# Civilization #13: Aristotle and the Greek Legacy **Channel:** Predictive History **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoTOxE4DTFA **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/WoTOxE4DTFA ## Chapters - 0:00 — Introduction to Aristotle and Paradoxes - 3:47 — Plato’s Forms Versus Aristotle’s Teleology - 8:14 — Key Philosophical Differences and Impact - 13:58 — Aristotle as Sensor and Lyceum Founder - 23:45 — Hellenistic Empires and Cultural Strategies - 33:40 — Resolving Paradoxes through Sensor Theory - 40:45 — Authorship Debates Surrounding Aristotle - 46:26 — Enduring Greek Legacy and Conclusion ## Transcript **[0:00] Speaker A:** Okay? So today we will finish the Greeks by discussing Aristotle. And a lot of what I will say today will be controversial, okay? So feel free to challenge me. Feel free to ask for clarification. Feel free to ask any questions, okay? So here's my argument. Aristotle is a paradox. He is one of the mysterious figures in world history. He's one of the most famous, but he's one of the most mysterious. He's a paradox for three reasons. Okay? The first reason is he is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers in human history. He's next to Plato. He's certainly as influential as Plato. But what is unique about him is we do not have anything originally written by him, okay? We have no text that we believe was personally written by him, and that's unique in human history, okay? We say Shakespeare was a great writer, and we can prove it or show it by reading his text. **[1:17] Speaker A:** We believe Aristotle is a great thinker, great writer, but we have no evidence, no text to show us this is the case. But we believe so. Okay? So this is the first paradox of Aristotle. Second paradox of Aristotle is he was a very prolific writer and thinker. In fact, we believe he. There's about 200 works attributed to Aristotle. What is unique about his work is the range of his thinking and his research. So he's written a book on politics, right? What is the best political system? He's written a book on poetics, theater, basically, what makes for a good tragedy. He's written a book on ethics. What is a good life, what makes a good person. He's written a book on rhetoric. How do you convince the audience that you are correct? He's also written books on physics. He's written books on metaphysics. He's written books on biology, okay? **[2:31] Speaker A:** The range is just incredible. We have no analog in human history like him, okay? He's completely unique in the range of his curiosity. Second paradox, the third paradox, is most problematic. We know that Aristotle studied under Plato for 20 years. And so we also believe that Aristotle was Plato's most famous story. **[3:07] Speaker A:** The paradox is Aristotle's understanding of the universe is radically opposed to Plato's understanding of the universe, okay? And that, again, is unique in human history. You would think the best student would carry on the master's work or at least build on it, right? But Aristotle, his understanding of the universe is in conflict with Plato's work. In fact, you could also argue that Aristotle is negating Plato's worldview. Okay? So let me explain how. **[3:47] Speaker A:** So we know Plato. We know that for Plato, there is A God. And it's called the form of the good. **[3:57] Speaker A:** And the form of the good is what is eternal, perfect and immutable, okay? Now, the form of good emanates other perfections, what he calls the form of the ideal. Okay? So these are concepts like justice and beauty and reason. And then these concepts manifest themselves in forms like horse, right? Or a woman, okay? And these are like the ideal, perfect, immutable, eternal manifestations, okay? So there's only one horse. It's up in heaven. Everything else is a copy of this horse or imitation of this horse, okay? So we live in the shadow realm, okay? The shadow realm, where everything is imitation. Okay? This is our reality. It's a shadow reality. **[4:56] Speaker A:** And that's why art and poetry and theater are so bad, because they are really an imitation of an imitation. Okay? So this is Plato's hierarchy. So from this hierarchy and this worldview, we can make certain extrapolations. Okay? The first extrapolation is, for Plato, what is good is if you approach or return to the form of the good. What is evil? What is bad is if you move away from the form of the good. Okay? Right? So poetry is evil, mathematics is good. Now, why is mathematics good? Because mathematics is what allows you to approach the form of the good. All right? So let me give an example of this. Okay? Let's say there's a circle, right? Now, what Plato argues is, no matter how hard you try, you could never, ever draw a circle in this world, okay? Because a circle has an edge. So it's like, literally impossible for you to create something without an edge, right? **[6:15] Speaker A:** You're like, well, I can draw on a computer, but if you go at a microscopic level, you will always find an edge. Okay? So how do you create a circle? Well, you create a circle by imagining it in your head, okay? So what you're really doing is you're imagining the circle because you're accessing the realm of the forms you're approaching from the good. **[6:39] Speaker B:** Okay? **[6:40] Speaker