Latest / Christians Reading Classics / Aristotle, with Philip Freeman

Transcript

Aristotle, with Philip Freeman · Christians Reading Classics

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: The Christian tradition is the Christian's inheritance.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's why Mir Orthodoxy has created a new online resource called The Faith Received.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: The Faith Received is a massive online library with almost 20,000 primary source works throughout church history, made publicly accessible, practically usable, and beautifully readable.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: From Augustine to Aquinas, Athanasius to Paulinus, Suarez to Voetius, and every creed, confession, and catechism, the Faith Received is the best online reading experience for the riches of the Christian tradition.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thousands of these works are translated into English for the very first time.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: The Faith Received features full scripture and topic indexes of all the works, author pages, as well as research tools like Ask, Power Search, Compare, Connections, Notebooks, and more.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: The treasures of the church have been opened.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Go to thefaithreceived dot com to start reading today.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's thefaithreceived.com to start reading today.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: For your beauty, O maiden, even to die is a fine fate to strive for in Greece, and to endure pains, fierce trials unending.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Such fruits you cast into hearts are like to a mortal, better than gold, better than fine breeding, better than gentle sleep.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: For your sake, even God like Heracles and the sons of Leda endured much in their labors, hunting for your power.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Longing for you, Achilles and Ajax went to the house of Hades.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: For the sake of your beauty, the nursling of Aternaeus left behind the rays of the sun.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, he and his deeds will be the subject of song, and the muses will sing hymn to immortality.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those daughters of memory, they who exalt Zeus, God of hospitality, and the grace of lasting friendship.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So wrote Aristotle in one of the few of his poems to survive on the death of Hermius, a friend.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from your orthodoxy.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're doing something a little bit unusual.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am talking today with Philip Freeman, the author of a new biography of Aristotle.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of talking about one specific classic book, today we're talking about the life of Aristotle.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Philip Freeman is recently retired as the Fletcher Jones Chair of Western Culture and professor of the humanities at Pepperdine University.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he has just left this position and is now living happily the retired life in the woods of New Hampshire.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm imagining like bears roaming his property somewhere at night.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're friendly bears, and he probably feeds them, or maybe not.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know they say don't feed the bears.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But he is the author of many, many books, including Julian, Rome's last pagan emperor, Hannibal, Rome's greatest enemy, Alexander the Great.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, this new book, Aristotle, the first teacher, now out from Yale University Press.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, Philip, thank you so much for being here this morning as we're recording.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's my pleasure.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, because you have spent a career writing about great books and really the authors of so many great books, uh, I would love to start by asking you to tell us your kind of intellectual journey.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just walk us through your life as a reader and thinker.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, I I was never much of a sports jock uh back in high school.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so the the one thing I enjoyed doing was reading.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would read everything I could.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: I went down to the local public library uh one day and I found this series from the University of Chicago, Great Books of the Western World.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just so much fun.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I thought uh I I um uh I started reading through it in my spare time, checking it out, reading Cicero and Dante, and you name it.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so um I went to college and I majored in classics, uh, which uh was uh a lot of fun.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: My parents thought uh that was maybe not the best idea, but I stuck with it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then I eventually went to grad school at Harvard and after that um taught for 35 years or so uh in different colleges, finishing up at Pepperdine and teaching humanity, teaching great books, teaching um anything they told me to.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I was uh I was glad to do it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so um now I'm uh spending my time um visiting my new grandchildren and uh writing uh books.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so it's uh it's been a great journey.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is fun.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Great things happen when you read the original classics.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm biased.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also a classics uh student, lifelong student.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So yes.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: How fun.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're about to get to Aristotle, but first I have to ask, what are you cooking up now?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Oh goodness.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: I uh I'm I'm working on something very different, which is uh a biography of Marco Polo.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I had, you know, I read about Marco Polo forever, and he's a little bit outside my normal area of ancient and early medieval studies.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's really late medieval, but I am just fascinated by this guy.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I am from finishing up a biography.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: I traveled um a lot of his journey, actually, uh, over the last two years.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: I went to China and Tajikistan and and all, you know, all along the Silk Road.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: I sailed back from China all the way to the Persian Gulf.