sort of a quip to tease me and so on.

00:51:58.160 But then as I was doing my, uh, you know, research in writing the happiness book, of course,

00:52:05.340 the ancient Greeks have written a lot about the good life and Nassim kept coming up in

00:52:11.440 my head because I was saying every single time I seem to come up with what I thought

00:52:15.660 is a clever, brilliant idea. 0.99

00:52:18.980 And I'm like, God damn, I'm smart. 0.99

00:52:21.340 And then I go, oh shit, Epictetus already said this 2000 years ago. 0.99

00:52:24.920 I'm not nearly as smart as I think I am. 0.95

00:52:26.700 And, and the place where I saw this most is that I have a whole chapter on the inverted

00:52:33.480 you to demonstrate that of all, you know, possible laws of optimal flourishing, the one

00:52:41.360 universal law is probably the inverted you, which is too little of something is not good.

00:52:46.440 Too much of something is not good.

00:52:48.040 And you have to always look for finding that sweet spot.

00:52:51.100 And I demonstrate that that mechanism operates at the neuronal level, at the individual level,

00:52:57.320 at the ecological level.

00:52:58.920 Now, of course, Aristotle didn't necessarily do it across all these units of analyses, but

00:53:03.540 in Nicomachean ethics, of course, he talks about the golden mean.

00:53:07.580 Yeah.

00:53:07.860 The doctrine, the so-called doctrine of the mean.

00:53:10.160 Yeah.

00:53:10.340 The doctrine of the mean.

00:53:11.140 Exactly.

00:53:11.840 And so, I mean, what, so remember I asked you earlier, you know, was there something unique

00:53:18.040 about the American experience that generated all these guys, blah, blah, blah.

00:53:21.420 So now let's apply it to 2,000 years earlier.

00:53:25.000 In your view, is there something unique in the water in ancient Greece that generated so 0.78

00:53:32.240 many ridiculous thinkers? 0.55

00:53:34.600 And if so, what is it? 0.97

00:53:35.920 I, I don't have a good answer to that.

00:53:39.220 I really don't have a good answer to that.

00:53:41.560 But, and this is another way, I guess, another way in which the history of philosophy, I think,

00:53:47.420 humbles you.

00:53:48.960 Not only do you keep learning how, you know, all these great insights from people of the

00:53:54.820 past, and not only do you realize a lot of things you thought were creative and novel

00:53:58.300 actually have all these precedents.

00:54:01.580 But your question, also, you just realize how little we really do understand about just

00:54:08.080 big questions like that.

00:54:09.300 Like, why, what, what allowed Greece to do this?

00:54:12.960 Like, what was going on?

00:54:14.620 And I, I'll just be honest, I don't have a good, a good answer to that.

00:54:19.660 Can I offer one, perhaps?

00:54:21.220 Yeah, absolutely.

00:54:22.080 So, you know how Veblen talked about the theory of the leisure class?

00:54:28.800 And as part of that writing, he talks about hence conspicuous consumption and so on.

00:54:33.960 So, I think that Greece had to have reached a certain level of survival, you know, comfort

00:54:45.020 that it has an institutional mechanism that says, hey, all super smart people, go off in

00:54:53.160 your togas and do your thinking because you don't have to worry minute to minute about whether 0.99

00:54:59.400 you're going to be killed and raped and maimed and enslaved. 0.99

00:55:04.420 If nothing other than that, could that explain a lot of it? 0.99

00:55:08.600 Yeah, I think that's part of it.

00:55:10.120 Yeah.

00:55:10.380 I mean, you know, you'll remember that, you know, during the Bronze Age, you know, you

00:55:17.260 had, you did have writing and reading and things.

00:55:21.320 And there was this period in the ancient Greek world of what's known as the Dark Ages that

00:55:25.320 lasts from about 1200 BC, you know, through about like 750, 700 BC, where just life is

00:55:32.400 so bad, life is so difficult that writing disappears, like even receipts for trading things.

00:55:39.300 So, you're right that it wasn't until kind of Greece emerged from the Dark Ages, and then

00:55:45.940 there was a level of material prosperity that allowed people to start writing again.

00:55:50.360 And maybe in light of what they had gone through, were able to sort of, I don't know, come together

00:55:59.100 in some new way.

00:56:01.260 I mean, I'll throw out the one idea I've had over the years about this.

00:56:04.820 I want to tell you in advance, though, I have like 30% confidence in this as an explanation.