A:** So it's only pure. It is only through a process of pure thought, pure philosophy, pure mathematics, that you can actually start to understand this world. **[6:53] Speaker A:** All right? That's Plato's understanding of the world. Aristotle has a completely different understanding. Okay? So Aristotle starts with this, that God's a prime mover. So the prime mover, just imagine a big bang, right? Something explodes, Boom. It moves, and it forces other things to move as well. So what Aristotle is saying is, everything is really in motion. Everything is changed because it was all caused by the prime mover. **[7:32] Speaker A:** And in Plato and in Aristotle's world. What is good is if the thing that changes moves towards its purpose, okay? Or the word he uses is called telos. Telos. If you're moving towards your purpose, you are doing good in this world. If you're moving away from your purpose, you're doing bad in. In this world. Okay? So the example is a soldier. The purpose of a soldier is to fight and win wars. So if you go fight and you do your best, you're doing good. But if you run away from a war, you're doing bad. Okay? So this is Aristotle's worldview. **[8:14] Speaker A:** And as you can understand, as you can see, these two worldviews cannot harmonize. They are in conflict with each other. You have either one or the other. Okay? So let me highlight the three major differences between these two worldviews, okay? And again, I need to emphasize this. I am not an expert on Aristotle. I'm not an expert on Plato, okay? So I am committing oversimplifications. Scholars who are experts will hear this and be outraged, okay? But for the purpose of this class, I feel these oversimplifications provide clarity. Okay? All right, so the first oversimplification is Plato's what we call a rationalist. **[9:06] Speaker A:** Aristotle is what we call an empiricist. All right, so these are two big words. But the rationalist is just someone who believes that you can access the tooth through peer thought, okay? Mathematics. An empiricist is someone who believes you can only access the truth through observation and what we call induction, okay? Inductive logic. **[9:31] Speaker A:** All right? So if I see a woman wearing a dress, and I see another woman wearing a dress, and a third, I'm like, okay, well, from this, I can logically deduce or induce that all women wear dresses. And that's what separates woman from men, okay? So for Aristotle to seek the truth, you have to observe and you have to induce, okay? So that's the first major difference. Second major difference is Plato is what we call a dualist, and Aristotle is what we call materialist. A dualist is someone who believes that there's a body and a soul, okay? And if you believe there's a body and a soul, you also believe the soul is more important because the soul is eternal, whereas the body will decay and die. **[10:25] Speaker A:** Aristotle, he's a materialist. So for him, the focus is on the body and what happens to the body. Okay? There may be a soul, there may not be a soul. He doesn't really care. For him, it doesn't really matter. What matters is what happens to the body, okay? The third major difference is Plato believes in the idea of immutability, okay? Or what we call eternity. **[10:51] Speaker A:** For Aristotle, almost nothing is immutable. Most things are mutable, okay? The only thing that's really immutable is really God. But everything else is mutable. It will change over time. And so for Aristotle, the concept is infinity. Things will always change, things will always move. There's no stopping movement, okay? But for Plato, things are eternal. There's. There's a grand design, and nothing that changes really matters. It doesn't really affect the grand design. So for him, it's eternity. So these are the three major differences between Plato and Aristotle. Now, what's really interesting for us is this conflict between Plato and Aristotle is what will inform the philosopher debate for all Western civilization, okay? So there are two major camps in Western philosophy. There is the rationalist camp, all right? So people like Descartes. And then there are the empiricists, okay? So people like David Hume, all right? **[11:55] Speaker A:** And for most of Western history, philosophers will go back and forth between these two extremes, okay? Either Platonic ideal or the Aristotle reality. Okay? Does that make sense? All right? Is this clear? Any questions? **[12:14] Speaker B:** Maybe one question. **[12:15] Speaker A:** Sure, Sure, go ahead. **[12:17] Speaker B:** So for Plato and the forms of the good. **[12:21] Speaker A:** Yeah. **[12:21] Speaker B:** So So for him, that's not abstract. Like, that's something that's real. It's not an imaginary thought experiment. To him, that eternity is as real as maybe even more real, then. **[12:35] Speaker A:** Yeah, so that's a great question. And for Plato, okay, what we like our lives, the reality we live in is not real. It's ephemeral. Whereas the form of the good, that's what's concrete, that's what's eternal, okay? So, I mean, like, I understand that's counterintuitive to us, but the reason why it's kind of counterintuitive to us is because we're mainly influenced by Aristotle, right? We live. We are materialists, right? Science is materialistic. But back