Why I'm Forcing You to Read Aristotle: Athenian Democracy.

if there are two things I can tell you
about YouTube one it's a great tool for making reading productive if you're watching this video cast your mind back to any of the great and important books you've read in your life and imagine if you challenge yourself right after reading the book when it was still fresh in your mind to make a video summarizing what it meant to you why it was important to you why you write it in the first place and then how it was different from what you were expecting or looking for if you'd made videos like that even if you never went back and watched the videos again the process of gathering your thoughts and presenting them in video format for any of the important books you've read in your life would be tremendously meaningful it would enrich it would enrich the reading you've done it would make it more intellectually productive and I think it is also for those of you who are not blessed with a photographic memory it is an aid to your memory then you can also go back and and watch the video and have a laugh for me I am blessed and cursed with a very accurate memory I think it does make a traumatic experience in my life haunt me more and certain kinds of regrets and remorse and what have you is more of a burden for me however it is really bizarre from you right now I'm going to give one example this is a constitution of Athens by Aristotle when I was reading this I could remember reading the same text and when maybe when I was 19 years old maybe 20 years ago when I could remember how my impressions of it then were different from my impressions now but but even so um I stand by what I say you know gathering your thoughts and putting them into a video tremendously productive way to make it make reading productive make reading of meaningful texts more meaningful um and then secondly there were two points there were making YouTube videos about your your reading is is so is so productive meaningful maybe the second one come on no script no edits Kieran oh oh right that was it and the second thing I was gonna say is making YouTube videos but the reading you're doing definitely makes unemployment more productive and that's that's my segue to the next next part of this video because I mean you you actually had some anxiety about this period of unemployment yet which is understandable now Melissa she know who you is I've got my best girl Melissa here with me off camera you know Melissa is a goal oriented person Jay used to be the life forced me to become more process-oriented right I mean being process-oriented is like well I'm learning Chinese I don't know how much time I've got to put in Chinese I don't know what the outcomes are gonna be I don't know if I'm ever really gonna get flew in this language I don't think we're gonna use it it's gonna be part of my job but I've just got to appreciate the process as an end in itself right like the learning process has got to be satisfactory because I don't know what the outcomes are gonna be it's hard it does not come to me naturally and I've had to do that with so many things I've been engaged with where I've had to stop being cool or Jia to become president was the very goal oriented person and like most coercion people are many she does kind of get a sense of self esteem positive or negative out of those goals or lack thereof so part of the context for deciding to get on this you know course of reading yes yes self education kick with these ancient Greek and Latin texts in English translation oh that you know Melissa was saying to me in effect look how are we gonna make these these couple months there's gap in our schedule you know how we're gonna be productive now I admit that that's the way I'd phrase it that's not what that was that was really the the question in the air was how we're gonna make this time but everyone is rebooted and you were feeling lousy about yourself and I mean you know it's it's kind of weird but I mean I think before you started this unique experience in your life you your self-esteem would have been higher if you had a minimum-wage job at Starbucks as opposed to feeling like you're unemployed and there's this this gap in your schedule now I just mentioned the gap in our schedule is is brief there's already a video explaining we're about to go to Paris and telling you guys to meet us or help invite us to an event when we're in Paris we're gonna be in Brussels and then we get back from Paris and then we have like one month to do some more reading and learning and then we're in school so starting in September we're in classes so we it's a finite gap of time during which were journals were employed but yeah YouTube it's a very different sort of structure than studying for an exam it's I feel the shirt is too small let me just be honest just being honest all right no but if I don't do a button looks looks too inviting ooh I need a gold chain that's right Hey look uh uh it's very very different from reading a book like this in order to make a deadline for University essay reading a book like this prepping for the answers that are gonna be an exam you know you're reading these things for what's meaningful and what's in what's important in them but then also I mean Melissa's doing this very formally she's gathering her thoughts and putting together conclusions you know for for a series of YouTube videos okay now what's really missing here some of you may be wondering why didn't I make this video at the beginning of our of our doing this reading well one thing we've been busy that we had nothing to do but you know it was a really weird scene not captured on tape that was really passionate and really emotionally overwrought where I sat down with Melissa and I really told her why this was worth reading you know I made this very passionate you know speech