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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
Speaker 1 0:00
It's arguable, at least, that that the peak for Aristotle is a kind of friendship. Maybe the friendship between two philosophers, or at any rate, two human beings who are striving for intellectual virtue, which is explicitly and emphatically the peak prayer. The moral virtues are essential, but they're not the people.
PJ Wehry 0:28
Hello, and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host P.J. Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Robert Bartlett, the Barakus Professor in Hellenic Political Studies at Boston College, and we're here today to talk about his book, his new book upcoming here in December, "Law and the Good Life on the Political Philosophy of Aristotle. Dr. Bartlett, wonderful to have you on today.
Speaker 1 0:52
Thank you, and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
PJ Wehry 0:55
So, Dr. Bartlett, why this book?
Speaker 1 0:59
Why this book? Well, it's an it's. I mean it to be a kind of introduction or overview to the political philosophy of Aristotle. So I guess one way to answer your question would be why Aristotle. I've been studying Aristotle and the ancient world generally for a long time, and the short answer is that I find in especially in Aristotle, kind of directness, a kind of clarity, and power to the questions that I think still are important ones for human beings today. And I wrote this book in order to try to put together what I thought I had seen in his treatment of political philosophy, or the human questions, or as he puts it, the philosophy of human affairs, and in my book that means that I treat the Nicomachean ethics, and probably at greatest length, I treat that book. What is virtue? What is human happiness, and so on? And then it's all, but also its sequel, the politics, where he takes up, as the title suggests, more immediately political questions. But I also treat a third book called *The Art of Rhetoric* and so the art of persuasive speechmaking. I think it's the single most influential book in the history of rhetoric or speechmaking, and so I tried to give readers introduction to those books, but also a kind of synoptic view of how they fit together. What is the good life according to Aristotle? What kind of questions do you need to raise in order to begin to to think about that life and what that life mean, even in 2026. So the short answer is, I in this book I tried to write a kind of comprehensive account of Aristotle's answer to the question of what the good life is for you, and I hope I succeeded in that. Which is the
PJ Wehry 2:59
question that everyone really ends up asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and that's really interesting. So, and this is a. Can you talk a little bit about choosing those three books together to kind of answer that question? Why those three? Why not? You know, on the soul, or you know, yeah, you know, surely logic would be part of the good life, right?
Speaker 1 3:27
Well, maybe it's preparatory to the good life, hostile. Maybe it's too hostile to logic. Why those books? Because in those books, it seems to me Aristotle treats most directly the question of the human good. The Nick McKeon ethics begins with the question, "What is happiness? begins and ends with that question, and it remains. I think it's difficult in its way. All of Aristotle's writing is difficult, but it does remain, I think, accessible to a wide range of people, I teach it pretty regularly to undergraduates. I'm always struck by the the directness of much of Aristotle's discussion of the virtues, for example, courage. You know, students have immediate access to that question. Maybe they have a higher or lower opinion of courage than Aristotle, but it's it's not a strange or bizarre question, and so I think the Nick McKeen ethics is the natural starting point for political philosophy or the philosophy of human affairs, and then the politics is the explicit sequel. Each book refers to the other. The end of the ethics is a kind of transition to the politics, and so that makes sense. What what perhaps maybe is less obvious is my inclusion of some discussions of the rhetoric. That's a kind of addendum, I would say, to. His politics, and I just have I just have naturally very great interest in in rhetoric, speech making, and so on. And so I was attracted to that book. That book refers to both the ethics and the politics, so they're kind of in the same the same universe, if you like. Now, having said that, I think one does need to study the the on the soul, the anima, and the metaphysics and the logical writings, the so-called organon, and so on. So all of those are part of the bigger project. But everybody has to start somewhere. And for me, and I think for at least the students I encounter, the more natural starting point isn't being qua being. It's what what should I do with my life? How how do I live? And that's that's a question that Aristotle, of course, raises.