then, and I would say back then, in Plato's time and for most of human history, it was assumed that our world was transitory or transient or ephemeral, okay? And it was a spirit world, okay? That was real and that was eternal. Does that make sense? **[13:27] Speaker B:** Yeah, I think so. **[13:30] Speaker A:** Okay, okay, again, this is oversimplification, okay? Like, if you go to a scholar who understands itself, I will probably. He'll probably criticize me, okay? But I. I'm saying that for the purpose of this class and for our understanding of Western civilization, this will do, okay? Just understand there's a major conflict between Plato and Aristotle. This will go on for thousands of years. And this will inform the debate in Western civilization. Okay? This is the fundamental debate in Western philosophy. **[13:58] Speaker A:** All right, so let's go back to. Let's summarize where we are. Aristotle is a paradox, right? We have nothing that he wrote originally. The range of his work is just incredible. It's unique in human history. And then lastly, even though we know Aristotle under Plato for like 20 years at least, Aristotle came up with a very different conceptualization of the universe. In fact, it is in direct conflict with Plato's understanding. Okay, so how is this possible? How are these paradox. How can we resolve these paradoxes? Okay, so I'm going to make an argument, and I will slowly make this argument, but it is a controversial argument. Okay? My argument is that Aristotle was not a philosopher. He was not a thinker, he was not a writer. What he was ultimately is what I refer to as a sensor. Sensor, you can also use words like synthesizer, okay? **[15:06] Speaker A:** Or editor or systemizer. Okay? But basically nothing that he thought was original to him, but he decided what would be political, convenient for the moment. Okay? That's what we mean by sensor. **[15:27] Speaker A:** And it's my argument that if we understand Aristotle as a sensor, then these three paradoxes go away. We can explain away these paradoxes. All right, so let me make my argument, okay? My first. My first piece of evidence is we need to compare and contrast the life of Pholusac and Macedon and Aristotle. When you do that, okay, you put their lives side by side. Interesting parallels emerge. Okay, so let's look at their lives. Very simple. Aristotle, he was born in year 384. Philip II was born in year 383. That's about the same age, right? Now, Philip II, he's a prince of Macedon. His father is the king. Right? Aristotle, his father was the court physician to the king. He was the king's personal doctor. Right? So from these two pieces of information, what can we guess about Philip and Aristotle? **[16:36] Speaker A:** They grew up together, right? Does that make sense? Aristotle's father was the personal adopted the king. Philip was the son of the king. It would make sense. They grew up together. It would make sense. It would be educated together. All right? **[16:52] Speaker A:** Second thing that's interesting is from 367 to 348, okay, Aristotle went to Athens to study Plato. Now, around the same time, okay, in the year 369 to 365, Philip went to Thebes to study military innovation under the best generals in Greece. All right? And here I would extrapolate and say the teenagers, they're going to further their education, right? And learn the best scientific and military innovations in order to bring them back to Macedonia. And this happens all the time, right? In the 1980s, China sent its best and brightest to America to study science. Okay? So we can also surmise that even while they were away, they were still in contact with each other, right? Now, in 359, Philip became regent, or basically king. And from then on, he started this massive military campaign to conquer all of Greece. Now, one thing that was interesting about Philip's conquest of Greece was the Athenians didn't really oppose him. **[18:12] Speaker A:** Okay? And this is one of the great mysteries historians struggle with. Why is it that Philip ii, he's going around, he's conquering all these places that are in conflict with Athens, and Athens doesn't really resist, all right? And one possible theory is, well, Philip II just bribed all these Athenian aristocrats. In fact, the man who most opposed Philip, this Athenian statesman named Demosthenes, he actually said this in speeches. He said, listen, I'm telling you right now, Philip tried to bribe me, okay? And I know Philip's bribing all my opponents, but I'm telling you, Athenians, Philip is a menace to democracy, and that's why we must oppose him. So we can surmise that Philip was bribing these Athenians to support him, and that's why there's so little Athenian resistance to Philip. If that's the case, then who's the middleman? Who's the person who is in contact with these Athenian aristocrats? **[19:18] Speaker A:** Aristotle. Right. Why? Because remember, Aristotle was at the academy for 20 years. The academy in Athens at that time is like Harvard, Oxford today, right? It's where all the rich and powerful go to study. So for 20 years, Aristotle was in contact and became friends with the most powerful individuals in Athens. And that's why when Philip need to negotiate with Athenians, it would make the most sense to send Aristotle. Okay, does that make sense? **[19:55] Speaker A:** And then we know that Philip united Greece in 338, and then 335, three years later, Aristotle started a new school in Athens in competition with the Academy, called the Lyceum. Okay, so what is the purpose of the Lyceum? Okay, so that's what I will discuss next. But. But does that make sense? There are direct parallels between the lives of Aristotle and Philip. And we can guess or extrapolate or deduce that Aristotle and Philip were very close throughout their lives. And Helping. And they were helping each other. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, so now the question then is why was Philip going around conquering all of Greece? Well, Philip had a vision for the world. And it's called something called what we call the Pan Hellenic Project. **[20:56] Speaker A:** Okay? So Pan Hellenic Project, okay? So at this time and throughout most of its history, Greece was divided into city states all around the world, okay? Mainly in mainland Greece, but also across the Aegean, in Asia Minor. In Asia Minor, Anatolia. Okay? Across all these different islands and into North Africa and across the Adriatic, also into Italy as well. Okay? So you have this sprawling Greek world. And there were many who believe that this Greek world should unite together because there's a common ancestry. So it's a dream of many philosophers that a great man of history would arise and unite all of Greece by basically defeating Persia. And Philip II said, hey, that's a great idea and it should be me, okay? But the problem is the Pannatic Project assumes a common Greek identity and it didn't really exist at that time. In fact, Greeks probably had more common with their local cultures than with each other, right? **[22:13] Speaker A:** So if you were Greek living in Asia Minor, you were probably more Persian than you were Greek. Okay? So in other words, Philip needed someone, a sensor basically to create a Greek identity. Right? And the way you do that is by taking all this vast universe of knowledge that the Greeks created, right? And you create an encyclopedia or a series of textbooks that define what it means to be Greek. Right? You standardize and you systemize Greek knowledge. **[22:56] Speaker A:** Does that make sense? And so that's probably what Aristotle was doing when he started the Lyceum. He had lots of students, okay? **[23:12] Speaker A:** Yeah. So throughout history, all congress did this, okay? Because that was the only. Because by standardizing and systemizing knowledge was the best way for you to co opt elite. The elite and to showcase your, your legitimacy. Okay? Otherwise intellectual elite would think of you as a barbarian conqueror. All right? And the way, the best way that you co op the intellectual elite is by showcasing a new systematic knowledge. Okay? Does that make sense? **[23:45] Speaker A:** All right, so the problem is that in 336, Philip was assassinated and his son Alexander came to a throne. Came to a throne. And as we discussed last class, Alexander had a very different vision from his father. His father wants to unite the Greek world. Alexander wanted to conquer the entire world to show he was superior to his father, okay? And unbelievably, incredibly, he was able to do so conquer most of the world in about 10 years time. So now suddenly you have this sprawling Empire all around the world, okay? So let's, let's, let's, let's just sketch out how vast this new empire was, okay? So you have, you know, Greece and Macedon, right? Okay, so that's the Greek homeland. **[24:48] Speaker A:** Thank you. That's the Greek homeland, right? But hey, over here you have Anatolia. This is Mesopotamia. Over here is Afghanistan. Oh, sorry, sorry. It should be Iran. Sorry, Iran, Afghanistan. And you also reach as far as Pakistan. Okay? And down here you have the lavat, and you have Egypt. All right? This was not supposed to happen. Philip and the Panhellenic project. Imagine like their conquest would extend up to around here, okay? Because you're uniting the Greek world. Alexander went too far, and now you're. You've conquered most of the known world, okay? **[25:40] Speaker A:** Then Alexander died, and then the empire was divided into three major fragments. Over here you have something called the integrated empire, okay? The antagonate dynasty, okay? So that's one peacely empire. Down here you have Ptolemy, okay? Ptolemy was one of Alexander's generals and he took over Egypt. And over here you have something called the Seleucid Empire, founded, of course, by the General Seleucus, okay? And over here you have other smaller kingdoms as well. So you have this vast empire. And this is something that was unplanned and unexpected. Now that you've conquered these places, your concern or your problem is how do we govern? Okay? So you need a new culture. And so these different generals adopted different strategies. So, for example, here the Persian culture is extremely well established, and the Seleucid king and his hearers decided a process of localization, okay? Or another word we can use is synchronization. **[27:04] Speaker A:** Syncretization, meaning two different religions or two different cultures come together and coalesce together, okay? So throughout the Seleucid Empire, it was really a process of synchronization. The