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, just had the best time of my life.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's that's what you can do in retirement.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I've um I've I'm I'm working on in finishing this up and it should be out in the late spring, I believe.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now that is fun.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great, that's a great excuse.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just like retrace the steps of Marco Polo.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was a great, great fun.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Did you get to drink that uh famous fermented mare's milk?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: I did not.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: I uh I I ate some strange things.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: I had yak yogurt uh up in the mountains of uh, you know, somewhere up in the uh Tian Shan Mountains.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh I didn't uh but I I I did I did experiment with some new food, that's uh for sure.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh got to see a lot of the things that that Marco Polo saw, which was just oh, it was so much fun.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So getting back on track, I got so distracted, uh, which is exciting always.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Marco Polo.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm looking forward to that already.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um the usual first question I always ask then is what is a classic?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you've spent your whole career thinking about that.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So what is a classic?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a classic is a is a work of um uh of literature, of philosophy, of science, something that is timeless, something that can speak to us uh at any time period, something we can learn from uh at any time period.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Aristotle's works, at least most of them, are certainly uh classics.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh any um uh Cicero, uh Dante, um Isaac Newton, uh Einstein, uh there there are so many classics out there that can speak to us uh and and we can learn from.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And that's you know, that's my definition of a classic.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So how do we um how do we treat differently ancient classics and modern classics?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think about this a lot.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do we give the same value to a classic that's just a hundred years old, for instance?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good question.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a certain um before I would accept something as a classic.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people talk about works published in the 1980s as classics.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say, no, they haven't stood the test of time yet.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: They really, it's kind of like canonizing a saint.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you really need to think about it for a while, you need to examine, you need to think, you know, ex see see it for a while.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so um an ancient classic is certainly one that's earned the reputation uh of it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but there are that's not to say there are um, you know, there aren't modern classics right now uh that uh will be read 500 years from now.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and um so so yeah, it's it uh an ancient classic is certainly one that's well established.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Umcient classics is uh we can't project our own time period on them.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: When we read Aristotle and he talks about slavery, for example, and speaks of it as something perfectly natural, we can't just dismiss Aristotle uh because he does that.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he's living in a certain time and in a certain place.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't talk much about women uh because not that he hated women, he actually uh seemed to be very close to several women, but it just wouldn't have occurred to him to write about women.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so we have to always keep in mind the cultural context, I think, uh, when we read ancient classics.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good segue into your work because you've written a number of biographies of the authors of great books, including this particular um, the biography of Aristotle.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So would you talk to us a little bit about the value of knowing about the life of authors of great books?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of times I've hear I hear uh great books aficionados saying, like a great book just stands on its own.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to know anything, you just pick it up and read it, and it's great.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh, as I I write in the introduction to the Aristotle book about this, and I say that when I was uh way back when, 35 years ago, 40 years ago, when I was interviewing for my first jobs, I um I went to a college and uh you know taught was talking about Aristotle and uh was talking about the importance of uh understanding the time period he lived in, the collapse of Athenian empire and things like that.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, no, that doesn't really matter.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, like you said, a classic stands on its own.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I I didn't get the job because of that.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I personally, I mean, uh you have to be able to uh to certainly appreciate Aristotle or whoever for what they say, regardless of the time period.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: But uh I wanted to um write this book for people who love Aristotle or are curious about Aristotle, but also would like to know something about his life.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: I I find the life story of people fascinating.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um sometimes it shows up very clearly in their books, sometimes it doesn't.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: But it helps me uh to uh to understand who they are, to read Flannery O'Connor and and to know something about her life uh just makes the works come alive to me.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so that's that's my take.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Not everybody would agree with it by any means, and I respect that, but uh I like to know something about the history and the people behind these books.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, um I agree, and I consider myself a historian precisely because um I focus on that.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do we learn from these books about the period um that everybody lived in?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's uh let's walk through your book.