5. The Well-Ordered Soul: Happiness and Harmony

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature (PHIL 181)

Professor Gendler begins with a poll of the class about whether students have elected to take a voluntary no-Internet pledge, and distributes stickers to help students who have made the pledge stick to their resolve. She then moves to the substantive part of the lecture, where she introduces Plato's analogy between the city-state and the soul and articulates Plato's response to Glaucon's challenge: justice is a kind of health--the well-ordered working of each of the parts of the individual—and thus is intrinsically valuable. This theme is explored further via psychological research on the 'progress principle' and 'hedonic treadmill,' as well as in an introduction to Aristotle's argument that reflection and reasoning are the function of humanity and thus the highest good.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Chapter 1. Internet Poll and Self-Regulation
05:57 - Chapter 2. Plato's Response to Glaucon's ChallengeChapter
28:57 - Chapter 3. Jonathan Haidt's Two Principles of Happiness
30:54 - Chapter 4. Aristotle on Happiness and Teleology

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://oyc.yale.edu

This course was recorded in Spring 2011.

PROFESSOR: OK.

So the clicker question that
I want to ask you right now

is--ah, shoot!

This says polling closed.

Now polling open.

"Did you commit to turning
off the internet

completely?", press one.

"Did you commit to restricting
your internet usage in some

way?" That is, you're keeping
the internet on, but you're

promising not to check Facebook,
or play Angry Birds,

or go shopping at Zappos, or
whatever other indulgent thing

you do on the internet.

If that's your case,
press two.

"Did you put no restriction on
your in-class internet use,

but you're somebody with a
computer?" If so, press three.

Or is it kind of not applicable
to you, because

you're somebody who uses a
pencil and paper in class?

OK.

Now it's supposed to be the
case that the timer is

counting itself down, but no,
I've got to prattle for

twenty-eight seconds.

So here we go.

So this is a case--I read
through the papers for my

section, and my sense there--and
I don't know

whether it was a random
sample--is that about

two-thirds of the students
committed to totally turning

off the internet, and about a
quarter committed to sometimes

restriction, and a very small
percentage committed to no

restriction on internet use.

OK.

It should be the case in one
second that our slide--

yes.

OK.

So 43% of you, 43% of the
students in this room, made a

precommitment in the
form of a promise.

It became a precommitment
because you wrote it down.

Just thinking it didn't
make a precommitment.

But you took an action at a time
when you felt yourself to

be cool and calm and reasonable,
and made a

decision at that moment that
you took to be binding upon

yourself in the future.

And an additional 16% of you
didn't draw a bright line at

the turning off internet
completely, but attempted to

put in place some sort of
intermediate restriction.

Now my next question for you is
whether you have strayed.

Twenty seconds. "One.

Not even an itty bitty bit.

Not once." "Two.

Just once or twice." "Three.

Um, well, a few times, but I'm
trying." Or "four, yep, I've

been playing Sparkle HD Lite
on my iPad all class long."

And let's see how the
numbers came out.

OK.

So we should get--that didn't
show up automatically.

Aha.

So 56% of you--

excellent.

56% of you have not
strayed at all.

But notice that half of you have
found ourselves unable to

carry through with a commitment
that you made, and

that you provided some
enforcement for in the sense

that you internalized in your
conscience the idea that you

had made a commitment.

It turns out that for many
people, simply making a

commitment in their mind is
insufficient for them to stay

in this not even an itty
bitty bit category.

For those people, who end up
here or here or even here, it

turns out that putting some sort
of external constraints

in place are useful.

So the New York Times had
a piece last week about

something called Phone Condom,
whose slogan is "Zip it, lock

it, keep it in your pocket." And
the idea is that you take

your cell phone, and you put it
in this little Ziploc bag,

and while you're driving,
you are unable to

gain access to it.

One of the students in this
class--and you'll have access

to this on the slide--e-mailed
me a link to a computer

program which is basically a
computer condom, a "zip it,

lock it, keep it in your pocket"
for internet access.