PJ Wehry 5:53
Is there a natural progression? It's interesting. You talk about the rhetoric being kind of an addendum. Is there a natural progression in the Nicomachean ethics to the politics, in terms of like the self friendship and then the greater polis. Yes,
Speaker 1 6:11
exactly. So I could give a kind of snapshot of organization of the ethics and the companion ethics. It begins and ends with a discussion of happiness, what is happening, and in the middle, the bulk of it is going through. It turns out 11 virtues of character or moral virtues. Then you write the discussion of friendship. It's the single longest discussion of friendship that comes down to us from antiquity. Plato has a short dialog on it. Cicero wrote on it, but but not at such length. So you have the question of happiness: what is it? And then these virtues would apply to individuals as individuals. They have implications for your membership in a community. But Aristotle treats them as a quality that you either have or don't have, as the case may be, or the vices too. Then he broadens it out to friendship, just as you say. What what is my connection to other people? What do I want from a friend? What does a friend want from me? The kinds of friendship, and so on, and then back to happiness. And where the ethics culminates, the peak of Book 10, which is the last book, is intellectual virtue. He had telegraphed that earlier in the book, but not discussed it. And so, the sort of the peak that we reach at the end of the ethics is this: is the philosopher, someone seeking wisdom or trying to perfect intellectual virtue, the cultivation of the mind, but that's all very apolitical, or at least it seems rather apolitical. And so he adds to so at the very end of the ethics, he turns to to speak about the law, and it looks as though he's going to sketch the kind of regime of virtue. How do we bring the moral virtues that I've just discussed into being in a community? But that's not quite how he proceeds. In a way, he reopens the whole question of the human good. All, and you're right. It becomes very political. Obviously, we're no longer these individuals with virtues or vices, as the case may be, but we begin in a family and in a village, and then in a polis, a community, a political community. And one of the most interesting things, and what I try to do in my book, book five of the ethics is related, is takes up justice. What is justice? Very interesting, complicated discussion of that, but then he comes back to it in the politics in in book three, and it's a much more immediately political discussion of justice as you might expect. And one of the puzzles is how do you put those two things together, the two separate discussions of justice, and it's fascinating thing. He looks at first from a rather individual point of view, and then from a more thoroughly political point of view. For example, the regime. He's a very famous discussion in Book Three of the Politics of the regime types and their justice and their injustice. So again, it's much political, and part of what he's saying there, I think, is this is useful. I think today in modern liberalism, we may ask ourselves, "What kind of a human being do I want to be? Sort of focus on ourselves, cultivating ourselves, which to some extent he encourages. But you can never forget the broader context, even in modern liberalism, where we sometimes think of ourselves as rights-bearing individuals and leave me alone, you know, kind of a thoroughgoing libertarianism, perhaps just don't tread on me. But Aristotle would would teach us, I think, that even for such a person. For modern liberalism, which Aristotle didn't know precisely, couldn't have. Nonetheless, there is broader political community that affects you, and you need to think more seriously about that. Your relation to it, how it would be improved, both for your benefit, but for the benefit of others too. And then the transition to the rhetoric is very-it's a very political book, as I say. I treat it as a kind of sequel or addendum to the politics, and he is concerned with questions of justice there too. He's very concerned about the misuse rhetoric, which he details. At the same time, he acknowledges that we need rhetoric.
Speaker 1 10:48
That there's going to be rhetoric for so long as human beings, who are speech-making creatures, for so long as they come together, and that's natural to us, according to Aristotle. So, on the one hand, the rhetoric is a kind of how-to, those kind of strategies and different kinds of proofs or modes of persuasion and so on. Different kinds of rhetoric. He gives examples of what to do and what not to do and so on. And he exhorts us not to abuse it, but I think he acknowledges in the end that it can still be used. Sometimes I compare rhetoric to a loaded gun that can do a great deal of damage, or it can do some good, even perhaps great good. Rhetoric has something of that character for Aristotle. And the difficulty is this: that you using rhetoric, you can persuade someone of something, but it may or may not be true. And in any case, persuasion doesn't have to come from knowledge, right? So you can teach someone something. The interior angles of every triangle add up to 180. You can teach them that, give them a proof, and then they would be persuaded, presumably, if they understood it. Rhetoric is not like that, or it is rarely like that, and and so it's a it's a diceier affair. Aristotle is sensitive to that. He knows he's playing fire, and rhetoric, you know, in the ancient world, we cry the fact of 15 sound bites and so on. But in the ancient world, especially Greece and Rome, you know, public speaking making was art. It was practiced, and you have an hour-long speech, which would be listened to, and so on. So it was more highly developed, I would say. But it, and so it was in a way the deep means of power that if you could persuade a crowd assembly that you were right, that's equivalent to power. And so, on the one hand, he acknowledges the somewhat disturbing or potentially disturbing power of rhetoric, while also trying to improve it and make it more precise. So, my suggestion is that the three books go together, and that they, if you listen to the ethics, you'd get a not an apolitical picture that's too strong, but insufficient stress on the political. After all, what is one of Suddhoo's most famous theses that a human being is by nature a political animal. That's what we are. If you just looked at the politics, you wouldn't have the rich detail, the possibilities of human excellence that you get in the ethics.
