What the ancient Greek philosophers discovered about how to do life better.
Tamar Gendler is dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. Her Open Yale course “Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature” has hundreds of thousands of views. An updated version of this course will be available on the Coursera website this spring.
In this episode we talk about:
- The tension between our animal nature and our spiritual/intellectual nature
- How to define concepts such as “virtue”, “morality” and “the soul”
- Whether living a moral life actually makes you happy
- The similarities and differences between ancient Greek philosophy & Buddhism
- And how Tamar has applied all of this to her own life
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
The ten percent happier podcast dan harris,
hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we do it you may have,
it is either through meditation or through just being alive that debt, your mind is out of control. You ve, got
or two things you want to do habits you want to establish goals you want to achieve, and yet you often dont managed to do them
you have all sorts of things you don't want to do procrastinate lose your temper, whatever
and often you end up doing those things anyway. We talk a lot on this show about how the buddha had tons.
Strategies for attaining the monkey mind, but does so did the ancient greek philosophers about whom we don't talk that much so today,
got a professor from yale whose studied these ancient philosophers extensively and has come up with a very clear and practical way to apply these ancient
grits of happiness to our modern lives
Tomorrow, gentler is dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, Vincent J Scully, professor of philosophy, and prefer
you're of psychology and cognitive science at yale university. Her online course
loss if and the signs of human nature has hundreds of thousands of views and enough
It version will be on the core. Sarah website, this spring in the sky,
station. We talk about the tension between our animal nature and our spiritual, slash, intellectual nature, how to define
concepts such as virtue morale
and the soul
whether living a moral life actually makes you happy.
The similarities and differences between ancient greek philosophy and buddhism and how to MAR applies
all of this in her own life, but first time for some
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Professor tomorrow gambler welcome to the show, thank you so much
excited to talk to you.
We just our wisdom, basic biographical information, one of your areas of x.
to use is how the wisdom of ancient philosophers.
help us do life better. Now, I'm just curious hat,
How did you arrive at this area of interest, so I was really
always interested in the way in which the same idea is presented in different contexts, depending upon the goal of the
and doing the communicating, so I grew up in
family, where my father was a rabbi and you might think the project of religious interpretation is a project of taking a set of texts which were composed at
I'm in history distant from the time that we are right now and help make salience their relevance as guides to the deepest
when questions so in the same way that a scholar of religion or a practised
or of religion might relate to ancient wisdom.
texts as objects that can help you in the present
So to get I come to recognise that many of the text that I was reading in the contract,
of my academic work as a faculty member works of people like plato,
or Aristotle or the early modern philosophers like gay card or Hume, that all of them could be true.
in a similar way, which is to say what are the insight that appear here that can guide us because they are
proves that extend beyond the time and place at which they were composed was or something
about your life cycle,
that your dad was a rabbi and was interested in universal truth was there,
something about your life and your needs design.
Where's curiosities problems, challenges neuroses that sent you in this direction. So one wonderful thing about human beings is, I suspect there are exactly
Zero people on earth, for whom there are not needs
desires, neuroses circumstances, frustrations that require them to think about. How can they thrive in a world that doesnt perfectly conform to the
in which they wished. They found themselves. So I had what, by every measure, is a wonderfully supported life. I grew up in a loving family. I found a loving partner. I had two wonderful children, but even against that backdrop, there are
things that don't come out the way. You hope- and I was not particularly religious though I had been
raised in a family that with spiritual- and so I was looking-
or ways of answering questions
that really matter to me, what is it to put yourself in a position to be able to truly
therefore, and truly listen to another person, and I didn't have a theological framework in which to do that.
because, for whatever reason, the framing of the world
divine eminence, didn't speak to me. So I was struggling with what I think are
set of questions that we all struggle with. How
HU. I live in a world so full of imperfection. In way
Is that I can care both about those close to me and about those further from me in way
I can take joy in what I'm doing at any given time and for me the set of wisdom texts that spoke most effectively
to the kinds of questions and concerns that I had were a set of text that were pretty
cleanly logically structured in the way that philosophical texts are, as opposed
to another modality of something that is for
ample associate ably structured in the way that metaphor or mysticism is
I think what you described is pretty common. These days you have people who we know quick way. To put it, the sort of
when parlance way, to put it at his spiritual. But not religious, am everybody whether spiritual, religious or you know hardcore atheist. Everybody knew
its purpose or meaning whether they are aware of it, are not. Everybody lives in a confusing and tropic world
and what we now seeing is that we're looking for meaning in places that are somewhat surprising from
work to seoul cycle to meditation apps as mainstream religion loses its appeal for many people. I mean, I would say, all of us live in a world where there are earthquakes and fires, that is to say all of us living
world, where there is an imaginable degree of human suffering and all of us
so live in a world where the people we love and care about most are sometimes going to disappoint us so bad
with in the very narrow sense of daily life.
No one's daily life goes perfectly and in terms of the planetary situation that we inhabit, there will always
be an extraordinary amount of human suffering and what to do
in the face of those two facts, the very person
well. Reality of frustration and the very very objective reality that there is suffering which we can only do a small bit to alleviate those are going to be constant truths, and the question is how in a world of which that
these true. Can we build lives that feel meaningful to us and that I would
also say, are meaningful to others. We care both about how it feels to us and about what it does in the world.
We're gonna talk about the overlap between buddhism, which
something I know a little bit about, and these ancient folks
but you can find many of the same themes and chairman and judaism Islam. You know
it in these traditions that were separated by both geography and chronology is the end
just blazing. We obvious that if you think hard about the human condition, you're just gonna come to the same conclusions, no matter
when or where you are so we say, there's a common structural problem that we face
which is that we are simultaneously physical, embodied contingent beings,
whose instincts and responses are fundamentally those of animals that is of organisms
whose mean ambition is to have children who have children. So one fact about human beings always and everywhere is out
embodied nature, and that means all sorts of things it means were hungry. It means were thirsty, it means were sexually attracted to things. It means that we feel discomfort. It means that we can die off
all of those are a set of truths at the same time,
Men beings are capable of abstraction, their capable of representation
their capable of seeing one object as standing for another, their capable of sophisticated emotion and their capable of landing and see.
