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The Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle with Sabrina Little | America 250 · Christians Reading Classics

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Intellectual virtue owes both its birth and its growth to teaching, for which reason it requires experience and time.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: While moral virtue comes about as a result of a habit, whence also its name, ethike, is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos, habit.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: From this, it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature, for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up 10,000 times.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Neither by nature then, nor contrary to nature, do the virtues arise in us.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Rather, we are adapted by nature to receive them and are made perfect by habit.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: So wrote Aristotle in opening the second book of his Nicomachean Ethics, written in the mid-4th century BC.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to season two of Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from Muir Orthodoxy.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: The theme for this second season is Classics American Christians Should Read in honor of America's 250th.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: I am Nadia Williams, book's editor for Mirror Orthodoxy, and the author of the book Christians Reading Classics, out this past fall with Zonderan Academic.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: Today, it is my delight and privilege to talk about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics with Sabrina Little.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: She is assistant professor in the Salmon P.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at the Ohio State University.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: She is also an accomplished ultra-marathoner, a five-time U.S.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: champion, and a world championship silver medalist.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: In her research and writing, she combines these interests, her love for philosophy and virtue ethics, with her love of sport.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And this includes her book, The Examined Run, Why Good People Make Better Runners, published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, Sabrina, thank you for coming.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd like to start with a general question that we always start with, which is what's a classic?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's some debate about what text should be included in classics, but the way that I understand them, they're books that have just endured, they've lasted the test of time.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're part of kind of a tradition of inquiry about what makes a good life and what what a human is, right?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: These big kind of persistent questions.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the role that they play, one, they're sort of you hold them up as kind of masters, right?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: They they show you what good writing looks like.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: But then also they kind of in C.S.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis's phrase, they help you overcome your chronological snobbery.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: You don't see the the water that you're swimming in, right?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it and it helps you to just ask questions with a little bit of a critical vantage from your own your own time.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess um this is the oldest book we've discussed on this podcast, because I've been trying to overcome reverse chronological snobbery on this podcast.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a classicist, so for me it's like, okay, well, I'll admit that some 20th century books are in the classics too.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so the Nicomachean Ethics is a classic, so we can agree on this probably, but it's not an American classic.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us, what makes this worth reading for American Christians in the year of America's 250th?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think it's still an abiding, important question what a good life is.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's something that we personally wrestle with or we ought to wrestle with.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh every time I teach Nicol McKeon ethics in my ethics classes, I always start with, you know, you start at the beginning, right?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So Aristotle says, everything aims at some good, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he describes how we aim at these lesser goods, and then those lesser goods, you know, kind of build into some major good, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: What is what is it that life aims at, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and so he gives these examples like, well, when you're building a harness, it's uh for horseback riding, and that's part of strategy and war, and then war, you know, aims at victory.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I play this game with them.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I ask, well, why are you here today?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they they'll say something about my attendance policy, and then they'll say something, you know, I because I need this class.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And why do you need this class for this major, for this career that I have in mind?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you push it back far enough, they have some sort of vision of a good life, or they don't.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes when I ask that question, it is completely vacant.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's like they are on some sort of achievement escalator to nowhere, and there's no solid end.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so given the fact that, as I think Aristotle points out, like the that our ends give us coherence, being able to assert what yours is and assess it and see if it's something worthwhile, um, I think is a really, really valuable activity and kind of gives gives shape and is a little bit action guiding in terms of the decisions you make.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I always make my students ask those questions because I want them to know what their life is oriented toward.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's an important question as a Christian, right?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you wake up every day, you probably have a to-do list.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what is the to-do list oriented toward?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: What is the thing that has the highest good?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and is the thing that you're doing oriented toward that good?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a means ultimately to that end?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, that's a that's a really important for Christians, important question for Christians to be asking.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: And we really don't speak, we don't spend enough time as a society talking or thinking about these kinds of fundamental questions.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like what is a good life?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost, it almost sounds like a joke.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was um I was reading uh an article a while back, I think Jen Frey, it was a Jen Frey piece, and she was talking about she was looking at the statistics of how in college people used to ask those questions.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there was like you, you know, you would have conversations in your dorms about about those sorts of things.