PJ Wehry 13:35
Yeah, that's really excellent. Thank you for that that answer. I want to return to the idea of how justice and law interact. You hint a little bit about that in the book about arbitrary and even immoral laws. But before before I get to that, I did want to ask you. You find when talking to your students and kind of what led to this book that Aristotle brings a directness, a power, and a clarity. Some of that is undoubtedly his own style. Do you also think that's because of his foundational role in philosophy, and that the students kind of intuitively feel that feels like there's something generative going on there, where they're recognizing things like courage because Aristotle made that important.
Speaker 1 14:27
Yeah, that's an interesting question, a difficult question. There's no doubt that Aristotle comes with a certain reputation. If they know anything about philosophy, they've at least heard that name, and that he's one of the people. So I think they're maybe more willing to listen to him now. I teach at Boston College, a Catholic school, Jesuit school. So maybe some of my students had some prior exposure to him at some point through Thomas Aquinas or other sources. Maybe there's a bit of a prejudice in his favor among my students. I don't know, but I would say the fundamental thing is not so much his reputation as what it is that he says. Yeah, and one of the peculiarities or striking about the ethics, for example, is that it's partly a description. I don't know of a community that doesn't prize something like courage, because you need soldiers to defend the place. Something like justice. You owe me this, and I owe you that. There couldn't be exchange, which a community needs, without some notion of justice. At the same time, Aristotle, at least as I read him, is also prescriptive. There's one of the most fun exercises I have as students is we go through his 11 moral virtues: virtues of character, courage, moderation, liberality, justice, and so on, greatness of soul, and then we make our own list. I either do this before or after, and there's some overlap, courage. But today we'd say more like being tolerant, being nice, things that don't really make his list, and that that begin a kind of interesting conversation about these differing pictures of what an excellent human being is, and again, that so they always agree with Aristotle, but they're open. I find open to at least a conversation between the things that they bring to the text and the things that he says. This is this is what excellence consists of. Some things are, as I say, uncontroversial. Some are quite controversial. He wasn't an egalitarian. He didn't presuppose the fundamental equality of all human beings, which, which I think typically my students do, or universally my students do. But to your first point about law, yeah. That the title of the book is "Law in the Good Life, and the things that I like to do in the book is to put together all of the references he makes to law, which are somewhat scattered. And I notice this thing, this feature of his discussion, that on the one hand he has very high praise. No community without law, a legal order could survive, and deference to the law. We need to be habituated to obey the law, and so for example, he warns against frequent changes of law because that that gets people used to thinking law isn't somehow fundamental, and that's very dangerous. So on one hand, you say a quote unquote conservative case, very austere in that way. Going together with that, though, are very, very tough criticisms of law. That law is incapable of doing what it wishes to do, because law as such is universal. Never do this; always do that. And as he brings out he's not the first to do it, but he does it quite powerfully. The human circumstances they're so vague in the particulars that if you simply apply the law as it's written, blank form, you will in fact do something that the legislator did not wish. and that's a real problem for law. That even from the intention of the lawgiver, it will be violated in when it's applied in any number of circumstances that legislator couldn't have foreseen. And so, as I say, there's both high praise and pretty tough criticism of the law in the ethics of politics, and so one of the solutions-a very famous, a very influential solution-is his discussion of so-called equity, and that it falls to statesmanship to try to fill the gap in what the law says, and the good that the law tried but failed to come up with. So there are exceptions to every rule. This very famous cliche in English, I suppose, but that's really true. And so he has this very delicately phrased discussion. He doesn't want to criticize law or the lawgiver.