now again in terms of context part of this is the issue of unemployment and Melissa was kind of feeling down about herself in terms of her goals what she was doing at the time and just to mention you guys also melissa is simultaneously learning French and before you were learning Chinese you've taken a pause on Chinese so she got other things going on intellectually but still this is nothing for self-esteem and you know there also we talk a lot about politics from every period of history in any given week there's a lot of talk a lot of stuff so in part of the context we're sitting down giving this kind of passionate plea for the importance of studying ancient Greek and Roman sources and and it's a short list I don't mean everything I'll give you guys the list of what we're reading and what I recommend you guys read what I think of as kind of the must the must read stuff here um part was it will say to her look the other day we were talking about politics in 18th century France it's important yeah kind of but there's no way I can say to you like here and now this is a gap in your education this one you didn't learn at University of Michigan this is one that really matters to the rest of your life you've gotta buckle down and do politics and philosophy of 18th century France I don't think that's true at all you know whatever we probably talked a little bit about 19th German 19th century German philosophy we talked about within that period of time we talked about the signing of the American Constitution the debates you know in that period of American history I had I had been reading something I may or may not talk about a little bit in the same video I had read this short of a dense book very thoroughly on the history of the the English Civil War says 1630 1640s 1650s and in England um you're important and interesting but none of this has the the monumental fundamental profound significance of these ancient Greek and Latin sources and here's why you know so news is this very passionate a very emotionally overwrought speech and for me I'm someone who comes at this I was very anti Eurocentric someone who's been anti euro senator for a variety of reasons but I think the most obvious being that the quality of university education I had was also terrible right so you come out of the disappointment with the Western university education system in my case I made a transition to being a scholar of Buddhism which doesn't give you gives you a very different perspective on the history of philosophy and politics in the world so once you're working on Buddhism I did both ancient and modern you know I did I did sorry ancient modern medieval the whole the whole span but includes questions like how did Buddhist societies abolish slavery how did the status of women women's equality democracy how did those issues emerge in besides how did Buddhist societies react to you know the progress of science you know obviously very different from how the Catholic Church react to the progress of science but still there's a tension between tradition and modernity there so once you're into Buddhism and in my case going right back to the most ancient period of ancient Buddhist literature 2005 me years ago in the palate language written in India so all of a sudden the the the colors on your palate the colors on your palate as a painter you have a draw from aren't just you know Greece Rome France Spain England now you got India Japan China well Cambodia Thailand Laos you know you've got um is much more diverse and frankly deep range of world historical cultural and political experiences to draw from now you serve but this comes I've had many videos mentioning the abolition of slavery and people have seen this face to face with people and I know what happens over YouTube people often stunned when I just start using examples like Haiti Sri Lanka Thailand like oh you thought you thought Texas was the only place of the history of slavery well you're wrong you know there's a diverse you know this is part of the human experience on planet earth the question of how do you both show every sorry and also the question of abolishing abolishing slavery already comes up in if ancient Greece in Rome in case you hadn't heard so you know it's true I mean if Melissa had met me 10 years ago it's hard for me to put a number on it but you know 10 years ago 15 years ago I used to be more anti Eurocentric I was much more skeptical about stating the value the unique value of these these ancient Greek and Roman sources sorry 10 years might not be might not be long enough ago where it was much more into saying well no this is just one corpus of ancient text that's meaningful and when I sat down and said to Melissa was no you know this is of unique astoundingly important significance for about five different reasons and I maybe can remember two of them you know in this video now one was it's only if you get in touch with these ancient texts that you're really gonna understand the tragedy of Christendom you're gonna understand what was lost and what was destroyed now the culture of ancient Athens pre-christian Athens pagan Athens so every we want to put it was astoundingly productive in terms of the arts in terms of poetry in terms of theatre in terms of the rudiments of science I'm saying the rudiments of science advisedly but really meaningful questions in science were being were being asked and answered and in terms of the rudiments of politics and I dare say political science and these things were linked the way in which the society was productive and might this is my way of expressing it I said to Melissa look Christianity provided people with comforting certainty something to be tapped to cling to to have faith in it provided a blanket of certainty and if you dared to kind of peel back the blanket if you if you question those those publicly and cocaine