It turns off access to
the internet for a

given period of time.

But for those of you who feel
like you want some sort of

external reinforcement, but
you're not prepared to make

use of the internet lockup, I
thought I'd provide something

which would help you stick to
your commitment by making use

of two things that we learned
about last week.

One is that when there are eyes
in front of you, you feel

the gaze of the world
upon you.

And the other is that when
there's a kind of social

reinforcement by peers, it's
easier to stick with a plan.

So not only because they are
left over from my older son's

bar mitzvah, I have for you
smiley face stickers, which

the TFs will hand out.

And if you would like, you are
free to put a red or orange

sticker on the corner of your
computer if you're committed

to no internet during class.

It'll be there to remind you
and to show your peers.

And a green or blue sticker on
your computer if you are

committed to restricted
internet during class.

To the TFs, there are 720 of
these stickers, so we're not

going to run out.

You can just hand out--

just hand them out, a little
piece of them, and people can

pass them around, and put
them there or not.

We're no worse off.

They were sitting on my desk
since the bar mitzvah, which

was in October, and I thought,
here, we can make four points

at once in a class.

In fact, we can make five.

Because the question of
self-regulation is, in fact,

the fundamental question that
we are addressing in the

context of the material that
we read for today.

So I want to apologize, because
today's lecture really

is, in lots of ways, dead
guys on Tuesday.

I'm going to go through, in some
detail, some arguments

from Plato, and then in
some detail, some

arguments from Aristotle.

But my hope is that by doing
so, I'll provide you with a

framework that will allow you,
when you go back to the

reading, perhaps in the context
of writing your

papers, to feel like those texts
have become accessible.

So famously, as you recall,
Plato had suggested that our

soul can be understood as
having three parts.

That we have a rational part,
which he represents sometimes

as a human being, sometimes
as a charioteer.

That we have one called the
spirited part, which he

represents sometimes as
a cooperative horse,

sometimes as a lion.

And that we have, in addition,
an appetitive part, which he

represents sometimes as a wild
horse, and sometimes as a

multiheaded beast.

Plato's suggestion is that a
certain kind of happiness is

available to us if we get
these parts into line.

He writes, "one is just who
does not allow the various

parts within him to meddle
with each other.

He regulates well what is his
own, and rules himself, puts

himself in order, and harmonizes
the three parts of

himself like three limiting
notes on a musical scale.

And from having been many
things"-- from having been as

you are, pulled in two
directions, pulled in the

direction of keeping the
internet off, and pulled in

the direction of checking
your Facebook page.

Pulled in the direction of going
to the library and doing

your homework, and pulled in the
direction of hanging out

your suite and talking
to your suitemate.

"From having been many
things"--pulled in the

direction of what reason tells
you to do, and pulled in the

direction of what spirit or
appetite tells you to do--"you

become entirely one, moderate
and harmonious."

So the Platonic ideal of the
well-structured soul is one

regulated by reason in which
spirit and appetite are

subjected to reason's
mandates.

Now, what I want to
give you now is

basically a thirty second--

well, five minute--

overview of the plot of Plato's
Republic in Books,

(sort of), II, III,
IV, and IX.

OK?

So the story goes as follows.

Plato is trying to tell us what
the human soul is like.

And in honor of the weather,
we'll represent the human

being like this.

And he points out, as I just
noted, that the human soul has

three parts.

It's got a rational part, it's
got a spirited in part, and

it's got a part that is full
of appetite, appetitive.

And you can see the human
being, the lion, and the

multiheaded beast, in Plato's
famous image there.

But in order to understand what
is good for the human

being, Socrates suggests, at the
end of the discussion in

book two, which we read for last
class, that the best way

to understand what it is that's
good for the tripartite

human being is to think about
what would be good for a city

that is structured
in the same way.

What societal structures can
help us understand things

about the internal structures
of human beings?

