The Daily Stoic - Massimo Pigliucci on Why Virtue Matters

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Ryan speaks with Professor Massimo Pigliucci about his new book The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders, what Alcibiades’s magnetism and lack of moral compass can teach us about what we look for in leaders today, the tension between being virtuous and being pragmatic, and more.Massimo Pigliucci is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, the former co-host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast, the originator of Neoskepticism, and an advocate and popularizer of Stoicism. He wrote a viral piece in The New York Times called How to Be a Stoic as well as two books on Stoicism titled How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life and A Handbook for New Stoics: How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control a Stoic handbook. He also explores Stoic philosophy on his podcast Stoic Meditations. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating, and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing, of doers, of athletes, people I know, people whose work I admire. I always try to bring to someone who I think has a unique perspective.

And my guest today, Massimo Pigliucci, is someone I'm known for quite some time. I've had dinner in his house. He invited us all to a little pre-Stoic con party. I guess this would have been in 2016. He was the host of Stoic Con in New York City, which is a conference every year about Stoicism. You may be familiar with Mossimo's work. He wrote a very viral piece called How to Be a Stoic in the New York Times several years ago. He wrote a great book by the same title, called How to Be a Stoic, using ancient philosophy to live a modern life, which is largely about Epic Titus. He also has one called A Handbook for New Stoics, How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control. In his new book, we're going to talk about

is called The Quest for Character, what the story of Socrates and Alcy Abidies teaches us about our search for good leaders. Alcy Abidies teaches us about our search for good leaders. Alcy Abidies is a fascinating historical character as we get into today's episode. It's sort of a best and the brightest kind of situation yet all the promise and talent in the world and then it goes so poorly. And no one I think is more well suited to discuss this in Massimo. He is a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. He's the former co-host of the Rationaly Speaking Podcast.

And just an interesting expert on skepticism, pseudoscience, and then personally fell in love with philosophy. He's has this interesting sort of personal belief, he sort of uses stoicism and skepticism. Neo skepticism is one thing he's called it. He says which uses the combined insights of the ancient skeptics and stoics to craft a better way to think and live one's life. His new book, The Quest for Character, What the Story of Socrates and I'll see you by this teaches us about our search for Good Leaders is really interesting. I think you're going to like it, and thanks to Massimo for coming on the podcast.

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Download the Amazon Music app today. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or do moire or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us?

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Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondering App. Alright, well, let's kick this off with a pronunciation guy. How do you say his name? Is it Alcy Abidies, Alcy Abidies? I'm embarrassed to say I don't know exactly. I would say Alcy Abidies, although that's an English-sized translation version of the name.

So, it's okay either way. I don't think he minds. Let's put it that way. Yes, well, he's definitely dead and the stokes would say, it doesn't quite matter. But I struggle with that myself, because obviously you interact with the words in the classroom and so do your students,

but so much of the philosophy that I've learned, the books that I've read, I read by myself. I've never heard any of the words said by anyone. Sometimes it's not until I come to interview them for the podcast, or I'm saying them in public. I realize I may have been like butchering the pronunciation, which is partly, I'm super patient when someone comes up to me and talks about stoicism or something like that.

Like, I get where they're coming from and also, it doesn't really matter. That's right. Exactly. And of course, the other thing is, even scholars, they don't really know. I mean, it's a best guess, right? So. Right. It's not like there's a phonetic-hole spelling guide. You know, you meet someone today and they have a perfectly reasonably spelled name

and then they let you know they pronounce it in some sort of idiosyncratic way. Like who knows, maybe LCBITES was like, sorry, the sea is silent. We don't know. Exactly. So we'll have our best guess and we'll go from there. I think Senna Cohen would say it doesn't matter if you get the superficial stuff right.

What matters is do you get the essence of the person right? He talks about this as far as the Odyssey goes. He says it doesn't matter whether it happened or it didn't happen or this year or that year, what matters is that you are navigating your own Odyssey. Yeah, exactly right. That's another reason why sometimes I am puzzled by all of these discussions about, let's see, try to find out the real historical socrates and what he actually said. Well, I mean, we know that that's a lost cause.

We're not going to find these historical socrates. What's important is the socrates, the character that has come to us from Plato, Xanophone, et cetera. What does that person tell us? And how we react to what that person tells us. The real thing, it's a chimerite. It's like, who knows real thing, it's a chimerite, it's like who knows? Yeah, it matters is that a lot of people, thousands of years ago, thought he was real and almost

all of Western thought is predicated on the idea of him being real and what sort of timeless lessons are given within his life or the the fables about his life. That's exactly right. for the the fables about his life. That's exactly right. So let's go to Alcivide's like, what's his deal? Because I think to me, like, he's more confusing than Socrates himself. He's this like, inigmatic, contradictory, brilliant, idiotic, heroic,

villainous guy. It's so many more things. Yeah, he's really puzzling. In fact, one of the reasons originally I got interested in this project was precisely because I've always been fascinated by Alcy Bydes. And I am still surprised that nobody as far as I know has made a movie out of his life, because that is definitely a kind of life that would deserve its own movie or even its own mini series at this point. I mean, the guy was impossibly handsome, Uber rich, brave, dashing.