a certain ease of course you'd actually be persecuted yeah I should be punished and so on you know look at what Avenue Galileo etc but you know the the it wasn't forced but this created a culture of certainty and by contrast I'd say I mean very few people use this in a positive sense but I do Athens was a culture where everyone was in this state of uncertainty and you see that even in these these texts like the Euthyphro these texts from Plato they're on this list it's like look this conversation happening in play was not the deepest conversation it reflects so many things about this culture in the way in which people were always on their toes people were asking you know what is good what is goodness what is piety what is religion I mean in Catholic Europe nobody's asking that in a sense nobody's allowed to ask that it's a very limited frequency of permissible debate and permissible question the fact that these are people who were asking how do you calculate the mass of an object through water displacement theorem how do you estimate the size of the earth is the earth a sphere or is it a drum shaped object or as a flat you know the questions about the the stars and the past the pathways of the the planets in the solar systems on yeah it's easy to look at that nice elation these were people had to live every day with the awareness that they could be hauled into court and accused of almost anything there was a deeply litigious society incredible levels of backbiting and infighting and questioning and self questioning and of course we can see the the harm that does including that it got Socrates killed I mean ultimately there's there's a price in blood for this the vibrancy of the theater you know in this culture they embraced having a theater ridicule and excoriate and criticize public figures including Socrates and it got Socrates killed you know so political figures are being elected and they're being kicked out of office in very short spans of time they're they're being you know the the the decisions made by political leaders are being debated openly and questioned openly and people can be dragged into court because of what they said in that debate or because of some business practice or some idea or for insulting the gods or producing in pious and nobody really knows there is no simple Authority like a papal Authority does it mean to be a godly man or what does it mean to be a heretic all of its open for debate all the time everybody's debating everything all the time and I mean I think it's kind of dumbed down with just said told the students oh well there was a lot of scientific progress well you know you can say there was a lot of theatrical progress what does that mean you know um this was this was a culture in which people were coping with a sort of an overweening omni-directional doubt and you know the texts we have show just how you know tremendously stimulating that was for human intellectual development and sorry again kind of jumping ahead the fact that so many of these authors had just come out of this civil war the sir I'm calling it a civil war it's a civil war within Greece but it's the war between Athens and Sparta so it's not really a civil war the war between two two city-states contending a sort of greco-roman nation or Empire you know uh sorry I've secret whatever sorry greater greater Greek area you know some islands from Italy are included in the map and so on but look the war between Athens and Sparta doesn't produce in Athens a generation of writers who just regard Sparta as evil of the country almost every single author we're looking at including Aristotle who's a generation later they have this tremendous esteem and respect for Sparta they're beaten by the Spartans and they analyze their own society and say okay what are we doing wrong you know what of our shortcomings what are the Spartans doing right there's this tremendous openness and you see that but we even see that in Herodotus with Herodotus looking at the Persian so the Persians are more foreign they don't speak Greek they don't worship the same gods I guess the support of Spartans don't really there now a similar religion Alize you know this is tremendous capacity for self-reflection self-criticism analysis of outer cultures and their own culture and question was drawing and so on so I just say um this is setting the stage for why this culture why this Athenian culture at this moment in history is of such unique significance is so tremendously important to study only when you've appreciate do you understand why I mean one of the examples I use few was it's horrifying to think that Christopher Columbus in 1492 was relying on maps from this period that fundamentally hadn't changed since Herodotus he was actually using specifically the map from Strabo Stra bo but Strout I've seen strabos work I've read all of Herodotus Strabo is basically an updated revision to - yes anyway you know he was taking this and presenting this so whatever approximately 2,000 years later not to put too fine a number on it you know there would be no progress in the sciences there'd be no progress in geography they'd only been regressed they've been this terrible terrible intellectual deadening in Europe due to the rise of Christian orthodoxy and of course something similar happened in the Muslim world where Muslim orthodoxy took over this is not uniquely Christian but the two religions have had a lot in common you know so you only appreciate that by plunging in these texts and seeing what was there seeing what was lost okay so secondly why is this uniquely significant well you know I mean democracy something I appreciate more now than I even appreciated you know a couple years ago I mean democracy is produced by really rare and peculiar cultural circumstances so I think I've already talked about this kind of intellectual the intellectual