TOKENS PODCAST: S5E7
What does it mean for a person to flourish? To be truly happy? To live a good life? World-renowned classicist Edith Hall outlines answers to those questions through Aristotle’s vision of happiness, explaining why the ancient paradigm of a life well lived might be just what we need afresh in the 21stcentury. Plus, helpful insight into why our construal of happiness might be inseparable from theology, politics, and culture.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr. Edith Hall is a Professor in the Classics Department at King's College London. She holds a Ph.D from St. Hugh's College in Oxford. Her specialism is ancient Greek literature, but she enjoys putting the pleasure as well as the rigour into all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman history, society, and thought. Edith has now published thirty books, broadcasts frequently on radio and television, works as consultant with professional theatres, lectures all over the world, and publishes widely in academic and mainstream journals and newspapers. She is a world leader in the study of ethnicity, class and gender in ancient sources, of ancient theatre, and of the instrumentality of ancient ideas in world culture since the Renaissance. Edith has held posts at Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Reading and Royal Holloway, and visiting positions at Notre Dame, Swarthmore, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Leiden, and Erfurt.
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University, 1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999).
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TRANSCRIPT
Lee: This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
As a professor of ethics I'm especially delighted about our episode today. I get to talk moral philosophy, and virtue ethics. And to talk about it in a way such that you may wonder why you didn't get more instruction on this a long time ago.
Edith: Aristotle's whole worldview. His whole philosophy starts, he says, from, from a sense of wonder and curiosity at the world.
Lee: That's Edith Hall, professor at King's College in London, world renowned classicist, and author of a delightful book entitled Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life.
Today, a wonderful conversation with Edith about the ways in which a modern construal of Aristotelian philosophy and virtue ethics just might be help us to be healthier and whole people, and, dare I say, even happier.
Edith: By happiness, he doesn't mean exactly the way that it's understood.
Lee: We discuss the very practical ways moral philosophy can change your life; why desire and emotions are not bad; and the ways the far right and far left are quite similar, and what both could learn from virtue traditions.
All this, coming right up.
INTERVIEW
Lee: Edith Hall is a world-renowned classist. Currently professor at King's College, London, having held numerous faculty positions, including Cambridge and Oxford. Her specialism is ancient Greek literature.
Edith has now published 30 books, broad cast frequently on radio and television, works as a consultant with professional theaters, lectures all over the world, and publishes widely in both academic and mainstream publications. Today we're discussing her book Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life.
Welcome Edith.
Edith: Lovely to be here.
Lee: Thank you for joining us from your home there in Cambridge-shire and a delightful to have you. I, as I, as I think about one of the ways in which you are, you are helping lay folks, we might say, come to an appreciation of Aristotle. It strikes me that you're trying to make the case that philosophy is grounded in both wonder and practicality and holding two things together that often times don't get held together.
Edith: I think that's exactly right. Aristotle's whole worldview. His whole philosophy starts, he says, from, from a sense of wonder and curiosity at the world, uh, the opening line of his, his book on metaphysics is sentences.
It's, it's absolutely natural for human beings to, wonder at the world and want to understand it. And he also thinks that's the mark of the human being. He thinks that that's what makes the human animal different from the other animals is that we have this, capacity for wonder curiosity and reason.
And that is the human function, is to exercise those faculties of, of wonder and curiosity and reason. And he thinks that by doing that, thinking about the world, thinking about anything in the world, you can think about, um, biology. You can try to understand how bodies work and build up the skills and build up the knowledge and put it into practice.
It's very similar. He thinks doing philosophy to doing medicine. You learn your craft. You learn exactly how the body works. He thinks with philosophy, you learn how, uh, morals and ethics and the rules of life work. And you develop those as you go through life by practical application. So, you actually assuage your curiosity and, uh, fulfill your sense of wonder by practical immersion and the nitty gritty of everyday life.
Lee: Yeah. And the practicalities that you develop in the book are so fascinating and so broad and so diverse and, and holistic. So, ranging the practicalities ranging from decision-making. uh, to politics. From sex and drink to justice, an all-encompassing, holistic vision of life in which no, no stone needs to be left unturned in living a good life.
Edith: Absolutely. In fact, you have to turn them over to see what's underneath.
Lee: Yeah. Um, and as well then driving this whole vision is the notion of happiness, right? That this is, this is key to what it means to be human.
Edith: Yes. His word for it is eudaimonia so sometimes his ethics get called eudaimonic ethics, but by happiness, he doesn't mean exactly the way that it's understood, I think, in modern English.
It's, uh, sometimes translated by philosophers, uh, living well, but that doesn't mean living well by eating a lot. It means living in a virtuous way and fulfilling your human potential. I actually liked the old Latin translation is, is felicitas. That's an, it is an English word felicity, which means something a little bit different from, happiness. The real way to understand it, though, it's a verb. It's something you do. It's a way of life. It is not a state. It's not a psychological state that you achieve either temporarily, which is the way we tend to understand it. Like having a happy meal or happy hour in the bar, um, or even permanently because he doesn't think you can. He thinks you've got to remake it with every encounter that you have in life with every situation you have to remake it every day.