Speaker 1 19:44
On the other hand, he he makes clear there has to be something like equity, so that a judge, a juror, a politician, or statesman of some kind could intervene and say, "No, not in this case. Here, there's an exception that if we enforce this." Law as written in this case, we do more harm than good, and so there has to be an exception. But you can't write that into the law because the law can't anticipate the endless variety of different human circumstances, and that really requires a kind of judgment or prudence to speak of one of Aristotle's key virtues, you look at the law. What was the intention of the good that the law tries to bring out, and then apply it to this particular circumstance with Sally and John, you know, or whatever it is, in these particular circumstances. So I tried, as I say, I tried to trace out his subtle and complicated treatment of law. Very high praise, very tough criticism, and it seems to me that finally he he is the core of his political philosophy is not a legal philosophy. Once you sort of see both the strengths and the weaknesses of law, then you turn to virtue, moral virtue, arete, and the virtues then take on a greater importance, and that's the single thing for which he's most famous. Surely, since teaching about the moral virtues, intellectual and moral virtue. So I tried to do justice, as it were, to his treatment of law. Law really is very fundamental then and now. You know, we don't may not have great reverence for ordinary laws. We know they're man-made. We don't pretend that the American laws come from the gods on high, but we do have, say, constitutional law, and there you get a sense of the kind of reverence for law, which was customary throughout the ancient world. I think it certainly is, and they did have a notion of divine law that Zeus, Alou, and Paulo gave laws to Sparta, to Crete, to other places, so that law brings with it this this sense of reverence, or can bring with it this sense of reverence, deference. And Aristotle says that's very nice, yes, but in some cases the law won't do. So there's, in fact, in politics, he has a critique of the regimes of Sparta and Crete, which again claimed a divine origin. Says if you look at the Constitution, it's got some serious problems. So, so yeah,
PJ Wehry 22:33
and that's a great answer. Yeah, if you don't mind my asking, oh, sorry, go
Speaker 1 22:39
ahead. No, I'm just going to say to go back to you said in your question that he's very aware of the thought of the of the fact that there can be unjust laws, and that yes, that might seem a commonplace, but it has real consequences. That law is essential but limited.
PJ Wehry 22:58
Yeah, I and that just as a technical point, and it's been a while. Is the Greek word for prudence, and just for my own my own benefit, is that phrenesis or phronesis?
Speaker 1 23:10
Yes, yes, phronesis is general translation. Okay,
PJ Wehry 23:16
I I read I um yes I I I read Truth and Method about 15 years ago, and I remember that extended discussion. And I think I was reading Heidegger at the same time, so I was like, wait, attracting that, which is just goes. I mean, the influence of Aristotle. It'd be tough to overstate it.
Speaker 1 23:40
Rapids, yeah. especially with, but but also with Gadward, great influence.
PJ Wehry 23:47
Yeah, I. So, and as we are talking about, yes, as you're talking about putting these together, when you talk about this this movement between the the universal and the particulars and the need for equity, and this is where I think we can tie together his virtue theory with statesmanship, right? Because if you're a very if you're very good at rhetoric, but you lack virtue, you're not going to result in equity. So the particulars are supplied by virtue. That Frenesis is something that comes. I think Vernesis is actually, or prudence is one of the virtues, correct? But that all of the virtues working together is that what provides that particular basis for equity?