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the research is showing that fewer of those conversations are being had.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking at education in in sort of a different way.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully in my classroom, I can occasion those kinds of humanizing questions.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we need them.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's so uh what are Aristotle's aims here?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned like ask asking those big questions.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: What is the what is the good life?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: So um kind of walk us through the big questions he's pushing us into, and um perhaps his big conclusions that he wants us to draw.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the biggest one is is the one where he starts, so everything aims at some good.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we would call like a teleological account of nature.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Telos is it's like the same same word you find in telescope, right?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Telescope is to see something far away, or if you're a biology person, that telomeres pull things to the size of the cells.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's about what is far off, right?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so he's asking for this kind of advantage on your life.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: What is the thing that's far off?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that is some great good.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And what is this great good?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: He says it is eudaimonia, and eudaimonia is a word for flourishing, and it is a good that is good in itself, and like it's it's something that's desirable and is an end in itself.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's his mate his biggest conclusion, right?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: We have this sort of end flourishing, everything aims in terms of flourishing.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and how do you um accomplish this kind of flourishing?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he defines it as an activity of the soul, right?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's this active, ongoing process that's largely constituted by virtues.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So to have a good kind of life, this it's not sufficient, but it is necessary that you have these sort of excellences of your person.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that is like the big thing.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's his biggest legacy is talking about virtue and talking about what it means to be a good kind of person.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Wrapped up in the in the question of virtue and vice is is of course other questions like nature, what does it mean to be a human?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's he sees these these traits as as making you a good instance of your own kind as human beings.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you ask those questions.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And in the passage that you read at the beginning of the show, you you read, right, you can't um if you throw a rock up a hundred times, right, it it's not going to continue to go up because that's counter to your nature.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so virtues are a kind of thing that's suited to what we are as human beings.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes in our contemporary discourse about virtues, we think of them as making us something else or like these floating angel creatures.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you talk about virtue, people just think it's like not really human, it's not realistic or something like that.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it is.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is like something that is suited to the sort of thing you are as a human being.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So nature is part of the question, and then also freedom, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're not an excellent virtuous person if you are doing something against your will or even if you're um bound in in in certain ways.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so yeah, so those are some of some of the major questions that he discusses.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and he concludes talking about like different kinds of lives, like um being oriented toward pleasure, being oriented toward knowledge, um, being oriented toward the practical life of the citizen, and kind of weighing those um see which which one is the highest sort of thing.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So which one is?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's debate here.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously, um the life of pleasure is one that he dismisses as immediately vulgar.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he calls the the um life of of reason, kind of contemplating God, like thinking about eternal things.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: He calls that the most divine.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's godlike, it's it's the highest sort of thing.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: But as some theorists point out, we're not gods.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have this sort of need of the practical and have to run our cities and things like that.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a tension there, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I wish I could, and some to some degree, I wish I could spend my days contemplating, but also I have to make dinner.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so, how do these things kind of come together in a good life?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there are certainly trade-offs in in our lived experience.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think about this because Aristotle's star pupil was, of course, Alexander the Great.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, he got slightly different lessons there.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely a practical life.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: So how do we reconcile that today?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how what do you tell your students about this?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh reconciling this tension.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think, well, in our contemporary context, I think that my students don't spend much time contemplating at all, um, like developing a kind of life of the mind.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like if they say they go out even jogging, which like for me has is a significant place where I am just by myself thinking about things, they're listening to podcasts.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so they're never fully unplugged.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so if there's one case that I'm often making with my students, it is be comfortable being alone with yourself and think about things.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have a life of the mind, take that seriously.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, so it's always being connected to devices.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a problem.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have this AI situation where intellect is being undermined at every turn.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, thinking is really hard.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like being able to sit down and write is exceedingly difficult.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's difficult for me, and it's the life that I've chosen, it's my job, right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so trying to motivate that they take their ideas seriously and they and they develop this sort of excellence that is a defining feature of being a human is is a case that I try to make again and again.