crosscurrents in Athens that made it stand out so to rev it and it meant that Athens not Sparta is still today this symbol and guiding light for civilization now again I did all this scholarship on Buddhism those conditions or that kind of culture did not arise in Sri Lanka you know Sri Lanka had a golden age in case you guys don't know when they built technologically they were more impressive than wrong I mean that honestly I've been there and seen the seen the ruins I've seen their minds they developed you know wonderful anyway waterworks they had fountains and sewage systems and they built all kinds of stuff that was more impressive than Rome they carved out caverns in the face of these remarkable cliffs they built palaces on the tops of they did all kinds of stuff that's still you know it's it's in ruins but you can look at it and go wow you know these guys really had their act together as a material culture and civilization but they remained for all that a crude despotism a crude despotism based on you know Buddhists dogmatism rather than Catholic dogmatism or Muslim dogmatism so it had some nice aesthetic features to that reason a little more forgiving and accepting and you know a little bit less awful a society many ways but they never managed to light the same spark that Athens lit right um so Amy and I say this again you know this when I look brief digression in terms of the progress of my learning at any one time there's knowing away at me and awareness of something that's a gap in my own education so two of the gaps I've tried to fill just in the last month or two I really always knew I didn't know enough about the English Civil War again 1640s of being the the central decade and I knew that I'd never gotten around to reading Cicero on the Republic a text that's also called on the Commonwealth by Cicero and when I read these two books simultaneously I didn't think there'd be any overlap between them but it is to my astonishment that in the middle of this book the king of England basically stands in front of a court of inquiry set up by Parliament and defends his actions by quoting verbatim the philosophy of Cicero so I mean this is another one of those studying things like you know 1492 Columbus making this proposal on the basis of Herodotus and Strabo these ancient texts political philosophy progressed almost not at all it only regressed it utterly failed to progress in more than a thousand years of Christian Dominion now why is that I mean people didn't just suddenly get stupider there's a lot to it but I should say well you know partly there is a real sense in which we have to reflect people got stupider you know what is intelligence what is it that fosters intelligence you know I was just reading Aristotle again appreciate what Aristotle and Plato have this in common for both Aristotle and Plato what they really want is have a public system of education that's one of the reasons why they worship the Spartans even though the Spartans are their hated enemies supposedly more because Sparta did have a system of public education no matter how twisted and perverse it was it was pretty it was pretty weird people it was pretty uh pretty demonic um teach teach children how to steal keep them starving and teach them to steal because if they steal they'll be clever clever but if they get caught stealing they're whipped and beaten like that was part of this part that was part of their formal system education the being a thief is clever but getting caught is stupid so learn your lesson kids this is part of the formal addition boom but they did have a system in new Athens did not at all they just had private tutors and you know and what-have-you so you know Athens had a lot of disadvantages but they nevertheless had these social conditions that included the theater and the constant lawsuits and everyone being called in for jury duty five hundred and more people you know three thousand people being on a jury three thousand people being convened to debate whether or not we should go to war oh we have a proposal for the public budget to do this or that pull in three thousand people here the speaker's debate discuss the orders all these things stimulated really high levels of intelligence of people and again I think that's probably cuz learning is lifelong you know I and not to boast unduly I'm an example of this I'm someone who didn't stop learning when he left University you know to a massive extent I was stimulate to keep learning keep growing keep challenging my assumptions in the same way you can see say even in the total absence of formal education Athenians were being stimulated to really develop in this way anyway look sorry come back to the the point was being here and then back to Athens and then we're out what Cicero was actually doing was really subverting democracy he was presenting a totally insincere argument for why ancient Rome in the Roman Republic the idealized Roman Republic had just enough democracy that it's not a tyranny and you can get into the details but it's a very insincere argument now also England circa 1630 it's a total joke to say that it has all the best features of democracy but that's exactly the argument the King of England made when by the way he was fighting for his life he ends up eventually getting executed it takes a long time several you know Wars come and go but he ends up eventually on the chopping block the king of England but you know he's arguing that his regime it's not a democracy but it's a hybrid of monarchy aristocracy and democracy that is all the best features of democracy included right so I mean centuries have gone by between Socrates and Cicero and many more centuries go by between Cicero and and in the king of England but you have this you know touchstone you have this standard for you know what democracy means sorry I have to interrupt