So, I like to see it as a verb to live well, to do your best, to try to be the best version of yourself, because that will make you happy.
Lee: In her book, Edith quotes John F. Kennedy on this point, that happiness is "the full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope."
Edith: He's very well aware, Aristotle, that lots of numbers of people in his world and our world today don't have that scope. Uh, the scope means sufficient opportunities and support, especially in childhood to identify your potential and achieve it. And some of that is just down to luck and he's, he's extremely clear about that and recognizes his privilege as someone prosperous enough in a society where people did a very great deal of work, and there were slaves. That he has got the freedom to exercise his full capacities along the lines of excellence in a life according scope.
Lee: And this then points this towards you have, uh, or I guess, early in the book, you talk about taking potential seriously and scoping out a Telos for one's life.
So, could you kind of describe to us the notion of a Telos and then how that leads to taking one's potential seriously?
Edith: Yes. Well, Aristotle thinks that everything has a Telos. That is the Greek for an end, but it doesn't just mean a conclusion. It means, um, a purpose to be fulfilled. It's a cause it's the reason why we're here. And he thinks that we've all got one, all human beings as babies have got the Telos of becoming, uh, the potential.
That's Dunamis in Greek, our word dynamite actually. But you have the potential, if you're a little tiny baby to become a fully functioning, fully educated, fully healthy, fully socially integrated, adult homo sapiens, we all do. But then beyond that, we've all got our own TLR switches about some people say teleology, some things to say teleology it's, it's American English. But we all have a different perfect ourselves we could be. So it might be, um, that you are, uh, destined. We might say to be a great teacher, a great parent, a great gardener, great violinist, a great lawyer, a great cook, any of those things. And true happiness means really getting that identified early enough so that you can, uh, focus on, on being as good at that as you possibly can be.
And this is incredibly helpful advice, I think for anybody, either in education, both you and I have been, you know, educators. So, we're dealing with trying to help young people find out what it is that they're really good at. Or, as a parent. If people force destinies or a Telos on their child that isn't their true one, then they're never going to be happy because they're not going to be doing what they enjoy.
And Aristotle is very clear that pleasure. This is very refreshing for people brought up in, in very puritanical, uh, or ascetic traditions, but pleasure is the best guide. He would say, look at a child, see what they enjoy. And from that, try to infer, or deduce, how they can actually monetize it.
Lee: Make a life that way. Right.
Edith: But, I mean, people like Bob Dylan have said he got paid for doing the one thing he loved. How, how lucky is that? I feel the same. I've got paid through researching and teaching. How lucky is that? If somebody had tried to make me, um, a chartered accountant or, um, an anesthetist, I'd have been miserable. I’d be able to do it, but I wouldn't have been fulfilling my true potentials.
I wouldn't have been good at it and I wouldn't have been happy. So, I think this is an incredibly positive and helpful, concept.
Um, and it's also, it's very sort of, egalitarian, or embracing because he really does believe everybody's got something that they're good at. Absolutely everybody. And that a fully happy functioning community.
It's going to work because, you know, I wouldn't say God, but that humans have been given such a variety of talents. Isn’t that in itself wonderful? That some of us are good at cooking. Some of us are good at music and some of us are good at driving cars. Isn't that fantastic?
Lee: Yeah. And as the son of an accountant myself. I've been always been very deeply grateful for the ways in which my parents did precisely what you were just describing. They look for the things that brought me joy and encouraged me in those things. You have a line in that particular chapter where you say an unplanned life is indeed less worth living.
And it strikes me as how it seems that too often education and or a consumerist life, consumerist goals that get set before us, encourage us to take the space to indeed plan a life. We might spend more time planning a vacation than we do planning our life it seems to be.
Edith: Absolutely. And I don't think that young people are, I visited an awful lot of schools and colleges for 16- to 18-year-olds, because I think that's a crucial period.
I thought that young adulthood. Um, and I'm always amazed and distressed by how little attention these young people have had paid to really thinking about what they want to do, then how to tailor the means and resources that they've got. Right? You have to do that. We live in the real world. But then also really be encouraged to go for it.
I mean, nobody ever lay on their death bed regretting that they tried to do something and failed, I don't think. I think people lie on their deathbeds really, uh, regretting the things they didn't try, the things they should have done.
Lee: Which is a beautiful way to reframe in the Christian tradition. You know, we have this, the sins of commission and the sins of omission, and yet you point to the way in which Aristotle has that same distinction, right?
Edith: Long before Christianity, long before Christianity.
Lee: And it might be helpful. And that here, you have this notion of thinking of a failure of omission to construe that on your death bed, of what did I fail to do? The thought of putting myself in that place and thinking, what did I, what did I fail to do is a terribly helpful practical exercise.
Edith: Yes, I think so.
Lee: Yeah. The one thing you've already began to point to is that this notion of happiness does not mean that things always simply go well for oneself, um, nor, nor does it rule out the notion that one’s life might be characterized by what we would characterize as, as sharp periods of suffering, but one could still be, have this sort of happiness, right, that Aristotle is pointing us to?