King to influence the world both directly at the moment and indirectly,
in long term ways- and I would say, the tension between being finite, physical being and a concept
intellectual emotional planning being the
mention that produces requires strategies for resolution, and I would
they all of the wisdom, traditions to which you advert are different. Attempts to resolve the tension between our animal nature,
and our spiritual, intellectual, emotional nature
you're convinced. I think you are that, even though these was
and traditions are ancient they re
can apply
what's going on in our lives right now, I can imagine somebody listen to this saying. Well, the greeks, the romans, the buddha, the,
The shamans in the jungles of
South america, they didn't have to deal with. Always
technology, they don't have to deal with climate change statement have to deal with a bullet
The polarization of the variety that we're seeing now there are so many modern problems that one could possibly argue are unprecedented. So I think there are at any moment in history a set of problems which are distinctive to that time.
So. We have a set of problems which are raised for us by modern technology. You just listed on excellent set thereof, but we don't in, for example, the part of the world where we have this technology face the weight of child mortality that war
is typical among individuals who are living at greek and roman times. We have as a society developed
alternative views of the way in which gender does or doesn't allow somebody to be ineffective thinker. That is, in the
Jeanne, greek and roman world was hard for people to see women.
As full cognitive equals, whereas in
contemporary world, it is in most communities accepted that gender or
that is not what's determinative of cognitive capacity, so yeah
there are going to be differences. Those differences are useful to look at both directions.
Its useful to see that, when you read back at the beginning
of the iliad. The story is about a fight over a woman who has been enslaved.
To be a mistress to one of the generals? And nobody,
nobody in the story thinks that's a problem, so recognise
that we'd need moral progress in terms of our capacity to understand. Subject can be that's a difference between the modern world in the ancient world so to the kinds of distractions that people
Yes, when you're reading an ancient greek story, there will looking at the shape of the fire,
and its mesmerizing? Is that similar,
who are different from the way in which looking at your iphone is mesmerized.
Same in some ways different in others. So I find that there is sufficient commonality for it to make sense to look across worlds. But yes, there.
real differences there are ways in which the modern world has things that the ancient world doesn't and ways in which these
work, has things that the modern world doesn't
and noting that, alongside noting the commonality, as part of what makes it valuable to use, ancient texts or right, having set the table
in that way and thank you for fur, your handholding. Let's talk about some of the key terms that
you use or that the ancients were using one of them. Is you demoniac? Yes, what does that mean? So the central phrase that you done mona has at its centre at the wheel
die maud, which is trans literary, did in english d, a I m, o n, and if you read the film pullmans
dron stories, or if you know what the idea of a demon is a dime
It is something that is your spirit, your soul, and you can think of it metaphorically, as the set of things which aren't just your
your emotions, your imagination, your ambitions, your sense of morality. So that's your dime on an
You die mona or you die. Omonia. Adverts, too, is the condition
of the soul, the spirit, the diamond being in good order so think about it.
You're working as a waiter and you
carrying a set of plates back to the kitchen. If your tray,
Is you demonic? That is if it is in a position to thrive or flourish, all the plates are lined up in the right kind away and nothing's at risk of tippit. So a way to.
think about an english translation of you, demoniac or you. Demoniac is spiritual, thriving well being flourish
I had a million questions about that, but I'm among a hold it because you were gonna go much more deeply.
into this balance that the angel
you're calling for which, by the way, you have modern, say colleges, sir calling for it is well we'll put been in there
for a second in the name of just defining a few more terms too
you d, Mona. The next one is an please correct me. If I'm mispronouncing, this
fro nieces, good from
He says he is an ancient greek terms that refers to a particular kind of wisdom, and we make this
stinkin still today from me,
this is practical wisdom in contrast to what we might call mere books smart, so somebody might be fear
luckily wise, they might know a lot of information. They might have a full answer
repeated sense of the structure of the community of which there are park, but they might none. The less lack practical wisdom show the term for
Nieces refers to the kind of wisdom and understanding that has to really crucial characteristics. One is that it is so
sit. If two situation, it is responsive to what is specific about the moment,
It is aware of the ways in which whatever action is undertaken will affect the put killer, details
of the circumstance in which you find yourself. So that's one feature its contextual
aware and the sick
is that it comes out on the spot quickly
in real time in way
That are authentic, so think about ways in which those two things might not be the case rates. You might have some abstract knowledge, but not be able to apply it to a particular.
waken or you might have a particular knowledge, but you can call on it right at the moment. The moment,
that it matters to be able to control. Your anger is the moment at which you're about to get angry. It does
matter. If you have that skill at other times the moment
which it matters to express authentic sympathy particular
with someone you dont like is the more
and when you are together,
for niece, this involves having culture
in yourself, the capacity to respond instinctively at a moment in a way that you wish you would respond that is sensitive to the particularities,
at that moment, so like a wisdom based spontaneity, it's a wisdom based
cultivated spontaneity in
same way that when you try to get theoretical knowledge, think about the drills that you do
at school, when you're learning multiplication tables, you want to learn them all:
Ok tables so completely
there's. No think time
between seeing six times seven and saying forty to those want to become foundling associated. In your mind and practical
wisdom involves doing the same sort of were hersel generosity, kindness, loving, kindness forgiveness, so that those come
Woot six times, seven is forty two. When you see those two numbers, I am compassionate towards you. When I see your suffering, I like the concept a lot and we are going to come back
continuing on the definitional tipp. However, the next set of words. I want to take a look
are, and maybe these should be
together and maybe they should be addressed separately, but virtue and morals good. So these are vexed terms and one of the things we often
discovering conversations is that sometimes people disagree about concepts and sometimes people disagree about which words applied, to which concepts and that that second question sometimes really feels like it matters to people. That said, in this context, I'm going to tell you how I think it would be helpful for us to use the word virtue
and for us to use the word morality in the context of the conversation that we're gonna be having for the next hour or so so let me
Art with morality, because that some more general term in this context, morality is worth flee relating
to the world, with the recognition that you are not the only person in it the lots and lots.