It was like everything you would want in a young man. And at the same time, incredibly flawed, right? He was a friend of Socrates, a student of Socrates, sometimes rumored to be lover or want to be lover of Socrates. And yet, it's hard to imagine somebody who had a more negative impact on the history of ancient Athens than altibiodies. I mean, he really made a mess out of his life and the life of his compatriots. Do you think that's why Socrates liked them so much?

He's like the puzzle of puzzles. We know Socrates liked puzzles. Was Alcio Bites like the ultimate project? Yet all the potential, yet all the flaws. Socrates doesn't seem to gravitate towards easy and simple questions. And definitely this guy wouldn't have been that kind of pupil. Yeah, I think that Alcybanis was part of a broader project that the Socrates has. At least if we read Xanophones memorabilia, we find a version of Socrates who

thinks of himself as in the business at least in part of advising people whether to get into politics or not. For instance, in the memorabilia, he advises Glockon, played his brother, not to get into politics, and Glockon apparently listens to psychites. And then he also abides comedies who was Glockon's son to get into politics because because Socrates thought that communism was the right person. Carmities does. Unfortunately, really bad timing because he gets into politics during the period of the 30 tyrants. So that didn't go out very well.

He also, Socrates also advises another individual, Uthedamus. And in that case, also Uthedamus listens to Socrates and realizes that he doesn't have what it takes to get him to politics and instead it becomes one of Socrates' students. So it looks like Socrates really did think of himself as not getting into politics himself, but as somebody who might be able to move things indirectly, let's say, by telling people, by asking people, you know, you should do, you should not do. In fact, in the memorabilia itself, in book one, a sophist antifon criticizes Socrates for not getting into politics. And Socrates replies, well, how now, antifon should I play a more important part in politics by engaging them in them

alone or by taking pains to turn out as many competent politicians as possible. So this is very conscious on Socrates' part. So you're right that Elcibiades might have been part of this broader project, and probably Socrates was particularly interested in Elcibiades' precisely because it was so challenging, right? It was so difficult to do. So Socrates sees himself as this groomer of talent, this cultivator of potential, and

Alcy Abideus has an unlimited amount of it, but it's also simultaneously this lost cause, it seems to me. Exactly. Exactly. Now, the thing is, Alcy Abideus is brought up as an example of Socrates' failure, right? But I don't think that's quite fair, because Socrates actually tells Alcybides not to do it. You know, when in the Alcybides' mire, which is attributed to dialogue, attributed to Plato, although we're not sure that Plato wrote it or not, but nevertheless, in the dialogue is pretty clear.

Alcybides, a young Alcybides, goes to Socrates and say, hey, I'm trying to, you know, I'm thinking on getting into politics. I want to become a leader in Athens. What do you think? And then what follows is a brutal job interview basically by Socrates. And at the end, Socrates says explicitly, explicitly to Alcibad is he says, then al-As al-Sibar is what a condition you suffer from. I hesitate to name it, but it must be said, you are wedded to stupidity, best a man, or the most extreme sort, as the argument accuses you and you accuse yourself. So this is why you're

leaping into the affairs of the city before you've been educated. So, so I really, this is definitely telling Al-Sibar, don't do it. It's not really Saugat is fault if then else about it ignores the advice and goes and make a mess anyway. Well, you know, you talk a lot about virtue at the beginning of the book. And I thought maybe a good place to start would be, are there any virtues that Alcy Abideus has any of the virtues? which one would you pin on him? I guess maybe courage, but he also strikes me as kind of a classic example of a type that's popular today. He's very smart, very able, very slick, you know, very ambitious and all these things. But what's missing, it seems like is any sort of real moral compass or a set of ethics?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. In fact, the key there is the word you just use, moral. But as you know, the word virtue in Greek is Arrete, which just means generally speaking excellence. Now, clearly, Alcybades does show excellence in a number of things. He's an excellent general for one thing. He's later on in the Polyponnesian War, when he's reinstated as one of Athens leaders. He brings about one victory after another.

I mean, the guy is obviously a military genius. So, he does have a military excellence. He's also excellent if you want to use that word. And a number of other things, survival for one thing. I mean, yes, at the end, you know, a spoiler alert, it does get killed. But he avoids a number of different kinds of enemies for decades throughout his life. So he does have certain kinds of excellence, but the ones that he's missing are the mortal ones. He's certainly not courageous in the mortal sense of the term. He's brave in battle, but he's not courageous in the mortal sense.

He's not temperate in the mortal sense, or in any other sense, really. He's not just, and he definitely is lacking in terms of practical wisdom. He doesn't know what is really good and what is really not good for him and for Athens. Yeah. I guess Aristotle looking at Alcy Abides would have pointed out how often he veered towards recklessness. Not only was it not in pursuit of the right thing, which I think we should talk about the sort of moral definition of courage, but it was so often not just taking risks, potentially catastrophic risks, potentially catastrophic risks, the consequences of which were born by other people. So I mean, often, Alcybide's courage is sort of an intemperate vice. That's right, that's exactly right. I mean, the guy is lucky for a couple of decades of his life, right?