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I try to do it in my pedagogy too.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like um, I noticed early on in my teaching that I would be nervous if I asked a question and no one answered.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I would always pick on the first person who raised their hand.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it was kind of incentivizing impulsivity of thought, like the person who is just willing to just shout out an answer and I'd be like, thank you.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I'm just saying, I just tell them, like, I am going to let this question hang in the air and we're all gonna think, and then we'll respond, like trying to reinforce something slow and contemplative, which is something we don't have the opportunity for very much, or don't make the opportunity for as much as we should.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it gets again to that point of training in the virtues.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk a little bit more about this?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how does the college life, if lived well, like the kind of things you uh you encourage in your classes, train students in the virtues?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, it's a good question.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I is when I teach my ethics classes, uh, I always start by asking them what ethics is.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they always think it is these sort of decisive moments of choosing that are like trolley problems.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm either gonna do this thing or I'm gonna do that thing.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: And there are a few moments like that in the course of one's life, but I have them write down everything that they did that morning before they came to class.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe you played on your phone for a while in bed and procrastinated, and then maybe I don't know, you ate something.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you did you hold the door open for anyone?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Were you in a rush?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Did you speed on their way, driving to campus?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like all these sorts of things.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I just like impress upon them your character is through all of those things.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: You are thoroughgoing and moral agent, and your character shows up not just in these decisive moments in choosing, of course it shows up then.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: However, it's also just how you are sitting here, it's how you use your technology, it's how you take care of your body and so forth.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so just trying to show them that their lives are soaked with morality and and then impress upon them that the way that they participate in sports, the way that they show up as students, these are because they're something that they do repeatedly, it is habituating them into certain ways of thinking and feeling and acting.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if every time they're sitting with, you know, in the context of friends, they're pulling out their phone, well, that's a practice in kind of um a kettia or a sedia, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: This sort of um not being diligent in your presence, kind of flitting off to something else, being unable to stay.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or if they are not exercising carefulness in their scholarship, right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: So they are just going to the first source that shows up on Google, just probably there because it's monetized in some way.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is that careful scholarship?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they are practicing being a certain kind of person who doesn't take evidence seriously.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: So just trying to impress upon them that these decisions are things that are shaping who they are, and who they are is it's everywhere they go.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is something you take seriously, um, their patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that's um, I mean, we forget sometimes um after the legacy of the Middle Ages, where Aristotle became so absorbed into like Christian thought that Aristotle was not a Christian, but this does sound very theological, like the idea that everything we do is formational.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, it does.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, and I mean, if you look at Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas kind of took that up, right, into the Christian picture.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not like so in the Christian life, there's this idea that you participate in your sanctification.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just something that happens to you that you are passive, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can't add anything to it.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you are improving your status before God, but it's sort of living out and perfecting your faith through the kinds of actions that you are performing on a regular basis.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I can get better at loving my children.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: I just have to, you know, like kind of walk through that life.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that I think about it is like um when I got married to my husband, that was a momentary thing.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: It happened a single moment, and then the rest of my life is going to be reconciling myself with what that means and trying to walk in light of this reality that's before me.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I honor my husband and how do I love him better?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like an ongoing process of working out that love.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's the way I like to think about the sort of tomistic appropriation of the Aristotelian picture because it's like he describes faith, hope, and love.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: They are infused, they are gifted.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: That changes your status before God.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And also we have these sort of um cardinal virtues.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: We have these excellences that you can practice that are a kind of common grace, um, that are daily kind of practices that you undertake and you lean in the direction of whatever that end is, whatever that T loss, returning to the that topic, that great good is.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so the importance of daily daily habit.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's the little things that add up so much.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Most Christian parents I know want to pass their faith on to their kids, but there's a tension.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: The work of discipling your children has largely been outsourced to church programs like Sunday School, youth group, and children's ministry.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are great.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the research actually suggests that when faith formation is treated like a class to complete, the kids graduate from church the same way they graduate from high school.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: They just move on.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mir Orthodoxy has put together a free ebook called Spiritual Formation for the Family that takes a different approach.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's rooted in the life of the household and the family and takes the spiritual formation of the family seriously.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's practical, it's theologically serious, and it's free.