So he proposes the famous
city-state analogy, whereby

corresponding to the part of
the soul that he calls

appetite are citizens of the
city that he calls workers, or

people who do the day-to-day
work of the city, and who take

their joy and pleasure from the
pleasures of the body and

of the appetite.

There are soldiers, those who
defend the city and serve as

its defenders in military
context, that who are

motivated by honor.

And there are, in addition,
philosophers or guardians,

those who live the
life of the mind.

And you'll notice who
gets to end up at

the top in this story.

So the idea is that in order
to understand the four

cardinal virtues in the context
of the individual, we

will be helped by thinking about
where those virtues can

be found in the city.

And we can then map what it
is that we've learned from

looking at the problem
writ large in

the context of society.

We can map that onto what
would be the case in the

context of the problem writ
small, the individual.

So Plato's Socrates points out
that there are four cardinal

virtues, and you know these
from your reading.

The first of these is wisdom.

And the wisdom of the city and
of the individual is to be

found in its rational part.

OK.

Those should be--

There is courage.

And the courage of a city or
of an individual is to be

found in its spirited parts.

They're dancing.

And there are two virtues--the
distinction between which is

important in some contexts, but
not for ours--and those

are the virtues of moderation
and justice.

And the suggestion here is
that just as a city is

moderate and just when the
relations among the people in

it are proper, so, too, is an
individual moderate or just

when the relations among
its part are

appropriate and proper.

That is, moderation and justice
involve a certain kind

of harmony among the parts.

So that's the Platonic
picture.

And it turns out that this
is Plato's answer--

Plato's answer in the
voice of Socrates--

to the challenge that Glaucon
posed to us in

middle of book two.

You remember that we were given,
at the beginning of

book two, a three-way
distinction among goods.

We were told that there were
things that are valuable

intrinsically, in themselves.

There are things that are
valuable instrumentally, for

the goods that they provide
beyond themselves.

Those are things like money,
which have no intrinsic value,

but which have instrumental
worth.

And that there are things
that are valuable both

intrinsically and
instrumentally.

And you recall that Glaucon's
argument, first with the claim

that when we talk about justice,
we make claims for

its benefit in terms of the
goods that it provides in

reputation.

Second in his Ring of Gyges
story, where he argued that if

we can get away with acting
unjustly, we should do so.

And third, in the story of
what's called the statues

scrubbed, or the inverted
story, that even if you

weren't convinced by the Gyges
story, surely if justice

produced a bad reputation, and
injustice a good one, that you

would want to act unjustly.

So those three arguments are
Glaucon's arguments in favor

of justice being something with
only instrumental value.

On his picture, justice is
something that is of utility

to us in a way that money
is of utility to us.

It can help us buy our way into
things that themselves

have intrinsic value.

Socrates' argument, by contrast,
is that justice is

something with both of these
characteristics.

No doubt it is of instrumental
utility.

He doesn't deny either Glaucon's
arguments or

Adeimantus's arguments about
the ways in which being

perceived as just can
be of use to us.

But in addition, he argues
that there is a certain

intrinsic worth associated
with having one's soul

structured in the way that
the just soul is.

Now, I want to point out to you,
to be fair to Glaucon and

Adeimantus, that there's
a bit of a cheat here.

Glaucon and Adeimantus
are working with an

under-theorized notion
of justice.

The picture that they have is
that justice is roughly acting

in conformity with the
regulations that society

imposes upon us as
considered to be

meritorious, loosely speaking.

Being just is roughly
doing what the laws

say you should do.

Socrates, by contrast, goes on
and gives us a much more

sophisticated account
of justice.

But if those two
characterizations are what

philosophers sometimes like to
call extensionally equivalent,

then Socrates isn't cheating.

What it is to be extensionally
equivalent, is that you pick

out the same set of actions
in the world.

So Socrates' claim is that
it's a law that you're

supposed to be honest and
not murder people.