Of other ways to think about morality, but I think fundamentally, what moral theories ask you to do is to take your perspective understand why
is that you feel and experience and desire and then why
ignore that the world is filled with many other such perspectives, each of which cares about its well being as completely as you care
Your well being so to behave. Morally, is to recognise, for example, that your actions can harm or help another, and that that
matters and whatever moral framework you subscribe to, whether it's a utilitarian consequential list, moral framework or more framework that comes from a divine command theory or contain what sometimes
the ontological moral framework, what all of those have in common, is the assumption that other perspectives matter and that you recognise that in your actions and thinking.
So that's how I want to characterize the notion of morality and we can talk more specifically about different ways in which morality is sometimes characterized. Now, let's move to the notion of virtue the notion of virtue
in the way that I'll be using it in our conversation is
notion of a really good, bundled package of ways of doing things that tend to help morale.
So it's as if there's a giant menu and people have thought really hard about which
things go together really well. She forgot to have this kind of first course. It
makes sense to have this kind of second course. Cynical really go well. If you drink this kind of liquid. A virtuous like that,
virtue is a set of practices that are likely to help. You be moral in a wide range of cases. So forget
But, according to the ancient greek tradition, with
Some courage, moderation and justice
The special notion of justice are the four cardinal virtues, so let s think about bravery
the bravery is standing farm in the face of
Frustration standing firm in the face of fear, standing firm in the face of disapprobation and the ancient greek
picture says it
is useful if you
to be moral to be brave.
because it allows you to carry through on your moral actions but says the ancient tradition in order to be brave enough to recognise that bravery is in between two things, each of which is dangerous. One of those things might
obvious, which is being cowardly, so being brave is standing up even
the face of discomfort, even in the face of fear, even in the face of criticism is moving forward.
with something that you are committed to eve
when it's not easy to do so, but bravery also
to be distinguished by something on the other side, which is recklessness or stubbornness and chaos. Does it's possible to
instead of being brave, be cowardly, sir,
is it possible instead of being brave, to be reckless or stubborn right? You want to persistent
the face of others telling you not to, but not if they're right, so the virtue tradition in
of developing very suddenly calibrated habits of response to the world like being brave that are exquisite
sensitive to the ways in which bravery can easily
women into either cowardice or recklessness, and that as it avoids the other, it moves towards the one,
Would it be safe to say that morality? I love your definition of morality relating to the world as if you're, not the only person in it, would have you
I have to say that morality is to put it in. My
analogy. Morality is a kind of pulling your head out of your ass and seeing yet you're the only person on the planet and that other people matter too and
two are the tools,
with which one leads moral life. Beautiful morality is pulling your head out of your ass and virtue
are the tools that, once your heads out of your ass, let you shape the world in the right sort of ways. I consider it a
three that I've just gotten, nay dean from yale to use. The phrase tell your head out of your ass, not once but twice so high
But why final word to define before we get into your framework, which is so interesting? The soul
The ancients talk a lot about the soul. What did they mean by that? So every culture tries to figure out a way to talk about the part of us that isn't just our body, the part of us that is aware of the world
wild and able to communicate with the world, and so when I use the word soul in my conversations about ancient greek
shit, roman or early modern tradition, all
in by soul, is mind spirit, emotion, all the parts of you that aren't physical, so
something that is it in your soul. Is the orange juice that you drank for breakfast, the smart, you orange juice,
he drank for breakfast this morning is in your body and there's lots of relations between your
body and your soul, but, roughly speaking your body is the thing that circumscribed by yours
skin and your soul is the part of you that is abstract into law.
Sure emotional, spiritual conceptual any of the terms that describe view as a thinking or feeling thing as what philosopher sometimes call an age
or a patient in the world, an agent is somebody who does things in the world a patient
someone who is affected by the world so
Your soul? Is the part of you, the facts and is affected by the world? Intellectually and emotionally great super helpful. Thank you again.
For your patience of when it will mean walking me and by extension, everybody else did the basic terms here
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in your world, I'd say you have set out a framework that working out
use as the framework for the rest of this discussion, but I'm just gonna laid out for people
You can say a few words about it, and then we can dive into each part of the framework. The top of the pyramid is socrates,
who has an observation about human nature,
two is plato who
explains that observation and then once we ve understood
something about human nature. There are four tactics to deal with these facts and they are habituate. That's aristotle, too, is situated in that comes from the odyssey. Three is attach a comes from the iliad and four is detached, and I come from epictetus, so
we're going to dive into each of the component parts of this framework, but am I spelling it out generally correctly beautiful? Thank you
oh let's go into the observation, which is the first part of this framework, socrates had an observation about who we are and how we operate. What was it good? So socrates observation is that we are fundamental.
on known to and to some extent unknowable by ourselves. We don't know hours.
Yes, that's a simple way of describing the socratic insight, there's a whole bunch of
ancient stories about socrates and the details of them differ in the different killings, but the fundamental theme of all of them,
is the recognition that socrates wisdom,
this kid? In his humility in his room,
commission not of what he knew but of what he didn't know and in particular
Of his awareness
ways in which human
beings are not transparent to themselves. The point that socrates makes there
is, of course, in some sense, the most obvious point ever there could not be key shows or novels if it weren't the case that people son
and did things for reasons other than they thought they were doing?
no story of human experience assumes that we have direct access to who we are inside too
what motivates us to what we really care about to the reasons for which were doing something. But, interestingly, this is like
inverse of morality. It's really easy to recognise that
thing, is crew of everybody else with out recognising that its true of you so no really ironic way.
The way in which socrates knows himself is, can
oh, that his self isn't any different from yourself or from anybody else's self, and just as they don't have to
knowledge or access to their motivations or to what it is that they really want, or why they're doing what they're doing
so too is that true of socrates there's any
I run ironic structure, where self knowledge involves the acknowledgement that you don't know yourself, and you
hum too that realisation by realizing that you are in a very interesting sense, not special. You are just like
one around you whom you know do not know themselves.