I mean, he gets away with things that other people would have been killed or or or at any rate, certainly not succeeded. Uh, event should, of course, he's, he's like, does right now as Seneca would, would have alerted us, right? Like, you know, you can't count on luck for your entire life. At some point, it will turn against you. And that's where you see the real fiber of a real person capable of handling the virtues. If you are virtues, then the fact that likes turns against you, it's not a big deal. But if you are already counting on luck in order to make your life and not on your virtues, Then that's the end of the

game and sure enough that's what happens to all the varieties. So you brought up this idea that simple bravery is not the same as the cardinal virtue of courage. Walk me through that distinction. So one can show bravery in the face of let's say physical danger, regardless of what that physical danger is, and especially regardless of why that person thinks that this is necessary, right? The morally courageous person, on the other hand, braves consequences of his actions or her actions only when it is, they are in fact morally salient. So it's a question of, you expose yourself to danger, you expose yourself to consequences

of your negative consequences to your actions, because it's the right thing to do as opposed to because you want to impress somebody or because you want to show off or because of all sorts of other reasons. And a lot of, I don't know that it is fair to say a lot, but a certain number of instances of what people consider courage falls instead into this kind of, you know, I'm going to show you how brave I am, I'm going to show you how I can face danger even though there is no particular reason to do it, or in fact, even worse when there is a bad reason to do it, right? I is no particular reason to do it or in fact even worse when there is a bad reason to do it Right, I'm no model reason to do it. Right. I

I've always said like a non-controversial example this would be like writing a motorcycle without a helmet it requires facing of danger and death, but why? Exactly right so right so. So you're there possibly risking your life to make what point exactly that you're stupid enough to do the risk for no particular reason. There's also immoral bravery. So there are imagine a terrorist or a soldier for that matter who espouses the wrong, you know, cause and blows himself up or puts himself in danger in order to say, I'm sure there were brave Nazi soldiers during

World War II, but there were in the federation, for example, yeah, exactly the confederacy. They were fighting for a morally questionable, if not downright, awful reason. And therefore that doesn't make him courageous in the sense of one of the cardinal virtues. But they're still brave. No, no, I think a lot of people got that wrong during the pandemic also, or, hey, I'm going to say this unpopular thing and I'm willing to get canceled for it. But what matters to me, I think, is number one, is it correct, right? Because the virtue of wisdom is in there too.

But also, as you said, like, where is it in terms of the concept of justice or our obligations to other people? So saying, like, hey, I don't care about getting a virus or something like that, I guess, you're waving off of potential danger. but if by nature of your personal choice, you endanger other people needlessly or you take up a spot in a hospital or whatever, you're not only not being the moral virtue of courage, but you're also in violation of the other virtue, which would be justice. That's right.

And I think that's why Socrates and the Stoics defended the notion of the unity of virtues, right? So this idea that yes, we can name different virtues, the four-coloured on ones, which then are actually divided into sub-divided into further, details. But in reality, all of these are actually aspects of the same fundamental thing, which you can refer to as wisdom, so generally speaking, right? Precisely, that's precisely why? Because you cannot be courageous without being also just and temperate and having practical wisdom.

If you have only one of those or only two of those, then you run into the risk of putting yourself in danger for no particular good reason or even worse for a bad reason. No, you have a good point. The virtues are inextricably intertwined. I think it was, your rippities was saying, the presence of injustice immediately renders any of the other virtues worthless. Exactly. Exactly. And that wouldn't make any sense unless you thought of the virtues,

either as a set asperc of the same underlying thing, or as you say, as very deeply intertwined, you can't, you just can't, you know, separate them. It's like quarks in fundamental physics, interior, they're different and they're separate things. But in reality, you've never seen them apart. It's you can't you can't pull them apart. Okay. So let me ask you, someone who isn't an expert in the classics and certainly has a, as little familiarity with Latin and Greek. That's me.

What is the difference between virtue and arate? There's synonyms, but I mean, I guess they wouldn't have separate words if they fundamentally meant the same thing. Right, that's exactly right, then, and it's something that is not appreciated, I think, by a number of people. They're not the same thing. Virtue as we understand it is a subcategory of Arrethe. Arrethe is the general concept, as we were saying before, excellence in the broad sense. I mean, when Arishtadol says, a knife can have Aretha if it cuts well, if it does its proper function, if it carries out its proper function well, clearly he's not talking about a modal virtue, right? You know, knives don't have modal virtues.

And yet he uses the same word that Danny later on applies to the moral virtues. So I think a good way to think of it is that Arete excellence is the broader concept which can apply to anything or anyone that has a proper function. And in fact, it is defined as carrying out that proper function correctly at a high level.

