Arthur Brooks’ Ultimate Philosophy Masterclass (PT. 2)

What did Epicurus, Buddha, and Viktor Frankl understand about meaning that most people never question? In Part 2 of this masterclass, bestselling author and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks joins Ryan to break down Epicureanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and other schools of thought, revealing what each one gets right (and wrong) about happiness, meaning, and how to actually live. Arthur Brooks is a bestselling author, Harvard professor, and one of the world’s leading voices on happiness, meaning, and human flourishing. Through his books, columns, and teaching, Brooks helps people build more meaningful, satisfying lives grounded in both philosophy and modern research. 👉 Preorder Arthur Brooks’ NEW book The Meaning of Your Life https://hub.arthurbrooks.com/meaning-of-your-life-event-vip-registration 📚 Grab copies of Arthur Brooks’ books Strength to Strength https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/from-strength-to-strength-finding-success-happiness-and-deep-purpose-in-the-second-half-of-life?_pos=2&_sid=82dd00f9c&_ss=r and Build the Life You Want https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/build-the-life-you-want?variant=44583825703165 Follow Arthur on Instagram @ArthurCBrooks https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/, YouTube @DrArthurBrooks https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A, and X @ArthurBrooks https://x.com/arthurbrooks 🎙️ AD-FREE | Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES | Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. The basic premise of Stoic philosophy to me is life is gonna kick you around. It's gonna kick your ass. It's gonna go sideways. And you gotta be able to handle that. You gotta be able to not be broken by that. And then, there's the most important part. You gotta be able to turn it into something. You gotta find meaning and purpose in it. You gotta be able to rise to that challenge and then use that challenge to become better than you would have had it never happened. That's actually something I talked to David Kessler about a few years ago. He's an expert on grief. He worked with Dr. Kugler Ross on the stages of grieving. And he adds a new step, a sixth step, which is about how do you find meaning from grief and loss?

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Let me play a little chunk of what, you know, I talked about.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  There's some disconnection that I've heard over the years from people in grief. And as I started to talk about it, it became so apparent. Everyone was like, David, there's no meaning in a child's death. There's no meaning in a murder. There's no meaning in a betrayal, in a car wreck, in a divorce, in a pandemic. And I realized, oh, the meaning isn't in the horrible thing.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  The meaning is in us. It's what we do afterwards.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  And that is precisely what Arthur Brooks and I talked about in today's episode as well. How you transform suffering into meaning. We did kind of a masterclass on all the different philosophical schools, the Stoics, the Buddhists, Catholicism, Verstoesism, Arthur's own inner conflicts and more. I think you're really gonna like this episode. If you don't know who Arthur Brooks is, well, you should. He is a social scientist, one of the world's leading authorities on human happiness. He's a professor at Harvard, columnist with The Free Press, formerly of The Atlantic, host of the podcast Office Hours, he's a contributor to CBS and a wonderful speaker. He did a book with Oprah called Build the Life You Want, did the bestselling book From Strength to Strength, and a book called Love Your Enemies. All of those are available at the Painted Porch.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  But let's just get into it with Arthur Brooks. Here is part two of our masterclass on philosophy.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  All right. So give me, I think we can skip the Stoics. Does it get enough of that here?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  They can't get enough here. They can't get enough.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Tell me about Epicurus.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Epicurus, well, of course, who is way before Epictetus.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  I mean, he's what, 250 years before?

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Greek Roman.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Epicurus predates a lot of this stuff. And Epicurus, who is completely misunderstood today. Because it's the whole idea of eugdaimonia versus hedonia.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Right. And hedonia, which is hedonist and hedonic, and all these words come from it, as if it's the pursuit of unbridled pleasure. That's actually not right in a bunch of different ways. Pleasure is a limbic phenomenon that occurs in the limbic system, an ancient console of tissue that's up to 40 million years old, predates Homo sapiens. That's what produces your emotions, negative and positive, which you need to survive and thrive, to be sure. If you hit the lever of pleasure over and over and over again, you're tapping the limbic system. And you're being managed by those pleasures. That's the reason that, you know, your friends from high school that wanted to feel good all the time are still living in their mom's basements. Because they couldn't make anything of their lives, because they were being managed by their limbic systems.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Delayed gratification is that other part.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's among other things. I mean, the whole idea of, that we're talking about here is, is the other part.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  So that's how we think of, of hedonism. That's not Epicurus. So Epicurus talked about enjoyment, not pleasure.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Pleasure and enjoyment are related, but pleasure is a component part of enjoyment. Enjoyment is, is pleasure plus people plus memory. And it moves the experience into the prefrontal cortex, executive centers of the brain, where you can manage your pleasures.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  And you can make permanent memories. And so doing, that's why it's a component part of happiness, enjoyment. And so if you're doing something that's addictive, and you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  That's the whole idea. And, and that's really important to Epicurus, because Epicurus is all about enjoyment, which means he's surrounding himself with people. And they were talking about pleasant, non-conflictive, big ideas. And living in extremely deep moral existence. This was not like a constant drunken orgy that was going on.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  And I do think the best Stoics had a strong Epicurean streak.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Right. And we, the first person who, I mean, Epictetus trashed Epicurus, right? And, and just, it was a complete, it had nothing to do with what, it was just using him as a foil.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  When I think Epictetus having such a life filled with profound suffering, like first 30 years of his life, he's a slave.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  I think there's probably something about him, just at a human level, that's like, fuck that guy.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  That guy, rich guy. That rich guy in his commune with his weird cult.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, he doesn't know anything about, you know, he didn't, he didn't have to, nobody broke his leg for sadistic pleasure.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  You know, Epicurus never had to see Nero's Court.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  You know, like, there's, he probably looked at Epicurus the way some of us look at an academic philosopher or a guru or something. You don't live in the real world.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Or Mar-a-Lago.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, it's something where like, really?