So how does this job with the buddhist notion
at the self is an illusion that its unknowable, because it would be like trying to get to know santa claus. There is no santa claus, so there's no point getting to know him. So what I would say is very great,
which it is impossible.
To no one self in the buddhist tradition is
more extreme because, as you point out the buddhist view
who is that there is no self selfish,
illusion self is afraid,
that we use for making sense of a world that is extraordinarily complex. That is useful for us in an unenlightened state but gets in the way of a kind of true enlighten. The grid
picture. As I am reading it here and let me say there are many different pictures of what the soul looks like, and so I'm just giving a character as a
of one way we might think about. It is that their actually is a thing which is the end
visual, that there is a self in a sense that the buddhists would not take there to be a self. There are various pictures, for example, of a cell
as persisting into an afterlife.
in the ancient greek picture, but that that self is hard to see. So it's a different picture, but what's important about the commonality. Is that very often, even if
you're going to cleveland and I'm going to billings Montana. We can still travel west together on route. Ninety for awhile
even if you're gonna get off in cleveland and I'm gonna go all the way to billings yeah, don't know which place out
Less rather go, but setting that aside. What is that
chronic chronological relationship between buddhism and ancient greek philosophy,
with the buddha alive, many hundreds of years before socrates, around the same time, so sorry
in the buddha are roughly contemporaneous in the sense that they're, both in this sort of six five four hundred bc before the common era time there
is some speculation about what kind of interaction there is both between the buddha and the buddhist tradition and in particular, the
how a tradition which starts in the ancient greek and roman world about the year three
hundred bc ie, but I am not a historian. So what I want to claim is contemporary eighty, without making any hypothesis about the relation across the world's verona
ok, so that's the conclusion that socrates, then we move on to Plato who
as the explanation of the socratic conclude
again. The socratic conclusion is
we don't know ourselves and it may be impossible or at the very least, very hard to know ourselves and that's justified.
mental fact about the human condition and then
It comes in with an explanation of this conclusion. What did Plato say,
No, what player says is no kidding
don't know ourselves because cause were made up of a huge number of different parts and each of them
Europe is the world in different ways and feels inexplicable to the others, so in particular,
plato uses a metaphor. He says that human beings have what can be helpfully thought of as three parts what he calls reason, what he calls spirit and what he calls appetite. So let me start with appetite: that's
the big part of us that basically, we share with nonhuman animals, it's basically consumption
and procreation anything that's required for our continued well being and that part of myself wants to deal.
the here and now and the available and that which
is giving simple pleasure. So there's a big part of us. That is a positive that he's response.
save to really really immediate features of the world. But in addition to that says, plato with two other parts of ourselves which he calls the spirited part and the rational part. The spirited part
if ourselves, is responsive to social approbation and disapprobation, basically curs what other people think of us, and it does that in such a way that it too gains pleasure or pain
from being accepted or rejected. So, in the same way that you can be hungry in your appetitive part or feel pain in your toe
two can you be hungry in your spirited part, you can be
angry for love or you can feel pain at the rejection of some upon
that you have made towards someone you care about. So those are two parts to the soul. The operative part of the soul, appetitive from appetite and the spirited part of the soul, the part of you that cares about so
approbation and just approbation social approval and non approved finally says plato, you
what he calls a rational part of the soul. That's the part of you, that's capable of planning and having
long term, thoughts about what you do and what you want to be, and the rational part may have very different pictures about which of yours, spirited or appetitive desires. You oughta be indulging at a particular moment. In addition, your rational part is the part that does all the talking you're rational part has the ability to speak in words, you're a positive,
has the ability to speak in things like your stomach crumbles or your hands and tapping, because you're, nervous and anxious. So the problem is that, to the extent that you are thinking of yourself, cognitive lee, to dissent that you are thinking of yourself from the perspective of rationality, you wouldn't have direct act.
ass to spirit and appetite, because, no matter how many words you say to yourself: you're, not gonna, stop feeling hungry what speaks to appetite is food and procreation. What speaks to spirit is human connection and reason cat directly.
Provide that so Plato, it shouldn't be a surprise at all that we're are opaque. To
solves it shouldn't be a surprise at all that we can see
only inside to ourselves, because the big parts of ourselves there
the two giant courses appetite and spirit and they're just pulling us around all the time and the little part of ourselves that can control that which he calls that.
Mary, a tier, isn't a horse
It's so interesting that you see this notion of parts that we all have parts just echo
Through the centuries, all the web to modern psychology with things like internal family systems, which literally uses the word parts internal family systems for the
Uninitiated is up with
about it. A lot on the show up at some links in the show nuts two prior episodes on this: it's basically a basket
psychology that says you have these parts a jealous part and angry part. A appetitive part that
do their thing and are competing for salience in your mind, at any given moment and happiness
home wholeness balance
you die. Is the ability to
who work skilfully with these various parts exactly right and just to move to another valuable,
instructed the perspective of neuroscience neurosciences
fundamentally, a theory of functional roles that are played by either literal or metaphorical parts of the brain. Roughly speaking, the pieces of our brain evolved independently to do different kinds of things right, we got a really big bunch of stuff. In the back there
visual cortex that helps us take in information from the world that is presented to us visually and the women
other part of ourselves that takes in information on
then we have emotional information that comes in and stuff that comes in through smell and stuff that comes in through memory. I noticed that these
can be in conflict
in really simple ways. We have
of a set of structures in our brain that tell us whether were moving or not, and we have set.
Structure. Is that precede through our visual system, but tell us whether worm,
They are not.