But it's also the case that
somebody with a soul

structured in the way that he
has called "just" will not

steal, and not murder people.

It's a norm of justice that one
will have piety towards

one's parents.

A norm of justice in the
conventional sense.

So, too, says Socrates, is it a
norm of justice in the sense

that he's characterized
that you will have

piety for one's parents.

And so on.

So the picture is that the
notion, the more filled-out

notion of justice that Socrates
has provided us with,

accords well enough with the
notion of justice that Glaucon

and Adeimantus were interested
in to make this not cheating.

And that allows Socrates to make
two kinds of arguments in

favor of the intrinsic
values of justice.

The first comes at the end of
book four, where he argues

that justice is a
kind of health.

Roughly, justice is to the soul
as health is to the body.

A healthy body is one whose
parts are doing what their

parts are supposed to do.

Your body is healthy if your
heart is pumping blood at the

right sort of pace, so that
your brain is getting the

amount of oxygen that it needs,
and your fingertips are

getting the amount of blood
that they need, and so on.

So just as health is of both
intrinsic and instrumental

value to us in the body, so, too
is justice, which is the

health of the soul, of both
intrinsic and instrumental

value to us as spiritual in
addition to physical beings.

We're spiritual here in
a very modest sense.

So that's the first argument.

The first argument is an idea
that presupposes that there's

a way that it's good
for people to work.

And we'll revisit this
in the context of our

discussion of Aristotle.

So there's a way that your body
is supposed to work: The

heart is supposed to do this,
the lungs are supposed to do

this, you knees are supposed
to do this, your ears are

supposed to do that,
and so on.

And we have a picture of
what health amounts to.

So, too, says Plato, the
excavation project that he's

engaged in thinking about the
city-state analogy brings out

what it would be for a soul to
be healthy, and it turns out

that health for the soul is to
be arranged in the way that

justice mandates.

So that's the first argument
that he offers.

It's an argument through
something that Glaucon and

Adeimantus have conceded to
have intrinsic as well as

instrumental utility, and a
claim that once you understand

what justice is, you can see the
direct analogy between the

soul and justice and the
body and health.

The second pair of arguments
occurs in book nine, and

concern the question
of happiness.

The first argument there is an
argument that we'll actually

hear again when we read John
Stuart Mill at the beginning

of our utilitarianism section.

And that's an argument which
runs as follows.

The person who has developed
the capacity for

self-regulation, the self-ruler,
has along the way,

because of the kinds of beings
we are, also experienced all

of the other kinds
of pleasure.

In some ways, this is like
the Freudian story.

We start off as a bundle of
desires, and we take the

things that we want, without
consideration of their

long-term consequences for us.

And over time, we come and get
that unregulated bundle of

needs into a certain
kind of order.

We regulate it first by means
of praise and blame, roughly

making use of the honor part
of ourselves, and then we

regulate it by means
of reflection and

self-understanding.

So the person who has gotten
their soul into a harmonious

state is in a subjectively
excellent position, because he

or she has experienced all of
the pleasures that the person

who doesn't do self-regulation
has experienced, and in

addition, has experienced the
kinds of pleasures that are

available to us only if our
soul is well-ordered.

So all of us have experienced
the pleasure of checking

Facebook and playing Tetris.

But only some of us have
experienced the pleasure of

turning off our Internet during
class, and leaving it

off and listening to
what it is that's

being said by our professor.

And those of us who have had
the great pleasure of doing

the second, says Plato, have
recognized that that pleasure

is a greater form of
pleasure than the

pleasure of Angry Birds.

I'll leave it to those of you
who have experienced both to

assess that argument.

That's the first argument that
he makes in book nine.

The second argument is actually
a very interesting

argument, and one for which
full understanding would

require my going through the
allegory of the cave, which

I'm not going to do right now.

But suffice to say that it is
part of the Republic, and part

of Plato's philosophy in
general, to say that the kinds

of earthly pleasures that we
experience in interacting with

objects are, in fact, a certain

kind of unreal pleasure.