Speaker 1 24:32
Yeah, and it's it's one of the the puzzling and difficult things of his presentation of Vernesis, or the practical judgment. Sometimes it's translated prudence. I translated that it has to deal particulars, right? This guy took this from somebody else, and what do we do about that? Yeah, but it be divorced from some kind of principle, broader. Or universal principle, and so the negotiation between these particulars and and the universal rule is the the blood and guts, the heart and soul of prudence. And to some degree, I think people have that capacity for judgment, where they don't. It can be refined through practice and so on. But many of the great political examples through history, Churchill, for example, you know, there were many people in 1933 or 1934 who were looking at the European scene, and you know, in my judgment, at least, he saw more clearly than others did what the threats were, what had to be done on the ground right now in order to forestall or at least deal with those threats, and that's a that's a kind of prudence on the grandest scale, I would say, civilization maybe at stake. But yes, it's it's. I agree with what you say That equity as a as a as a cure for the limits of law has somehow marry the particular with the universal principle, and that does very much involve what he calls prudesis. He calls it at one point the eye of the soul. It sort of sees things, and he it's he doesn't really describe it except except in that way. It's one of the important parts of history, serious history, that you can look back at circumstances, and look at the different characters, the circumstances that were on the table, and to to see to evaluate the prudence or the absence of prudence, the imprudence that was at play in this or that circumstance. I mean, it's part of what makes the study of history attractive. That you get to sort of replay these concrete circumstances and and to try to figure out at least who did what well and why,
PJ Wehry 27:11
as a sort of practice.
Speaker 1 27:13
Yes. So that this sort of philosophic, quasi philosophic study of history. It has to be good history, but yeah. Well, Churchill's own. I mean, some people say he's rather biased as a historian to
PJ Wehry 27:28
go along with.
Speaker 1 27:33
But but he's a wonderful writer. So
PJ Wehry 27:35
yeah, to go along with the Churchill example. Yes, yes. To go along with the Churchill example, an example of someone who was not prudential would be like Neville Chamberlain, the the piece in our time, right?
Speaker 1 27:52
Right. I would say he meant well, and there was a certain a desire for peace, an exhaustion following the First World War, but he seems not to have sized up Hitler. And you know, Hitler was a-I don't know if he was unique. There were crazy tyrants in antiquity, but not crazy tyrants who also had technology at their disposal. This is a great difficult modern times, and Churchill sized him up in a way that I think Chamberlain didn't. I could recommend to our audience if they're looking for recommendations a book by by Churchill called Great Contemporaries, which is a series of biographies, including one of Hitler, and it makes for fascinating reading. You know we're we're taught today not to be judgmental, which is a nice exhortation, but it's humanly impossible because if you've ever made or lost a friend, you you are judgmental. We make judgments of other people all the time, and and the the net result of our being exhorted not to be judgmental is that we're not very good at making judgments have to make because life demands it of us. So read Churchill would be one one way to improve on that, hone one's skills,
PJ Wehry 29:15
and reading the ethics. How does friendship? Oh, yes. How does how does friendship in the Nicomachean ethics kind of bridge the polis and the individual? Is it practice? Is it the outgrowth that you you're able to practice statesmanship because you have a network of friendships, or is it more just the that you are practicing working alongside other souls?
Speaker 1 29:47
I like the way you put that because there is a kind of bridge, and that's how I am inclined to think of the discussion-that long discussion, complicated discussion of friendship in Aristotle books eight and nine of the ethics-as I as. I think I said that the treatment of the virtues, even to some extent the treatment of justice, although that's more complicated in the ethics. There, we're looking at individuals who are outstanding, either for the virtue or their vice, as the case may be. But in that discussion of friendship, he begins to take account of the fact that we are social beings, that you can't understand what a human being is in isolation, his or her fellows, and friendship. You know, in a way, the political community is more complicated. It's bigger and so on, but it's more complicated also in this way that it makes or it may make very great demands on us. For example, it may ask us to fight and die on its behalf, and the goods that we get from the community are real goods, to be sure. But some argue I'm getting a raw deal. I mean, 98% of our politics is discussions about who's getting a raw deal and who isn't. Whereas in friendship, it's two people, generally speaking. At least the most intense friendships are between two people, and there the the idea of a common good is richer, more immediately available, more powerful than a common good that might include 200 or 300 million people. I'm not saying there isn't such a common good, but in the case of friendship, in a way, you see something. Our desire for a connection with another human being is clear, more intense, and perhaps somewhat more interesting than our citizenship. So again, I mean, he treats that at length and very seriously too. We're political animals; we're social animals, and so he looks at all of that. But I agree with your initial suggestion that it's it is a kind of bridge between individual or individual, and us in our communal selves. And it's arguable, at least, that that the peak for Aristotle is a kind of friendship, maybe the friendship between two philosophers, or at any rate, two human beings who are striving for intellectual virtue, which is explicitly and emphatically the peak forever. The moral virtues are essential, but they're not the peak. No city can philosophize, but two human beings who are friends could
PJ Wehry 32:41
philosophize together.