If you're sitting on a train and the train. Next,
You starts moving those
two systems are in conflict with one another. Your part that feels low
station through motion thanks
still it happens to be correct in this case,
your visual system says relative motion is being observed, and it concludes that you, rather than the other object, are moving and in fact,
You begin to feel a little sensation about that. So the reason
that almost every theory that tries to understand
human beings, makes reference to parts and how those parts work together is that, as far as our back
scientific understanding suggests we actually quite literally, are composed of parts and those parts come into competition with one
all the time, they're, basically racing through your brain to get control of your hands. That's why you can feel
Old in two different directions: okay, so sorry
she's in plato, ts up, they ve, given us a description of the human,
situation we per socrates are opaque to
cells and then per plato. Of course, we are a picture.
cells, because they're just so much she
going on in there at any given moment. It is hard to be happy or content or
demonic at any given moment, because there is chaos and cacophony inside
and out, and that then tease up these four tactics that you talk about in your course.
that can help us to deal with the facts on the ground. The first of the four tactics is
This is your term that you use habituate. What are you
you mean by habituate, so think about the kind of being we ve just discovered. We are, we ve got a little trainee horse driver and two giant courses were running off, responding to things
that had been true and motivating for human beings for
few million years of evolution. So what
thanks to recognises that's what we're made up
made of an amid della and were made of a visual cortex and were made of all sorts of sensory apparatus that have evolved to be
sponsors to certain features in the world, and we are built of a whole bunch of drives and instincts that were designed to solve a very particular problem, namely that we have to have babies who have babies. Okay, so that's just a fact roughly, where animal
So if you are trying to teach something to an animal, you might have discovered that
Narrative store
telling reading per
waging aren't especially effective means for that. You don't take dogs to obedience, school and read aloud to them
from aesop's fables? Oh you, greedy fox! You should not seek the grapes, that's not useful in training a dog which
when you train a dog
is. You engage in the present day
and of certain kinds of motivational structures that make it pleasant to do a baby
that you desire to have happened and unpleasant to do a behaviour that you don't desire to have happened. That is, we are key
about when we think about our relation to non human animals of understanding how it is that you train something. That's not responsive to reason that has habits in
it's that pull in directions that are problematic for whatever the circumstance in which you're putting it and notice. If you're training, a dog to hunt or training a dog to ten sheep or training, a dog,
leads? Somebody who has a visual disability, those three very, very different kinds of training, so
as you can train a dog. You can train yourself, but in addition, there is a certain fact about.
Human beings, which is evolution, gives us a set of tools that make us capable of what's often called learning. Learning is developed,
thing habits so that things in your environment become easy to deal with. So anybody who's ever learned to drive has learned that if you put your foot on the right pedal, you move forward and if you put your foot on the left pedal you decelerated and
you ve learned that in such a deep way that you can use your phone meant
capacity in other ways, while you are dr, that's, why it's possible to talk and drive every thing that
of learned to do while you are doing something else. All of those are habits so if you're gonna build or if evolution
and a bill creature who is capable of learning. There must be an easy way of getting habits and the answer is you get habits? By doing the thing? That's a habit will ultimately encode. How do you learn to play the piano you learn to play the piano by practising playing the piano.
And one aristotle on whose work I'm hanging this idea of habituation suggests is the chest.
as you can learn to practise a physical skill rate, you learn to catch a baseball by practising
so too, can you make it in yourself instinctive act in accordance with
Aristotle calls, the virtues and you'll. Remember the cardinal virtues are wisdom,
Gee moderation and justice, but Aristotle's interested in all sorts of other virtues, like the virtue of generosity so earnestly
says, the way to become generous is just to practice being generous. Then till generosity becomes second nature,
so away that I sometimes summarize the idea that Aristotle has that anything. You practice often enough becomes what you automatically do is to say what I suspect you would call fake it till you make it, but to act as if you already were
that which you wish to become so you want to become brave act as if you were already brave just as crossing the street is a habit. Just as typing is a habit. Just as touching your phone with your
when it appears before you is a habit. So too says Aristotle. Things like bravery and generosity can become habitual.
so this, I guess, brings us back to phrony, says the idea that your training, these skills in order
to become a better person. That's right eye
safe for me says, which is the term that were using to refer remembered to practical wisdom, said there's theoretical wisdom book, smart and practical wisdom, worlds
apart from these is practical. Wisdom is, in some sense, recognising habituate situate attach due
catch and to using each of those tactics in the circumstance,
where its most valuable.
in a do, situate attach and detached presently. But but let me ask you one last question before get into that:
start all like
plato and socrates before him he's talking about
giving these virtues in the minds of these ancient greek philosophers worthy.
virtues worthy was this morality synonymous with happiness or was? This
type of thing you did just to be a good citizen and there is no self interest
plato, has a wonderful argument in a book called the republic where he argues that the
virtuous person is nine hundred times happier
then the non virtuous person, because their sole is well ordered. So the picture on
This ancient greek view is that the virtuous person
person who is wise and brave and moderate, and just and has the other non cardinal
choose as well
he is
leaving the life of you diamond nea, because that which they value aligns with how it is that their living. So it isn't a picture according to which your guaranteed to be happy with regard to the appetitive part of your soul. If your virtuous, it's not that if your virtuous you
get the most food to eat or have the most exciting sexual partners. It's not,
even necessarily the case that you'll have the admiration of the largest group of people, but if you are virtuous
will, in the most important sense thrive so virtue, which is going to cause you to be more
because virtue involves recognising, of course, that you are not alone in the world virtue.
and the morality that come with it practice through this
sales of fro niece S. Practical wisdom are going
To leave you in a state of you, demoniac in a state of
spiritual well being but notice that spiritual well being may not take the form that you thought it would pre and light
and right? It's not necessarily gonna give you better clothes and a particularly good glass of wine right
You'd demoniac doesn't necessarily mean your you know, taken cell,
in front of a private jet with the hashtag blessed. It's a deeper kind of
happiness than is often understood in the culture. Much more. My conversation with tomorrow, gambler coming eminent after this.
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Just a reset plato and socrates have diagnosed other basic brow,
for humans that our minds are out of control and we we
We have a clear view of their men are whipped all over the place, then,
what to do about that. The four tactics that you view lay out. We ve discovered number one which comes from Aristotle.