They aren't interacting with
that which is most real.

What is most real, says Plato,
are not the approximations of

circles that we encounter when
we use the PowerPoint Draw

program to make the snowman
in the slide.

They are the mathematical
ideals of circles.

The true nature of wisdom, for
example, is not the wisdom

that we encounter in the
individuals around us, so

that's wonderful, but rather the
form of wisdom, of which

all of these instances
are simply imitation.

So, too, with every other
pleasure that we have. So

there's the earthly pleasures,
and then there's a domain of

things with which we
interact which lies

beyond the earthly realm.

I spend a lot of times watching
children's movies,

being the parent
of two of them.

And among the movies that I've
seen recently with my younger

child is Narnia.

And among the movies that I've
seen recently with my older

child is Infection.

And we've also watched The
Matrix, and we've also watched

The Truman Show.

All of these are movies that
make Plato's point.

The gambit in each of these
films is that the reality

which you take to be genuine
and most profound--

this earthly realm, in the case
of Narnia, the experience

that you're having right now, in
the case of The Matrix, and

so on, is, in fact, but a shadow
of that which truly

lies beyond.

And this theme is, in fact, a
central theme of almost every

religious tradition.

That the domain of the secular,
the domain of the

mundane, the domain of the
worldly, is in some sense

unreal, and there is, in
addition, a domain of the

beyond, interaction with which
provides a kind of good that

is so immeasurably better than
the good of interacting with

the world, that there's almost
no comparison between them.

And Plato's Socrates, when he
says, the person with the

well-regulated soul spends his
or her time contemplating the

form is making exactly the same
kind of claim that, for

example, a religious Christian
would make in saying that in

giving up the earthly good and
focusing instead on what is

spiritually valuable, one gains
a kind of possibility

for flourishing that is
incomparable to that which you

can get in the earthly domain.

So the second argument around
happiness claims not merely

that the person with the
well-regulated soul has

experienced all the pleasures
and felt subjectively that

this one is the best,
but, in fact, that

that person is correct.

That the greatest form of
pleasures comes from the

well-regulated soul that spends
its time interacting

not with the mundane and
earthly, but with the ideas of

the beyond.

Now, final quote.

One of the ways of bringing home
the point that Socrates

has made is by means
of vivid imagery.

We'll find throughout, in
every single one of the

authors that we read, that
they are trying to make

arguments that appeal to the
various parts of your soul.

I just gave you a bunch of
arguments that ran through

reason, and now we're going to
get an image that's supposed

to stick in your mind, the idea
for which Plato has just

provided argumentation.

Here's how the passage goes.

You read it for your
reading today.

"Can it profit anyone to acquire
gold unjustly if by

doing so, he enslaves the best
part of himself to the most

vicious?" Right?

So the top part of the
snowman to the

bottom part of the snowman.

And here's the analogy.

"If he got the gold by enslaving
his son or daughter

to savage or evil men, it
wouldn't profit him, no matter

how much gold he got." Right?

If I tell you, you can have all
the money in the world,

all you have to do is sell your
brother or sister into

slavery, I assume that that
trade-off wouldn't be

appealing to most of you, and
those of you to whom it would

be, there are actually courses
on peer relations over in the

psychology department.

"It wouldn't profit him, no
matter how much gold he got.

How, then, could he fail to be
wretched if he pitilessly

enslaves the most divine part
of himself to the most

polluted one?"

So the idea is this.

When you steal, when you murder,
when you act in ways

that let the lower part of your
soul do what the higher

part of your soul tells you
shouldn't, you're exactly like

the person who has these
ill-gotten gains.

Just as it's not a good way to
make money to sell your son or

daughter into slavery, so, too,
Socrates suggests, it's

not a good way to make money
to sell the higher part of

your soul into slavery.

To enslave it to your passions
and to your appetites.