But then there is the crucial subset of Arrethe, which has to do with the model virtues. And that's the one that we're usually concerned with when we talk about virtue. But you could, if you take virtue as a simple translation of Arrethe, then you are just using the generic word and that is not necessarily the moral one. And so you might need to qualify and say, make a distinction between moral virtues and virtue

more broadly construed. That's a really interesting thing because it's like too many people pursue Arate without virtue. So just excellence, no virtue. And then I think you could argue there are people who, you know, spiritual practitioners, monks, ages, et cetera, or what have you. They explore virtue and they dedicate themselves to it,

but they lack the attribute, the attribute of aratay or excellence, you might say, the ability to act on that to bring it into the world to do something. I don't think specifically to the Stokes, but this idea that being virtuous on paper or one's personal practice was, it's like not fully achieving your potential

as a human being. You had to be virtuous, and have Aritae in the public sphere in life. That's, is that where they come together? I agree. In fact, here's one way to think about the issue. So, I think that the virtual, the model virtues are inherently social, they're inherently public. And one way to understand that, I think, or appreciate that, is if we go back to the basics and we look at the origins of the very words that we use when we talk about morality or ethics.

So for the Greco-Roman's, ethics and morality meant exactly the same thing, right? Ethics came from the Greek ethos and morality from the Latin Morales, which is simply as the way in which Cicero translates atos. So it's exactly the same thing. Sometimes to know a day's modern philosophers trying to make some distinction between morality and ethics, but as far as the Greco-Romanians are concerned, we're talking about exactly the same thing. Now

both words have to do with character and with community in both cases. And so right there, if you go just at the etymology of the word, what it means to practice the moral or ethical virtues is that you're practicing a kind of excellence that is other regarding. It's not about you. You can't do it in a monastery.

You can't do it as an airmit. You can't do it in a deserted island. It's inherently a social thing. Because after all, what is ethics in the first place? It's the problem. It's a study of how to solve the problem, about how to live harmoniously with other human beings. That's what we're talking about.

And so it is inherently other directed. Yeah, I was just thinking about that. Like, let's say you're thinking about a politician because obviously that's Sakuchi's thought a lot about that. If you want a politician who's great, who's disciplined, who is just cares about the common good, who's wise, but to go to the idea of Eritre, if this person is, although virtuous and good, like they're a bumbling and competent politician or an uncharismatic politician, it doesn't really matter. At least, at least something to be desired. Maybe we talk about Kato a little bit. I mean, Kato is a good example of that. He's a politician, right?

But in some ways, it's just as if his overwhelming sense of virtue constrains him or limits him. He's so often steadfast, he's so firm that he's paralyzed, right? And I guess, I don't know, it's interesting to me. Virtue is obviously important, but if you can't do the job, like, let's say I'm philosophically the wisest person who ever lived, but then I sat down to write and I'm just boring or self-indulgent, what does it really matter?

You're absolutely right. In fact, in, I begin the sixth chapter of the book of the quest for character, we've an interesting quote, one of my favorite quotes really from the ancient authors, is from Cicero, who was a very much a practical philosopher, meaning that he was not only a philosopher but a politician, you know, a statesman, etc. And in fact, in that quote, he's he's running to his lifelong friend, Atticus, and he's talking

about Kato. Now, Kato, of course, as you know, is a role model for Stoics and, you know, high level of integrity, etc., etc. But as you were saying, too much and too inflexible for actually being an effective politician. And Sister complains about Kato to his friend Atticus. He says, as for our friend Kato, you do not love him more than I do. But after all, with the very best intentions and the most absolute honesty,

he sometimes does harm to the Republic. He speaks and votes as though you were in the Republic of Plato not in the scum of Romulus. I love that phrase, right? This is come of Romulus. And that's exactly right. I mean, in fact, my next project, which I'm gonna start next year,

I'm gonna be on sabbatical, is on Cicero. Presumably for that reason, because I think Cicero is one of the very few examples in antiquity of not only somebody who took philosophy at heart very seriously, he tried to practice both in his public life and in his personal life, he's chosen philosophy, but he was a politician, he was a lawyer, he actually in one of his books, he criticizes his sarcophagus. He says, you know, sarcophagus is my role model, but the thing is, sarcophagus did not appreciate rhetoric. He said, you know,

sarcophagus, in fact, was downright distrustful of rhetoric. He thought that if you engage in rhetoric, you're a soufist, you're trying to manipulate other people. And since he says, that means he was not as effective as he could have been, because you need to understand how to talk to other people, how to persuade other people. Of course, with the right intentions, right?

So you have to have right intentions, but right intentions by themselves, not gonna do it, you're gonna turn yourself into a Cato, who was, yes, very high level of integrity, but also very inefficient as a politician. was, yes, very high level of integrity, but also very inefficient as a politician. Well, you have a great case study and character study of Marx's really is in the book, which I really liked, because one of my favorite quotes and meditations, you know, Marx goes, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic.