Edith: Yes. It's tied in very much with his, uh, another concept of his, which is self-sufficiency. This is something that only you can do for yourself. This is something you have to take responsibility for, right? You, you cannot expect someone else to present you with happiness.
So, it's hard work. And it means being very adult, right? And taking charge. But that it has the upside that nobody can actually take it away from you. So, that if you have, um, got yourself to a point that you're quite sustaining and self-sufficient in the ways that you produce good feelings inside yourself, then even if the worst happens and you know, you're, you're persecuted or prosecuted or in prison for something you didn't do.
People can't take away your inner peace with yourself that you didn't actually do what it claims you did. It can't, it, it's actually indestructible. And even absolutely terrible bad luck. And he's very, very sanguine about misfortune. He's very, very aware that, you know, bad luck is out there. And there's a lot of things people can't control about what happens to them, but he says that means that even, even if, you know, you are badly aggrieved or something really shocking happens to you, you lose all your money.
You still got this inner peace of mind that you were trying to do your best. And I think that, once I decided to give his ethics a real go, which was in my mid-twenties. What I don't have is a huge burden ever of personal guilt, right? Because I make mistakes, but they are not intentional. I can always say, I know I've been trying to do my best. Now that may sometimes lead to, um, you know, as I say, we don't always get it right with what we've decided to do that we think is for the best. But I know I tried, I wanted to do my best, and I think that being able to look yourself in the mirror every night or on your death bed at your past, I know I talk about death beds a lot, but he did.
He really did. That, um, I'd be able to say, well, actually there weren't many times when I wittingly did a bad thing. And that gives you an immense amount of, uh, freedom from a certain kind of mental torture.
Lee: Yeah. I, I have found as a recovering legalist or moralist or perfectionist, I would say, which was very much induced in me, I think by, inculcated in me, by my faith tradition. That having the virtue traditions inform my thinking about living a good life has helped in significant ways let go of that inner beating of myself, beating up of myself. Because it, and I love the fact that it, now I want to move to this in just a moment, but I'll kind of preempt some of this conversation.
I love the notion that any, any virtue has associated advices of excess and deficiency. And it may be that when I'm messing up, I'm actually, that may be a sign actually of growth because it just points to the fact that I'm learning to do a particular virtue better. Um, and it allows us great space of learning rather than a legalistic beating of oneself up.
Edith: Yeah, there’s no real place for a self-flagellation in virtue ethics.
Because once you're committed to trying to do your best, then you, you, you can be much more, um, at ease with yourself. Self-hatred, he thinks it's completely pointless. Um, but why would you dislike yourself? Um, and it's also a huge relief where we can go on to talk about this, but it's not just virtues. It's also just instincts, passions and, um, emotions.
So, that sort of Christian and platonic model, I mean, his teacher is Plato, but that you've got all these undesirable, bodily urges and instincts. He thinks it's just a nonsense. He thinks, because we're animals, that a guide to the good instincts. He sees hunger makes an animal go out and find good nutrition, sex drive makes an animal go out and reproduce itself to keep the species going.
How can they be inherently bad?
Lee: Right? Yeah.
Edith: Great relief. Great relief to me when I was, when I was 20 years old.
Lee: Indeed. But before we go to that, let me, let me point to one more thing that relates to this notion of potentiality and planning one's life. And that's this notion of magnanimity. And I love teaching my students about magnanimity because this, this, this picture of, um, I'm going to try to take every aspect again, going back to the holistic piece, right?
I'm going to try to take everything about my life, seriously, not, not in taking myself overly seriously, but seriously, this is why this is a space of gift. And this is a space of wonder in which I can, the whole of my life now can unfold before me as a way of every facet of my life continuing to be open to the possibility of growth, the possibility of joy, the possibility of learning something new in every facet of my life.
Edith: Yeah, exactly.
Lee: Give us a little, uh, primmer here then on virtues as, um, a mean between two associated vices.
Edith: So, Aristotle thinks that the way that you'll get to feel much happier and be a more fulfilled person, is to turn to the best possible virtue version of yourself. All right? And that means identifying what are your inherent good points, the things you're good at, uh, morally, um, and the things that you're not. And he even gives a very helpful chart in his second big book on ethics, on eudaimonia ethics. The, um, point about this is that you take any, I wouldn't even call it a virtue, but a characteristic actually just a characteristic of, of one’s psyche. Let's take anger.
Okay. So, if you're a Christian than anger is a bad thing, which you're supposed to try and suppress, it's turn the other cheek. No?
Lee: At least for some Christians. Yeah.
Edith: Yes, quite. But, um, that, that, that's the meek and mild and, and being in control of yourself. Aristotle says, well actually that’s not quite the case. If somebody incapable of anger, cannot he thinks be proper moral agents. Uh, so you could say the example, if your child is bullied at school and you don't feel extremely angry about that, then you won't have the drive to get the child into the head teacher's office to ask him who the bully is, and what's going to be done about it.
That's deficiency. On the other hand, if you have too much anger, then you are going to be angry. You've, you've got anger management problems. You're going to be angry, completely inappropriately with people who don't deserve it in the wrong situation at the wrong time. And we all know people like that as well.