Now, this idea that we can take
some of the common wisdom

about the nature of happiness,
but recognize that it captures

only part of the truth, is one
of the things, one of the many

things, that's going on in the
passages from Jonathan Haidt

that I had you read for today.

So we read two chapters
for today.

One was required, chapter
five, which was about

contemporary theories
of happiness.

The second, which I recommend
to you was the

chapter about virtues.

I want to talk about the first
of those chapters, the

happiness chapter.

So we just heard that Plato
points out, or argues, or

contends, through this long
book, that human flourishing

comes not from material wealth
and physical goods, but rather

from something that it might
not occur to you was the

source of flourishing:
reflection and wisdom.

And the arguments that he makes
there make use of the

resources of the tradition
of which he's a part.

They're set in an ancient Greek
context, and they use

the argumentative tools
of philosophy.

In a similar way, the discussion
that Jonathan Haidt

provides in chapter five tries
to do this that is similar to

Plato, colon: It tries to show
that there's some truth in

common pictures of what
happiness amounts to, but that

they haven't gotten the
whole story right.

And it does so in part by using
the strategy which I

described to you earlier.

It takes what the common
picture looks like, it

provides a more profound
analysis of it, and it shows

that those pick out roughly
the same class of things.

And Haidt, in particular, in
that chapter, presents us with

two claims. The first
is one that he calls

the progress principle.

The discovery--for which there
seems to be pretty good both

behavioral and neuroscientific
evidence, both within the

domain of American culture and
cross-culturally--that most of

our pleasure comes not from
the achievement of a goal,

though there is some pleasure
that comes from that, but from

the process of achieving
that goal.

And the second--which hearkens
back to the material that we

read last week from Daniel
Kahneman, and the day before

that from Jonathan Evans--that
because we are more sensitive

to changes in good than to
absolute levels of good, more

of something doesn't always
make us happier.

More of something tends to make
us used to that something

and desirous of the change which
comes with having even

more of that.

The next slide is going to ask
you to have your clickers, so

if you can take them out,
we'll turn to them.

It's not an interesting
slide, I just ask you

to have your clickers.

So this gives rise to something
which is sometimes

called the hedonic treadmill.

The hedonic treadmill is the
idea that in order to maintain

the same amount of happiness,
if it's based on material

goods, requires us to run to
stay in the same place.

And the psychological principles
which underlie the

adaptation principle are exactly
the principles that

governed the cases that Kahneman
was describing.

That we are, as he showed in the
visual system, enormously

sensitive to contrast,
and extremely

bad at absolute judgment.

And we'll come back to that
principle when we read the

Cass Sunstein paper in the
section in ethics.

OK.

So my question, polling is open,
is "Are you ready to

move on?" Press one if: "Yes,
I can't wait for Aristotle."

Press two if: "No, you have
a question about Plato or

Haidt."

OK.

So this is just to like
re-engage you in case you

zoned out, because I've been
jabbering, and the clickers

are supposed to keep
you talking.

OK.

We have--

oh, shoot.

This clock was supposed to
start automatically; we

already have 118 of you.

OK.

So if you are somebody--

can we jump this, or not?

Oh!

That was worse.

OK.

I'm not going to touch this.

So if you are somebody who was
in category two, and you have

a question about Plato or Haidt
that you would like to

ask now, please do it before
we discover how

rare a being you are.

Or perhaps how common.

All right.

No questions?

Question.

STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE]

PROFESSOR: You don't really
understand extensional

equivalents.

Yes.

OK.

So that is a philosopher's
term.

Let's see how rare you
are, and then I'll--

ah, OK.

So though you are in the 9%, I
will nonetheless answer your

question for you.

So two characterizations are
extensionally equivalent if

they pick out the same set
of things in the world.

So if I say: I'm interested in
picking out all geometrical

figures that have four corners
that are equally spaced from

one another, and you say, I'm
interested in picking out all

geometrical figures that have
four sides that are of equal

length and at right angles to
one another, you're picking

out squares and I'm picking out
squares, even though we

gave different descriptions
of what we're picking out.