Speaker 1 32:42
so it may be that friendship ultimately, when you put the whole package together, it may have a kind of higher peak than even the best community has community.
PJ Wehry 32:56
So that politics is something that's more necessary than than kind of ultimate is that?
Speaker 1 33:04
Yeah, it's
PJ Wehry 33:06
does that make sense? Is that is that a way to think about it?
Speaker 1 33:10
Yeah, there's. I would say there's this complication. So for Thomas Hobbes, say one of the early modern thinkers, I assume your title title of this podcast is at least in some ways, a nod to Hobbes. Maybe the Book of Job and Hobbes.
PJ Wehry 33:25
It's actually Job, but
Speaker 1 33:35
for Hobbes, we are not by nature political animals, and our coming together in communities is entirely man-made; it's artificial. For Aristotle, that is not true. Again, one of his most famous theses have said that the city is by nature, the polis is by nature, and we are by nature political. So something in our nature come draws together. He says, "You either have to be a beast or a god not to meet the city. But the complication is this: seems to me that our nature, human nature, is complex. And my view of his final position on this question is something like this: that you couldn't fulfill human nature without a community group in a forest somewhere. But neither does complete and full citizenship in a community, even a good community, that does not exhaust the peace that human nature admits of. So, our political nature, our membership in a political community, is the necessary but not the sufficient condition for full human health, let's say, so that the moral virtues come into their own in a political community, how we deal with our fellows, and so on. At least partly, that's the purpose of them. But intellectual virtue is something else. Yes, it could be used. To guide a community in the way that we've said, in the form of phronesis, butnesis isn't the peak. Sophia is wisdom for Eric, and so there's so if I could summarize the complication, as at least as I understand it, for Hobbes, politics is just an unfortunate necessity. The state of nature is terrible. We have to construct a man-made leviathan, the man-made state, to keep nature at bay. It's so terrible, but it's our doing with our own commands. For Aristotle, that is not the case. No, that our nature, in a way, begins to bloom in a political community, but. that the highest peak element of our intellectual capacities transcends any community, and in that respect, friendship, as I say, might be the higher source of or place locus of of excellence, human excellence, than even the rest city. Never mind a bad city. One way I could put this in an historical example is that Socrates, the philosopher, lived in Athens, which was a big, prosperous, loosey-goosey community. But at the age of 70, he was killed by Athens. So there was even in this case, there was a tension between the philosopher as such and the community or the city. Now that may be an extreme case, but it's. I think Plato and Aristotle regarded it as revealing something fundamental.
PJ Wehry 36:36
Yes, absolutely. I and you've mentioned it a couple times here, and so I've been leading up to this question. You talk about what's necessary for the good life. You have the law, which it could be arbitrary, even immoral. There's this need for equity, and then you talk about not just moral virtue, but also intellectual kind of fulfillment. Why do we need both? Because it's really interesting the way that you know what is true without regard to action, which definitely seems how does that apply to living if it doesn't apply to action? And so I I would love to hear what you have to say about that.