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us about the story.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I found it fascinating because I'm a classicist.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I had to read a lot of Aristotle as part of Comps.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh there were a lot of things I learned from your book that I did not know about his life.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So this was really, this was really great.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: I learned about a lot too, just doing the research.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I had also read tons of Aristotle uh and um taught Aristotle, but I'd never really dug deeply into his life.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: He's uh he's born in the uh the 380s.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: So the Athenian Empire, the great 5th century Athenian Empire, has collapsed.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Athens has lost the war to Sparta, the Peloponnesian War.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um Persia is still over there, looming in the distance.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Macedonia, uh, under uh the um the father and grandfather of Alexander the Great, uh, are growing in power.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: So he he's living in a very turbulent time.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And he's born uh in the in the 380s, uh, and he is uh born in northern Greece at a um a little town uh called Stegira, which is up near Mount Athos uh for those who are interested in in monasticism, uh Orthodox monasticism.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: He's he's very close to that.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he it's uh it's it really a very much out-of-the-way town.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I in the in the book I title it uh that first chapter, a town of no importance, uh, because nobody had ever heard of Stegira.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: So he's he's growing up in the in the boondocks, uh, we might say, but not to uh you know, not completely cut off by any means uh from Greek culture and education.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: His uh father is a physician, comes from a great family of physicians.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: He is the physician to the um the royal court of Macedon, of Macedonia.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so Aristotle is is raised uh in a scientific household.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: He's almost certainly uh spent some time in Macedonia.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: He probably knew Philip, the father of Alexander the Great.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh Philip was just two or three years younger than him.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: So uh even though he's from a small out-of-the-way town, he uh he he uh grows up, gets a good education.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: But there's there's no you know remarkable stories about Aristotle as a young man.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: He's just you know just a bright guy.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but like um well, like like Harry Potter and so many people, he becomes an orphan.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I think that that uh spurs him uh to go on and and uh you know maybe do uh great things that he wouldn't have otherwise.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: So by the time he's uh in his late teens, he has uh moved over to the coast of Asia Minor near Troy.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he's being raised by a guardian, um, and he is uh continuing his education.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm I in the book, what I try to do, we don't have a lot of information about Aristotle.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of the main problems of Aristotle, is just the sources.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm trying desperately sometimes to reconstruct uh what's going on in his life.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so he has a um uh a very uh uh in some ways typical childhood for a wealthy uh he comes from a wealthy family, uh, but in many ways it's not typical because he's he's always traveling, always moving.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: He never seems to be at home.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: He is uh never really has a home, uh for that matter.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: So um it's uh a really fascinating um young experience youth uh for uh for Aristotle.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they're just these breadcrumbs that you're connecting.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um the the point uh you just made about travel, yeah.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: For most Greeks, it seems like there's actually an aversion to travel for most people.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Staying still.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm thinking, granted, that's several centuries earlier, like Hesiod saying, like, I've only been on a ship once, and man, was that rough.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't, I mean, people travel, obviously, merchants and traders and people like that, but in general, people, you know, stayed home.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe they, you know, went to the neighboring town or something like that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, you know, most people were farmers, and you know, you can't just pack up and go on vacation for a few months, even today, if you're a farmer.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you were pretty much bound to where you were.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: And Aristotle uh uh was unusual in that he did travel.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he we he didn't travel like to Ireland or India or anything like that, but he traveled all around the Aegean in his life, and he saw um a great many um, you know, like Odysseus sailing around.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: He saw a great many um people and uh uh different towns and different ideas.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it seems like that interest really like played into his writing even later in life.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean he um he he traveled over uh to the area around an Asia Minor near Troy.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he went to the island of Lesbos.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he does some of the most fundamental uh research in biology.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean, one thing about Aristotle is that he he really invented education as we know it.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if you pick a discipline, uh biology, literary criticism, logic, uh they really all go back to Aristotle.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: They begin with this man.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: So he travels to all these different places.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: He goes to Athens and becomes a student of Plato.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he uh he's he's all over the place picking up all of these ideas and shaping them.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: And we don't know exactly when he wrote his different books.