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can get access to it and even download a free PDF of it at Mereorthodoxy.com slash family.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's Mereorthodoxy.com slash family to get free access to spiritual formation for the family.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Aristotle does have a reputation for being a bit difficult, and I love how you're breaking him down in much simpler terms that are accessible.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, what advice would you give to listeners who might never have read him before, but now are listening to you and to you and are thinking, okay, this is relevant, I can do this.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: So what advice would you give them?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and when my students tell me that Aristotle's hard, I tell them, yeah, same for me.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like, I don't, I don't know, like maybe the expectation is is going to be like Harry Potter or something else, like something that's a little bit easier to digest.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell them, like, I have to slow down and I have to work through things.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing that I show them sometimes, like I have a couple of the texts that I read first as an undergraduate.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So my my copies of Aristotle, my copy of Plato.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I read the marginalia, like what I wrote in the margins.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think I had no idea what was going on sometimes.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like sometimes I'm like, wow, I had no idea.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm like consistently now.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm now the marginalia, you know, in in some respects has improved.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: In other respects, I'm learning things from the first version of me.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So like I saw things as a 19-year-old that I don't see now, and vice versa.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so don't put your reading experience down.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, you can grow with these texts.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's something that like you can live in and continue to grow with, but also know that you have a vision that you're bringing to the text, and and you can probably see things that are uh that you might miss later, right?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: In a in a different phase of life.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I tell my students that like, hey, me too.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard for me.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I missed a lot of things, I still miss things.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: I tell them to slow down, slow way down, and that's okay.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's not a race.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you read less, it's just the way that it is.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Also tell them to um to read with a friend if they can, um, because these texts are meant to be discussed in the context of community.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes in my classes, like we are the friends, right?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're reading this together, and that's a really neat humanizing opportunity to learn from each other and learn from the master.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, like having those conversations, sometimes they think that they've gotten nothing out, and then in the conversations, they say, Well, what about this?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, they've they've gotten more out of it than than they imagine that they have.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you can do it.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Start slowly, read the Friend, read with a pencil, circle things, ask questions, um, and read and reread and reread.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, these are yeah, meant to be grown with.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you brought up a really interesting point that we also don't think about enough.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the expectations that we bring to books today, we really are expecting everything to be easily digestible, like Harry Potter.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I can pick this up even if I'm tired, um, and so on.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I've realized, you know, I have books that I can read in the I have morning books, like when my brain is fresh and fully caffeinated.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I have evening books, the ones that are like, I don't need to be 100% to be able to read them and understand them.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: And as you were talking, I was thinking, yeah, Aristotle is definitely a morning book.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh need um need all the assistance.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: But uh that is something that um also the difference between how we read and how people in antiquity read, where um, yeah, they did not expect to read super fast the way we do, um, with some like really um just not necessarily highly literary novels.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: I could probably breeze through 100 pages in an hour.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um no one's doing that with Aristotle.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: And if you are, you're not getting anything out of it.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: But um I appreciate that.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: The virtue of slow reading, which in itself actually is a virtue.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's training us in something uh good.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, patience.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, there are a lot of virtues that supervene on reading for sure.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: So speaking of virtues that uh you've learned from Aristotle, or at least connected to your life in practical terms, let's talk a bit about the examined line, uh the examined run.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: It is the examined life, also.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: The examined run.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you rely on Aristotle quite a bit.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, can you tell us a bit like the concept behind the project and how Aristotle fits into it?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so while I was writing my dissertation, um, which was in moral development, I was also running professionally and coaching cross-country and track at a small classical school.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a classical school where they took seriously the idea that athletics plays a role in your moral formation.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I was doing the daily work of trying to figure out how to help my students grow in virtue while trying to become more excellent myself and reading moral development, which is the perfect storm where I'm realizing that, you know, Aristotle gives you a really good structure for thinking about growing in excellence.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and athletics really is a great opportunity to practice putting on virtue.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: So Aristotle talks about growth in virtue in a number of ways, like we can learn to be more excellent through moral emotions, like admiration of excellent people, and through shame and guilt, right?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are different ways, but there's also, he says that um we acquire virtues by doing, right?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So in this section on the moral virtues, the as a kind of ethic or habit, right?