I think he was having to learn a lesson there from Cato or specifically that line from Cicero, although we don't know if he actually said it or not. I think he was saying, look, you're the emperor of Rome, which is a real place in the real world in a real flawed time. I don't think that's all out pragmatism, but he is trying to like dispense with the fantasy and projection and naivete, which sometimes

a virtuous person, you know, just unconsciously adopts and then wonders why they're not able to get the world from where it is a little bit closer to where they want it to be. Yeah, exactly. So now you picked on, Marcus as an example. Marcus is yet another instance like Cicero. He's certainly informed by his philosophy. His life is certainly devoted to his philosophy in particular to stoisism, but he's a politician. He has to get things done. He's a general in the field. He has to get things done. And so those are, I think, the most interesting examples because you mentioned where pragmatism, these are

Cicero and Marcus, both, are very pragmatic people, but they are virtually pragmatic. As opposed to let's say a Machiavelli who was an anti-virtuously pragmatic, right? And if it's not by chance that Machiavelli, who I actually mentioned a little bit later on near the end of the book, Machiavelli took himself to be responding to Cicero, not to Socrates, because he realized that Cicero was the opposite in a sense or what Machiavelli was trying to do. Both of them pragmatic, but one thought that you can be pragmatic, there is no contradiction in being pragmatic and at the same time trying to be virtues.

Well, in the other hand, Mike Kevali had arrived at the conclusion based on his own environment and culture that know that you are incompatible. It's one or the other, you can't have both. Yeah, it's delightful oxymoron there. And not unlike the Stoic's favorite of a preferred indifference. I'm writing about Gandhi right now, and I didn't have that word,

so I'm gonna use it now, thanks, but he's this remarkable character in that he's preposterously idealistic and pure, and he believes in these almost impossible things. As a politician, he's constantly compromising, negotiating. It's always on the assumption that we're getting closer and closer to the ideal, but he wasn't compromising the fundamental principle that was at stake, but he was willing to settle

for a crumb and another crumb and then another crumb, which I do think Kato struggled with. He had this idea of how the republic should work, and then he insisted on that price refusing to compromise in any way, which is Plutarch Obserz ends up bringing about the very collapse. He said he was trying to prevent. Exactly. That's why, from Marcus that you mentioned earlier, Marcus says, be content with making progress here. And now he says, because it matters. Because if you make progress right now,

you have to have an ideal mind. I mean, that's the reason why there is, in fact, no long-term contradiction between virtue and pragmatism. Because if by pragmatism you simply mean, I mean, I'm going to get done, things done no matter what, and I don't even know what exactly I want to get done except that. I want to solve the problem right now. Well, then sure, but you can go in that in that direction and you're definitely not going to go into virtuous direction. But the idea of having an ideal

in mind, so you know where you're going to go, you have a compass, you have a mortal compass. But at the same time, you are pragmatic in the sense that you realize that you might never get there. And certainly, you're not going to get there right here right now because there's a lot of other stuff that you need to get done, and you have to convince people who might not share the same vision, or perhaps who share the same vision, but don't share your same ideas of how to get to implement that vision. And so what are you going to do?

Are you going to do things so that you are getting incrementally close to that ideal that you have in mind or you're just gonna be You know uncompromising and then lose the whole risk losing the whole thing, which is exactly what happened to Kato Yes, I mean speaking of senators. I was thinking of this bill that just passed or was in the process of passing in the US where They're trying to defend gay and interracial marriage Which at the time because the Democrats didn't have the votes and the Supreme Court is, you know, whatever, they had to find a way to get 10 or so people that they disagreed with on almost everything to come to their side

and make the deal. And Chuck Schumer makes the deal where he agrees to table the legislation until after the midterms. He has to take them out their word and then he has to table the legislation until after the midterms. He has to take them out their word and then he has to put a bunch of protections that you know are probably not preferred that shouldn't be on the table. We shouldn't have to be negotiating for something that's straightforward and sort of basic as people's ability to marry who they want to marry. And yet you know, we don't we don't live in the Republic, right? We live in America in 2022, which is, if not quite the dregs of Romulus, you know, it's

not perfect. And if, if not doing that, you know, it brings about something worse in the opposite direction. You know, if the Democrats lose the Senate or the Supreme Court ruling down comes here there, you know, by despairing of perfection and deciding to compromise, they're avoiding a potential worse alternative. Yeah, I could pretty agree. And that is, it's the approach of let's get whatever we can get done now in going in the right direction, because you can always go back and revisit it later. Once you have moved one or two or three steps in the right direction, now it's actually

making it more difficult for your opponent to push back. Sometimes, of course, they will push back and they will push back successfully, see the overturning or roe-v-weight, for instance, right? Without that, that was done decades ago, but apparently it wasn't. Although, if the Democrats had made some compromise along the way and codified some sort of federal minimum, they wouldn't have been exposed the way they were. Maybe it's, I don't know, pick your poison. It's fascinating.

Yeah. Now, the fundamental notion here is that, which is, in effect, one of the messages that I try to get through in the book is that if you decide to get into politics and to the statesmanship, then you have to do two things. You have to do it with a moral compass in mind, because otherwise you become a ruthless, self-serving narcissist like Alcibiades. So you have to have the moral compass,

but at the same time, you have to realize, as Sucero says, and as Marcus say, that we don't live in Plato's Republic and we're much closer to the mother rummalous. And you need to take that into account, otherwise you're gonna be completely frustrated. And not only inefficient, but in fact, arguably causing problems

yourself in a direction that you really didn't want to. Well, you think even about Socrates, when people think of Socrates, they think of this golden age of Athens in this sort of wonderful place, and they don't realize that even Socrates himself existed the only time for the 30 tyrants, not one tyrant, 30. And so I think, you know, even his view must have been tempered by a certain kind of pragmatism or realism.