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's kind of hard to figure that out.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: We can make some guesses.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the logic books were probably uh among the earliest, uh, but the scientific books you know start early and they continue throughout his whole life.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And um I I emphasize in some ways uh science uh in this biography of Aristotle, just because he did so much fundamental work that people had never thought about doing before.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and he got stuff wrong, uh certainly, um, but he got stuff right uh as well, much more right than he did uh wrong.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh he he picks up knowledge uh and just absorbs it like a sponge, but also um also processes it and turns it into new things.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about Aristotle in Athens, because it seems like that's the period that really shaped him.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he's about 17 years old.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: He uh leaves uh northern Greece, uh Asia Minor, comes down to Athens, and he's there for many years, uh studying at the Academy of Plato.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and the uh the Academy of Plato, it's uh it's a great place to visit for anybody who's who's going uh who's in Athens.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a fun, um, it's a bit of a walk, actually, into the northwestern part of the city.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, but you can walk up there and it's a park now with lots of ruins scattered around, people having picnics and things like that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: But it's just such a wonderful feeling to go up there.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's just outside the old city walls.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but Plato had set up his academy there, which was kind of, I mean, it's you could call it a university, you could call it a college.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was really more of a research institute than anything, sort of like, I don't know, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies on a smaller scale, something along those lines.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so Aristotle goes there, he learns, he stays 20 years, uh, and he um is learning, it's self-funded education.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: He's going to lectures, he's listening, he's um reading uh everything he can get his hands on.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: He uh apparently becomes a teacher himself uh by the by the end of it, um, you know, helping people who come there to learn.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just it's absolutely fundamental for what he does, uh his years at the academy.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, what was Aristotle's relationship with Plato as persons, not just ideas?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh Aristotle and Plato, Plato is is a generation older than Aristotle.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: So uh it's he's uh some people uh later on in Aristotle's life and in the centuries to come like to try to stir up trouble and say that you know they fought each other uh and they hated each other.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: And no, they didn't at all.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um Plato had great respect for Aristotle.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Aristotle had tremendous respect for Plato.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: He disagreed with some of his fundamental ideas, like the ideas of the forms.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that Plato uh was uh very theoretical and believed in the in ideas of beauty that were real and were out there.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and Aristotle was much more skeptical, much more uh experimental than this, but it didn't it didn't stop him from tremendously admiring uh Plato and being a um thinking of him eventually as a as a as a great friend.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's uh and that's striking because we we think of Plato and Aristotle kind of in the same breath, like these are the great uh Greek philosophers.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so would somebody observing them in the fourth century have predicted that?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Probably not.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they uh uh Plato was better known in his own time than Aristotle was.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Aristotle, you know, got got a reputation.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but no, I mean if you could go back in time, uh it would be a fascinating thing just to see these two, you know, the older Plato and the younger Aristotle just arguing with each other uh very respectfully, but that's what they did uh in this uh academy and later on in Aristotle's school.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: They they um I mean they were not afraid to disagree uh you know vehemently sometimes with each other, but they did it with respect, uh, which is a a skill I think we we tend to lose sometimes.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: In the modern world.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't think people would have predicted.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe Plato, they would have thought, yeah, this guy's going to be big.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Aristotle, yeah, maybe not so much.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I guess that's again a good reminder of how classics are books and authors who stand the test of time, and you can't really tell it when you're too close.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: You can't.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: You really can't.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Center for Christianity and Public Life invites you to their annual summit for the good of the public.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: The summit gathers Christians and public service-minded leaders who want to think deeply and work practically for the health of our public life.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Coming together from many places and perspectives, these leaders are united by the conviction that Christianity offers essential contributions for the good of our neighbors, our institutions, and our shared future.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: This year's summit will be held on October 5th through 7th in Washington, D.C., featuring speakers such as Judge Patrick Schultz, Mayor Danny Avila, Nazanan Ash, Russell Moore, Jane Kaminsky, Jennifer Hurt, Vince Picote, and many others.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Learn more and register at ccpublife.org slash summit.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you can find that link in the show notes.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So moving to Aristotle, kind of growing into being a teacher in his own right, tell us about his school.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, after he, you know, later on in his life, I guess, uh, I forget the exact dates, but he's in his 40s, 50s.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: He dies when he's uh about my age, uh in his early 60s.