Greeks adapted themselves to local customs and to local culture, okay? At the same time, the Greeks were conquerors, so they still needed to maintain a coherent identity, okay? So it made sense for them to adopt a lot of Aristotle's work. Because, remember, Aristotle was creating a Panhellenic identity. And so he basically created a lot of textbooks. He basically created an encyclopedia. So it made sense for them to import Aristotle's works. Also, what's important is making. Remember, Aristotle was Macedonian. And for the longest time, Greeks did not consider Macedonians to be Greek. This is why it's called the Pan Hellenic project, not like the Pan Greek project. **[28:16] Speaker A:** Also, Greeks were very condescending towards Macedonians because they saw Macedonians as barbarians. So it was in the best interest of these Greek new Macedonian conquerors to exaggerate or to highlight the intellectual contributions of Aristotle. Okay? Does that make sense? Right, Ptolemy? Egypt was very different, okay? Egyptian culture has been around for thousands of years, and Egyptians are very proud of their culture. And this is a problem that because you're very proud of your local culture, you don't like foreign rulers. And this is something that the Persian empire struggled with throughout the centuries that it dominated Egypt. The Persians were famous for their openness and tolerance. Basically, you were allowed to practice your own religion, and they were very supportive of that. Okay? The most famous example are the Jews, right? Who the Persians supported in rebuilding the second temple. We'll get to the Jews later on. **[29:22] Speaker A:** But because the Persians were so supportive of local culture in Egypt, the Egyptians rebelled against Persia many, many times. So Ptolemy and his hearers didn't want to make the same mistake, okay? They wanted to impose a new culture on the Egyptians in order to show that they were superior, therefore more divine than Egyptians. Okay? So Ptolemy, he did many things that started this process. The first thing that he did was he stole Alexander's body from Babylon where he died, and brought it back to Egypt, okay? Because Egyptians saw Alexander as a God, as the son of a God, right? So to establish legitimacy in Egypt, Ptolemy went on a military expedition and stole the body of Alexander, which started something called the war of the diokai, okay? Basically the successor wars. That's the first thing he did. Second thing that he did was he established a new capital in Alexandria called Alexandria. **[30:35] Speaker A:** Okay? So this was mainly a Greek city. It was a new Greek city founded by Alexander, and this is where they house Alexander's body. The third thing that he did was he started to. To sponsor something called. We call the today the mousion. Okay? The mousion is the root of the English word museum. But the museum was really the world's first research university. So Ptolemy and his hearers brought together the greatest Greek scholars in the world to basically continue the work of Aristotle to standardize and systemize Greek culture so that they can impose it on the local Egyptian culture. Does that make sense? **[31:31] Speaker A:** All right. And the most famous aspect of the Mujiang is the library of exandria and the autonomy. Spent a lot of money on the library of exandria, mainly by going around and collecting original manuscripts. All right, So a representative went to Athens and said, we at the library of Alexandria would like the original copies, the original manuscripts for Ieschylus, Sophocles and Eurypides, the three great playwrights, and the Athenians are like, we can't do that because they're like gods here, okay? We're not going to give you our original manuscripts. And the Egyptians said, all we're going to do is we're going to take these manuscripts back to the library of Alexandria where our scribes will copy them out, okay? That's all we're going to do. And then we'll give it back to you. And as a guarantee, we're going to give you like, 15 talents of silver, okay? **[32:34] Speaker A:** Now that's like a billion dollars back then. The Athenians have never seen so much money. So Athenians will say, well, okay, well, if it's just to spread great culture, we can actually deal with that, okay? So we'll take the deposit, 15 talents, and we'll give you the manuscripts. The Egyptians took the manuscripts, placed it in, in the library of Alexandria and said, hey, Athenians, keep the money, okay? Because the Egyptians under Ptolemy were focused on turning the library of Alexandria and Alexandria into the intellectual capital of the Greek world, all right? And so what happened was that after Alexander died and his generals took over, the Pan Hellenic project really became what we call the Pan Hellenistic project, okay? It went from uniting the Greek world into spreading Greek culture all around the world. And that's why we have Greek culture still with us today, because of this process. **[33:40] Speaker A:** So let's go back to the original paradox, all right? Why? There are three paradoxes, right? The first paradox is why do you have nothing original from Aristotle? The answer is because Aristotle didn't write anything original. He stole everything from other thinkers and had his students copied out in