myself again the fundamental point in the fundamental problem here is a parliament is not a democracy really in the history of England this is a difference we in British history and colonial history history of a colony like Canada or the United States Parliament didn't even pretend to be a democracy right and today people have their wires crossed on this fundamental issue a parliament is not a democracy a republic is not ma chrissy and again that's in Cicero and that's in the mouth of the King of England and so on a parliament is something very fundamentally different in its function and its design its creation it even goes back to the meaning the word parley meaning a meeting of war chiefs a meeting of army generals and their meeting to discuss raising the taxes for a war etc this is the the actual function and creation of British Parliament what's what is supposed to serve and the other lesson that the British public learned from these this terrible Civil War is that a parliament can in every way be a tyrant just as much as as one man there's the pyramid lumetri tyranny is just as real as the the tyranny of one man or ten men now oligarchy or what have you it's not hard for a parliament to do all the evil things a great a great tyrant can do but it's in Athens and it's in Athens only it didn't it didn't happen in Japan but a lot of things independently average betters mentioned Japan is a totally separate Japan invented the stock market independently you know the Japanese and the Dutch completely separately invented this idea of buying futures on the stock okay no connection you know what I mean um I'm told I don't even know if this is true but in India they completely separately invented quite a long list of technological innovations including you know a breaking white light into colored light through a rock crystal steel smelting you know creating steel there's quite a list of things human beings in different continents at different times managed to invent independently right by including written language and many fundamental things like that but democracy really has a mano Genesis it has one origin it has one origin and it's delicate and it doesn't last and it's so intellectually vital and artistically vital and product and it's so self-critical almost all the sources we have sorry including Aristotle including Thucydides including the zeniff on almost all of them are living in this unique moment when Demark the ball gets rolling for democracy under the harshest critics of it you haven't guarded as if so bullet hasn't gotten through cities through cities is rough on democracy and and he lived through that war right he lived through that war he saw what a joke tomorrow one of his facilities one of the fundamental reasons he hates democracy is he says it's starting new wars all the time if you leave it in the hands of the public you just have a meeting where they all get whooped up they all get to vote on war they're gonna go to war every time or you know they're always gonna want to raise the war budget so that was that was part of his reason for me fundamentally opposed opposed to democracy but yeah when you when you understand and appreciate that these are the these are the contrasts real quick the contrast between ancient Athens and the Dark Ages of Europe the Dark Ages of person um that come thereafter the contrast from ancient Athens and Sparta that's just next door and there's other interesting contrast between Athens and Egypt from Athens and Persia but above all else the really instructive contrast between Athens and Sparta where the Athenians are examining their own society they're examining Spartan society they're asking what is freedom what is democracy what is it what is the meaning of empire as another thing being being debated you know what is what is justice even mean if your kingdom is built if your polity your political system is built on conquering and looting and robbing other people and and piracy and what-have-you we talk about justice but at the same time we call people heroes when they carry out you know piratical looting and raids and sometimes rape and murder and so on - you know these these these fundamental questions being asked and then you know skipping had many more centuries the contrast between democracy democracy in the strictest sense and Parliament Parliament is not democracy between democracy and a republic whether it's the Republic of Cicero or the Republic of the United States of America and of course you can say more easily that contrast between democracy and monarchy today not that not that many people are saying hey you know what you know what would you do to improve Canadian politics we could learn a thing or two from Saudi Arabia you know maybe we can learn something from Switzerland may we go under something from Denmark nobody's looking to imitate the political Arrangements in the world's few monarchies neither Saudi Arabia nor nor the United Kingdom but these are profoundly important profoundly meaningful contrasts that still really matter today and where I rely to say to Melissa look I absolutely believe this may be the last chance in your life you got a couple months we're gonna be in school take these couple of months and pour your energy into getting a foundation in these two extra nation Greece and Rome they're gonna matter for you for the rest of your life and something else that I said spontaneously in that conversation I said the more you read about politics the more you realize that everyone who ever mattered in the history of the world read these same texts now of course you can put in a caveat there you know this is a Eurocentric statement but still even as soon as these texts are translated into Japanese everyone in Japan read them I'm sorry I've done research on exactly that even Thomas More's utopia was translated Japanese and