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh he founds his own school.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: After he's gone away and taught Alexander the Great and all of that, he comes back to Athens to a place called the Lyceum, which is uh in the western part of Athens.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh again, another great place to go visit.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's much more in downtown Athens, very easy to get to.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it was a public park.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Aristotle was not an Athenian citizen, so so he couldn't buy land.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: So he rents a place and he teaches in the park and he models it really very much on Plato's Academy.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's a research institute, not a school exactly, uh much more of a gathering of people who want to learn and want to do research.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so he founds this uh school at the Lyceum, and he uh people come to him, uh, people who are interested in science, uh, people who are interested in philosophy, uh, people who are interested in ethics, everything.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's modeled very much on Plato's school, but it does seem to have more of a practical, experimental emphasis to it than uh Plato's academy.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Theory is very much at home in uh in the Lyceum in Aristotle's school, but pragmatically it had uh a map room.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's the first map room that we know of, uh charts.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Aristotle loved maps, uh, charts uh for understanding the world and the different peoples of the world.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh at scientific instruments, Aristotle was measuring uh, you know, uh astronomical phenomenon, the uh the uh, well, I forget what it's called, but when when Mars, you know, when Mars traits uh the sun, you know, he was measuring these things.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um so he he was having uh a great time learning and teaching um the dissection of animals.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they did that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in Aristotle talks very specifically about um chicken eggs.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: And this is apparently the sort of thing they did at the Lyceum, is he's dissecting chicken eggs uh at different periods.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I've never done this myself, but I I he talks about how if you very carefully peel the outside off of a chicken egg at different points in its development, you can see the the little chick in there with its little heart beating.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, people had not done this sort of thing before.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so it he's he's really there inventing um biology, uh, zoology.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it it would it must have been just fascinating to uh to to have been there.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the part that I find fascinating is that he found so many students who were in on it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he he found uh people uh collected people, uh people came to him from all over the Greek world.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, you had to have it always helps in history to have money, uh never never hurts.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but there were uh some poor students of both Plato and Aristotle who who managed to either get sponsored or to work nights at the local taverna or whatever they did in order to fund their studies.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: But uh but um it's it was a uh uh it was a a gathering together of uh people who uh love learning, really.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: It must have been just a wonderful environment.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: So today we think about education, like what is it for?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's the obvious sort of like credentialing that you're not gonna get any sort of job unless you have at least a BA degree.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody goes to college.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically like the next few grades after high school.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in the Greek world, this was not like studying with Plato or with Aristotle wasn't going to get you like a ticket to a job.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So why did people do this?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is education for in this world?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's I mean, that's a great question.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: For Aristotle, education was all about learning, all about the pursuit of virtue, mental, intellectual virtue.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: For some people, education was about learning how to um to speak better.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh rhetoric, of course, was very important in the ancient world.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, learning how to hopefully be a political leader, uh, but most of the time it it wasn't, it didn't have a practical end to it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: You nobody would have asked you what your major was uh if you were studying with Aristotle, because you studied everything.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh I just remember again, and you may have experienced it too, and when you were studying classics, people asking you why uh why aren't you studying accounting or or business economics or pre-med or something like that?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and admittedly, classics is not the most practical thing to study.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's hard to find a job, and but it's just wonderful.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and um for people who study in the modern world classics, I think it's it's similar to what people in the ancient world uh it's just uh a love of learning and a hope that someday I'll get a job.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but uh but but mostly it's just a love of learning.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I've had this conversation um multiple times with people over the years because um Aristotle thought that this love of learning, as you mentioned, like is an intellectual virtue, but intellectual virtue builds people of virtue.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And my point to friends is always like, well, don't you want nurses and doctors and lawyers who are people of virtue?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, absolutely.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh, you know, I I I hope that people who are doctors, who are surgeons, who, you know, I want them to be very skilled before they pick up that scalpel and start cutting into me.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I would like for them to also, you know, have had some experience thinking about ideas.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, not that we have to, you know, discuss Herodotus together or anything like that, but but just that's you know, they they they've thought about the bigger picture of of life uh and uh you know what it's all about.