manuscript form. Does that make sense? Second is, why are his works so diverse? Why is the rain so great? And the answer is, because he was trying to capture the essence of Greek knowledge, okay? He was trying to unify Greek knowledge into an encyclopedia for dissemination around the world, okay? And the third thing is, okay, most interesting thing is why is Aristotle's philosophy so different from Plato's worldview? Okay, that's, that's, that's a really interesting question. Why. Why are they so different? So let's switch our perspective and ask ourselves, if you were King of Macedonia, if you're Philip Alexander, what's your problem with Plato's philosophy? **[34:54] Speaker A:** You have a problem. What is it? **[34:58] Speaker A:** Any guesses? **[35:06] Speaker A:** Your exander, your philom. You really hate Plato. Why? **[35:15] Speaker A:** Why? **[35:22] Speaker A:** Well, the problem with Plato is you go to Plato. Your exander, you go to Plato and says, I want to conquer the world. Right? Plato would say, what's the point? It's all not real. Alexander, you're just wasting your time. You can conquer the world, but all you're doing is conquering a shadow. What's real is the form of the good, right? Alexander, study mathematics, man. Okay? Do more math. **[35:56] Speaker A:** Stop going around and killing people. Do more math. Right? And we know what Alexander would do here, right? Alexander would probably cut off Plato's head. So Alexander and Phil hate this thing, right? This thing is idiotic. I want to conquer the world, but this philosophy is telling me it's pointless. What matters is mathematics matters. Philosophy. All right, now let's now compare this with Aristotle's prime mover theory, right? What Aristotle is saying is, everything is motion, and what is good is if you fulfill your purpose. Now, if you're Alexander, Philip, this makes more sense. I'm Philip. My purpose is to unite the Greek world. And the more I unite, the more good I'm doing for this world, right? Also, if you're a king, you want your citizens, your soldiers, your workers to work hard, right? Well, for Plato, working hard is just useless. You're imitating an imitation, right? **[37:11] Speaker A:** When you. When you create art. But here, working hard is what gives you purpose. It's what gives you happiness. Okay? **[37:27] Speaker A:** So Aristotle also promoted two major concepts. The first is erite, second is eudaimonia, okay? Arete is just excellence, okay? Your Alexander has arete because he's an excellent general. When you have arete and you are achieving your purpose, then you achieve eudaimonia, okay? Which is just flourishing or happiness. And that's the purpose of life, to have arete and to achieve eudaimonia. So work hard. Fight for exander, support him as he conquers the world because he's making the world better. Does that make sense? **[38:12] Speaker B:** A quick question about that. So if I'm a soldier, my purpose is to be a good soldier. Am I not, like, approaching the form of the good? That there's this ideal soldier up there, and the closer I can get to that, my behavior. **[38:30] Speaker A:** Okay, that's a great question. Yeah, thanks, Doug. Okay. All right. So the question then is if I'm a soldier and I'm. And I'm, you know, working hard and winning battles, am I not approaching from the good? And the answer is, for Plato, it's not the reason why is what if you do in this material world is pointless, okay? Because this material world, it's not real. So whatever you do is not real. Does that make sense? Okay, so what you need to do is Return to the form of the good. But your body can't do that. Your soul can do that. So your use of the body is pointless. You have to use your soul, you have to use your mind. All right? Therefore you have to be a good person. Therefore you have to engage in philosophy and mathematics. And that's how you return to the form of the good. **[39:28] Speaker A:** You're used to the body. **[39:33] Speaker A:** You're just deluding yourself. Okay? Right. And if you engage in art, then you are deluding others and that's more evil. If you're Alexander, you're conquering others and forcing them to believe your fake philosophy, then you're committing the most evil in the world. Does that make sense? All right, all right. So, yeah, all right, so this is what I. This is my theory of how to best resolve the three paradoxes of. Paradox of Aristotle. Okay? Does that make sense? He was basically a censor who was working for Philip and Alexander and he was trying to develop a Pan Hellenistic identity in order to unite the world they conquered. Okay, so that's my argument. Any, any questions about this overall argument? Does it make sense to you guys? **[40:26] Speaker A:** Okay, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. All right, go ahead. **[40:32] Speaker B:** So one of the questions is how do we know? Because I think a few things might. **[40:39] Speaker A:** That's a great question. Yeah. Okay. All right. So how do we know he didn't write any of his works? **[40:45] Speaker A:** Okay, the answer is this. **[40:49] Speaker A:** When you write something, you actually manifesting your thought, right? But your thought comes from your personality. So if you look at any work of genius, it's original and unique. Does that make