Which is to habituate, in other words, to create good habits that can help you build the virtues which will make you happier the second of the four tactics?
is situate, and you draw this from the odyssey which many
If not all listeners will have read and junior high, like I did and probably
Not remember so. Can you describe the odyssey in brief and then talk about what in it suggests
situate is a good tactic for us, so the odyssey
is a really long book which, in twenty four chapters, tells the story basically of a guy getting home through a wildly indirect pathway and
most quest, narratives end up taking that form,
somewhere you're going somewhere else, and you go to a whole bunch of places in between. In the case of the odyssey, this character
Oh yes, yes, who is heading home
finds himself in all sorts of different circumstances and depend
upon the circumstances in which he finds himself. He
finds itself behaving in different sorts of ways.
So he ends up on one island where there are beautiful, songs being sung and his tempted to take his ship off course. Me ends up on
mother island where everybody gluttonous eats and in
I'll just themselves in those ways, so let me give an analogy that will help bring out the relation think between habituate and situate, so bets are useful in some contexts, but might be completely non adaptive in others. Here's a really simple one. I have a habit of reaching for the purple toothbrush
my tooth brush in our family has always been the purple one, so really really good habit and I unthinkingly reach for the purple tooth brush and that's mine, but suppose
go to your house where there's five different people who have purple toothbrushes?
All of a sudden, I'm in a situation where
These simple habit reach for the purple toothbrush. Is it useful? What does this have to do with Aristotle and odysseus? Habits are useful.
In the sense that they are contextually specific running really fast is a good habit to have
when you are hearing
gun shoot at cross country race. But it's not
A really good habit to have if you're right in
and of a large street, and you hear a sound and you run into traffic awareness that whether a habit is effective or not is going to
depend upon the situation in which that habit is carried out so
situate involves, putting yourself in circumstances that make it easier,
for your habits to work right, you might think of that in two different ways.
one is that situating surrounding yourself by others who share your values, can make it
we easy to develop habits. If you want to,
study hard for an exam or get work done.
That is somewhat averse to you going to
I worry or co work space is aware
if situating yourself so that the habit that you're trying to develop gets ryan,
forced the reason you take a yoga class. The reason you take a medication class. The reason you take a language class is not cause. You quoted do
those things on your own, but because,
easier to do things
when you are surrounded by others who share.
Always values ceased
situate yourself in a place that makes it easier for a certain practice to become habitual. The second thing
that you do when you situate is that you make
sure that your habit is able to
deal with the situation that you find yourself in and if it isn't
You can use some sort of external mechanism so suppose
worked really hard to cultivating myself healthy eating habits. But it's none. The less the case that a particular
kind of sugary buttery sent, makes me attracted towards a particular kind of food. The advice situate says: don't keep those kinds of cookies on the desk in front of you, move them away from you or plug your nose. When you walk past the bakery,
or make it impossible to eat those cookies by putting them on a really high shelf. The other reason
that I use the odyssey as the example of situate is because
story of the odyssey, towels, exactly stories of odysseus,
engaging in self control in the face of temptation, so famously budgets.
this has to shear his boat between two islands than in scylla and charybdis or skill and correct this, and
Those islands are sirens studies beings with
if voices and when you hear those voices, you're gonna, be candid too,
Here, your ship off course odysseus in kiss that he's gonna be go
through this narrow strait that he's going to be tempted in this way, and so he does two things
The first thing he does is that he feels the ears of his oarsmen with wax
so that they won't hear the sound and they'll be able to continue. That's like plugging your nose as you walk past, a factory that has food that
see, really appealing or
It's like not buying food. That will be
hunting and putting it in your house.
meanwhile odysseus has himself tied to the mass so that he can't jump off the ship and listened to the sounds of the silence. That's
like doing something. Dan area has an example of putting your credit card in a glass of ice water and freezing it
so that you can take it out until the water melts. You prevent yourself from acting on something so the
should have situate. Just to recap is first, the recognition that habits are context.
specific and that you can use the situation to reinforce a habit and that,
It's also sometimes the case that a situation means that a habit isn't useful and
second, that we have strategies that we can use when habits themselves aren't enough. We can do things like of.
Wait temptation and we can do things like preventing ourselves from acting on temptation. So that's the notion of situate and that's why I take it from the odyssey, were working
way through four tactics to deal with the human condition, which is not often that dumpster fire and we ve worked through a bitch way, which is to create good habits, and then we went through situate, which is to reinforce those habits with the places and strategies that are wisely strategic and
were moving into the third tactic, which is attach- and you Marshall, your evidence in support of this strategy from the iliad which, if memory serves, is the sequel to the odyssey. The iliad is the prerequisite to the odyssey. By
as we know from star wars, it doesn't matter the order in which you issue the tales hopeful your host,
should know these things, but the clearly euros does a dummy
I actually think,
prolonged or a narrative, our highly flexible things, so the iliad the pre quota to the odyssey
is this story of the war from which odysseus is heading back roughly so the elite is the story of what's called the trojan war and
it's a story of basically
nine days of battle and of how a group of human beings who are mostly connected to one another and incur kept lee affected
by what they think of themselves and what other people think of them. How, though,
groups of people. A group of greeks and a group of trojans manage
bring an end to this,
long, long battle, which has lasted for almost a decade, and the picture here is
that there is a sort of square in which we can operate. We can habituate. We
and move over and situated on one of the things we can
recognises that when we situate one of the best ways to take advantage of circumstance is by exploiting the fact that we are profoundly social beings so
Ultimately, we have this spirited part of ourselves as plato would say. Ultimately, we care what other people think we spend. The entire
ready of junior high school, the entirety of development into adulthood, working out where it is that we want to fit in the social world.
and the capacity to care about others, both with the passion that love provides and with the passion that hatred provides but
with the passion that jealousy can give and with incredible jim
that comes from generosity. That's what I mean by the tactic of attach so notice. All of these
involves recognising nature of a little driver who isn't a horse who ass to figure out how to talk to the horses.
one way to talk to the horses is to cultivate habits in the horses
Other way to talk to the horses is to situate. The horse is right, put them in places where there is plenty to eat, so they don't fight or where they have a bride.
on them, so they all move in the same direction. That situate another thing you
do with the horses is you can attach them? You can surround them by
their horses, who are acting in the way that their acting so that comes to be and feel natural to the horse. This abuse,
full metaphor in the buddhist tradition of yokel,
An elephant who is to be came to an elephant whose already trained and thereby the elephant, comes to
see that this mode of being in the world is available to it. So the cod
We have things that I'm calling attach, which I put in the context of the elite,
because it's a story of love and why
or and jealousy and hatred and fighting and friendship, and how painful it.