Speaker 1 37:16
I mean, your first question: Why do we need that? I would say, well, why do eagles soar? You know, this just what we are by nature, at least according to Aristotle, that we have two kinds of excellence: excellence in doing, including making. You know, we can build statues and bridges and the most amazing things. That is a part of our excellence too. But according to Aristotle, the the peak simply is our capacity to understand what is true, and this this maybe I should say a little bit about because it is somewhat strange in our time. We're very practical people, so we too study theoretical physics and theoretical sciences more generally, I think it's true to say that it's generally regarded the more the more serious thing is not the study of those theoretical things, but application of them. You know, so it's great to understand motion, terrific, but could you build a better airplane or a better missile, the application of it that that gets the stress. I would say, in the modern in modern America, for lots of good reasons, serious reasons. For Aristotle, he acknowledges all of that, but for him, the thing of higher dignity and higher worth is simply understanding, and the word theory, the English word theory, comes from the Greek word theoria, which the simple meaning which is simply to look upon something. The theater is the place where you go to look, and and for him, doing making-that's good. We couldn't have human life without action and praxis, praxis and and techné, technical arts making. But the higher thing simply is understanding, not for the sake of any other reason than that we long to know the way things are. That that's his contention, and to the extent that one is progress in that and is aware of one's progress, that that is a crucial part of happiness. And so, the simple answer, if it is a simple answer, is that's the kind of animals we are. We seek to know, and yes, we can apply that knowledge in various ways, but but we needn't. And Aristotle, I think, argues that in the highest cases we don't. Was warrior than we are. When you talk about the
PJ Wehry 40:05
moral,
Speaker 1 40:09
sorry,
PJ Wehry 40:12
go ahead. Oh, well, actually, I would love to hear at the end of that sentence. He's warier than we are of what?
Speaker 1 40:19
Of technology. I mean, what we call technology. Yeah, the application, the application of philosophy to the relief of man's estate, as Francis Deacon, that the ancients generally were very. There wasn't a great incentive to do that. It's an interesting question, an interesting theoretical and practical question: Why, in the early modern era, Hobbes and on Machiavelli, there was that to try to change the world fundamentally through the application of what we now call science, but which at the origins they call philosophy, practical philosophy, moral science, and so that-that's a long question for another day. But but that incentive was absent from Plato and Aristotle. So content simply to understand,
PJ Wehry 41:16
or not the second, but the the next book,
Speaker 1 41:20
the next book,
PJ Wehry 41:23
yes, so and I'm, I'm, if I understand correctly, virtue, moral virtue, is closely tied to praxis, and then prudence, you know, certain types of certain types of virtue, and then the intellectual fulfillment is coming out in kind of the just the the end of the good life. Like, what is the ultimate end of it? It does seem to me, though, if I'm if I'm understanding correctly, that techné does show up maybe sneakily in rhetoric, or is that praxis too?
Speaker 1 41:58
No, no, he calls it a techne. You're absolutely right. In fact, the proper title, the full title of his book, is "The Art of Rhetoric. So that comes up there. So rhetoric he treats as an art, which means that it's a body of knowledge, like a shoemaker. A shoemaker. There's an art of shoemaking in Greece. They would call it a techne, and you may say it's rather modest, but it knows things. It knows something about the anatomy of a foot and the purpose of a shoe and different kinds of leathers and so on. This is one reason, by the way, why Socrates often uses examples from the arts because they actually know something. They may not know the answer. Qua shoemaker, they may not know the answer to the good life, but they do know something; it's real. And yes, the art of rhetoric or speechmaking is a techné too. What does it know? It knows as Aristotle presents it: the way, the principal ways that you can persuade an audience of something, and the kinds of proofs. In other words, the kinds of rhetoric, the subject matter of rhetoric, the just and the unjust, the noble and the base, and the good and the bad, or advantageous and the disadvantageous. Those are the three six subject matters, but three groups of subject matters of the three main kinds of rhetoric. So he's in his very technical way he lays all of this out in the rhetoric, and as for prudence, just one point. I agree with what you say. It seems to be right. Prudence is connected. It is an intellectual virtue, but it is connected intimately to moral virtue. You can't separate the one from the other. He has this formula that the the end, the goal of prudence that it looks to is given by moral burden, and prudence is the capacity to figure out how to get that in. So one has to act nobly, as he says, or justly, courageously. Okay, fine, but then prudence would tell you, in this circumstance, do I stay or do I run? And that's a difficult, of course. That's a difficult question. So yeah, there's the moral virtues, prudence, which is ultimately tied to the moral virtues, and then intellectual or contemplative virtue, theoria, wisdom or sophia at the peak, together with science, as you could translate, episteme, knowledge in the straightest sense. So that's kind of snapshot of the well of the ethics, but that that framework runs throughout, right?