sense? In other words, if you read Shakespeare, guess what? There's no other Shakespeare in the world. If you're trying to imitate Shakespeare, you look like an idiot. Homer is unique. Plato is unique. There's no point in trying to imitate them. You can't do it because you are not them. Okay? Now when you look at Aristotle, there's something unique about Aristotle. So you know, when you read Plato, the Republic, there are certain ideas that stand out, like Allego, the cave. Okay. There's certain phrases that capture your imagination that doesn't exist with Aristotle's text. They're written like textbooks. So the argument for the longest time was Aristotle did write his own books, but they were lost to us. **[41:54] Speaker A:** And his students had to reassemble his thinking from their own memory. Okay, so, so, so yeah, that's how we know. But, but this is generally agreed upon. We have nothing that Aristotle wrote originally. **[42:08] Speaker B:** Okay, so maybe the follow up question then would be it's just as possible that his ideas were politically expedient for the empire and they could have been co opted by forces outside of the Aristotle's personal control. **[42:24] Speaker A:** That's That's right. **[42:27] Speaker B:** Is that as much of a valid theory? **[42:32] Speaker A:** Yep. Okay, so. Thank you, Doug. Okay. Yeah. So there are many different possibilities of how Aristotle can become so influential. Okay. The first possibility is as, as I, as I argue, he was actually a partner of Phillips, that they were both trying to promote the Pan Hellenic project. Okay. That's the first possibility. But another possibility is as Doug says, he was just a philosopher. He was a student of Plato. **[43:27] Speaker B:** Yeah, because like one of the. Just from the chart there about Aristotle's biography, one thing that kind of stands out to me and I'm projecting too much onto his dad. But his dad was a physician, right? A doctor. **[43:40] Speaker A:** Right, Right, that's right. **[43:41] Speaker B:** And And that, that's. If that's your approach to the world, you are going to be much more of a materialist looking. What's wrong with my body? Like, Plato's not going to be any helper. Right. **[43:54] Speaker A:** But. But. Right. **[43:55] Speaker B:** Being much more down to earth and grounded. And you know, that's going to come out from being a physician, son. And I, I know a lot of the writers, writers that, that I like were formerly doctors. Like Anton Chekhov. **[44:09] Speaker A:** Yep. Yep. **[44:10] Speaker B:** Kind of coming from the Russian world where there was all these big philosophical novelists and Chekhov comes into that world. It's just like the down to earth, grounded common sense. This is how we live. **[44:23] Speaker A:** Yep, Yep, exactly. So. So, yeah, so it is entirely possible that Aristotle was a materialist because that was just his personality. Right. The influence from his father who was a physician. Okay, but that creates another problem, which is if you are so opposed to Plato's understanding of the world. Right. Because you're a materialist and he's a dualist, why were you studying under Plato for 20 years? Does that make sense? **[44:52] Speaker A:** So that creates another problem. All right, so another thing I want to point out is, okay, how we have Aristotle's works today, there are three different possibilities. Okay. The first possibility is that Aristotle, in his lifetime, he organized his students and created this encyclopedia. And it's no different from professors at University State. Right. Professors who are scientists, they actually do very little of the original research that the students do. It but they want to supervise the entire process. So it's possible. That's the first possibility. Aristotle was supervising the work of creating a Greek identity. The second possibility is after Aristotle died, his students start to remember, recall his lectures. And that's why so much of his work is fragmentary. Okay? We don't have complete manuscripts. And the third possibility, okay, and it's entirely possible, is Aristotle is a fiction created by scholars at the Library of Exandria. **[45:56] Speaker A:** Okay? So it's really the scholars at the Library of Alexandria who created Aristotle. And they did so by synthesizing all this work. And then they. They gave it to. They accredited it to attribute it to Aristotle in order to create the legend of this philosopher. Okay, does that make sense? **[46:17] Speaker B:** There's some interesting overlaps here with Confucius, right? **[46:21] Speaker A:** Okay, so let's have an argument about Confucius. Let's have discussion about Confucius. Okay? **[46:26] Speaker A:** But I want to very quickly talk about the Greek legacy, because even though we can argue back and forth about Aristotle and his providence, what is not debatable is the profound influence that Aristotle had on the world. Okay? We can argue if Aristotle's. If Aristotle was the original writer or the original thinker, but what is not debatable is the tremendous influence he had on the entire world. Okay? So there are three aspects of the Greek legacy I want to discuss. The first aspect is the Greeks created a new way of being human. All right? So let's look at the major thinkers. We have Homer, you have the playwrights