Is to lose someone you love and how frustrating it is to be
defeated by someone that you saw as an enemy, all
What that story is about is the incredible power that we have
to use social situations to cause us to behave,
there are more or less in the ways that we reflectively want to behave.
there's so much overlap here with buddhism, which talks about the import
of sancho or community, which I often described as likely hiv lane or carpool lane effective.
attaining or doing life with other people who take this
of seriously, and then you see it in modern psychology and have it for me
is the bolstered by having social support
in other words, being around people who are trying to do
same things, you're trying to do, and that brings
The fourth of the four tactics which is detached instead of attack and this
ams and your scheme from epictetus, so Epictetus actually comes from the third way,
of the greco roman stoic tradition. Unfortunately, we ve lost the works from the earlier period, but epictetus is a thinker
on the year seventy eighty, eight d,
or c e, depending on how you referred to that time, keep is born.
a slave, and he writes a little handbook, actually one of the biggest students rights down in the fall
of notes from a lecture than epictetus gives a tiny little book. That is literally meant to be the first self help book and the book begins with the unforgettable sentence. Some things are up to us, and some things are now
not up to us and, of course, that opening sentence is reflected in contemporary discussion in the form of the serenity prayer. Right, god, grant me the serenity to accept
things. I cannot change the courage to change the things I can endorse
them to know the difference. So epic, kid
says the rival
flourishing. Living well requires you to approach the world, knowing the difference between two kinds of things: things
up to you. That is things that are in your control and
is that are not up to you. That is
that are not within your control and then it's like an economics lesson devote your efforts to the things you can check
don't waste your money on the slot machine? That's never gonna, give you a prize so epictetus. This picture is this: in order to apportion
effort correctly. In order to have your desires align with the world, you need to put your energy
towards changing the things you can a not towards trying to change the things that you can't so that step one. It's a waste
the energy to try to. I wish the sun wooden rise at seven o clock tomorrow morning. While you know what this,
gonna rise at seven o clock tomorrow morning. I wish my car
we were ready for me to drink. When I woke up hey, that's something over which you have control
you can set the machine the night before, instead of falling into bed, but the second thing,
epictetus says is that people often get things
in the long category in particular, they failed to recognise the degree to which their responses to the world are up to them. Spectators points out that no one can
Salt you, unless you let them somebody says something to you: they don't like your shirt or they think you're, really bad pod, castor. It's up to you,
whether that is received by you, as an insult or for eggs
but whether its received by you as an expression of their ignorance or an opportunity for growth, so the tedious points out that, in fact,
Almost all our reactions to the world are things that are up to us
reactions to social, approbation and disapprobation, and our rights
actions to the things which are
are sources of frustration. We feel very attached to an object, then as objects do when it.
makes we will be sad rather says epictetus if you
detach yourself and your happiness from the
things which are not up to you, you
who will be in a position to thrive,
and you'll notice. It's a very buddhist theme.
The second thing, you'll notice, is that if you are trying to cultivate detachment, suppose an object feels very, very important to you,
and you're trying to make it matter, little bit less
You can't just save yourself, oh that
matter to me anymore. I don't care about acts, you can't just do that. It will but notes epictetus. There is a way you can do it, which is that you can try to cultivate habits that make it easier for you to detach and
We attach to the things which matter for you to distinguish between what is an instant in your control.
the ways in which you relate to the sun,
notice that we have a square habit
is a way of controlling our instincts, but habit is both dependent on and affected by
Our situation,
situation, its largely shaped by the
social interactions that we find ourselves having through attachment, but how we in turn
for it and understand those social interactions. The way in which they motivate us is actually
much more up to us than we would think not directly but indirectly to our ability to cultivate and
create habits and so on through the quartet.
We ve just walked through. All of this, you walk through the diagnosis of the human condition for tactics to deal with it. Where does this leave us at the end here? So
I would say, is I hung on a particular set of enduring texts,
What I think is a really easily universal lies. A ball hanker bowl
way of thinking about a particular problem that we all have, which is basically we do stuff. We wish we wouldn't
and we do it because of the fact that we are both human and animal, and I happen to have attributed the first of those
to socrates and the second of those two, his student plato, but basically
universal human truth that we don't know
end up being able to do what we wish we would have done at the moment.
One of the reasons for that is because were built up out of a whole bundle of stuff.
and then I said, look if were built up out of a whole bundle of stuff. What's a relatively easy way to think about how to get that bundle? Well, ordered how'd. You get the plates balanced on the train
we can carry it around and what I say is here, for we can form habits
we can put ourselves in useful contexts. We can surround ourselves by people and take advantage of the ways that motivates us, and we can recognise the way in which our reactions to things are a lot more up to us than we thought they were, especially if we use habits to cultivate instincts that we care about, and I happened to attach each of those habit to Aristotle, situate, the odyssey attach to the iliad and detached
two epictetus, but you could do this exact same story telling using a set of novels. You could use this exact same sir,
we telling, in the context of a twelve step program, I've. Given you a set of tools that
actually underlie first rational behaviour therapy and then cognitive behavioral therapy. So all of these are intended to be tractable, understandable, easy to hold on to in the moment, a notice of course that that's the lesson that we would expect to be the case. It's not useful if something rips to have the scotch tape that you use.