00:56:11.600 But I remember reading this book by this scholar, Michael Poliakoff, about combat sports in the

00:56:21.660 ancient world.

00:56:22.420 And I know this is a funny thing to mention, but in chapter one of that book, he pointed

00:56:27.960 out this incredibly interesting thing, which first of all, just the Greeks were very competitive.

00:56:33.420 Um, but here's the really interesting thing.

00:56:36.960 He said that, you know, outside of Greece, uh, competitions just weren't a big part of

00:56:44.900 anyone's culture.

00:56:46.060 So, for example, there were other places around the world where people would box, where there

00:56:51.580 were boxing matches.

00:56:52.800 But the way it would be organized is there would just be a festival of boxing.

00:56:57.840 So just everyone, you know, the first guys would come up, they'd box, then they'd get out,

00:57:01.780 then the next guys would box, and then you just watched the boxing all day.

00:57:05.080 And you're like, okay, the festival of boxing.

00:57:07.380 But it was only in Greece where you had this idea of like, well, wait a second, the guys

00:57:12.060 who won the first round, we now need to have them box each other in a second round. 0.51

00:57:19.700 And we need the winners from that second round to then box each other, because we need to

00:57:23.280 figure out who is the best boxer among the group.

00:57:27.720 The original Marsh Madness brackets.

00:57:30.120 That's right.

00:57:30.620 That's exactly right.

00:57:31.540 And, you know, Poliakoff was suggesting that that really was something distinctive in the

00:57:37.540 ancient Greek world, where there was this desire or interest in setting people against

00:57:44.040 each other in competition so that you could find who was the best at this, that, and the

00:57:49.460 other.

00:57:50.500 And so here's the idea.

00:57:53.800 Maybe, first of all, maybe that helps explain why Greece had a lot of economic prosperity,

00:58:02.220 is there was some toleration for people being able to trade and figure out what the best

00:58:06.340 way of doing things is.

00:58:07.840 But it also might have set in motion this dynamic of, well, look, we've got five theories out

00:58:13.280 there about this.

00:58:15.320 Which one is the best theory?

00:58:16.820 And we need to set those theories in conversation and debate with one another to figure out what's

00:58:23.040 the best overall so we can find an explanation that it, you know, is clearly the best one.

00:58:29.240 So I don't know.

00:58:30.660 Maybe the competitive aspect of ancient Greek culture was sort of part of the secret sauce

00:58:38.540 that led to this explosion of culture as well as kind of philosophical production, as well

00:58:48.340 as, remember, dramatic production.

00:58:49.980 The poets back then would be in poetry competitions with one another to see who could come out

00:58:56.620 with the best play, and there would actually be judges who voted, and one person would

00:59:00.480 be named the winner.

00:59:03.100 So maybe there's something about that that helps explain the success of ancient Greece.

00:59:07.580 But look, I want to, I'm not going to float that as a reductive explanation of it,

00:59:15.540 because I'm not sure.

00:59:16.860 There's probably other things about the way Greeks understood the divine, their theological

00:59:23.080 views, and maybe there's some things just about the physical environment of Greece that

00:59:26.620 play a role, too.

00:59:27.520 I'm not sure.

00:59:28.600 Interesting.

00:59:29.400 Do you have time for one last question?

00:59:30.920 Sure, you bet.

00:59:31.880 Okay, so I said that it would be a personal one.

00:59:35.360 I hope I'm not giving too much away.

00:59:37.060 If I talk about your physics background, am I giving something that you don't want to be

00:59:40.380 discussing, or can I talk about that?

00:59:41.800 Oh, that's my, no, it's fine.

00:59:44.760 I mean, I feel like that's a different life.

00:59:47.120 Yeah, well, because I was going to, so let me tell you how I'm going to set this up.

00:59:51.660 I often ask, as the last question, a question on the psychology of regret.

00:59:57.060 And that's because in my previous book on happiness, I have a chapter where I talk about,

01:00:01.860 you know, a life that's well lived is one where hopefully when you look back at your

01:00:05.400 life, you have as few regrets as possible.

01:00:08.040 Yeah.

01:00:08.220 One of my former professors at Cornell was one of the pioneers of the study, the psychology

01:00:15.420 of regret, where he, although he wasn't the first one to make this point, he certainly

01:00:19.800 is the one who sort of developed the empirical study of regret due to action versus regret

01:00:24.700 due to inaction.

01:00:26.140 Regret due to action, I regret that I cheated on my wife and now we're divorced.

01:00:30.000 First, regret due to inaction, I regret that I didn't pursue my career in physics, right?

01:00:37.720 Okay.

01:00:38.240 So, and it turns out, Stephen, and this may not surprise you that over the long run, when

01:00:43.740 you ask people, which form of regret do they regret most?

01:00:47.800 Usually it's ones due to inaction over action.

01:00:52.440 So if I were to flip that question to you, and it doesn't have to be regarding the fact

01:00:56.140 that you didn't become a physicist, you're still a young man, but what would be your

01:01:00.540 biggest looming regret so far in your life?

01:01:04.320 Oh, gosh, God.

01:01:08.680 My biggest regret, you know, I, let me start, I don't regret, just to, maybe people don't

01:01:18.080 know my story, why would they?

01:01:19.480 But, you know, early on, I was very interested in physics, and just didn't really know anything

01:01:25.080 about philosophy.

01:01:26.700 And when I discovered philosophy, it would just, I couldn't believe it.

01:01:31.760 It just was incredibly interesting to me.

01:01:34.580 And ever since that moment, I've never had any regrets about going into philosophy.

01:01:40.160 You know, it continues to inspire me and surprise me and be fascinating to me.

01:01:46.880 Um, you know, I guess I do regret, uh, not having more time to read, um, and to, to do

01:01:56.160 research just because I am, uh, signed up, you know, to, to try and make a difference in

01:02:02.560 all of these other ways, uh, with my, uh, administrative duties.

01:02:06.240 But even that I don't regret because, you know, as I've been running the Declaration Center,

01:02:11.200 as I've served as the chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion, I've learned so much

01:02:16.560 more, uh, first of all, just about how organizations work.

01:02:20.480 I was very naive about that.

01:02:22.220 I've also learned a lot about myself.

01:02:24.540 Um, when you kind of put yourself in these situations, you get thrown into things that

01:02:28.960 you never imagined you would.

01:02:31.460 And that brings out-

01:02:32.180 Like the founding fathers.

01:02:33.040 And it brings out parts of your personality you never knew you had.

01:02:36.180 Um, and so it's been a tremendous, you know, learning, uh, experience for me, um, even though

01:02:44.540 I don't, I haven't had as much time to sort of just sit down and contemplate, um, as, as

01:02:50.400 much as I would have, as I would have liked.

01:02:52.820 But, um, you know, it's hard.

01:02:55.040 It's a hard question to answer, Gad, because I really don't have, um, a lot of regrets.

01:03:00.120 I, I seem to be living my life in a way where-

01:03:02.400 That's why you're always smiling and happy.

01:03:04.360 That proves my point.

01:03:05.120 Yeah, I, I feel, I feel young at heart still.

01:03:07.920 I'm, you know, life is such an adventure.

01:03:10.200 I never know what's going to happen.

01:03:11.480 And I love keeping an open mind about what the future will bring.

01:03:14.360 So, um, so, so far so good.

01:03:16.680 I guess if we, if we do have a, uh, a time where I find I have a major regret, uh, that

01:03:22.700 can be the, the warp and woof of another, uh, interview about what happened.

01:03:27.940 Yeah, let me, let me end with the following and I'm, I, cause I want it to be recorded.

01:03:33.880 Uh, when I first connected with you and with Rankin, Rankin Sterling, who's the, uh, you

01:03:40.200 know, associate director, uh, I, I didn't know much about Ole Miss.

01:03:44.720 I didn't know much about the center.

01:03:46.380 And every day I wake up irrespective of how religious I am or not and say, thank God for

01:03:53.000 Steven and for Rankin and for Ole Miss.

01:03:55.680 I'm so honored and so delighted to be associated with the center.

01:04:00.500 Thank you for having, uh, come and gotten me for this wonderful adventure.

01:04:05.400 Come back anytime you'd like.

01:04:06.880 I can't wait to see you again at Oxford.

01:04:09.180 Uh, I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.

01:04:11.500 And I'll talk to you soon.

01:04:11.820 Oh, it's been great.

01:04:12.600 No, Gad, it's always great to talk with you.

01:04:14.880 And, um, we're going to do so many exciting things down here at the center.

01:04:19.960 We're all really looking forward to it.

01:04:22.060 Thank you so much.

01:04:22.680 Stay on the line so we can say goodbye offline.

01:04:24.240 Thank you so much, Steven.

01:04:25.640 Anytime.

01:04:26.480 Cheers.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - November 18, 2025

Dr. Steven Skultety - American Freedom, Aristotle, & the Beauty of Philosophy (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_920)

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