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it is um what you repeatedly do.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's this um men become builders by building and liar players by playing the liar.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: So too, we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's kind of in one way, it's really simplifying because it's like, well, how do I develop a better character?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I have to just do the thing.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: But see, in another way, it's frustrating because it's like, oh, it's on me.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have to do the thing, I have to take these initial first actions and repeatedly kind of submit myself to be more excellent in certain ways.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the structure of athletics is really promising for virtue development.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think music is the same just because there's this sort of practice mentality to it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: So every day you set off in your sneakers and you are repeatedly acting in certain ways to become more excellent.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and this sort of practice space, like if you think about the activity of running, for example, it's not morally neutral.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: There are opportunities to practice being patient, practice persevering.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Persevering is just the activity of endurance running in general, right?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like persisting towards some good end.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there are opportunities to act well when you're humbled, um, opportunities to be resilient and so forth.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's taking seriously though that practice space, looking at your habits of attention, and trying to do the messy work of becoming more excellent in certain respects.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote the book realizing that there was this kind of kinship between the athletic practice and virtue development, that every day I was trying to become more excellent and realizing that there was a vocabulary helpful there.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was also realizing that where I was athletically, I couldn't improve as an athlete unless I took my character more seriously because I would always start races too quickly, and that was a lack of patience.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would and I would struggle in the middle of long runs, like just wanting to do anything else rather than stay in place and without having a vision of what I wanted to do instead.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was realizing that I was um that was the vice of Akadia, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: This was sloth.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we think of sloth in terms of the sort of laziness instantiation, but there's this other kind where you are everywhere and nowhere um doing just kind of internally busy, um, and my attention was flitting off.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if I didn't practice that, it was going to be something that was costly in terms of my athletic performance.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, so I undertook this project and it was really fun to write.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was fun to write because I got to talk about learning from exemplars.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what can you actually learn from excellent people?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I got to talk about emotions and running, which is as a huge part, like emotion management is a huge part of being able to compete well in sport.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: I got to talk about virtue development, I got to talk about the good life.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, it was it was a really fun undertaking.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I love the connections that you brought out between like the different aspects of your life.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: I uh worry sometimes that in modern America we're pushed to comportmentalize different aspects of our life.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're an intellectual, you're an intellectual in your office when you're writing.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Don't bring that home.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: Or like if you're a mom, you're only a mom between these hours when you're with your kids and whatever else.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you're really um arguing in a lot of ways here for the integrated life that who you are as a person and every aspect of your life matters.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh right.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think like running in particular, I think is a really good um, it's sort of like a canvas for seeing other aspects of your life play out, um, which is something I like about the sport.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I I think, you know, like I'm a trained Aristotle person.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm gonna think about my T loss.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna think about the way that it informs my running, my parenting, my coaching, uh, my teaching, and everything like that.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully my whole life is testifying to that great good, which for me I'm a Christian, and so that's that's honoring God.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: So let me ask you a more difficult question, because you also uh are a parent of very little people right now.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: How do you teach them the virtues?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is such a good question.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh if you ask me like some days, I'll be like, yeah, it's going great.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: And other days, like today, I'm like, wow, not going great.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a Friday, everyone is really tired right now.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I this morning I was like, wow, that's I could have done this morning a lot better.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I think so.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um one thing that I learned from the classical tradition from from both Plato and Aristotle is they talk about education of the body before education of the mind.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I've been doing a lot of like emotion coaching with them, like helping them to um yeah, like be able to govern their emotions better.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes we'll talk about like, oh, you're feeling angry, like why are you feeling angry?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is that the right response?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like we talk about our emotions um and we talk about how to handle them.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and like Aristotle says, it's like it's not that anger is you don't want to do away with anger.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Anger is a per is an important part of your seeing the world clearly, right?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I see an injustice, I should feel angry.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: If I don't feel angry, then I'm not adequately construing the moral universe around me, right?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I it's never that I'm shaming them for emotions, but we're often talking about how to how to do them better.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I tell them when I get mad, I'm like, I should have, I got too mad.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry about that.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like we talk about it a lot.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we also talk about like I I we do play music.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: My husband and I like to play them classical music.