PJ Wehry 44:40
And so, how does how does the techné portion fit into this overall framework? So we do have the art of rhetoric at the end. Is it that the good life will come to those with praxis and theoria, or that they will seek this out and it will kind of come as a result of it, or that techné should be? Distrusted, maybe I'm maybe I'm understanding you from earlier. Techné is should be distrusted because without these two, it's not good.
Speaker 1 45:08
Right. Well, you put your finger on actually a controversial point among people who study these things. What exactly is the relation between the moral virtues on the one hand and the intellectual virtues on the other? The distinction is clear. He insists upon it. He treats them separately. So that's not the controversial question is: Is the formula for a good life all of the moral virtues and practice us intellectual virtues? That's one big package. Or is there a kind of break, a turn, such that the moral virtues cease to have the same importance that they had once you turn to theoretical virtue, and you know there are serious scholars on both sides, so I won't I won't presume to settle that question, although I have my view of it. Because we're political animals, I mean, Socrates lived in his whole life, didn't leave, and so on. And to that extent, surely practiced virtues in action process. He didn't steal from the bread seller on the street, even though he was poor. He fought for the city when he was asked to fight for the city, and when he was condemned to die. He accepted the decision of his community and drank hemlock. So there's clearly some moral virtues at work there, but the core of his life seems to have been, in Aristotelian terms, theoretical philosophy in that sense. As rhetoric as an art, that I don't know that I have much to add on that. You're quite right. Is his exhortation is that because you see its power, his exhortation is therefore use it wisely, But there were many unscrupulous teachers of rhetoric, including in the pages of Plato, Gorgias, Polus, his student, and so on. Protagoras, most famous Sophist antiquity. These were complicated questions, but they were somewhat sketchy fellows, I would say. And Gorgias, his claim, at least that he's a historical figure, was that he could you persuade a crowd of anything with rhetoric if you studied with him and paid his very high tuition. Now that's quite a claim that you can persuade a crowd of anything, and a little disturbing if you think about it. You don't have to think about it very hard.
PJ Wehry 47:42
Yeah,
Speaker 1 47:43
that's a kind of ring of gaijis, you know, from the Republic to disappear and therefore never be punished. And that was Gorgias's sort of come on. And with that odor, that attended rhetoric, that Aristotle, you know, he's aware of this, of course, and so he he tried to make it both more precise as an art, but also to put sort of rails or curves on its use.
PJ Wehry 48:19
Yes. Now I want to be respectful of your time, and one thank you. I've really enjoyed this discussion, but just as kind of a final question, besides buying and reading your excellent book, "Law on the Good Life, on the political philosophy of Aristotle, as what should pre-order it, drive up the sales. But besides buying and reading your excellent book, what is something that? Yes, besides buying and reading your excellent book, what is something that you would recommend to someone who has listened for the last hour that they either do or meditate on in response to today's discussion.
Speaker 1 49:03
Well, maybe two things. First, simply, I would say if if you are so inspired, read Aristotle. Read. I would recommend first the Ethics. I translated, co-translated with my friend Susan Collins, also available to Chicago. Yes, but want to use another edition? By all means, use another edition. It can be tough going. His prose can be difficult. Once you get to his account of the virtues, I think it really opens up. And so, my first recommendation would be simply to talk to the man yourself. The second thing I would say would be to try to become better, I'll use a word I don't like very much. Consumers of political information, speeches that we hear, not with a cynical eye, but with a critical eye or ear, and. And to go back to something we talked about a minute, read good political history, where you see impressive, for good reasons or bad reasons, impressive human beings on the stage, speaking, acting, and and and trying to think about what they reveal about the human soul in its beauty and its ugliness.
PJ Wehry 50:25
Phenomenal answer, Dr. Bartlett. Thank you so much. I really appreciate having you on today. It's been a joy talking to you.
Speaker 1 50:32
Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed it too. Thanks very much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai