Aristotle: The World's Greatest Philosopher?

John Cers, welcome back to the show. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> Aristotle is perhaps the most celebrated and influential philosopher of all time. Do you think he's overrated? >> No, absolutely not. Um, I mean, he's an incredibly difficult thinker to get to grips with, but I think once you do and you kind of really get a sense of how his mind works, I mean, I think it's absolutely incredible. And >> I don't think that I don't think that that involves thinking that he's right

about everything. I don't think you have to agree with Aristotle to think he's an incredible thinker. I think it's just the way that he analyzes things, the way he makes decisions. He's very very good at saying, look, it's just not as simple as that. We need to complicate this issue further. And I think that that's like a really valuable um skill or trait for a philosopher. Mhm. >> Um, and the other thing that he'll do that's really impressive is we'll see him kind of make a first stab at an answer to a question and then he'll give a second slightly more refined answer to

the same question and then another. So there's a sense in which you can see him thinking through the problem. >> And so if you read him in a way where you think, okay, this is a big systematic thinker and you see these kind of seeming contradictory statements, you think, God, what's going on here? All these logical inconsistencies in what he's saying. But if you get the sense that you got to kind of get into the rhythm of his thought process and you see him, okay, here's a general statement. Now let's refine it. Now let's refine it. Once you get into the rhythm of how he thinks, then I it's really impressive.

>> Sure. So people will have heard of Aristotle, but maybe especially if they're watching an introduction like this, they might not really know what he's all about. So in the fewest possible words to start with, like what what's what's the hype? What's what's so great about Aristotle? So I mean perhaps start with a very small bit of biography. So um so Aristotle is a student of Plato. He's as a teenager he goes to Plato's Academy in Athens. He studies with Plato for 20 years is

effectively Plato's greatest and brightest student. So he's coming in that legacy, right? Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. And um so he's drawing on all of those Platonic ideas, but then he's challenging them and questioning them and moving them on to kind of the next stage. So that's kind of one part of what he's doing, but he's also a natural scientist. In fact, I think the best way to think about Aristotle as a thinker is first and foremost, he's a biologist. >> He's interested in understanding the

natural world. He's interested in understanding organisms, including us, and how they operate. Um, and so you've got this combination of kind of very refined, complex metaphysics that he's inheriting from Plato, and you've got this really down to earth, nitty-gritty, let's understand the physical world. He's bringing both of those things together. Um, at the same time, he's also interested in politics, he's interested in literature, he invents formal logic. >> I mean, there's no one in history that has invented more academic disciplines

than Aristotle, right? That's quite an achievement for anyone to do. >> Yeah, that's fair enough. Okay. So I think and and the thing is each of these areas like formal logic and his sort of so-called metaphysics and his ethics and they're sort of world unto themselves. So I think the best thing to do is kind of take them one by one and start getting a feel for the kind of stuff that Aristotle was thinking about. So I suppose like one of the most foundational questions I people often start with Aristotle with the ethics

stuff but I always like to leave that till last. We spoke before about stoicism and we did the same thing. Everyone knows that stoics are people who >> you know hold fast in the face of suffering. But let's do the metaphysics first and then see why that's what comes out of it. So for Aristotle I suppose the sort of fundamental question for a philosopher might be something like you know what is being? What is substance? What is the universe made out of? What is like the foundational nature of reality? when it comes to Aristotle, how can we start

getting a feel for his picture of that? >> So, I think to come back to something I was saying earlier, his first movie is to say it's more complicated than anyone else has thought. Right. So, kind of the famous sort of early metaphysician in Greek philosophy is a guy called Pimemenades. Yes. >> Um who's a big influence on Plato in many ways. And Pimenes says, well, things either exist or they don't exist. there's no middle ground, right? It's either one or the other. And um things

can't suddenly come to be out of nothing, right? So you can't have um existing things suddenly appearing. Um um and equally, you can't have things that exist vanishing into thin air, right? That doesn't happen either. So things either are or they are not. Um and ultimately, Palmenities says, well, everything just is. Everything just exists, right? You can't have a non-existent thing. And so if you just have existence and nothing can fall out of existence, you kind of just have

permanent eternal existence. Everything just is all the time, right? And this is all very kind of armchair philosophy, right? >> Um and so Plato inherit inherits these ideas. Clearly Aristotle and Plato were talking about these things in the academy when Aristotle was young. And he comes along and says, "Well, look, we need to complicate this. This is a far too simplistic way to think about existence." Right? So for instance, this chair exists. It's a thing. Um the

brownness of the chair also exists. Um but the brownness doesn't exist on its own. The you can't have brownness just like that. You can have a brown chair. >> So the brownness exists as an attribute of the chair. So it exists in a different way to the way the chair exists. Right. Yeah. So suddenly we've got two ways of thinking about what what is or what what um what is real. And then he's um given that he's interested in organisms, biology and the natural world, the one defining characteristic

of the natural world is change, right? Everything's constantly in motion. Um this is something again that Palmenities kind of is denying. Things just are and they don't change. >> Mhm. >> So our no everything's changing. Everything's moving all the time. And if we look at physical processes and organisms, then these give us really clear examples of this. So um sort of classic example would be say the acorn right um so an acorn is an acorn but it

also is going to become an oak tree or or has the potential to become an oak tree right and so there's a sense in which the acorn is two things at the same time. It is an acorn and it is potentially an oak tree >> um in the way in which nothing else is potentially an oak tree. >> Yeah. Uh and and that potentiality is like part of what the acorn is. You wouldn't fully understand the nature of an acorn unless you understood its potentialities. And I mean you mentioned Palmenades who it's quite hard to sort of interpret

him. Um but he he seems to deny the existence of change because he sort of says as you say like stuff that is is stuff that is not is not. For something to change would mean that something which is not would need to sort of come into being. You know, for there to be a tree that that grows or something, there would need to be something like a tree that wasn't there before. That's something coming from nothing that that doesn't make sense. So Palmenity sort of brings up this paradox of change. And Aristotle in attempting to sort of

answer this concern starts with this distinction. He says, well, you know, there are different ways in which something can be. And for an acorn, it is an acorn, but it's also potentially a tree. And you might think, well, potentiality isn't like it's not really a thing. It's doesn't exist. But the acorn isn't potentially a chicken. It doesn't have the potential to become a chicken, but it does have the potential to become a tree. So, whatever that is, it's like it's it's real and it means something, right? >> Yeah. Absolutely. As you said, it's it's the defining characteristic of an acorn, right? You don't know what an acorn is unless you know it can it has the

potential to do that. So, so that is really really important. And so this kind of really challenges the sorts of things that say PNI was saying because the acorn is defined by what it is not >> at the moment. >> Yeah. >> But what it can become so quite nice and the other thing that's also going on here if you think back to sort of Plato I mean lots of people will have their kind of sort of caricature of Platonic metaphysics right there are ideal forms that are unchanging and then the physical world is constantly changing and it's just some kind of sort of shadow of of these really existing

unchanging things. So again, Plato's committed to this idea that the things that really exist are are eternal and don't alter and the things that change are somehow secondary and less important. And so again, Aristotle wants to challenge that and say, "No, it's all this changing stuff that isn't fixed in its in its being." Um, that's the interesting stuff. That's the world we live in. That's the world we want to understand. >> Yeah. Okay. So that's interesting. Okay. Aristotle comes along and says, "Hey, like you know, when we're talking about

stuff that exists, there's sort of potential and there's actual. You know, there's there's acorns are potentially a tree and when it becomes a tree, it's actually a tree and it has the potential to decay or whatever." Okay. Uh so what, you know, who cares what what does that mean? Why why would someone bother sort of thinking about about that? Yeah. Okay. An acorn potentially becomes a tree. Like who cares? >> So I mean it's just part of trying to understand the natural world, right? If you're trying to do science, I mean, then you're going to want to understand

how these processes work. But I think so, I mean, I think one really interesting thing to do in thinking about a philosopher is who their enemies are, right? Who's the bad guy, right? And for Aristotle, I think the bad guy is Democrus, the atomist, >> right? So um so Democrus is kind of presenting what we would now call a kind of reductive materialism, right? Everything can be just reduced down to matter in motion. >> Yeah. Democrus is one of our earliest

perhaps the earliest thinkers who who believed that the universe is made out of sort of small indivisible well atom. I mean the word atom just means indivisible, right? It's unfortunate that we have since split the atom. [laughter] But by atom literally we mean whatever the most indivisible small sort of unit of stuff is. That's what an atomist. And democrus says the universe is made up of atoms. Whatever the nature of those atoms are and everything that exists can be explained in terms of

those atoms which sounds a lot like you know a modern materialist. And this is the kind of thing that democratus is talking about. >> Yeah. Absolutely. And and you know, you're you're all too aware of all of the sorts of problems that that might raise if you're just talking about dead matter in motion. How it is that is it that some things are alive? How does consciousness grow out of just the interactions of these bits of dead matter? Right? So this is Aristotle's sort of big concern that just describing the physical world in terms of that kind of um inert matter just

that model just isn't rich enough to explain the kind of the complexity and the variety that we see in the natural world in particularly in um biological organisms where um so I mean think back to the acorn right if you're if you're a kind of reductive materialist you you you break it up you look at all the component you see what it's made out of in theory. That's your complete explanation of what it is. >> But that doesn't tell you anything about trees. >> Yeah. >> So, it's not really enough.

>> Yeah. Right. Right. Right. >> It's a it's it's only a partial explanation. We might say, >> sure. I mean, a modern thinker might be quick to kind of criticize Aristotle that they might sort of say, well, if you actually knew everything about the molecular makeup of the acorn and the molecular makeup of the the chemical surrounding it or like of of the sunlight and all this kind of if you actually knew all of those facts and put them together, you would kind of predict a a a tree that a tree would sort of

come about. But few things to consider is certainly maybe it's not as simple as that, but also like Aristotle is is very early on here. You know, he's one of our earliest people to be thinking about this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, sometimes he misses things we now know to be true, but like is still undisputedly a genius for his time. I mean, there's one interesting moment where Aristotle seems to kind of prefigure evolutionarily evolutionary natural selection. like he considers the

possibility of like essentially natural selection. He he describes it and then he dismisses it for reasons which now we understand evolution seem a bit too sort of forthright. But the fact that that was even sort of something that was considered by him is is is pretty astonishing. So I don't know. I I kind of want to just sort of protect Aristotle's reputation against what might be called presentism and realize that we're dealing with a we're dealing with a mind here. Okay. Um I kind of also wanted to you said

talking about like who his enemies are. Okay. So you've got Democrus the atomist. You've also talked about how Aristotle was a student of Plato and there are some really important ways in which Aristotle differs from Plato. Right. So you just alluded to this concept of the forms and in the context of change but could you tell me a bit more about what like Plato's idea of forms were and how Aristotle thinks about things differently? M so I mean precisely what Plato thinks about ideal forms is a kind of a vexed question. It

says different things in different dialogues but he seems to be committed to the idea that that the kind of really really secure knowledge that he's after can't be knowledge of something that's changeable. Right? Because you think you know it and then you go back to it a week later and it's different. So you don't really know it after all. There's a sense in which for Plato, real knowledge looks like mathematics, right? Eternal and unchanging. 2 plus 2 always equals four. >> Yeah.

>> And so he thinks that if all of our knowledge has to look like that, then um it's going to have to be knowledge of unchanging ideas. Um and so he thinks that as we look at objects in the physical world um as we look at chairs for instance, we ought not to be so concerned about the particular chair in front of us which is going to change and decay and and and not be there forever. But instead we want to kind of

I was going to say sort of abstract, but that's not the right word. um we're going to want to try and get to the idea of chair in itself. We want to move from the particular chairs we see to the idea of chairness if you like. >> Um and he thinks that that idea of chairness if it's unchanging must have always existed. And then there's all the kind of very weird and wonderful stuff about was there a past life when we encountered these ideas directly before we then you know >> yeah entertains the idea that okay so I

mean the question is right you've got a chair over there I've got a chair over here and there's a table in between them right there's something that these two chairs have in common that they both don't have in common with the table which is why we call these chairs and that a table and the question is like what is it they're not the same object yours is over there mine's over here but They've got something which connects them and makes them both fall into this category of chair. And so for Plato, there is this thing called chairness which both of them must like

sort of participate in, right? And our knowledge of what a chair is now must be because we had some kind of prior understanding before our birth. He entertains this idea that we were sort of existing in the realm of forms, which is a little bit wacky and a little bit weird. But look, it's a it's a real problem, right? Because otherwise we've just got got a bunch of matter and it's like arranged in various ways and yeah you know I could call it a chair but I could also use it like a table or something to to say that there's this real thing that these have in common that the lampshade doesn't means there

must be this sort of form of chairness that they all participate in. Aristotle is aware of this problem but he doesn't agree with Plato's solution. >> No I mean let me give a kind of a more sensible and sympathetic account of what Plato is doing here as well right? Um and he as I say he says different things in different places. So he's actually quite difficult to pin down on this. >> Another way um to describe what what Plato is saying is look for you to be able to go into the world and recognize a chair you must already have the idea

of chair in your head in some sense. So he's effectively saying that there's certain ideas and concept that we must know a priori. We must know them before we go out and experience the world. They're not things that we kind of um [snorts] concoct um um off the back of experience. They must be there already. Right? So for your viewers who know uh uh who are kind of deep into their philosophy already, right? He's he's he's canned. He's not >> Hume. >> Would be a way of describing where Plato is on this. Right? So a priori concept

must be there in place already. Uh and then there's the kind of the weird and wonderful stories about and did we encounter those a priori concepts in a past life which obviously can't doesn't go that far. >> Um but what Aristotle want to do is want to bring that idea of form down to earth. So for instance again I mean it's a mundane example but the chair again right um Aristotle is going to say yeah the chair has a form right and the form is simply the structure and organization

of the matter that makes it up >> right so these these the chairs do share something in common and it's the way in which the matter is structured and organized but as soon as you destroy all the chairs in the world there is no form left. So the form is dependent on the particular things that exist rather than being some kind of eternal idea that exists independently. >> Mhm. So for Plato, the form exists and the objects sort of exist as reflections of the form. Whereas for Aristotle, the

individual objects exist and the form sort of comes out of those individual objects. So he sort of like flips it on its head and and reverses it and says that the >> the metaphysical starting point is the objects in the world from which we get forms rather than the other way round I suppose is like one way of thinking about it. We'll get back to the show in just a moment but first episodes like this take a lot of planning and last night I was up fairly late reading everything I could about Aristotle and I soon realized that I just kind of hadn't

had enough to eat. But I'd been so wrapped up in my prep that I also hadn't gotten any food in and I didn't really feel like waiting for a delivery or something. So I might have felt a bit stuck. I would have been a bit stuck were it not for today's sponsor, Hule. That's H U L. I reached for one of these. This is the ready to drink black edition, which is a high protein variety. It's got 35 g of vegan protein, 26 vitamins and minerals. There's no added sugar. It's gluten-free. It's got fiber. It's got omega-3s. And it costs less than $5. This is a complete meal of

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Okay, so for Aristotle, form is like some kind of structure or arrangement of a sort of set of of matter. So, he's got matter and he's got form. And these two being put together gives us this concept of of hyo hyomorphism, right? I think um well hyo must mean um >> something like matter and form meaning

well like like uh and and and morphe meaning form. So you get like hyomorphism, the idea that what an object is >> is a mixture of matter and form. And if you're familiar with like scholastic philosophy, you will begin to see the influence of this kind of thinking on people like Thomas Aquinus who also sort of felt the same thing. I mean, Aristotle is is a titan of philosophy to the extent that if you read Thomas Aquinus, he just refers to him as the philosopher. That's that's Aristotle's name in in Thomas Aquinus's work because he was just that significant. But okay,

so we we've got an idea of of Aristotle's metaphysics. We've got this thing called hyomorphism, matter and form. We've got a rejection of Plato. We've got a rejection of of Democrus. Um, I think there's one more sort of missing picture before we can talk about some of the implications of this metaphysical worldview, which is Aristotle has some some pretty specific views on the nature of causation. So, we've talked about objects which exist and the form in which they exist, but there's also like reasons why things exist, right? An acorn doesn't just exist for no reason. Um, in the modern

like age, if I ask you to explain something's cause, like if I say, "What was the cause of this chair?" You might say, "Well, it was whoever made it or the factory that made it or whatever." Aristotle wouldn't answer it quite in that way, would he? >> No. Um, so I mean, famously, um, Aristotle is is um, credited with a theory often referred to as the four causes. >> Um, and um, although in this context, I think cause is perhaps a slightly misleading translation. So, uh, a better

way to put it would be four explanations or a better way still to put it would be to say an explanation must have four different components, right? >> Okay. >> And so, one of those components would be what we mean about causation, right? Um, you know, who made this come about? >> So, um, and so in Aristotle, we call that kind of the efficient cause or or explanation. >> Um, then we've got the form and the matter that we've just mentioned, right? So if again you want to understand the

chair, you've got to know what it's made out of, >> its shape, structure, um who made it, >> and then the fourth one that you've got to know in order to understand the chair is what's it for? >> Yeah. >> Right. What's its purpose? What's its goal? The kind of the teiology, the telos. And so again, to know what's the difference between the table and the chair, you need to know what they're for, what function they have, and and and that he thinks is equally vital to

to really understand anything. >> Yeah. And people like it's a sort of common question in philosophy to be like, well, you know, if I if I sat on that table, would it just like become a chair? And I think a sensible way to answer that is to say, well, what what's its actual purpose? Like what was it made for? And that's like the only real way that we can meaningfully distinguish between the table and the chair in that context. Cuz yeah, maybe they're made out of maybe they're both made out of wood, they both got legs, and they both got a flat surface on top of them. What's the difference between a table and a stool? Well, it's like what was

the purpose it was made with? And yet today, if you were to say that things need explaining in terms of like teology, in terms of what they're they're for, people are like a little bit allergic to it. And I think Aristotle is like aware that people think about this differently. We we understand that a table is made with a purpose, but when we look at things that aren't man-made. I mean, we've talked about chairs and tables, and it's easy to see how this applies. But what about like a tree, you know, like when you

look at a tree, you might say, okay, it's got a material cause or explanation. It's made out of, you know, bark or whatever, made out of wood, and it's got a form. It's the form of a tree. has got an efficient cause which is like you know the the the rain and the soil and everything enacts the change but what's a tree for people would say that's kind of a meaningless question what would Aristotle say I mean in the case of the tree the kind of organism as a whole I guess um it's [sighs] it's trying to stay alive it's

trying to reproduce in a sense um this is what living things do so um there's a sense in which that's their function we might today. I mean, what he's particularly interested in when thinking about these kind of purposes or or or functions for things, he's thinking about parts of organisms in particular. So, if we think about a human being, right? Um what's your what's your liver for? What are your kidneys for? What's your heart for? I mean, we can answer those questions, right? They have very

specific purposes. They play a role in the functioning of the organism as a whole. So those look like quite simple examples of things in the natural world, not man-made, where we can point to these kind of functions and purposes. >> Yeah. >> So I think it's interesting how like I've read um if you read like a biology textbook, like a high school biology textbook or something, you'll find arisatilian language like sneaking in or if you like look up on Google like you know what is a heart like why why do we

have a heart? It won't say something like because of this evolutionary trajectory and this arrangement of atoms which contingently it'll say to pump blood around the body that's why you have a heart which is an extremely teological answer you know like why do why do why does this exist why do birds make nests why and it's all like oh to do this for for this purpose why do trees have leaves oh in order to photosynthesize when like in the modern day we don't

like the idea that teology is like built into nature so much we we sort of are typically suspicious of it but the language remains and I think it's because people will want to say something like it's kind of true that the heart exists to pump blood around the body but really what that is is a shorthand for saying that like an organism which pumps blood around the body is like more likely to survive if it has a heart and therefore hearts evolve in in that creature.

It's not really that like the heart ontologically really is for pumping blood. And so I don't know. Do do you think that like a modern understanding of evolutionary biology undermines the teological causation of Aristotle? >> I mean that's [clears throat] a really good question. I mean I mean I think I would say yeah the heart is for pumping blood. That's literally what it's for, right? Um um we're not we we again back to the acorn. You're not going to understand what a heart is. Yeah. And if unless you don't grasp the idea that it

is for pumping blood, >> but then the big question is does that imply that it was designed to pump blood? Can we reconcile what Aristotle was saying with say Darwinism, right? Um I think we can. I mean, if you think about what Darwin was trying to do, and this isn't my area of expertise at all, but what Darwin's trying to do is offer an explanation for how these purposes and functions come about, right? Darwin

can see that the heart looks as if it was designed and has a very clear purpose. And so his question is, how on earth could that have happened >> without reference to some kind of brand designer who who constructed all of this? And so his explanation of look here we can show how it is that this object with a clear function came about over this incredibly long process that involved all sorts of chance and and contingency along the way. But the end result is something very much with a

function and a purpose. So so in a sense Darwin would would acknowledge that I think >> I think it's helpful maybe to to think about like when you ask a question like what is it for? instantly you're you're conjuring up ideas of like a creator and a god who like makes it all happen for a particular reason. I think it's helpful to to use the word like function there is is much more sort of secular. You can say like >> we're not saying that like this is what a heart should do. We're not saying it's written into the rules of the universe that there should be this thing called a heart that has this purpose. It's just

as a matter of fact what is in fact its function. What does it do? not not just what it is, not just what it's made out of and like how it got there, but what does it do? You know, that that that's not a sort of super theological or supernatural kind of question. It's just what does it do? It pumps blood around the body. And that's what we're talking about with this fourth level of explanation, which I think still has a place, you know, in in our in our sort of modern metaphysics, but is >> is often sort of understated. But it

depends on the context, right? Like I've sometimes said if you if you go into a science like lab and and ask somebody like you know why why is why is that rocket on its way to the international space station and they'll say well because the thrust it outweighs gravity and gives it escape velocity and so on and so forth. But if you ask that same guy like at the pub they'll say cuz we want to get his face man cuz we want to get up there and we want to do some science. And both of those can be true at once. And the whole point of

Aristotle's distinction here is to say that these are different aspects, different ways of answering the question like how do you explain the existence of of this thing, right? So, okay, that all having been said, we've got a a basic grasp of like how Aristotle is is is thinking about the world. Um, one of the most sort of profound metaphysical questions that somebody can ask is about like the nature and causes of the universe itself.

Did Aristotle believe in God? Um, so um I think the short answer is yes, he did. Precisely what he means by that term is sort of slightly harder to pin down. I mean, he thinks the world is eternal. He thinks it's always existed. So he doesn't think it was created at any point. >> Right? And in the kind of early Christian reception of Aristotle, this is a a sticking point, right? That they don't have to fudge, >> you know? Um

>> so um so he thinks the world has always existed. It wasn't wasn't created at any point. But nevertheless, he thinks that there must be some kind of I mean the phrase he uses unmoved mover. There must be some kind of first cause in the sense of something that ties up our explanations. Right. So not a first cause in the sense of big bang chronological first. Yeah. Exactly. So

so not not a first cause in that sense but but something that is kind of the origin of the ultimate origin of movement and activity in the world. >> So we don't have an infinite regress in our explanations, right? Because he wants to avoid that. So he thinks there must be some kind of eternally existing unmoved mover that is the source of all the motion in the universe. And so that's what he wants to call God. >> And I mean this is interesting because it kind of then connects with things he has to say about the heavens. So um he

said okay we want some eternal movement right movement that doesn't stop. Um well movement in a straight line is no good because it has a start point and an end point. So what movement can go on and on forever and ever? Movement going around in a circle. >> Mhm. >> Right. And can we think of any objects that move around in circles that have always been there and will always be there. Well, and he looks up at the night sky and he says, "Well, look, there all these things up there going round and round and round and they don't

seem ever to stop and they seem to have been there forever." >> Yeah. So perhaps these are kind of sort of divine bodies in some sense that are underpinning everything everything else but it gets very murky beyond there >> and you see quite quite different from like a modern conception of of God. And it's interesting isn't it because like Aristotle his his views on like the nature of whatever God might be are extremely different from something like modern Christianity. And yet, thanks especially to Thomas Aquinus, Aristotle is seen as one of the most sort of influential Christian thinkers. Even

like pre-Christianity, he he was like sort of laying laying a seed. So like you said that Aristotle believes in an unmoved mover. And my understanding is that by motion in this context, we're kind of talking about change, right? Not just what what's called locomotion, which is like movement through space, but anything which goes from one sort of state to another. That's what we might call motion. That's how Aquinus would use this term to prove God's existence. And this was kind of based on Aristotle.

And given what we've just talked about, we know that change, any kind of change when something like an acorn becomes a tree as a kind of change would be characterized by Aristotle as the actualization of a potential. So you've got some kind of potential thing which is is not currently actual but is really there potentially and then it gets actualized and becomes actual and then as you say there's like a there's like a regress here and this is particularly sort of focused on by by Aquinus later which is

that like in order to actualize something there needs to be something already actual you know like if I want to cool down a a can of Coca-Cola and I put it in a fridge if my fridge is only potentially cold but not actually cold it's not going to be able to, you know, actualize the potential of the can to become cold. The fridge has to be actually cold in order to actualize that change in the can to make it cold. But then if the fridge is actually cold, something must have actualized that potential. And whatever actualized that

potential must have been actualized by something else. And and so something has to be actual in order to actualize, but there has to have been something to actualize that. And you end up with this kind of regress. And crucially, this this isn't the kind of regress that that sort of goes backwards in time, like dominoes falling over, but like what is actualizing potential right now? You know, the potential of the cup to be in its position right now as opposed to being on the floor. It's being actualized by the table, which is being actualized by the table legs and so on

and so forth. And the idea is that like if this went on infinitely, there would be no ultimate actualization. And so there needs to be a so-called unactualized actualizer or unmoved mover. Problem is when you try to talk about this, you're using the word actuality and actualizing so much that you get completely lost in the weeds. But hopefully people can roughly follow that we're talking about some kind of first element in the causal chain which itself is not doesn't have any potential

because if it has some potential well you got to explain why this is actualized and not that potential and then the regress continues. has to be purely actual and has the power to actualize everything else. So we kind of end up with this unactualized actualizer, the the unmoved mover, which is great. And Aquinus leans on that very heavily later on say that that first unmoved mover is God. But for Aristotle, it doesn't like get you that far, right? We're not talking about some omnipotent, omniscient, loving creator of the

universe. We're just talking about some kind of divine causal principle. So in so far as this unactualized actualizer like interacts with the with the world with us or cares about human affairs Aristotle has some quite different views to the modern Christian doesn't he uh yes I mean this is something uh something impersonal something that certainly isn't intervening in any way that isn't particularly interested in particulars I mean Aristotle's image of kind of I mean this is where we see this

platonic influence still Um I mean Aristotle's God is going to be thinking about universal ideas and and uh uh and forms we might say rather than thinking about particulars. So it's going to be contemplating very general bits of knowledge. It's not going to be interested in the day-to-day activities of the physical world and certainly not interested in anything that we're doing. >> So yeah, it's a it's a very disinterested and and abstract type of deity. um the fact that the fact that um

the Christian tradition was able to incorporate this with all of the crazy things you find in the Old Testament for instance and and and find a way for this all to sit together is you know quite an achievement. >> I think I think so because of course Aristotle it sort of has an interesting history like post his his death right because his works are kind of like kind of neglected for some time and then kind of rediscovered. Can you tell me about that story and particularly like the church's reception of Aristotle's work when it's sort of rediscovered?

[clears throat] >> So I mean in late antiquity um his works are translated into um Syriak and then Arabic. They kind of the their first wave of influences is in the east in places like Baghdad and we see um um Islamic philosophers really interested in arisetian ideas and going with them. Um a little later uh sort of 12th century we see some of Aristotle's works get translated into Latin some of them from those Arabic versions. Yeah.

>> Um Spain is particularly important. Um you know Alanderus where you got a lot of um Arabic scholars and people from Western Europe going or Northern Europe going to Spain and learning Arabic and translating texts. [gasps] Um, and people also access some some some texts from from Greek, right, from Baantium, say, and translate those into Latin. >> And when that all happens, and people first encounter the kind of full range of Aristoc's ideas, I mean, the church is deeply worried about this. I mean,

here's this guy who says that the soul dies with the body, right? Amongst many other things, who denies miracles, >> says the universe is eternal. >> He says the universe is eternal and wasn't created, right? So he's saying on the face of it, Aristotle was saying a number of really quite heretical things. Yeah. You get a group of Arisetian philosophers who were almost who are very radical, almost atheists in Paris and and they're condemned, right? The bishop of Paris says, "No, don't teach this stuff. This is dangerous." >> And it's then the next generation of

philosophers in Paris, which includes Thomas Aquinus, >> who then want to kind of rescue Aristotle. they can see that he's just a genius thinker and they don't want him condemned as a heretic. So they find a way to kind of create this marriage where they can bring bring the two together. >> So yeah, it's it's um it's not an easy marriage to start off with. It it it takes some time. It takes some work. It takes someone of the stature of Thomas Aquinas to pull it off. >> Yes. Quite quite quite. Um, and people can probably begin to see how like while

there's lots of resonance, Aristotle as far as pertains like later Christian tradition is is laying some seeds that had to then be, you know, actualized by by Thomas Aquinas. Um, but there is also a lot to like in in Aristotle when it comes to modern theistic ways of thinking. And and one of those is trying to account in a world full of all kinds of organisms full of plants and animals for the sort of uniqueness and specialness of humans.

Like Aristotle as you say is fascinated by biology and he also knows that you know what a thing is hyomorphism from earlier is its matter and its form. So if you take the right matter and you put it in the right form it gives you you know a a thing. But Aristotle writes quite plainly about a corpse right he sort of thinks about a human corpse someone who's dead and thinks it's got all of the matter that a human does and it's all arranged in the right way. The

heart's in the right place, the blood is in the but it's dead. That there's something missing. There's something which makes it alive. And when something is alive, there's something that makes it human as opposed to a dog or or indeed a plant. And so can you tell me a little bit about like Aristotle's taxonomy and how he accounts for what a human is and what makes them so special? So I mean earlier we were saying that when we were talking about hymorphism we were saying okay form is the kind of structure and organization of the matter and as the corpse example really nicely

illustrates that's clearly not enough when we're thinking about living beings right it's not just the way in which the matter is organized there's something else that's really vital like literally vital >> to to give us a a proper understanding of what's going on and the way um Aristotle cashes this out is he says We also need to think about what things can do. We need to think about their capacities um their potentialities, right? So I mean he uses the word potential in two

different senses, right? So one sense is the acorn has a potential to become the oak tree. The the the warm can of Coke has the potential to become cold. That's a change that an object goes through. But there's another sense of potential which is using an ability or a capacity that you have. >> So we both have the capacity to talk and sometimes we use that and sometimes we don't. >> Um that doesn't involve any any change

on our part. We're still the same person but one of them we're actualizing the potential to speak. Yeah. >> And the other we're not. Right. So then he'll want to define say human beings in particular but also other other living beings as um the sorts of things that have certain abilities and capacities and that then becomes part of his definition of what the form is. So form of a human being isn't just two arms, two legs. It's the ability to speak to move to reproduce but most importantly

of all in the case of humans the ability to think >> right that's the capacity that we have that no other animals do. So it becomes our defining characteristic. >> Mhm. And this is where again it becomes important. I think like the earlier four-fold causation becomes relevant and you begin to see okay interesting Aristotle thought that to understand something you have to know what it's for. So what when you look at like real cases like this if if you don't have that element then trying to account for the difference between a corpse and a living human being kind of becomes quite

difficult. Yeah. You can just say one of them's alive, one of them's um uh and when you start reaching for words, you'll want to say something like, well, one of them, you know, it's doing stuff. It its heart is pumping blood. Its brain is firing neuro. You're talking about what it's doing. You're talking about like functions. You're talking about what everything is sort of for, what it's what what sort of end it's serving, and that's what sort of produces life. So, matter and form, but form includes what a thing does, like what it's what it's for. Um now Aristotle

uses in trying to distinguish between say what a human does and what an animal can do and what plants can do. Um and like you say it's about capacities. It's not about actually doing them. Right now you're not speaking and neither is your chair but you have an actual capacity to speak and the chair does not. in terms of the the sort of type of form or the the arrangement of form that that something has a human versus an animal versus a

plant. Aristotle uses this word this Greek word psyche which is typically translated in the west as as soul. Um I don't know if you think that's an appropriate or an unfortunate translation but can you tell us a little bit about how people talk about the soul when it comes to Aristotle? So, of course, the English word soul has all sorts of resonances that that um might make people think that we're talking about something immortal, for instance. And so, that's kind of a bit unhelpful. We need to kind of bracket that. >> Um, and I guess in English psyche has

all sorts of kind of connotations as well. So, it's always a problem. But let's just stick when and use the word soul. But the the key point to remember is >> soul simply refers to what it is that makes something alive, right? What distinguishes the living, breathing human being from the corpse, right? And soul is is the thing, right? >> For Aristotle, like that's how he uses the term. >> Yeah. So, um and that's not to say that some kind of some kind of soul has

departed from the corpse, right? It's not as if it's it's lost a component. >> It's just that it's the the corpse has lost its capacities. So, in the case of a human being, soul, the thing that describes how we're alive is really a a case of just describing those capacities and abilities that we have. >> Yeah. It's like if if you have a tower that that that you like knock over, right? Like it's it's capacities as a

tower. The form that makes it a tower is now gone. >> But it's and you could call that the soul the soul of the tower is whatever sort of makes it into a tower. Its form, its capacities and whatnot. If I knock over the tower, the soul has gone, but it's not like it's like floated off somewhere into an afterlife or something. It's just not no longer functionally there. >> And and Aristotle was going to say that plants and animals have souls, too, because they're living things, right? So, a plant can be alive or dead. So, a plant has soul. It has some kind of animating um um um animating power um

which is simply to to be alive. plants um um can like reproduce in in in their own way. Um animals also have the ability to move and perceive. So they have additional capacities. They're more complex. >> And then human beings have those two layers, but they also then have this ability to to think. So they're more complex again. So as you kind of go up the scale of nature, you get more and

more capacities. >> Mhm. And this is what Aristotle means by soul. He's not talking about a ghost in the machine. He's not talking about some thing which continues to exist after you die. He's just talking about the form of a living thing. That is it's its organization. It's it's and and also its functions and its capacities. What can it do? And so a plant can do one set of things. Animals can do that set of things plus some more stuff like locomotion. And then humans can do all of that stuff with locomotion and and and you know metabolizing and whatnot.

But also they can think and that's all Aristotle means by the soul. Cuz people might be put off. They might think, "Oh, Aristotle believes in the soul." I often find people are surprised to learn that that's what he means by soul. It's also worth pointing out that, of course, he didn't use the English word soul. He meant something more specific. So, again, not very supernatural here. Just we're just talking about like matter and form. And so, the thing that makes humans so special is their ability to to reason. Now, some people might want to say, "Okay, but surely this is like a bit of a gradation." Like, I've seen, you know, I've seen chimpanzees that can like, you know, tap on the screen and

follow the numbers and stuff. Aren't aren't they kind of using reason as well? Like is is Aristotle sort of justified in saying that humans are a particular form as opposed to every other animal? >> So when Aristotle is describing human beings as rational, he uses the word logic, right? Rational, which comes from the Greek word logos meaning word or explanation, right? So humans are distinct in so far as they speak. They don't just think, they also

speak, right? You might think your dog can think and is actually very clever, but your cat's probably cleverer. Um, but humans speak, right? And then you might say, okay, well, other animals like dolphins and things, they communicate. Communication isn't unique to human beings. >> But the the the sense of logos that we've got at play here is not simply communicate, it's also explain. Right? >> Human beings are the only animals that try to explain the world that they live in. We're the only ones that do science

>> and that's unique to human beings. So when Aristotle is talking about rationality, he's not just talking about kind of basic thought processes we could we could attribute to lower animals. Talk about the logos. >> He's talking about we can think and reflect about the world that we live in and we can try and explain it. That's distinctive. >> Mhm. And so that's what makes humans special. And yeah, again you can begin to see how this might be relevant to Christianity when you consider the importance of the logos which people

might have encountered that Greek term in the context of Christianity uh in that the logos is translated as the word. So in in in the prologue to John's gospel in the beginning was the word and that word is logos. It's the same word being used by Aristotle to describe reason here. So, you know, some some overlaps beginning to beginning to kind of form perhaps. Um, but okay. So, we've got a metaphysical view and hyomorphism, four causes, and we've got Aristotle's view on the soul, which is actually pretty like empirical and and

materialistic essentially. Um, that gives us a kind of like metaphysical picture of of what Aristotle is is talking about, I think. Um, one thing that we haven't mentioned yet, which people often start with because it seems a bit more like meta, is something you alluded to earlier, which is that Aristotle invents formal logic. Now, Aristotle is this great scientist and biologist and now apparently a metaphysician and and, you know, pre-Christian thinker and whatnot, but at the same time, he doesn't just want

to think about propositions. He doesn't just want to think about true facts like grass is green and animals have limbs. He wants to think about how facts relate to each other and how they combine to produce arguments to produce new knowledge. Today in philosophy, we use arguments all the time. We try to learn things by saying, well, if this is true and this is also true, then we can conclude that this kind of thing is true. And funny as it might seem, this isn't really something that massively existed before Aristotle, right? That's

true. I mean we I mean we see some arguments set out in some of the very early Greek texts and we see lots of arguments in Plato's dialogues where Socrates is arguing with people but there's no real kind of formal account of of you know you know you you see Socrates make an argument in the dialogue and you think yeah that works or you think that doesn't work but how do you know right you're kind of just going with intuitions >> what Aristotle wants to do is formalize all of that so we can really see when

does a conclusion follow deductively from the premises. >> When do we know that we've got a necessary truth? Right? >> Um and so what he wants to do is abstract all of the kind of distracting detail from the arguments that we're making and just look at their structure so we can see does the conclusion follow from the premises. So kind of famous example that sort of syllergistic arguments that he codifies for the first time you know all A's are B all B's are C therefore all A's are C right the

first if you slot in facts in the first two that are correct the conclusion is going to be correct necessarily and there's no getting around that >> and then if you can string some of those arguments together into a longer piece of reasoning then you can start to come up with really quite complex pieces of of of knowledge so >> it's a way of I Again, famously in Plato's dialogue, Socrates is arguing with all these guys that we usually call sophists who are sort of presented by Plato as trying to pull the the wool over people's eyes. And you know, we're

all familiar with sophistry today. Um, Aristotle really wants to say, okay, I'm going to give you the tools so that you can really um you can really uncover that when you encounter it and you can see whether someone is giving you a good argument or not. >> Yeah. And so to be clear here, like if you if you have an argument of that form, like all A's are B, all B's are C, therefore all A's are C. You could say that argument is valid. Like it's it's

true. Yeah, that follows from the premises. But there's there's no content there. It's like it's like algebra, right? It's like algebra, but for for for argumentation. It's like it it there's no content. We're just talking about the the overall structure. And Aristotle comes up with a bunch of different essentially like forms of argument. and he sort of in the form of like A's and B's and ifs and all this kind of stuff and alls and nuns and whatnot and lists out basically a bunch of different valid syllogisms where if you plug in the facts you'll know what the conclusion is and that's

like a pretty significant contribution to philosophy right but I mean it's incomplete right our sort of conception of formal logic today is not purely arisetilian but it's a it's a starting point yeah absolutely I mean it's a hu it's a huge achievement if either just done that and absolutely nothing else, >> he would be a really really important philosopher. Yeah. >> But to have done that and done all the work in biology that we're talking about, effectively inventing biology as a discipline in the process, not to

mention all of the other things that he does, um then it becomes, you know, just unbelievably impressive. >> I'm beginning to see as well, I'm hoping people can begin to see that when you introduce Aristotle and you want to sort of start talking about him, you kind of want to I asked you at first like, you know, what was all the hype? And it's like gosh, well um it depends what you're talking about because he's he's invented logic which is totally separate from being probably the preeminent biologist of his of his era. Like his his study of of animals didn't he like sort of lived near a lake or

something and he'd go down and spend his time like dissecting the fish and stuff like that and no one else was doing at the time. >> Yeah. I mean, after he left Plato's Academy, he spent some time on the island of Lesbos. Yeah. And I've never been, but in apparently in the center of the island of Lesbos, there's a huge lagoon, kind of sort of a huge body of water in the center. And and Aristotle will spend a couple of years there um dissecting fish on on on the shore of this lagoon, you know. Um and again, we're back to we're we're we're back to

our kind of four causes. You you open up a fish, you pick out all the different bits and pieces of it. I can see what this is made of. I can see what shape it is. But if I don't know what it's for, I have no idea what this is, right? Is this an eyeball? Is this a a liver? >> I need to know what function they have in order to understand how this organism works. And so I think that's where I think it's the hands-on empirical science of dissecting fish, which is where many of these ideas were

first kind of crystallized. >> Yeah. I find it so interesting the thought of like how the different ways of of interpreting what it means to say what is something for like what is an eye for to see and it feels like you could almost trick people like in the context of philosophy if you speak to like a a modern atheistic materialist and say like you know does the eye have a purpose they want to say oh well you know no not really it just sort of exists and it has the appearance of but if without priming them you sort of went up and you said hey like can you tell me what an eye is

Oh, it's, you know, it's the organ you used to see. And what I want to say is I like people might think Aristotle is a bit well antiquated um because he's sort of holding on to this teological nature that has been gone since evolution. But I want to say that like I agree with you from earlier that evolution doesn't do away with this concept of function. It might do away with the idea of there being some like built-in teiology by design, but I don't think it necessarily does away with the idea of of of it

being meaningful to say that like the function of a biological part is really like part of what makes it what it is. I think we can we really can retain that if we just use quite like plain language about it. You know, the table has a function to hold things up and that was invented by humans. The eye has the function of seeing and that was developed by natural selection. One is designed, one's not, but they both have a function in a meaningful sense. >> Um, so having said that, I want to ask you what the function of a human being is. And what I mean by that is I want to I

want to sort of I want I say wrap up, but it's probably the biggest subject of of Aristotles that that is most popularly discussed, his ethics. you know, we've got an idea of what he thought about the world, but he's also famous for his Nikamakian ethics about what makes a good life. And in many ways, his idea about about like what makes a good life and what humans should do is not about like divine command or some ontological rules built

into the universe, but again this question which we keep coming back to like what are humans for? What is their function? >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think I think it's I think you've been absolutely right for us to discuss it in the order that we have because I think you need to understand the biology first before you can understand what's going on in the ethics. And so famously at the very beginning of of um the ncommian ethics he he he gives what we often call a kind of a function argument right you want to

understand what a good human being is first you got to understand what a human being in general is right what's it for and then what's its function and once you understand that a good human being will be one that fulfills that function right so if the defining characteristic of a human being is rational ity. A good human being is going to be one that is rational and exercises those capacities. >> Um and Aristotle thinks there are two

different ways in which we can engage in rational activity, right? Two different ways in which we can be good human beings and these relate to two different types of virtues um that he describes in the book. So the first set of these we might call I mean traditionally they're called moral virtues. We might call them character virtues, something like that. Um, and these are prim primarily concerned with managing our desires and our appetites, right? So, we're animals, we're

biological creatures. We are we're animals with rationality added, right? We we don't lose our animality just because we're rational beings. >> So, we have all those desires and appetites that any other animal would have, right? We're all motivated by pleasure and the fear of pain. M this is just the human condition and so Aristotle says well one way in which we can be rational is develop the right kind of character traits to control those desires and appetites right um you know we have this inbuilt desire for food we we we always want food you know

um there are good evolutionary reasons why we always want food but we don't want to let that just run out of control so we want to develop the virtue of moderation where we can keep a check on those appetites and that's one way in which we can live a rational life Right. Um, another example would be say courage, right? Again, good evolutionary reasons for us to run away from dangerous situations. Right. Very sensible. >> Um, but there are some situations where it might be important for us to face

danger and to step in for a variety of reasons. So, we want to develop the virtue of courage so that we can use our region to manage that kind of very sensible inbuilt cowardice that we all have. So there are those ways in which we can be rational by by managing those nonrational elements of our of ourselves. Right? A second way we can be rational and this comes back to what we were saying earlier about kind of explanation and and doing science is

what Aristotle calls intellectual virtues. And so this would be the trying to understand the world that we're in. trying to contemplate the universe to do biology um to think about God to do philosophy do metaphysics the things that we've been talking about right now right so that's another way in which we can be rational so um so a good human being and this is I think the key most complex question in Aristotle's ethics which I

don't think is resolved at all which is which of these if at all is the most important Do we have to choose between the two? The obvious thing to me, it seems, is to say, well, obviously the ideal human being is going to be rational in both of those senses, right? You're going to have those virtues of moderation and courage, >> and also you're going to engage in that kind of reflective activity. But the way that Aristotle phrases it um right at the end of his book um on ethics is to describe this in terms of

two different ways of life, right? So he talks about a political life, someone engaged in their community, who has those virtues, who is a a good social animal, we might say. Um, and then he also talks about someone living a contemplative life, someone who's just engaged in this kind of theoretical reflection. Um, and you can see how that might connect with sort of monastic ideas in the later Christian tradition, the person who isn't involved in society because they're just engaged in intellectual pursuits.

Um, and so he kind of presents it almost as if there's a choice between these two different ways of life that you could live. They're both rational in a sense. They're both praiseworthy. Um, but how do you want to live your life? What do you want to what do you want to do? >> And I think I I think I mean philosophy often has an autobiographical element and I think in this instance it's clear to me the life that Aristotle wanted to live which is just to be engaged in that kind of contemplation, reflection, the life that he did live, right? doing science and and thinking about these big

questions. >> So firstly, just as a point of interest because people might wonder why is it called the Nikkamakian ethics? >> Um that's a good question and shrouded in mystery. There's another book called the Udemian ethics. >> Um it may be that those books were originally addressed to those people. It may be that they were edited by people with those names. Um so in both cases we've got a kind of a pile of lecture notes. Um in fact some of the books um

that make up these two works overlap. So it almost looks like one is a kind of an expanded version of the other. >> Yeah. >> So it may have been that these were the names of different editors. Um Aristotle had a son called Nomicus. >> So it's conceivable that his maybe his son put all these lecture notes together after his death. Mhm. >> Um but yeah, we we don't know for sure. >> Interesting. Okay. So, we're talking about like the function of of a human being and it's like the employment of rationality, but people might be

confused cuz they're thinking, well, no, I I studied Aristotle in in school or uni or something. And I I remember them talking about udeimmonia and I remember them talking about the fact that that kind of meant happiness. And I thought that for Aristotle, the ultimate aim of ethics or the ultimate aim of human life was was this this happiness that people talk about. >> Yeah. So happiness not in the sense of a subjective feeling of >> being happy in the way that we use English words, but happiness in the sense of having lived a good life,

>> right? Something a bit more objective, something a bit more substantial, right? Something that other people can say about you, >> right? >> Another term that people sometimes prefer to use to translate udimonia is flourishing as opposed to happiness. >> Yeah. >> Which might better capture the kind of thing we're driving at. >> Yeah, that's right. And uh and in a sort of very famous English translation um sometimes it's just translated as a good life. Yeah. Right. So that's what we're after. So how do you live a good life?

Be a good human being. >> Right. Um engage in rational activity. So happiness isn't about kind of feeling good inside as uh um only. It's about actualizing your potential for being a good rational being. >> Mhm. >> And and that's what happiness looks like. And and as it happens, he thinks that if you do that, you will feel happy, right? That happy the feeling of happiness, the feeling of pleasure.