But by the nature of the world, he woke up and he had to live in that every day. Yeah. However, that's one of the reasons, as we were saying in the beginning of this conversation, that maybe one reason why Socrates deliberately chose not to get into politics himself, and instead thought, look, my best chance to affect the events here is to talk to people and to influence people indirectly, right? And that's a very valuable choice.

I mean, myself and Made it essentially the same kind of choice, right? I decided to become a teacher, not a politician. Now I'm very interested in politics, and I talk to my students about politics all the time, and we have interesting discussions that sometimes become uncomfortable for either the students or myself.

But that's the point. I know myself enough to know that I would be a disaster as a politician. I just don't have the skills. I don't have the rhetoric anymore. Importantly, I don't have the ability to compromise and the ability to be diplomatic that a real politician has to have in order to be efficacious. But I can teach. And I can teach, I think, if I flatter myself a little bit, you know, fairly efficiently. So I can have that kind of influence. Each one teach, I think, before I flatter myself a little bit, you know, fairly efficient. Please, so I can have that kind of influence. Each one of us, I think that's a, there is a general lesson there. Each one of us can contribute positively to society, especially if we realize, if we

know ourselves, you know, that the famous Delphiq Oracle in junction, right? Know that itself. If we know ourselves enough to figure out what kinds of things we can actually be efficacious and pursuing. And what are the things we need to stay away from? Because we're not, you know, it'd be nice to be able to do it, but that's just not me.

And so I might as well not go into directions that are gonna be deleterious or inefficacious. You know, I need to focus my energy and my time on things that I think are gonna work, gonna make a contribution. You know, it's interesting though, almost all the character studies in the book, it's Socrates, Elcebides, Aristotle, and Alexander,

you have Seneca, Nero, Marcus, and Commodus. It like never works. In almost none of the examples, are they able to teach virtue to the person, or were they able to be the adult in the room that steers them in the right direction? Yeah, I think that, you know, the two chapters there that are interested, make an interesting contrast are five and six. In chapter five, I talk about instances of philosophers wanting to be teaching virtue to politicians.

And in six, I talk about politicians themselves who are already prone to philosophy and seek advice from philosophers. And the contrast is pretty remarkable because almost every case of philosophers who try to influence politicians who are not interested are failures. I mean, Plato failed twice with Dionysus I

and Dionysus II of Syracuse and he almost lost his life on both occasions. Adistalla did a little bit better with Alexander, Seneca was a disaster with Nero and so on. When is it that it works? It works when people like Marcus or Cicero or Dion who was a student of Plato, because those are the people that actually seek out

the philosophers for advice, right? So it's a very different, it's a specific example of the general notion that you can teach people, but you cannot learn on behalf of people. They have to do the learning themselves. So if they're not willing to learn, if they're not willing to accept advice,

there's just not gonna work. Which is why I think at the end of the day, the advice at the end of the book is twofold, because the question is, you know, how do we improve the situation in terms of statesmanship and in terms of our politicians? And I think that at the end of the day, we need to do two things.

One, get rid of most of the politicians we have now. Because frankly, they're not interested in virtue and into it, I think. Not all of them, of course, there there's always exceptions but we need to get rid of a bunch of people and you know in countries like the United States that are more or less democratic you can do that because at the end of the day these people are in charge yeah in charge because we vote them right so at the end of the day we can do that. The other thing that we need to do is invest in the long run and we're not

we're not doing this. In other words, teaching virtue to our kids, young kids, you know, like elementary school or middle school level kids. And we just don't do that. In fact, we do it so so rarely that recently I saw a documentary about one of the few exceptions. So this is a movie called Young Plato. And it is set in an elementary school, in a Catholic elementary school in Belfast, Northern Ireland. And it's the story of, the real story, because it's the documentary,

of the school's principal who decides to teach philosophy to his kids, practical philosophy to his kids. And even though he uses a broad number of philosophers in his teachings mostly and not surprisingly, he keeps going back to Socrates and the Stoics because they tend to be the most practical ones. And you see the impact, the specific impact

and direct impact philosophy on these kids. These are kids that have to do with, have to deal with bullying, of course, that's a common phenomenon. They are, remember, in Belfast, so they're growing up in a society that is still marked by violence and by strife and so on and so forth. So they have to deal with this stuff in real life and they benefit from philosophy. But we don't do that. We don't teach philosophy in that sense to our kids. In fact, quite the opposite. We try to stay away as much as possible from it. And then we complain, why is it that the next generation of people is not going to, it's

coming up and it's then, and we don't have good leaders. Well, no kidding. Well, yeah, you think of Nero. Senaq is someone who is forced upon Nero. And I think that famous statue of Senaq teaching Nero, he's not very interested. You could read his body language. And then you can trash that with Marcus

who had this really very early predilection towards philosophy. Although he's adopted by Antoninus, he accepts Antoninus as his stepfather. He seeks out Rousticus, who he sees as his teacher. He's not unwilling, right? And you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. That's really the difference. It doesn't matter how smart the teacher is.