So, he says there's something between moral apathy, right, and not caring less about bad things being done to you or your dependence, and excessive anger. So, there is an appropriate amount of anger, which, if properly channeled, make you go and do the right thing. Uh, and, and I always sort of have people like Martin Luther King in my mind about that. Very well channeled anger, right?
If he had not been angry about the situation of African-Americans, he would have been in Aristotle’s eye deficient, morally deficient, and not a proper moral agent. Now, as somebody with very strong emotions. And I was a very passionate child. And I'm still a very passionate person. That this proved so much more helpful than just being told to repress it.
It was to think very hard whenever I felt anger about whether it was actually justified, appropriate, and what I could do with it constructively.
So, you can take that for any instinct or any emotion. It's about getting it in the right level. This is so much, I think, this is very much well suited.
I think, I think it's why Aristotle is so much more suited to the 21st century, because post Freud, we've all learnt that actually instincts and drives and emotions aren't necessarily a bad thing. And to embrace our inner child, but just learn that we've got to be adult about appropriate contexts and degrees of expression of those emotions.
Lee: The first time I read, reading The Nicomachean Ethics, and I read Aristotle's saying that the virtuous person will be, is something like, will be angry in the right way for the right length of time with the right intensity, with regard to the right thing. I think the first time I read that, yeah, first time I read it, I had a sort of immaturity and I thought, well, thanks.
That's very helpful. But then the more I've reflected on it, I thought this is brilliant, right? And it gives us sort of multifaceted, uh, prudential response to the situation that requires a lot of discernment about what this anger, how it might be helpful to us.
Edith: So, you've got this little chart in the eudemian ethics, I think, which I do reproduce in the book.
Um, and, uh, it’s really quite simple. It's like taking a questionnaire on yourself. You've got to answer it honestly, though, but you've got to figure out which ones you're already actually quite good at. So, I've never been, had a problem with feeling empathy, for example, but I was very aware that that I had a huge problem with, being vengeful.
And again, he thinks that you need a certain amount of, uh, capacity for desire for revenge. He says, again, you're not a correct immoral agent. I mean, if somebody smashes into your kid, cause they're a drunk driver, then you need the desire for revenge to get you into court, to get them financial support so that they can have wheelchairs and properly adjusted cars for the rest of their life.
Right? You need to feel…
Lee: It’s grounded in justice.
Edith: But I, I, my life was, was dominated till I started working on this one by desire to get at people for quite minor, snubs and insults and so on. So, I did my own sort of thing on what I was good at. It also helped me identify my skills. I mean, modesty is a particularly interesting one because especially, I don't know if it's quite the same in American culture, but in British culture, especially for women, any kind of, self-congratulation, or just self-awareness of what your skills are.
You are never, ever allowed to say, you have got to denigrate yourself. Okay? And he says, this is just pointless. Okay. There's a mean between false modesty, which doesn't get anybody anywhere. I mean, if we were on desert island and people were to say, is anybody here a good cook? It wouldn't be very helpful if I didn't say yes, I am.
Do you see what I mean? I'll take it. I'll do the kitchen. Of course, I don't want to say yes, I'm the best ever cook the world has ever seen because that's nonsense. But saying no, I'm not a good cook when I am, right? But in fact, even, I do find in, in British culture even, and professionally the ban on, especially women being clear about their, uh, just clear about what they're good at.
So, this helped me realize that actually I was a very good communicator, right? I had a good analytical brain. So those are the two things I'm good at. Then there all the things I'm terribly bad at like being chaotic, uh, quick to vindictiveness. He's very interesting on money. Because my reaction to having had an incredibly financially mean father, was to be profligate with money. I mean, really profligate, give it away to anybody, get into debt, you know, just telling myself it didn't matter. But of course it matters, especially when you've got defendants. So, the mean between meanness and stinginess on one side and profligacy is just financial responsibility.
So, everybody will have different things in Aristotle's list that they will recognize that they need to work on, or that they can actually be proud of and, and work to enhance and fulfill further. But, it's so much more humane and forgiving than most other monotheistic and platonic. I’m indeed, philosophical schools like stoicism we're very down on emotion. So, I think it's very, very unusually fitting for you know for the 21st century.
Lee: Two things kind of come to mind here. Um, one, I would like to mention briefly that, um, like going back, for example, to turn the other cheek. That is in the common Christian and non-Christian imagination a sort of invitation to passivity, but these days there's a lot of research that's been done.
In framing things like the Sermon on the Mount in terms of virtue ethics, and it's fascinating scholarship. And so, for example, one of the things that some suggest is going on with Jesus in, for example, turn the other cheek is that he's providing a kind of virtuous practice. That is actually a mean between a fight or flight.
And that in its context, turn the other cheek had this powerful culture, because of the cultural cues and the cultural particularities. It was a way in which someone of a lower class could respond to an insult from someone from the upper class in a way that turned the tables upside down and made a new possibility occur in that context.
Edith: That is really interesting.
I just have never heard that.
Lee: Yeah, it's just remarkable sorts of material. Walter Wink is one of the scholars that popularized that.