Got home its useful to have the scotch tape ready to hand the metaphor that epictetus uses when he writes his handbook of something that's ready to hand, is actually the metaphor of having a sword ready to draw at the moment. Some part of the reason for putting these in snazzy little heuristic form habituate situate attach detached is to have them be right.
He too had we do well when something is easily available and something is easy.
Lee available when its put into a simple form, and that's part of why you need to have your podcast every week? Right? It's not enough just to say
once here are some tactics and strategies for flourishing and thriving it's not enough to like
kate on tuesday and then you're done meditating exactly because we are the kinds of beings who are helped by your restricts habituate situate attached.
touch. We are beings who need such heuristics, so that
leave me to my gentle,
gingerly offered buddhist critique, not of your heuristic, which I think is fantastic, but more
greco, roman philosophy generally, to the extent that I understand it, which is not a great extent, so you may actually
be able to undermine the entire foundation of this critique. I'm going to advance here, which is
given how hard it is to remember not to be an asshole
given how hard it is to remember not to give in to your animal.
desires on the regular. I think, in my expense,
at least that we need more than just heuristics
and more than just the intention to create habits toward generosity and other virtues, but meditate.
And which allows you to kind of pound this into your neurons, to see clear,
How chaotic and cacophonous the mind is now
then a theoretical way, but in a very embarrassing way, all the time. So your gear,
in the charioteer who, as you, keep reminding us, is not a horse. This muscularly challenged charioteer, so a little bit more muscle, as so that he can or she can, or they can see what the horses are up to
at a given moment and redirect them anyway. Does that
Make any sense what I'm saying makes a lot of sense and actually want to extend your metaphor right. So I've told the story at the level of a south, for particular human being- and I have said here from the perspective of self- is
a set of heuristics interesting lee when plato has this big discussion of the individual he's actually using it to figure out how society should be stopped.
for them, when Aristotle finishes than economic ethics, which is his big discussion of habit here
It goes on to write a book called the politics which is about the structure of society. So let me say this in response to your buddhist concern. The self is a really useful level to think about things and I've. Given you are framework for thinking about
things from the perspective of the self plato and aristotle and political philosophy,
general say, the south is also, though use
too small, a framework in which to be thinking about this. We actually need to think about. What's the structure of society, what's the structure of religion, how is it that we build things that region
forcing people all of these tendencies rate. So you might think this office
one size and societies. Another when you are rightly pointing out is that the buddhist tradition is
intensely aware of the ways in
which the self is not just too small to be the only focus of our attention, but also to be,
could be the only focus of our attention and by the way it doesn't exist anyway, and so, in addition to the reinforcement that comes from
building the right social structures and religious frameworks and the support that
from using these four heuristics at the level of the south. In addition, the buddhist rightly points out
this needs to be reinforced at the level of the some self at the love of the north
at the level of not even recognising this particular contingent assemblage of subjected
you're as being anything more than a contingent assemblage of subjective experiences, so I would say think of me
He's as three among the many scales of approaches you could take some self self super self and
all of them. I think, in that sense are making the same set of observations. Did the growing
means. Have they make?
the attempts to kind of building inner microscope that allowed them to see the sub self,
in a way that would give either the self or the body politic a leg up when it comes to the horses.
I don't know, of meditation
and tradition in the greco roman context, but I am too
Reiterate, not a scholar of the period. I do
that there is lots and lots of work, for example in places republic, about the rhythmic training of the soul and about the aceh.
Actual ways in which you train individuals who are going to be in leadership positions to appreciate
many in music to march together, that is, you use,
things that are, at the level below consciousness, things that involve the increase,
being of certain kinds of sensitivities and all of those happen, a sob rational level. I pressed
we don't know of ways in which there is an analog to the meditation tradition.
But there is a lot of spiritual, letting go. Sir. There is a notion of revelry. There are certain kinds of enjoy
chickens of drugs in of vapours which involve a detachment from reality as
of letting go. But I would say to my knowledge, the closest analog to the practice of meditation is the product
of the cultivation of sensitivity to harmony and what is that practice? Look? Look so player. Has this
great description in the republic of how it is that we're going to train what he calls the guardians which, basically the people who are going to be in charge of
making wise decisions on behalf of the community, and he has a long description of how their early childhood involves particular kinds of gymnastic routines
and trainings in hearing the harmony of particular kinds of sounds, and so the idea roughly emanates, the post
in your doctors, office children learn what they live and the picturesque
posts to be individual
who are going to go on to leadership positions should be individual,
who find it instinctively joyful to move their bodies in synchrony with others individual.
who find it instinctively joyful to hear music that is orderly in a certain way, and the idea I take it is there
those things will come to feel comfortable and deeply real
to the guardians in such a way that they will try to
cultivate a society in which, not just literally but metaphorically speaking, body
move together, inharmonious ways and the aesthetic and social experiences that people have are ordered
other than disordered.
final question. For me. You know you, you ve, been studying and teaching these concepts for so long. How are you doing with your own levels of
eudaimonia, and for nieces I am privileged to be
in a marvellous moment in my life? But I mean that
at this moment in my life, largely because of the practices that I have undertaken and I were
say I was some one in particular who needed
the lessons of epictetus, the recognised
in that. Some things are up to me and some things are not up to me. The recognition
whether a behaviour on the part
someone, I love, is a betrayal or whether it's an expression.
of their independence and autonomy is mine,
to judge and determine- and I would say the framework that Epictetus gave me buffered by the recognition that habit
and context, and association with others could make. A big difference has been absolutely essential in getting me through the parts of life that anybody faces at.
age apparent dying. My children leaving the home,
and a sudden need to reconfigure what it is
that my ambitions and relationships look like for what I hope will be the next three decades of my life
I could ask you so many more questions about all that, but damn sensitive to your time and grateful for your time and for helping all of us get to a step or two closer to a firm nieces professor to mar gambler. Thank you very much. Thank you. So much can harris
Thanks again to professor to mar gambler great to talk to her. I love that absurd
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Transcript generated on 2023-12-14.