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, why are you, you know, why are we trying to prolong life?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: What are we gonna do uh with uh 20 more life you know years of life, you know, watch more TV.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's got to be some uh point to it.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so yeah, I I uh I like to think that studying and and pursuing and learning can be useful uh to uh and joyous to anyone.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's again, like if you're dissecting chicken eggs, it's not just a career preparation, but it's really who are you as a person?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Who are you going to grow into?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a popular, we homeschool, and there's a popular homeschooling uh science activity to mummify a chicken, which is great fun for kids.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that does sound my my daughter um mummified goldfish.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: That was her one of her experiments doing that.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, a very, very Aristotelian experiment about, you know, does honey work better?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: Does salt work better?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh honey actually works very well.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh salt does not, uh, apparently.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but yeah, it's uh you know, experimenting is is ideal way to learn.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is, and it's um counter to everything in our modern world because it's not strictly utilitarian.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like our our instinct is very much like why what is this for?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, absolutely.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about Aristotle's most famous student.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have to, right?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Alexander.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh Alexander the Great, yes.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um Aristotle goes up to Macedonia, he's invited by Philip.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and when Philip invites you, you don't say no.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I think also they had a uh a relationship probably that went back many, many years.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: And Philip paid very well.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and even the best professors and philosophers can be swayed by money sometimes.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: So he goes up and he teaches.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and he teaches Alexander and some of Alexander's friends, like Ptolemy, who would later go on to rule in Egypt.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: And they go to a little place, it's a beautiful little place on the on the western edge of the Macedonian plain called Mietza.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's um you go up there and it just is idyllic.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great place to learn.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: I wish, you know, I I've been there in the um in the summertime and it's cool and quiet and just uh wonderful.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_02: So so he goes there and he teaches Alexander.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that relationship between Aristotle and Alexander has been the subject of speculation for over 2,000 years.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: And people have always tried to figure out, well, what did Alexander learn from Aristotle?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: Did he did he like Aristotle?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Did he hate him?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Did Aristotle hate Alexander?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Did he try to poison him uh eventually?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um we don't know.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we we it seems to have been um a respectful relationship, uh so that Aristotle so that Alexander, uh like Aristotle with Plato, Alexander um respected but disagreed uh with Aristotle.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh they spent several years.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: He spent several years there.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then when uh Alexander was um in his late teens, he took the throne, and that was the end of the education.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: But there are stories, wonderful stories.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to know what's true, but wonderful stories of letters going back and forth between Alexander and Aristotle while while Alexander's roaming around conquering the uh Persian Empire.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but it was uh apparently a relationship which uh was was was close and useful.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and um Alexander um revered Aristotle from from as far as much as we can tell.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm just imagining Alexander doing like lab days.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, today we're dissecting to chicken eggs.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm sure that they did that.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh this is comes right after the years of Aristotle and Lesbos on the island of Lesbos doing his his most intense research.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm sure uh that that Alexander the Great, well, he wasn't great then, but uh Alexander um you know dissected chicken eggs just like Aristotle taught him to that's uh that's remarkable.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about the intellectual curiosity that we uh we know Alexander had, like uh reading Plutarch's biography later, he's uh mentioning Alexander on campaign writing to like send more books.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a list.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um So Alexander was an intellectually curious person, and obviously we don't know like to what extent is it uh something that predates his studies with Aristotle, to what extent is it something Aristotle fed?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there is that this idea that a good general, a virtuous person, relatively virtuous person, I guess we could argue about Alexander, how virtuous was he.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, but um is someone who is an intellectually curious person.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and I think all the evidence is that Alexander really was.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he um, you know, the the stories about sending more books and and all of that, I think probably is true.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: But uh Alexander is very interested in establishing uh Greek culture all throughout the old Persian Empire.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's why we have Greek cities in Afghanistan.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, he's uh and sure he had other motives, you know, for for helping, you know, colonize these places, but I think it was uh I think there was a genuine urge probably to spread Greek culture, some of these things that he had learned from uh Aristotle.