If you're not interested in learning, putting those ideas into practice doesn't matter. Right. And you foster listening and interested in those ideas much earlier. You know, Nearle was already 17 by the time that Seneca got to him. Had it been a different person who might have worked? I mean, with Alexander, it did work to some extent. And Alexander was about the same age as Nearle. But at that point, it's a capricious. It depends on what kind of territory you find. If it's a furtoleries enough. But if you come in much earlier, at the beginning

of what the Greco-Roman's used to refer to as the age of reason. So when a kid is seven or eight years old, when modern developmental psychology tell us, that's the time when children start being able to engage in abstract thinking for instance Right that is the time to intervene and yet we don't we don't do it and then we complain about it Yeah, yeah, I wrote these two Kids books about stos Like, you're not gonna teach kids these ideas with books about talking pizza, you know,

or whatever, like cartoon characters are great, but I think there's a reason that for most of human history were taught ASOPs Fables, or were taught the moral stories, the 300 Spartans. It doesn't really matter if it's strictly true or whether the Odyssey was literal, whether the idea isn't a Bible or true. Like what matters is the parables that they're illustrating and demonstrating, they're trying

to teach and inculcate lessons that stick with you so that, yeah, in some big scenario, you go, let he who is without sin cast the first stone and whatever it is, you would have the reminder the precept as the Stokes would say that would stick with you so when you counted, you had like a guy. Exactly, I mean, the interesting that you mentioned the Bible and the Odyssey. So on the one hand, in terms of the Bible, I spent nine years in my career as an academic

in Tennessee, and at the time I was an evolutionary biologist, so you can imagine what kind of cultural environment I found myself in. And I had a hard time trying to talk to people and say, look, you're so obsessed with these notion that everything that the Bible says has to be factually correct, you're so obsessed with this notion that what everything that the Bible says has to be factually correct, you're missing the point. That isn't the point. The point is the story. It's the moral of the story.

It doesn't matter whether it is factually correct or not. Just think about ancient mythology, which was obviously not factually correct. That was clearly not the point. When I was a kid, one of the major books that influenced me was precisely the Odyssey. I saw Odysseus as such a fascinating character, smart and wily and courageous in a sense, in the end, flawed. Flawed, of course, because he's a human being, right? But I never took that the Odyssey a moment, as a history textbook.

I never thought that Sheila and Cabri, these are actual things, you know, beasts outside in the, in the state of Messina in Sicily or anything like that. So it's, the attitude really should be one of, what is the moral lesson here that I'm learning that I'm supposed to be learned from the story. I mean, think about another example that you mentioned

earlier, Plutarch. You cannot take the lives of Plutarch as necessarily historically accurate as we would want a biography, let's say, to be. They're not. He tells us. In the beginning of the entry on Alexander, he tells you that he's not about to tell you all of the single battles and all of the single things that happens. That's not his interest. His interest is in the character, both the flaws and the good things about people's characters.

So it's a different way of looking at things and therefore a different way of reading things. If you read Pluterk as verbatim history, you're completely mistaken. You're completely missing the point. Well, it's funny. Modern biographers seem to fancy themselves as like superior to Plutarch because they care about scholarly sources or accuracy or facts or numbers. And they're missing, I think, like the only reason the Stokes would say you should study a biography, which is how to learn how to be a great man or woman or to learn what not to do as a great man or woman. Plutarch makes

the poise is like, look at what this general did in the most momentous point of battle. It's like, that's way less important than this off-handed remark or that they may or may not have even done, but was said to illustrate or demonstrate their character, their essence as a person. And you could probably make the same argument for Diatrini's laertis and lies of the eminent philosophers. Like, so much of what he's saying is obviously preposterous, just demonstrably not true, but it was designed, I think, to get to the essence of what made that person tick.

Exactly, and that's another thing that the Argentinian slurritus in particular, it's another thing that really baffled me every time that I read a commentary or an introduction to the Argentinian, is because, of course, you're being told that, hey, you shouldn't take what you read here as historical truth because the Argentinian, we don't't know his sources and he made up a few stories. Right, but if you're trying to separate that, the reality from the fiction, you again miss in the

point. I mean, in some cases, not only there are instances in the Algernist where it's, as you say, it's very obvious that stuff is made up or it's impossible or stuff, but in a number of cases, it gives you two or three different versions of the death of the same person, so it's clear that it doesn't mean that as historical accuracy. It's like, yeah, one guy says that Zeno died this way. And another guy says that he died this other way.

That's not the point. The point is the moral message. And we need to really pay more, to relearn, I guess, to pay more attention to the moral message. Because after, at the end of the day, history, I find history itself, of course, fascinating. It does have intrinsic value. And I think it is a certainly worth pursuing.