If I'm picking out all female
siblings, and you're picking

out all sisters, we're picking
out the same class of things,

even though we're using
different descriptions.

OK.

So it's a democracy.

Plato doesn't think that's the
best form of government, but

here we are.

We're going to move on.

All right.

Aristotle.

So at the very least, right,
you're taking a philosophy

class, you deserve to have this
picture explained to you.

Since you see it on every poster
on campus. "Come to the

writing center!" I don't know
why they put Plato and

Aristotle on the "Come to the
writing center," but I might

as well tell you what's going
on in this picture.

So this picture is a famous
painting by the great

Renaissance painter, Raphael.

It's called The School
of Athens.

Many of the figures within
the larger painting

represent his friends.

You can go and see this in the
Vatican, if you're interested.

In the center of that painting,
famously, are Plato,

standing right here,
and Aristotle,

standing right here.

Plato is holding in his hand,
you can almost read it, a book

called the Timaeus, which is a
book of cosmology, and he's

pointing upward, many say
because he's pointing to the

realm of the forms.

Aristotle, by contrast, is
holding in his hand the

Ethics, the book that we're
reading, right?

The Nicomachean Ethics,
there it is.

You have a book that's on
the wall of the Vatican.

That's so exciting.

You have a $6 paperback
copy, but still.

You have, in some
ways, the book.

And Aristotle's hand is here
for one of two reasons.

Either because he's pointing to
the earthly domain as part

of his denial of the Platonic
picture of forms, or because

he's talking about the doctrine
of the mean, about

which all of you know a great
deal, because it's what we

read for today.

OK.

So next time you see this
picture, at least you'll know

who these two characters are:
Plato and Aristotle.

Aristotle, as you know, was
a student of Plato's.

And the text that we read for
today is, to my mind, one of

the most profound works of
psychology written in the last

2500 years.

It is, however, miserably
difficult to read, in part

because, though Aristotle wrote
dialogues, most of those

dialogues were lost. And what
we have here are basically

Aristotle's lecture notes.

You notice that on one of the
pages he says, "and now we'll

go and look at the
chart." Right?

He had--like--some papyrus
version of

these PowerPoint slides.

I don't know if they were
animated with--like--people

who walked back and forth.

But what we have here are
notes of a kind that are

rather difficult to read.

So because this is, in many
ways, my favorite book in the

whole world, much of what's
going to go on in the next

slide is that I'm just going to
give you some quotes from

it, and tell you what's
going on in the text.

So this is Aristotle's Ethics.

If Plato is thirty seconds,
this is going to

take sixty or so.

Let me tell you what's
going on.

So the discussion that we read
starts at the beginning of

book one, with an argument
that's sometimes called, the

argument in favor of the summum
bonum --you don't have

to write it down, which is why
I didn't put it on the

slide--sometimes called
the highest good.

That which is pursued
for its own sake.

And the argument here is
basically what we might call a

regress argument.

It's like the intrinsic/
instrumental value argument

that we heard in Plato.

The idea is that every good,
that is, everything that you

seek, is pursued either for
itself, or for the sake of

something else.

And if it's pursued for the
sake of something else, it

must bottom out or talk up.

Summum bonum, the
highest good, it

must top up in something.

And so the inquiry that we
engage in when we do what

Aristotle calls political
science--which is not

political science like in the
Poli Sci department--it's

political science in the sense
of the study of human beings

as political, that is,
social animals.

So the study of ourselves as
socially embedded creatures is

the study of what is the highest
good for the human.

And the highest good for the
human being, says Aristotle,

is--both in the minds of the
common man, that is, both in

sort of what you would read in
the equivalent of the mass

media in ancient Greece,
and in the mind of the

educated--what was called
eudaemonia or flourishing,

sometimes translated
as happiness.