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I think I think Aristotle had a big influence on Alexander.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Ptolemy, uh, before reading your book, I hadn't like it hadn't clued on me that Ptolemy as well had studied with Aristotle.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me see uh the development of the library at Alexand in Alexandria in a new light.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think you know that that would be a whole wonderful avenue to explore about how Ptolemy was influenced by by Aristotle.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know a whole lot about it, but uh but the you're you're right, the great library of Alexander, I think, Alexandria, uh, was uh was certainly had its beginnings with it with Aristotle.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: So Aristotle spends time studying in Athens.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then he goes, the interlude, educating Alexander, comes back to Athens.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: What next?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he is there for uh the last most you know 15 years or so.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um he is founds the Lyceum.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he is always in a little bit of under a little bit of suspicion because of his close ties with the Macedonians.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: The Macedonians, Alexander the Great, they've taken over Greece at this point.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so uh the Athenians, uh, you know, Athenians nowadays, it's so much fun talking.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: They they they talk about, oh, Alexander is you know just so great.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh back back in the day, they didn't like Alexander at all.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so um they uh were always suspicious of Aristotle and his ties.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so when Ale you know Aristotle is there teaching and teaching and learning and researching, and uh and then when um Alexander dies in Babylon, uh then uh Aristotle decides it's maybe time to leave uh Athens.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, although Macedonian power still continued in Athens, still things it was getting a little hot, uh, I think um for him to stay there.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh he leaves uh Athens.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: He goes to what seems to be family property on the island of Eubeah, and he lives about a year and then he dies there.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh continuing his research, his reading, his experimenting until the very end.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then in his early 60s he um died.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: Apparently had some um um uh digestive disease or something we don't really know, but he uh was you know struggled with health issues.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: But in the end, uh he uh uh he dies and um it's uh uh you know the end of an amazing life.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think about all the things that he accomplished in those years, and you know, being about the same age he was when he died, and I think, my goodness, what have I done?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't invented any new disciplines yet.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so I just it's it's a great story of Aristotle.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to hear more about the legacy like right away, because it seems like his students are the ones who really did some heavy lifting, right?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh he has uh students who continue his uh work at the Lyceum.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they're going on and they're inventing botany uh and all you know, all these other wonderful disciplines.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he uh he uh Aristotle has a family, uh, which you know certainly you would never think much about Aristotle's family, but he has a wife, he has a mistress uh uh after the wife comes along.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: He has an illegitimate, probably illegitimate son, and just uh he has a whole household with uh slaves and servants, and uh and then his daughter ends up marrying three times uh these uh you know, these great um Spartan um generals uh descendant families.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: It just really gets it's really interesting.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: I can't I can't get into all of it now, but it's was Aristotle did not live an isolated life.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: He was very much involved in the um in the in the politics, in the the culture, uh, and the families and of the day.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it's uh it's fun to read about what he and his his students went on to do.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: So so much um so much of the trouble of trying to reconstruct a life like this is all the breadcrumbs.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason yours is the first modern biography of Aristotle.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Walk us through like what was it like doing this research and piecing it all together?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there have been uh some um there were biographies of Aristotle, uh Diogenes, Laertes, and and others in the ancient world.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh another, uh a separate guy called Ptolemy wrote a biography of Aristotle that was translated into Syriac, that was translated into Arabic.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so um the Arabic sources, medieval Arabic sources, are actually fascinating to uh a great overlooked source for Aristotle.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: So what I did was I you know stood on the shoulders of giants uh who had uh done uh work um uh collecting together biographical information about Aristotle, but not actually writing a biography, uh just you know, collecting this wonderful material from Arabic sources and Greek and Latin sources.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and um so what I did was I I took this and did the best I could to turn it into a narrative story.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's uh as I say at the introduction, I I use the word perhaps and probably a lot and maybe uh in the book, and I do, because we don't have there, there's just so many things we don't know about Aristotle, and I'm just trying very much to make uh uh educated guesses uh about him.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I just spent the time um collecting together these these various sources and um just trying to fit it into a picture uh of of Aristotle and the world in which he lived.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, always trying to remember that Aristotle lived in a turbulent time, the fourth century BC.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was violent and just awful uh in in ancient Greece.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: And he lives at this time.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so trying to think about the um of what's going on uh out there and the and the rise of Macedonia and the threats of the Persian Empire and all the rest of it.