But at the end of the day, if we are into practical philosophy, we want to pay attention to things in a way that makes us better human beings and that makes for a better society. And you're not going to do that if you try to pinpoint exactly what happened or what did not happen in any specific example. Okay. Let me pull. This this quote from Senekai. I like what do you say? Sorry, I'm trying to pull it out of lives of the Stoics. I have it here. Basically he says yeah, the only purpose of studying philosophy is to make you a better human being. That's why I open the book. I love it.

The idea is that philosophy is supposed to make you a better human being, not to get the appreciation of big, confusing words like we're talking about. It's not riddles or tractable questions, but I think you get the same argument about history and biography and any subject, maybe not mathematics or whatever, but the purpose of studying this thing is to come up with rules and insight for the conduct of human affairs, not to dazzle with how brilliant your mind is. Yeah, and one of the sad things, of course, these days, is that if you're interested in philosophy

from a practical perspective in terms of improving your life and society large, the last place you want to be is in the philosophy department. Unfortunately, I think to some extent that is changing a little bit, it's changing because of these resurgence of not just sources but practical philosophy in general. It is changing because the academia itself is changing and philosophy departments find themselves under threat of being closed or shrunk down significantly.

And so they realize, finally, they're beginning to realize that they need to be relevant to their students' lives. And so slowly, and besides, of course, the new generations are used to begin to be used to a different way of thinking. And so things may be changing. But right now, in certainly for the last 50 years

or at least, if you were interested in the meaning of life and how to know that yourself, don't go into philosophy department because that's your wasting your time. I forget who said it, but I thought it was brilliant. They were talking about the still eggs. He was listening all the philosophers that were banished or this emperor or that emperor put them to death.

And he said like, if a tyrant return to power today, they wouldn't even bother banishing philosophers. Like what philosophers would they feel need they needed to persecute? Because it doesn't matter. It's just totally mashed victory or pointless or on some other level is totally non-threatening. There are people there who

persecuted just wouldn't be the philosophers. That's right. It would be comedians. Probably these days, I think it would be mostly comedians. Sure. And that's a sad statement. I mean, it's good for comedy,

but it's a bad bad statement for philosophy. You know, it used to be in ancient Greece and Rome that both philosophers and comedians were persecuted by tyrants, right? I mean, we tend to think in our conversations, we tend to talk about people like Socrates and Marcus Rillis and so on, but there were people like Aristophanes, for instance. And those were people who also got themselves in trouble for speaking truth to power.

And these days, we do not have that. We have very few intellectuals that actually get into that mod of operation, and usually those intellectuals are not philosophers. We need to change that. So it's one interesting good project for humanity to bring back intellectuals outside of the so-called ivory tower, especially if they're philosophers,

because they have a lot to contribute to society and to practical life if only they bothered to do it. Yeah, I mean, your point about comedians is well taken. A comedian is not bound by the rules of reality. They can blur, fact, and fiction, but the spirit of what they say is true, and it's probably why it's dangerous. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, we go back to Plato, and you read one of the Plotonic dialogues, talk about blending reality with fiction. I mean, Plato came up with some of the most interesting and fascinating myths, like the lost Atlantis, for instance, or the allegory of the most interesting and fascinating myths like, you know, the lost Atlantis, for instance, or the allegory of the cave. Yes, the cave or the myth in the symposium which he attributes to what he's talking is actually about the origin of love and, you know, why we look for for our twin souls and so on. Those are old stories that of course were not meant to be taken literally. There's no question about it, but there was a message there.

And the message was delivered through the story. That's why I think that these days, you know, in contemporary culture, comedians, especially philosophically informed comedians, that one of the interesting things is that a lot of comedians actually have degrees in philosophers, as it turns out, have a background in philosophy. And I don't think that's by chance. It seems to be, the last time I looked into it, it seemed to be a higher number than, you know, our percentage, than you would expect by chance. No, interesting.

I mean, okay, as we wrap up the last thing I thought that's maybe we're talking about here as we talk about philosophy. I remember we're at Stoacan and one of the things we were talking about was the popularity of Stoicism. And I know you're not strictly a Stoac, you're refusing Stoicism and skepticism in a couple of schools, but it does strike me as as really interesting the popularity of say Buddhism versus Stoicism, even though we live in the Western world, you could argue that these fundamental, bedrock philosophical schools and their teachings are nearly as popular as they could be, should be, and there's probably a lot left to be done in teaching and popularizing this. There is a lot to be done. I think that it would be really good if we were able to push

stoicism and greco-roman philosophy to the level, let's say, of Buddhism worldwide. Even Buddhism is not really a majority. It's not the largest religion or philosophy in the world, but certainly counts a good number of followers, and it is influential. And if over time we were able to push some of these, revised, of course, updated because that's always

what you need to do. I mean, modern Buddhism is not the same as Buddhism 2000 years ago. So it's fine to update and revise and all that sort of stuff. But I really do think that one of the major values in my mind of stoisism is precisely that it is potentially the Western equivalent of Buddhism, and it deserves to be out there in terms of usefulness

for a lot of people. So we have a lot of work to do before we get to that level, but I don't see why not. Let's do it. Massimo, thank you very much. This was awesome. Let's continue to do it. Hahaha.

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.