These will be the the consequences, the byproducts of fulfilling your potential as a as a as a rational animal. >> And how does that come out in practice? like what I mean different ethical theories about sort of how to live lead to quite different sort of practical outcomes how you spend your time and whatnot like >> how much does Aristotle get into like practical here are things to do with your life here are things to believe here are ways to behave does he get that specific um yeah absolutely I mean I

mentioned the idea of a choice between two different lives right do you want to become the research scientist or the or the monk or do you want to be actively engaged in the politics of your community. So, he kind of presents that as one choice about how you might live. Um, but he also gets really into the nitty-gritty of um um of um of um uh everyday human life, we might say. So, I mean, one example, he has quite a lot to say about friendship. >> He thinks friendship and our social relationships are really really important.

um not just friendsship in the way that we use the word, he's also thinking about romantic partners, he's also thinking about family relationships. He thinks these are absolutely fundamental. And so he goes into a lot of detail analyzing this in in a really quite kind of sort of psychologically perceptive and astute way. So in that sense, he's interested very much in the nitty-gritty. >> What does he think about friendship? I mean, I've heard he's got, you know, sort of >> very sort of interesting and broad views about friendship and whatnot. like what what does he actually say? >> So I mean for instance he he draws a

distinction between uh a kind of genuine friends versus what he calls um friendships of utility, right? So we have relationships with some people which are really just give and take relationships, right? Um and there's nothing wrong with that, right? Um you know relationships that we might have where we kind of you know um meet someone in a shop, right? You know you're there for a reason. and you want something from them, they want something from you. Um, but you want that to be a

good friendly interaction, but it's just it's just a transaction. There's nothing deeper to it than that. Um, and then there are real friendships, right, where you can really rely on the other person and it's grounded on care and concern. You're not trying to get anything out of that person. And so, again, this is Aristotle, the the scientist, if you like. I'm going to analyze human behavior, human relationships. I'm going to see how they differ and I'm going to classify them. And this is a useful

thing to know because you might think that someone is a true friend and you can rely on them and they might think you're just a friend of utility and it's just about exchange back and forth. And you you need to have a sense of, you know, you need to know what relationships you're in and and and where you stand. And you can only do that if you've made these classifications. >> Mhm. Okay. So, friendship. Fair enough. Um, I'm also thinking about I'm trying to I'm trying to think what people might have heard about Aristotle that they might want some elucidation on. And another thing that Aristotle is known for in the

context of ethics is what's come to be known as like virtue ethics. Typically, if you're like a student of philosophy, particularly high school or undergraduate, you kind of learn that there are different ways of thinking about ethics. You could be a consequentialist, in which case you care about the consequences of an action, like utilitarianism. Or you're a deontologist who thinks there are like rules to follow like divine command theory. And then there's this sort of third option which sits in the middle which is virtue ethics and it's about what the virtuous person would do. What

does that mean? What what what is what is virtue? What is a virtuous person and how does it connect to what we've spoken about so far? So virtue ethics is focused on developing these character traits like courage, moderation, justice, >> um, and a range of others that he discusses. Generosity would be another another example. >> And so the the thought is if you want to live a good life, don't think of it as there's a set of rules you have to

follow, right? Or ten commandments or, you know, can commands. Instead, what you want to do is develop the right character traits so that whatever situation you find yourself in, you've got the skills to deal with it. >> And rules can be a bit too black and white. They can be a bit too blunt. And, you know, people will be familiar with all the sorts of paradoxes, the the can, you know, the >> Yeah. Do you lie to the person at the door? >> Yeah, that's right. The lunatic comes to the door trying to kill your friend. Do

you lie about whether your friend is is is there or not? Uh, and if you if you think that it's all about rules, don't lie. never lie, right? Then then you get in these sorts of problems. Whereas if you're developing the right character traits and you find yourself in that situation, then it's like, well, on the basis of being, you know, um being, you know, just and fair to my friends and given the the specifics of this situation right here, right now, um I can use the character traits that I have in order to decide what to do rather

than just kind of unthinkingly applying a rule. And and Aristotle was quite clear about this. There are no straightforward rules uh in life because every situation is unique. Yeah. >> So we need to judge each one as we find it. >> And so virtue ethics is about developing the skills so that you can cope with those very different random situations. >> And what about this idea that these virtues sit in the midst of two extremes? You sometimes hear Aristotle >> described as believing in what's come to be known as the the golden mean. What's

all that about? >> Yeah. So, I mean, he thinks he thinks a lot of he thinks that vices are often extremes, right? If you go to the if you go to the extreme, you're probably going wrong, >> right? The right thing to do is probably somewhere in the sensible middle, right? >> Which might not sound very sort of exciting or sexy. >> Yeah. >> But maybe it's true. >> Right. People often think that, you know, you want to you want to push things to the limit, but actually maybe not. So he thinks that a lot of virtues

can be understood as existing in between two two vices. So moderation is an obvious example that it's somewhere in the middle. Um courage he thinks is in the middle between cowardice at one end and kind of recklessness at the other end. >> And for a number of other virtues he thinks this is a really good way to to think about them. Um, generosity is going to sit somewhere between kind of sort of stupidly giving all your money away or being really stingy and never giving any ma money away at all. So, there's going to be a sensible middle

ground. >> Yeah. I mean, we know we all know people who are like virtuous to a fault. I think we like we're so used to thinking of the idea that >> there's like good and bad. There are good ways and bad ways to behave and as long as you're doing the good thing, you should just do as much of it as you can. But then you come across the person who like is too brave. The kind of person who always wants to stand their ground and get into a fight or wants to stupidly run into the burning building even though there's no hope of saving anyone or what and you're kind of like, you know, it kind of makes you a bit

uncomfortable or someone who's like so so kind that like it's almost like uncomfortable like you sort of, you know, I don't know, you'd be a little bit uncomfortable in your chair and they're like, "Oh my god, oh, I'm so sorry. Let me let me fix that. Let me fix that. I can let me get you a pillow. Do you need it? And you're like, it's a bit uncomfortable. It's like too much. >> But obviously, I mean, it's obvious that the too much in the other direction is also bad. And so, it's somewhere in the in the middle. And this is not a sort of unique insight to Aristotle. Um, the Buddha's sort of central path and the

Confucious sort of has the same idea. It's sort of quite like well established in many ethical systems that temperance, mediation, being in the middle is is key. >> Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you know, another example, for instance, if someone is incredibly selfish, that's clearly a vice. If someone pays no attention to their own personal needs to the point that they neglect themselves, that's clearly a vice as well. There's a sensible middle ground where people are looking after themselves, >> but not to the point of selfishness. So,

again, that would be another middle ground example. Um, but I mean, Aristotle isn't kind of um dogmatic about this. He says, "Well, there are some things that are clearly just wrong, and there's no kind of moderate version." I mean, a nice example he gives is there's no moderate way to do adultery, right? Adultery is just not the right thing to do. So, there there'll be some exceptions, but he just thinks it's a useful way of thinking about what the right thing to do is, it's probably going to be somewhere somewhere sensible and central. Even

then, like with something like adultery, I mean, I know if you're talking about like a physical act, it's pretty black and white, but even then, like, you know, on the one side, there's the person who has a wife and just just doesn't care and will like, you know, talk to other women and meet up with them and do all sorts of stuff. But then on the other side, there's the person who might be like terrified to to talk to anybody of the opposite sex for fear that, you know, they they're somehow doing something wrong because they got a wife and they they won't even talk to their to their best friend's wife or be because I don't know, like just going

too kind of imagine even that going going too far and that really what you want is somewhere in the middle like yeah, I can I can have a wife and I can talk with women and have friendships and relationship with with with them without, you know, committing adultery like even that itself seems like it it sort of sits on a on a continuum and that mediation is is perhaps kind of kind of key. Um but what I'm I'm interested in is that these specific virtues which to us sound perfectly reasonable like yeah bravery sounds

good, courage sounds good, you know, generosity sounds good. The way that we got here like metaphysically is to talk about the fact that there is such thing as a human being and it has a natural function and that function is reason. Like thinking as philosophers we have to get rid of our assumptions that we know what's good and what's bad. Why is generosity like reasonable? I mean it seems like nice. It seems great. Everyone likes generosity and generous people. But like isn't it rational to be self-interested? Like why not? If you

can get away with it if if the only thing we're really talking about here with Aristotle is just what in fact serves the function of rationality. Why generosity? Why bravery? Why these particular virtues? M yeah that I mean that's a really interesting question isn't it I think [snorts] I mean there are two different places where Aristotle comes close to giving kind of a definition of human being right so one of them is to say rational animal >> another one is to say social animal yeah >> right some some animals live in in packs and herds others are more solitary human