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I just had a great time.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: I had so much fun.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciated your honesty in this biography of like gently reminding us which stories are facts and which stories are like educated guesses.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, like we are a long way removed, both culturally and time-wise, from Aristotle.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's so hard.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: And in Aristotle, the sources on Aristotle, one problem is there were people who really liked him, students of his, people who were part of his school.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, they wrote these stories and they they didn't want to say anything bad about the master.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then you had other rival schools who delighted in saying bad things about Aristotle, that he let a prostitute ride around on his back and just silly things, you know, uh things I can't believe were true at all.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you have different sources, but you also, I mean, the the one thing that we do have, which is just worth its weight in gold, is uh is the will of Aristotle that has been preserved.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it it gives us a picture of Aristotle, the family man, really, the private man, uh, unlike in anything else that we have.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is remarkable.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's another document.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea that existed.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't really we don't read it in great book seminars.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, we don't.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's and it certainly never showed up on any classics reading lists I had.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's just, but but it's there, it's been there for over 2,000 years.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess that's a reminder.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like reading your book was a reminder of which books, even of really like classic authors, make the canon.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like which books of Aristotle do people just not read, but you wish they would.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, goodness.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he writes uh, well, logic, his logic books.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they're very short, they're very simple, uh, and in some ways they they almost might seem too simple to us.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: He talks about logical fallacies and uh things that are very helpful to understand, just some very basic material.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um his books about animals, even though many of them get things wrong.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he, you know, Aristotle believed in spontaneous generation, that if you know flies can emerge from decaying matter.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's not true.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: And he should have known better.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he honestly should have known better than that.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: But so much of his stuff is so detailed in observation and so wonderful, especially when you remember that Aristotle is the first one doing this.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: He is inventing biology uh as he as he goes along.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: So some of the scientific works of Aristotle, even if they uh are a bit outdated in in some ways, are still extremely uh interesting uh to read.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: His Nicomachean Ethics, well, that's the one that everybody reads uh in college classes, and it's and it's good that everybody does because it is one of the most readable books of Aristotle.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: Most of Aristotle's books are more like lecture notes, uh, and they can be a bit of a bit dry to get through.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: But the Nicomachean Ethics is so good and so pertinent to all of us uh for uh for uh you know living our lives.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: What is friendship?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh things like that, just you know, fantastic stuff uh in this short little book called the Nicomachean Ethics.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: So um the books of Aristotle, they're out there in your local library.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh over my shoulder here, I've got the Loeb Classical Library.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and Aristotle takes up a whole shelf of it.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: So uh it's uh it's it's great just to pull it down and read it sometimes.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote a lot.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more Aristotle that probably most of us have never even heard of.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Which is funny to think because we spend so much classicists, anyway, we spent so much time complaining how too little of the ancient world survived.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, there's a lot more that we just haven't read yet.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: There is.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, things like his book on dreams, you know, fantastic little book on on dreams that that predates Freud by 2,000 years, but just amazing.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: So really good stuff out there.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's encouraging and exciting.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Philip, this has been just delightful.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been talking with Philip Freeman about Aristotle, the life of Aristotle, his writings, and Philip's new book, Aristotle the First Teacher, now out from Yale University Press.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, concluding question, which I always ask what classic do you wish you had written?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And why?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I had the talent, the skill uh to write a classic.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: But the the, I mean, Nicomachean Ethics is is is one I wish I could have written.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's just amazing.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh um, Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, I wish I had the skill to write.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely stunning.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Dante's Divine Comedy, you know, I I could only dream of being able to write something like that.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: So um, any of those, uh in any of those and more.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that is absolutely delightful.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: And spoken as someone who has indeed spent his life reading nothing but great books.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, Philip, thank you so much for talking with me.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.