read Japan I've done some some research on that these things did influence you know Chinese communism Mao Zedong was inspired by ancient Sparta believe it or not all this stuff did cross continents as soon as the the link was made through through through translation but you know whether it's Henry the eighth or Bill Clinton all these people you know went to these texts as a touchstone and you know what they learned from them good bad or otherwise I mean different people take different lessons from Plato and Plato is in some ways a fascist and greats a basis for it to outright fascist state but on the other hand Plato can very inspiring for an examination of democracy and and what have you so I mean you know yeah my final statement on this to to Melissa was as meaningful as all this other [ __ ] maybe you know reading about the Korean a Jewboys people were both into it I mean if I said to Melissa hey let's take this and really learn first nation's politics history I'm sure you know reading a bone ancient Buddhism and Buddhist philosophies interesting I could do that or even China you actually have most of herself she bought a couple books you may have seen them in the background but actually on the history of politics she's also was living with me in China and we talked a lot about history of China it's okay I mean you could have taken this time and put it into you know communism in China or 19th and 20th century recent history of China or something that's important that's fascinating but I've got to tell you this unique legacy and heritage from Greece and Rome it is actually more important and that's a conclusion I didn't come to easily or lightly and I didn't come to it when I was 19 years old and first reading this so guys we close this video with the actual reading list for the particular tax from ancient Greece Greece in Rome and the exact order in which we're reading them sorry this is the order I created for Melissa to read and you can imagine it's going through my head I'm doing this maybe one day I'll do this for my own daughter or my own hypothetical son at the moment I only have a daughter oh my one kid but you know but you know maybe someone else in the next generation I'll do this for I'll sit down and talk this through so remarkably number one on the list is pseudo Xenophon and again this is because I think the best way if you're new in this field to approach this is to understand the political contrast between Sparta and Athens so starting with an understanding that the the political and legal and cultural context for how what is the difference we inspired in Athens that's being meditated on every point so soon as elefante on the constitution of the spartans pardon me suitors NFR on the constitution of the Athenians then real Xenophon Xenophon on the constitution of the spartans right so there's a two short tax the directly contrast political and cultural conditions in Sparta and in Athens then three texts from Plato Plato's Euthyphro Plato's credo and Plato's apology so really brief gloss for me the Euthyphro really shows you so much about the politics of Athens again the fact that these questions can be asked you know the the the sorry that the the religious and political underpinnings for this conversation what's unstated what's implicit is just as important in what stated but what's explicit here it is showing you the sense in which Socrates is indeed guilty the sense in which surface really is a heretic in which from an Athenian perspective he does deserve to die it is in his trial which is coming up in the Credo and the apology now the necessary contrast to Plato's apology is to get back to Xenophon and read Xenophon's apology so sorry for those you don't know apology apology is a code word here this is actually but the trial and execution of Socrates okay and then next after that a big book on the list is through city's lucidity 'he's the author is the table look so guys you've seen this particular book on camera before this is not the complete text of facilities history of the Peloponnesian War but this is actually the text I recommend I do now own a copy of the landmark Thucydides which is the the whole unexpected attacks with a bunch of extra maps and added stuff and at this time I really do not endorse it I could do a later a later video talking about that but this version of Thucydides it's not that long it's not going to take you that long to get through so in case you're intimidated by Thucydides I really recommend that particular addition Paul Woodruff is the name as the translator interpreter etc I in my opinion it's an excellence you know the selection from from the source texts okay and then finally on this short list Aristotle the politics and aerosols politics would be excerpts for me I think probably even before that I think number one from our stone would actually be the political portions of ethics but by Aristotle there's only a couple pages it's like five pages but there are five really important pages five or ten really report pledges then excerpts from the politics I don't think anyone needs to read the whole of Aristotle's politics it's my opinion maybe I'll feel differently about it when I come back and pick figure I haven't read this for 20 years or something and then Aristotle's constitution of athens aka the Athenian Constitution tremendously important not that long it's a pretty it's a pretty short it's a pretty short to-do list people mmm you know obviously you could throw in Herodotus you could throw in a number of other texts but I think exactly for the political fundamentals I'm talking about here doesn't involve the mythology doesn't involve Helena Troy duh thanks here you're you're leaving out you don't need to know this is getting to the core of what's so meaningful what's so important about the legacy of Athens in Rome for all of us today