Ieschylus, Sophocles and Eurybias. And you have the philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. All right? So the Greeks created a new way of being human. What do I mean by that? Homer was an oral bard. He would get up in front of audiences and he would for hours recite this beautiful poetry about the Trojan War, the Iliad. **[47:40] Speaker A:** Okay? And in the process, listen to Homer created empathy and imagination, right? Because the point of listening to Homer was to enter Homer's world and become Achilles or Odysseus. And through this process, you became a different person. And. And therefore, you learn empathy, but you also expanded your imagination. Okay? So that's what Homer did for the Greeks. Then you have Ischylus, Sophocles, and Eupides. And what they did that was different is rather than sing directly at the audience, they had the characters face each other in a dialogue and a debate, okay? And by doing this, what happens is you create the capacity for perspective and inner debate, right? Because before you were part of the story. Now you have to step back and judge the story, okay? There's a debate going on. You have to switch perspectives in order to understand the characters. And this creates the capacity for an inner monologue, okay? **[49:03] Speaker A:** And in a debate in you. And then you have Plato and Aristotle. What Plato did that was unique was he took all the dialogue in the play and he transported onto the page. But now you're doing it by yourself, and you have the benefit of time, okay? And so this creates a capacity for reason and reflection, okay? You can sort of reason out if the words make sense to you. You are no longer influenced by the crowd or the emotions of the actor. You can just look at the words themselves and judge them on their own merit. You also have the capacity now to reflect meaning. You can go back to the words over and over the course of your lifetime to constantly reflect on their meaning and logic, okay? Understand? So when you add these three things together, Homer create the capacity for empathy and imagination. **[50:07] Speaker A:** The playwright create the capacity for inner debate and perspective. The philosophers create the capacity for reason and reflection. You now have a new human mind, okay? And when you study all of them, this is what we call ultimately a liberal arts education. **[50:31] Speaker A:** And guess what? Our greatest thinkers came to us from through the liberal arts. All right? So in the future, we'll study people like Kant, Hume, Hegel. Just the greatest thinkers of the past 20 years. They all. What was common about them is they all read the Greeks, and that was just their education. All right? So this is the first legacy of the Greeks, a new way of being and seeing, okay? Does that make sense? Second thing is, now that you have this Greek world, okay, the Greeks need to establish a cohesive cultural identity. And they had. They did that by promoting a Greek education, okay? But not only that, but they had to bring in local people into this education. So one major function of the Library of Alexandria was to standardize and systemize Greek knowledge. And they did this by standardizing the text, okay? **[51:44] Speaker A:** So they're given different texts of Homer. The text of Homer that we have today was developed by the people at the Library of Alexandria, okay? Standardization. They also take something called commentaries. So commentaries are basically like teacher handbooks, okay? They teach you how to teach this stuff. And they create, like, footnotes and chapters and page numbers, codices, indexes, okay? So the point was to make Greek education available and accessible to anyone, all right? And what this means is we in China now can actually read Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato for ourselves, even though we are not culturally Greek. And that's the benefit of the Pan Hellenistic project. **[52:38] Speaker A:** And the third major benefit is Greek knowledge meant a global revolution in innovation. Okay? What I mean by that is, remember, Greek knowledge is being spread around the world, and they are interacting with powerful local cultures. And through the process of synchronization, new forms of knowledge are being created. Okay? So the Greeks spread the knowledge to India, and now it's enacting with local Indian philosophy and religion, including new ideas. Right? So the most famous synchronization is in the Levant. Greek knowledge was being spread to the Jews. Okay? And so when you put the Greeks and the Jews together, you have a new idea that would forever revolutionize human history, and it's called Christianity. Right? So Christianity would not have been possible if it were not for the work of Aristotle. Okay? All right, so those are the three major legacies of the Greeks. And so it is, I think it's perfectly fair to say the Greeks were the most influential and consequential civilization of the all time. **[54:07] Speaker A:** They're certainly the most creative. No other civilization even comes close to their creativity. **[54:16] Speaker A:** Okay, so that's it. Any questions? **[54:23] Speaker A:** Okay, so, okay, so we are finished with the Greeks. Next class, we start a new unit on Rome Roman history. All right, so great.