That's what everybody
is going for.

So that's the beginning of
the passages that we

read from book one.

There's the question,
what's the thing

that everybody's after?

And the answer is, everybody's
after the same thing.

They're after happiness,
flourishing, eudaimonia.

So the next question is this.

What sort of happiness?

What is it that we mean when we
set out to seek happiness?

And here Aristotle runs through
this inventory of

answers that have
been provided.

And you'll notice, good student
that he is of Plato's,

that this taxonomy here is going
to look pretty familiar.

If it's the pleasures of
gratification, that is, the

pleasures that Plato
would call the

pleasures of appetite?

"No," says Aristotle, and he
gives some reasons for that.

Is it the pleasures of honor,
what Plato would call the

pleasures of spirit?

"No," says Aristotle, and he
gives some reasons for it.

Is it, then, the pleasures of
reflection, the things which

come from reason?

"Yes!" Says Aristotle.

And now he goes on to give
some reasons for it.

But the reasons that he gives
for it look different from the

reasons that Plato gave. Because
Aristotle rejects

Plato's idea of the forms.
Aristotle is not looking to a

domain beyond to defend
his view.

He's looking to a domain within
to defend his view.

It's 11:17.

I'm going to do one more slide,
and then we'll finish

up with Aristotle
next lecture.

So the question is, if you can't
turn to the form as your

justification for reason--

remember, Plato has this
explanation: "Why

is reason so good?

It lets you connect to a domain
beyond yourselves."

Aristotle can't give
that answer.

What, then, makes
reason so good?

Well, here's the argument.

Every object in the world,
he says, has a function.

The function of a knife
is to cut well.

The function of a paperweight
is to hold down papers.

The function of a laser pointer
is to direct attention

towards the slide, and so on.

And a good one of those things
is one which does

its function well.

Its function is that which set
it apart from other entities.

So good paperweights are things
that are heavy, and bad

paperweights are things that are
light, or round, so that

they roll off.

Or invisible, so that
you can't find them.

Or too heavy to move, so that
you can't pick them up off

your paper.

So when something has a
function, a good version of

that thing has manifest in
itself that which allows that

object to perform its function
especially well.

Well, what's the function
of human beings?

Well, to answer that question,
we have to answer the question

what is special about
human beings?

What distinguishes us from
plants, which take in

nutrition, and from animals,
which are capable of

locomotion and feeling
sensation?

What distinguishes us from
those beings is reason.

So just as knives are great when
they cut well, humans are

great when they do that special
human thing especially

well when they reason well.

"Reason is," he writes at 1098,
"the special function of

a human being." What, then,
is the human good?

Well, the good for a knife
is to be most manifestly

knife-like, right?

I mean, all those magic swords
that you get in plays and

movies and books?

What makes them good swords?

That they're especially able to
slay your enemies, right?

That's why the swords
are good swords.

So what makes you the Sword of
Lancelot of human beings?

It's that your soul is
structured in such a way that

you do what is best and
most completely

and distinctly human.

The good human being is the one
that does the human stuff

best of all, and the human
stuff turns out to be

reasoning and acting in
accord with virtue.

So the question that we'll turn
to at the beginning of

next lecture--

and you're all in a position
to read the punchline, in

fact, you should have read
the punchline for today--

is what does the virtue look
like that makes us distinctly

and most excellently human,
and how is it cultivated?

So for Thursday, we
are reading three

really fantastic things.

We're reading selections from
The Iliad, and I've given you

two choices of ways
to do that.

Pleas look at the
reading guide.

You can either read all of book
one or you can look at

the context of each of the
passages that Jonathan Shay

gives us, and I've given you
instructions how to do that.

We're reading Jonathan Shay's
incredible book, Achilles in

Vietnam, and we're also reading
Stanley Milgram's

famous 1963 "Behavioral Study
of Obedience" paper.

So we'll start with our
Aristotle, and then we'll move

on to our discussions
of those three.