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we think, you know, that's better for forming their their souls than whatever kind of coconut cotton candy music is is going on otherwise.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're part of like a liturgical church, and so they learn like kneeling and um like postures of worship, like we talk about that sort of thing.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I have them do like sports with me.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: So my one daughter, she's five, she's really into biking, and I help her in terms of like managing emotions on the bike, and like when something's difficult, we talk about this is great, this is like we're growing, right?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so that kind of like embodied learning.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and I do give them a kind of moral vocabulary to the extent that I I can and I think is accessible to them.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like they always want to say things are either nice or not nice, and as like a virtuous person, I'm like, those aren't really thick moral concepts.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about like patience and things like that.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, naming things, giving them a kind of grammar.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm really just like I can do those things.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the most important part of moral formation is really just role modeling.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really grateful that I have a husband who is just like so honorable and kind and gentle with them because I know that goes a long way.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I am just doing my best to to like show them love of God and love of reading and um how to how to be kind to one another and and respectful and so forth.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that sounds wonderful.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's and very practical, but in a beautiful way.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: So if um if Aristotle visited our society today, do you think he'd think that it's more difficult to grow in the virtues today than it was in the mid-fourth century BC?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you think he would kind of say, well, the problems I'm describing are the exact same?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: That yeah, that is so funny.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think about this sometimes because so I don't know fourth century BC.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: So recently I was reading, I forget who the Roman orator was, but someone was complaining about how the students weren't like paying attention or doing their work or something like that.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just thinking, same, you know, and I mean that that's what makes them classics, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're speaking to human nature in a way that is true, right?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and that nature is the same.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have different temptations and different um things that present.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: I really think this sort of our relationship with technology is at a point where it is really hard to be present, um, in in particular, um, like this sort of digital intemperance.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that being said, like uh, I mean, I've talked about the vice of Akadia quite a bit, right?
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: This sort of flitting off of attention.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if you read the about the the desert tradition, these these monks, they were talking about the noonday demon where they couldn't pay attention and their mind was flitting off, and they had to work really hard at this practice called stabilitas lochi to be able to stay in place.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, this is a medieval time period.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: You are at a monastery and you are having trouble paying attention.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: I have the same problem, and so I think like we're perennial people, right?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: We we have these these um these dispositions toward vice, and I just think that the set of things that capture our attention are just different over time.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you would see like, wow, people are still just kind of messy, um struggling to be excellent.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so yeah, I I think that's a kind of a persistent thing.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing I like to remind myself about when I'm reading Aristotle is like he was writing for the wealthy young men of Athens.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: They had a lot of things going for them.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was this privileged group, and so maybe it seems to us like, well, our our our waters are muddier, but but not everyone had that sort of privilege and space of leisure and and thing things like that.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe it's closer together than we might imagine.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting also because you're a woman, uh starting Aristotle.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Aristotle sometimes did not have the kindest things to say about women's capacity for virtue.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we could by analogy um try to be more excellent instances of our kind, yes, but he was also an empiricist or like uh in that direction, right?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like he explored the world and and and tried to figure out things on the basis of nature.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think I I'm I'm optimistic that, or I guess maybe hopeful that should he understand things like through a more contemporary lens, then maybe he would have realized that we were capable of reason.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, it makes me laugh a little bit um when I'm teaching Aristotle, and he's like, Yeah, the women, no virtue for them.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: But thankfully, in Christ we can say otherwise.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: I want to conclude with um our usual concluding question, which is what classic do you wish you had written?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: And why?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I thought about this question it and it is hard to answer, right?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh probably probably Plato's Republic.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I Plato's Republic is I don't I don't maybe the best book, um, Bible aside, like in human history.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's my favorite book to teach.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: I am consistently learning things from it.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's so masterfully conducted, and I feel chastised by it.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's topically rich, right?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Education, law, virtue, just metaphysics, epistemology, everything is in there.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so if there was one, I guess, I guess that would be the one.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess that um answers also like where you are, because typically philosophers are either Aristotle or Plato people, and I guess you're more of maybe more of a Plato person.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Although you love it.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: Plato to teach, Aristotle to write in, I think.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: I love this.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that's a great note to end on.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Sabrina.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: This was fun.