Edith: That, that, that is good. And of course, I've always, I was always struck as, as a child by the, uh, one serious fit of anger in the New Testament from Jesus of Nazareth, when he overturned the tables of the money changes. Uh, you know, there, there is one occasion on which he did, he did get notably angry. And that sort of puzzled me.
Lee: Or even the apostle Paul will say be angry, but don't sin, right? It’s that the point is not to not be angry, it's not to let it fall into something that will cause damage or harm. And in that kind of phrase, I hear in Aristotelian sort of framing of that. The other thing that reminds me is going back to your conversation about pleasures, you know, again, raised as a, as a teetotaler for example, in Southern Protestant culture.
Um, I find his conversation of temperance, uh, so terribly helpful. And to realize that it could be that abstinence is actually a vice, um, where, and indulgence, obviously when it overtakes oneself is a vice. Uh, but instead you're wanting to try to find the ways in which, as you said, pleasure is not the problem.
It's the right full enjoyment of the pleasure of the rightful, ordering of the pleasure, which I think is a very liberating sort of insight.
Edith: Well, it is ancient Greek. And the idea that wine was not life enhancing, at the right amount at the right time with the right people, um, would have been an absolute nonsense to any, any ancient Greek. It's, it's, it's, it, they simply couldn't understand it, that they, they had hugely ritualized, constructive drinking.
The whole point about the symposium, which is where a lot of philosophy’s done, is that you never drank more than anybody else. And it was served, you know, in measured proportions at quite big distances, you know, and mixed with water and all that kind of thing. So it was, it was the good things that the relaxation and the, uh, physical pleasure, uh, and the conviviality without, without the bad things.
Lee: From what you know, have Europeans had any sort of similar hang-ups about something like, alcohol as we Americans have had?
Edith: Well, certainly amongst, um, radical Protestants. Yes. Um, and, and, uh, all the European Muslims, of course, uh, we have large numbers of, of very integrated Muslims, most of whom do adhere quite strictly to, to no alcohol.
But they're Europeans. So for a long time, it was very difficult to get alcohol on a Sunday, especially in Wales and Scotland with large non-conformance Protestant communities. Having said that, I hope I'm allowed to say this on an American radio station, but I, my view is that most of the really extreme Protestants went to America.
Lee: Yeah, thank you for that. We really appreciate y'all sending them over here.
Edith: Yeah. I think the laissez-faire. The Anglican church by and large, which is your Episcopalian is, which is the church of England is much, is much more, laissez-faire. It has been ever since 1689 when it became sort of official settlement.
Um, so we don't have exactly the same problems. I mean, I, I do remember when I, um, first went to, I had a job at Swarthmore. What turned out to be a dry county. I mean, it was the day we arrived. We we'd had a very long flight. We couldn't get a beer, we could not get a beer. And in the end my husband actually drove to another state, a state line just because we needed to beer after, after this horrible time in the airplane.
Um, and that was our introduction to, so I do, I do completely understand it, but by and large, I think that the more extreme the Christian beliefs, the more likely they were to end up feeling persecuted and having to go to America.
Lee: You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, and the good life. We’re most grateful to have you joining us.
If you've not yet done so, subscribe today to the Tokens podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
We do love hearing from you, and are always pleased to hear some of the things you'd like to hear more about. You can email us at podcast@tokensshow.com.
Two shoutouts to Rabbi Jessica Shimberg and Mr. Jay Derting for their particularly gracious and kind emails. Thank you for taking the time to write in and share with us. And a third shout out to Linda Brown, who wrote in last year to ask more about virtue traditions. Linda, this episode hopefully helps address your interest in a primer in virtue traditions. In addition to Edith's book, I'd also suggest Josef Pieper's The Four Cardinal Virtues, Julia Annas's Intelligent Virtue, or Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue.
Also remember you can sign up for our email list, or find out how to join us for a live event, all at tokensshow.com.
This is our interview with professor Edith Hall, on her book entitled Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life.
Part two in just a moment.
HALFWAY POINT
Lee: Welcome back to Tokens and our interview with internationally renowned classicist Edith Hall on her book Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life.
So, speaking of another kind of, Jewish and or Christian construct, um, the notion of sin.
In biblical Greek, the word is hamartia that gets translated to sin. And this obviously is a significant construct in, um, Greco-Roman literature as well. But, as I have learned a bit about the use of the word in, let's say virtue traditions, this kind of points to, hamartia, points to some sort of potential defects that can destroy a person.
Is that right?
Edith: I'm not sure about that. It may, may be later than Aristotle. And with Aristotle, it's very clear. It means making a mistake, an error, which can be a judgment and therefore moral. It can be, you know, you can, you can take completely the wrong decision and do something very on just something to do something very unpleasant.
Um, but it's not a flaw. It was mistranslated as flaw, actually. Interestingly, in the, in the Renaissance. The metaphor comes from archery. I don't know if you knew that.
Lee: Yeah, to miss the mark, right?
Edith: Well, you miss the target altogether. The point about hamartia is, hamartanein is the verb, you shoot your arrow and it doesn't even stick into the target. It goes completely off. So, it's like a complete miss shot. So, he uses it for example, Oedipus simply doesn't realize, you know, he makes a massive error of ignorance. He doesn't know who he is, so he ends up marrying his mother and killing his father and so on.
But it's not actually the same as a long-term moral state. It's instantiated in serial actions.
Lee: Okay. Yeah. Very, yeah, very helpful. Let's talk a little bit about, um the kind of exemplars that Aristotle uses to kind of illustrate the moral life.
Edith: Yes. He's got some favorite figures that he compares, the person who's trying to learn to be an ethically good person, trying to learn virtue. One is, uh, the medical doctor, the physician. So, Aristotle likes to compare learning to be virtuous with learning, to be a doctor or a physician or learning to be a musician or an architect or any one of these professions.
So, there are certain, um, things that you have to analyze, certain natural skills you have to put together, and then you have to learn how to make them effective through continual practice. And then sooner or later, the beauty of this is if you put it into continual practice, right? A particular way of behaving towards other people.
So, for example, smiling and saying good day, when you meet people in the street, as opposed to scowling or spitting at them, it will become habitual. And he's quite clear about this, that it may feel like terribly hard work at first, trying to do the right thing by people all the time in every encounter, but it becomes habitual.
And I actually like the, the analogy that, of, of driving a car, we drive geared cars in Europe. Uh, and when, when you first start learning a car, you have to think consciously every time. Shall I go into first gear, second gear, fourth gear? After a few months of driving, you don't even think about it. It becomes habitual.
So, as you acquire the skills and you actually study the, the nitty gritty, the sorts of architectural principles, or, the parts of the body or the parts of the soul, if it's ethics, you know, your virtues, you then have to go out and dry run in the whole time with every encounter you have with people.
And through that you will learn practical wisdom. We all know that people do tend to acquire wisdom with experience. One of the sad things about our society is we don't tend to recognize how much old people know, you know, how much they've been around the block, but it will also become much more habitual.
My, my own example of that was, uh, my, my parents didn't I, when I said smile at people in the street, well, actually my parents were very 1950s, 1960s parents. They did not smile. If you went to them as a child to ask for help, you tended to get scowls. Like, what do you want? Sort of thing. And I was traumatized by this.
So, I swore with my kids that I would put whatever I was doing down, if they came to me, uh, switch off the radio or TV. And say, how can I help you darling? Right? So that they always felt they could come to me. Now, I went so overboard with this, that my daughters actually laugh about it. They say it was so extreme, but in fact, I do believe they have never felt a single hesitation about bothering me and that that's how I like it.
I want them to feel they can always come to me if they need to. And that did become habitual. When I first started doing it. I have to think smile, you know, when you really want them to go away because you were watching TV or, or whatever. Um, but I really do think I have largely managed to be welcoming when my children have asked to see me, or talk to me.
Lee: Yeah. One of the things I love about that depiction of the moral life and the comparison to musicians or, or any other craftsman or the physician or the architect and so forth is that it's the beautiful picture it gives of liberty or to freedom. You know, obviously there's a sort of, there's a sort of real good to a liberty construed in terms of freedom from, freedom from burdens and freedom from constraint or freedom from tyranny.
That's a, those are true political goods, but there's this other sort of liberty that comes on the other, as I say to my students, it comes on the other side of discipline, right? It's, it's just submission to a craft and through a submission to a craft over a lifetime, one becomes capable of doing something that mere so-called mere mortals could not do.
Edith: Well. I think, I don't think anybody's ever sort of finished in final great souled man, magnanimous man. I think it'd be, be in trouble, if you decided that you were finished, a finally virtuous product, you know. But I think that, um, yeah, it is a discipline. It takes a serious decision. Um, and at first it takes a very great deal of time.
I mean, taking a decision well, any decision well, uh, takes time and we don't take enough time to do it. We don't, that's why they call it, I think. I tied this up with the being the peripatetics, the walking ones. I do think walking is incredibly, you know, taking the dog for a walk is incredibly good time to think, put your phone down and think through difficult decisions.
So, it is very much like learning any other craft. And he says that. The Greek word techne, where we get technical from. It's a techne. Virtue is a techne like any other. And the trouble I think quite often is, is the word the very word virtue can put people off. When I'm talking to Americans, I tend to say, just do the right “thang.”
You know, it's like, just be a decent person. We would say in English, do the right thing in American. You know, we all tend to know what the right thing is to do in circumstances. He just, he does believe in sort of intuition, the intuitive good. But, um, very often we haven't been equipped with the ability to put that into practice.
Uh, and, and that takes time and, and a very great deal of effort and often self-sacrifice.
Lee: Yeah. How do you frame that up in terms of the notion of authority as opposed, for example, to someone like Immanuel Kant who sees the, kind of the epitome of the moral life as autonomy for, you know, freedom from external authority? It seems like with Aristotle you have this notion, there can be unhelpful authority, uh, tyrannical authority, or there can be helpful, needful authority to help one grow in the moral life.
Is that, is that a fair characterization?
Edith: I think so though, I don't get the impression from reading him that he particularly liked being under anybody's thumb. He didn't get to be fully free to do what he wanted to do with his life until he was 49. I mean, his own life is really interesting because he was, first of all.
Yes. I think the 20 years under Plato, that was good authority and he learned so much. Between 17 and 37, he was Plato’s student at the academy and blossomed and developed all of his ideas. And in dialogue with Plato, even though he eventually rejected a lot of them. But so, then he had to go off, you know, he was summoned to this horrible court to Phillip the great of, of Macedon, which was murder assassination, poisoning, treachery, adultery on a daily basis.
I sometimes wonder how he survived. As soon as Philip was assassinated, he went off to Asia. He at 49 years old, he finally got himself to Athens, set up his own university the way he wanted it, the Lyceum. So, I think his own life is a very good model of how you don't sort of give up, nor do you lose sight of your true goal.
But there was a kind of authority at the Lyceum, in that they had to sign up to a particular way of life and a particular program that they were all committed to, to education and research. And so on.
I don't think authority is quite the right word. It's more that you submit yourself to yourself to your own best self, and don't let transient temptations derail you.
Lee: Continuing to keep your eye on that, your own Telos, continue to facilitate the growth of those things in yourself toward that end.
Edith: Exactly. Yeah. Um, and he's quite interesting that actually, and one of the most interesting things is adultery, because all ancient Greek men were allowed to commit adultery. Um, they, uh, had ample opportunities for it outside the house. So, you know, with, people of either sex and it wasn't even particularly criticized provided you didn't bring it home to your front door.
And he says, no, it's absolutely not all right. And the reason why it isn't all right, isn't because you know, sex is bad. He think’s sex is great, but because it destabilizes trust in your foundational relationship, which will make you unhappy as well as the other person. So, because that trust of that foundational relationship, he thinks all society builds up from the, to the path, the couple.
Then, uh, you, you inject this toxic dose of distrust, which destabilizes absolutely everything. And I found this, you know, it's, it's certainly made me never be strayed by the wayside. What is the point of a transient pleasure, if it wrecks the really great building block of happiness? There's just no point at all.
There's no comparison between the happiness that each of those will give you.
Lee: How do you, as a woman deal with Aristotle's treatment of women and slaves?
Edith: Politics book one. Aristotle genuinely believes, uh, as did everybody else, uh, in antiquity practically everybody else in antiquity that, uh, women were in every way, intellectually and morally inferior to men. Strangely he thought that because he looked at the animal world and he saw a difference in size and so on. And because he's very clear that man is, humans are animals. He drew that inference. He also argued that slavery if it was of non-Greeks. And he did definitely think that some people from non-Greek cultures were inferior intellectually and therefore, probably morally because the two go together for him.
And he did not agree with those people who there were very few who wanted to abolish slavery on the ground that it was against human nature. This is what I say to him. Okay? If I point out that the whole of the politics, um, is actually insists, and I thought about this an awful lot lately with the American political situation, that the constitution must be eternally open to revision. In the light of, and this goes through this whole concept about deliberation, right? Either new information or a persuasive argument, okay? Or a new experience, you must constantly revise. And he says it's because no lawmaker can ever conceivably anticipate all possible occurrences that may arise. He cannot do it.
Right? So, you cannot create a constitution that won't need adjustment. And he actually cites, he's done research on 200 different Greek city states. And he saw a city where, he says in the old days we used to carry arms in public life, right? We used to arm ourselves to go to the assembly. We civilized Greeks have given all that up. We wouldn't dream of having a city state where you were, ordinary people were armed in the street. I always wanted to say that to the NRA. And the other one is we used to have a society where we bought our wives, just some money like cattle. And he says, we've given all of that up.
Those are the two things he cites. So, I would simply show him all the, very great evidence that we've now accumulated that there's no such thing as a racial differentiation and intelligence or gender differentiation. I would not only show him all the data, but I would also argue because I'd been educated in a way that ancient Greek women were, um, most persuasively using his own terms.
And I would then point to the passages, which are very many in the politics where he's insistent that you must always be open to revising your own constitutions, right? Does that answer your question?
Lee: It does indeed, yes, very helpfully. I come to the virtue traditions through theological studies and coming come to our tradition through studying them on the Catholics and reading Aquinas and Alister McIntyre who points me to, Aristotle and the virtue traditions and so forth. All of a sudden, I find in that these terribly helpful correctives to so-called right-wing or so-called conservative, moralism, perfectionism, religious legalisms.
Edith: Fundamentalism.
Lee: Fundamentalism and so forth. Yes. But increasingly as I watch, uh, the left, the far left and in American context, I'm also seeing parallels in the far left that look a lot like what I saw in the far right growing up. And what I still, what you can still see in the far right. And it occurs to me, it seems to me that both the far-right legalist types and the far-left legalist or shaming types could learn a great deal from the virtue tradition. So, what's, what's your thoughts on that?
Edith: I couldn't agree with you more.