beings live in packs and herds right we live in tribes we live in villages um you know when we're born we're this long We're utterly useless and if we're left on our own, we'd be dead within a week, right? So necessarily we're brought up in families, >> right? Yeah. So we are very survival depends on other people. >> So in order to survive, you have to get along with other people. >> So kind of socially positive virtues

like generosity and justice, right? And not running around killing everybody >> is actually really really important for our survival. Absolutely fundamental. Um, so, um, you know, we live in a culture where we've been encouraged to think that we should all be ruthless individualists and we can survive on our own, >> but that's just a lie, right? I mean, really, it's a lie. We're we're all dependent on each other in all sorts of ways that we might not immediately notice, right? >> People grow the food that I eat. People

filter the water that I drink. Um, I've never met these people, >> but I couldn't survive without them. M >> so we're all dependent on each other in all sorts of really complex ways and obviously today those ways are even more complex than Aristotle could ever have imagined. So getting along with other people is essential for our survival. So that's if you like the kind of the biological origin of those sociable virtues we might say. >> So do you think that Aristotle's ethics is ultimately

descriptive? I mean like when we think about ethics, it it usually sounds in this sort of mystical way that we don't quite understand. Well, you just should do this. There's this should component of the universe that you just have to abide by. Whereas with Aristotle, it sounds more like he's just saying this is the case. It is in fact the case that you're a human which in fact has a particular function and is in fact served by doing these particular things which kind of seems to reduce ethics to description maybe. >> Yes. I mean, you can certainly present

it in a very kind of descriptive way. This is Aristotle the biologist just describing this strange species that he's encountered. He just happens to be one of them. >> Yeah. >> Right. [laughter] Um, but there's also, I think, a kind of a normative element that comes through as well. So, an adult human being who doesn't control their appetites and desires and who never really thinks through their decisions, Aristotle was going to say that's a bad human being. They've gone wrong,

>> right? They failed to be a human being in the full sense of the word because they're not >> actualizing their distinctive defining capacities and that feels like really judgmental, right? Um and in a sense you could say okay it's no different from him saying this eyeball is broken in a very descriptive >> it's a bad table you know. >> Yeah exactly but but it feels as if there's a bit more normative force to it than that also. >> Yeah. Cert. But then I I think it can also be quite attractive to people who

are a bit suspicious of like morality and maybe they're not realists about ethics and they think it's all a bit sort of wishy-washy. that the Aristotle maybe like I mean if I say that's a bad table I'm not saying it's an immoral table. I'm not saying the table should hold things up in any other sense than just well that's that's what it's for and it's not doing it and that Aristotle's ethics could in theory be reduced to that kind of thinking such that it's not mystical. It's not like super like it's not divine. It's not supernatural. It's nothing like that.

It's just look there's a there is in fact a way that like that there is a function that you're supposed to serve and you're not serving it and and that's all that ethics really means which seems like a sort of easier pill to swallow than accepting this new onlogical category of thing called should and ought that sort of floats out there somewhere and we can't quite sort of pin down and it's quite attractive. I know that um Alistister McIntyre has that book after virtue >> which seeks to sort of rehabilitate virtue ethics and point out that

basically what he thought had happened is that what we mean when we talk about ethics and should and should not and good and bad it it's just like a different language to that which like someone like Aristotle was speaking that when he says words like good and bad he just means them in in a totally different way to the way that we do which is why we kind of think ethics is a weird and and different and out there whereas >> maybe for Aristotle it's just a case of defining our terms differently and and

realizing that it's not that profound. >> Yeah. And given the kind of close interconnection between Aristotle and Christianity in the middle ages and and after and we talked a bit about Aquinus earlier we've used words like virtue and soul which are both very loaded terms again coming out of that Christian tradition. And so I think one thing that might put some people off Aristotle is thinking that he's kind of stuck within that that model, right? >> But if we can kind of ditch those terms

and ditch those associations and think, hey, this guy is a natural scientist, he's a biologist, he's trying to understand organisms, he's and off the back of that, he's producing what's ultimately a naturalistic ethics. >> Yeah. we then end up with a completely different image of who this guy is and why we might want to to think about him and take him seriously. >> Yeah, that's interesting the comparison with the soul in that like at first it sounds like something wishy-washy, but when you realize no no like it kind of sounds like it it as you say like if you

didn't know you were talking about Aristotle if if you had like a a new atheist or someone in a debate and they were challenged and someone said, "Well, how do you account for the soul? How do you account for what a human being is if there's no God?" And the atheist kind of goes, "Well, I think well I think really what you're describing is just the fact that humans like use reason. They have this sort of animating principle, but I think it's just naturalistic. I think it's just sort of a function of their biology." You know, that would that would sound like a pretty sort of robust atheistic response to a Christian. But that's kind of what Aristotle said. And

the same thing with ethics. It's like, oh well, if there's no God, then how do you ground good and bad? Who's the moral lawgiver? It's like, well, there isn't really one. It's just it's just, you know, humans are social creatures. They they live in a society and they act in particular ways that are, you know, rationally serve their interests. Again, that sounds very much like the kind of thing you hear in debates about ethics between atheists and Christians. And yet, Aristotle could just as easily be employed by the atheist as as by the Christian, which is perhaps one of the reasons he's so influential that he just

seems to slot in wherever you need him to fit. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, >> but I I think you know Aristotle is one of the most important thinkers and I I don't know if you'd agree with me because um you said that the order we went in was was quite good and I I agree. But if people were going to go to the primary sources and like I I want to read what this guy has to say. I think most people sort of recommend that they actually begin with like the Nickimakian ethics. I I don't know if you agree with that or maybe they should listen to this and then read it or maybe read a secondary source on his

metaphysics like where should people turn to? There's your book of course which I'll link in the description introduction to Aristotle. >> But when it comes to like the primary texts where do you think people should go? >> Actually I think the easiest of all of his texts to read one that we've not talked about is his poetics >> in which he discusses Greek tragedy, >> right? >> Um I mean that's just kind of the most accessible. Anyone can just pick that up and and and read it. And even if you think I have no interest in Greek tragedy or or or how to to structure the

plots in stories, I mean it does give you a window into his method and approach because what he's doing is he's doing um what he's doing is what he does with every single subject which is okay, let's analyze this. Let's break this down. Let's look at the components. Let's see what all the bits are, right? Um how does a good plot work? What's the role of the characters and so on. So you kind of get a taste of his way of thinking in a way that is I think really accessible. Um >> you're absolutely right. The comic and ethics is um also quite good. I mean I

think it's kind of it looks accessible because it's talking about topics that people can connect with but it is actually quite challenging. So um maybe that second >> um I think um the the metaphysics is obviously really really challenging. his book metaphysics is really challenging. So that probably save for a later day. >> Yeah, I [laughter] think often times secondary literature is is better especially when you're dealing with

ancient authors and you're dealing with translations of ancient authors who even at the time in their original language were quite difficult to fully understand. >> There's there's no shame in just reading a commentary and having that as as your way in. Like I think that's that's probably that's the way I do it. You know, I'm not going to sit down and >> read through the metaphysics. I just feel like that would be a waste of my time at least. until I feel like I have a firm grasp of what Aristotle is talking about and that's going to come through secondary literature. So >> another book I recommend here briefly so obviously buy my book first.

>> Yeah. [laughter] >> But um there's a so but there's a really nice book which I which I reference in my book uh called the lagoon >> by a biologist called um Amarie Loy. uh so he's a practicing biologist so he knows his science >> and a certain point in his career he kind of um discovered Aristotle >> and thought oh my goodness this guy was a genius he was a genius biologist right um and he tells the story of Aristotle the the natural scientist and all of the

kind of um work that he was doing and so for people that are interested in the naturalistic Aristotle that's a kind of a great story by someone who really knows the biology ology, which I don't. Awesome. >> So, that's I think an interesting take. Completely different from the kind of Aquinus version of Aristotle that people might think is the obvious way to to go. >> Yeah. Well, we'll link that in the description as well. But John Cis, it's it's always fun. Thank you for your time today. >> No, my pleasure. >> If you enjoyed that, you should watch my

previous episode with John Cers, which was an introduction to stoicism. You can watch it by clicking the link that's on your screen. To support the show and get early adree access to episodes, subscribe to my Substack at alexoconor.com.