I think the biggest danger is, is taking any tenet whatsoever, whatever it is, left-wing right-wing as, uh, undiscussable. I find this incredibly frightening. Encroachments on freedom of speech are, um, being made all the time at the moment. What is, or is not permissible to say. Now we have to have a huge discussion because I don't believe in, in offense for the sake of it. I think if one can avoid offending somebody else's sensibilities one should do so, but not at the cost of, uh, losing my right to express my opinion. Now that that's a difficult thing, but Aristotle would certainly defend the need to examine all received opinions at all time.
I mean, he calls them those, you start from them. He says, you start from them. They're called the endoxa. That you actually, if you've got a question of, of, uh, should we carry guns? All right. You're going to start by listing all the views, justifications, defenses, apologies, and arguments against that have ever been made.
Right? You've got to start from somewhere. You don't start by trying to pluck an absolute, a new absolute out of the sky. You work it from those to your own sensible position and the society that you're in. Okay? So just the very idea that you cannot examine any tenet is, is completely, well, it would be outrageous to him. That's the whole point of being a philosopher, is that you've got to examine why we assume things. Um, I know these things are incredibly difficult. Um, uh, tense at the moment they are on British campuses. Uh, there've been a lot of de platforming of one kind and another going on, but, and it's quite difficult because I regard myself as fiscally very left wing, but morally and socially, very liberal.
And that's not actually something you often find. If you see what I mean. People tend to sign up to a whole bag of beliefs, which means they've got to take on the whole thing. And I don't want to do that. I want to examine every single one on its own merit.
Lee: Do you have hope that this sort of approach can continue to make a contribution socially right now?
And what might it look like for that to happen? Given the, the real threats of, de platforming to use the language you just used.
Edith: I think what we need is, um, what I would like to see is absolutely everybody in the world getting trained in moral philosophy in their teens, secular moral philosophy, secular, because it can, you can accommodate mild versions of any religion to virtue ethics, right? I have many Catholic friends who, who are also Aristotelians, many. I have a Zoroastrian friend who is an Aristotelian. That is perfectly possible, but what I think we don't have enough of is people actually learning the techne, as we said, of moral philosophy at school.
And I find that I go to schools to talk about it constantly, and they are so thirsty for it. They are so thirsty. When I say I can teach you Aristotle's nine-point plan for taking a decision to your best bet, at your own best interests to make a decision. Nobody has ever done that with them before. They have never done it, before.
Lee: Quick note here: our producer Jakob Lewis asked me what these practices are for making wise decisions. Thought you might want to hear the 8 practices from Aristotle that Edith discusses in her book: 1, don't get in a hurry; don't deliberate in haste; 2, verify the facts; 3, consult and -listen to- an expert advisor, people who know more about the matter than you, and who doesn't have an agenda in the matter; 4, consider the perspective of all parties to the decision; 5, examine all precedents, both personally and historically; 6, calibrate the likelihood of different outcomes and prepare for all outcomes you think are possible; 7, take luck and random possibilities, for good or ill, into account; 8, don't deliberate drunk.
Back now to more reasons students should learn Aristotle:
Edith: I tell them how to write your CV to be as persuasive as possible, which Aristotle tells you in the rhetoric, which is just by simply by studying human nature. Well, you will be able to write a better CV without telling any lies, right? Yeah. Um, and they, they are so thirsty for it and I think we're depriving them of it.
And if everybody in the world could sign up to the same sort of secular system, I think we would make very quick advances.
Lee: Yeah. I will say that, uh, you know, in, in my context where we, where I do teach, uh, theological ethics, um, I, I have this one particular class for undergrads that I've just started experimenting with in the last couple of years.
And we did this class in which we look at the overlap between Aquinas's moral theology. We look at Aristotelian moral philosophy, and we look at positive psychology. We look at the overlap of those three and these very practical ways to live life and students just, as you said, they just drink it up.
It's like, finally, I've got something here by which to construe what it looks like to live a good life.
Edith: Well, exactly. And I think it is a bit different. I think people are more religious, a large proportion of the population in the USA has a, has a faith than is the case in Britain where, I think, more than half of people say they don't believe in any form of God. But young people are not trained in how to behave in any coherent way anymore, certainly since the 1960s. And I think, I think that's just totally irresponsible of, of adults that they're not helping kids learn the techne of right action.
Lee: Yeah. And the wake of pain and suffering, unnecessary pain and suffering that comes in in the wake of that.
So. Well, we've been talking to Edith Hall on her new book, relatively new book. Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life. Thank you so much, Professor Hall. We're very grateful for your time today.
Edith: I've enjoyed it very much indeed. Thank you.
Lee: You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life.
If you would like to hear more about the practicality and beauty of a life of virtue, check out season 4's episode with Dr. Andre Churchwell; if you'd like to hear more about the Sermon on the Mount then check out our recent episode with AJ Levine.
Remember you can subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
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Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this podcast possible. Executive producer and manager, Christie Bragg of Bragg Management. Co-producer Jakob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios. Associate producers Ashley Bayne and Tom Anderson. Engineer Cariad Harmon. Music beds by Zach and Maggie White, and Blue Dot Sessions.
Thanks for listening, and peace be unto thee.
The Tokens podcast is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.
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