• 5:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  You know, and so, so for sure, but that's not what Epicurus was all about. Epicurus, it was a very, I mean, libertines, you know, the Berkeley generation of 68, they couldn't have lived with Epicurus.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  No.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  They wouldn't have been able to put up with the rules.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Because the whole, Epicurus' whole idea is if you're actually going to live in a state of semi-permanent enjoyment, you better not reduce it to pleasure.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  You better not reduce it to pleasure. And that's a really important distinction. And so what we can learn from him today is about this pillar of happiness. Is Epicurean enjoyment, as opposed to Epicurean pleasure, is one of the best ways that you can become happier. It's incomplete.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Indeed, it's incomplete. That's why the Stoics are better on the meaning pillar of happiness. The moderns are better on the satisfaction part, and the Epicureans are really, really good on the enjoyment part.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  No, and that's why I say you fuse them together and you get something really powerful. Cause there, there's actually something pretty Spartan about Epicurus, right? He's like, you know, there's a joke about the Spartans that hunger is the best flavor.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  You know, like, and, and there's something about, for him, he reduces his needs down pretty low. And then he's like, this is great. Everything's awesome.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  I don't have to reach for anything. I don't have to go without anything.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  It's all very accessible and practical and realistic.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  He's not saying pleasure is, is, you know, flying in a new Gulf Stream to have lunch in Paris. He's- He's saying, you know, this small pot of cheese is miraculous. If you think about how it was made and, and if you savor every bite of it.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  That's right. And, and the whole, the whole idea is, I mean, on the satisfaction pillar, your animal impulse tells you that it's, it's about what you have.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  And having more, which is the Gulf Stream, et cetera. Which leads to ruin, absolute personal, talking of anything else, just personal ruin, because you're gonna ruin it up. It's actually better described as what you, what you have divided by what you want.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  And the denominator is more important because a very efficient way to get greater satisfaction in your life is by decreasing the denominator by wanting less. And so this epicurean notion of wanting less, wanting less, wanting less, wanting less, and watching your satisfaction rise and rise and rise, or enjoyment in this particular case. But of course asymptotically it doesn't work.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  You can't go to wanting nothing.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Because if you want nothing, well, I mean, wanting for nothing, I suppose, that's a heaven, I guess.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Which is not what he was trying to create.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  I just think, like, I think about his garden and the simplicity and the beauty.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  And the long evenings in it. It's a pretty simple thing.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  What it is, is really in modern thinking and in Buddhist thinking, but really in modern thinking, it's really a lot about mindfulness.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  And that mindfulness is a very hard thing to do because the human brain, the prefrontal cortex is designed for you to time travel.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Retrospectively, prospectively, and mindfully. Those are the three time zones that are actually in your head all the time. Most people spend the least amount of their time here now.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  That they don't spend their time mindfully. So Marty Seligman, you know, my great mentor in the, in the positive psychology business of happiness, he says that we shouldn't be called, we shouldn't be called homo sapiens. We should be called homo prospectus because we live in the future. 20 to 50% of your cycles on average are living in the future. If you're an entrepreneur or a striver, like the whole audience for this show, it's more like 80% of your time is, and, and you're missing your life as the whole. As epicurus' point is, don't miss your life.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  He's saying, actually, this is better than the vacation that you are pining for.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  This present moment.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Don't build castles in the sky.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Don't do. That and don't be wishing that you could go backwards in time. Don't be enjoying your memories and don't be enjoying your fantasies. Enjoy this now.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  And that's super hard to do. As a matter of fact, there's all kinds of evidence that that our brain isn't even designed to do that very well. You know, when you put people in FMRI machines and you say, think about nothing. Then you turn on the default mode network instead of structures in your brain. You'll start thinking about the future.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Automatically.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  Well, there's a famous letter that Epicurus writes where it goes like on this, the happiest day of my life. The day of my death. And that's what the letter opens with like, he's trying to, he's, he's saying, and again, for people who think that Epicurianism is hedonism. He's trying to say you can be happy on the day that you die.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  So it's definitely not related to what you have. And it's not because he has some delicious last meal or something. He's just saying, this is the day that I have now, so it's the happiest day of my life.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  I'm alive right now.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  And being alive right now is awesome.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  That's the whole thing and good, we should all try to do that more. I'm not very good at that. Are you?

• 10:01Speaker 00

  No. All right. So you mentioned the Buddhist, maybe let's.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  We're going back in time a little bit.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Let's go back and.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Buddha was a contemporary of Socrates.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  So that was about 500 B.C. And this is of course, a notion that this, this came out of the, the Vedic and Hindu traditions. And so Gautama, Prince Gautama, Siddhartha, Buddhist prince, Hindu prince, completely sheltered from ordinary life, very, very rich. Wonder what's outside the walls of my castle. Goes outside and he sees all this suffering for the very first time in his life and questions everything that he's ever been taught. This is, you know, approximately 500 B.C. Decides to, you know, figure it out on his own, becomes a complete ascetic, right? Just like the mendicant.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Shaves his head.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Everything. It doesn't eat anything, is starving, miserable, the whole thing. And he realizes that that in itself is a form of attachment.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  That asceticism is a form of attachment. And under the Bodhi tree where he's sitting, which is still, you know, famous, famous, you know, metaphor for all kinds of enlightenment that we would get. He figures out the eightfold path of Buddhism, but fundamentally that philosophy is based on these four noble truths. The first is that life is, this is dukkha in Sanskrit. Life is suffering. That's actually not a good translation. It should be, and you'll appreciate this as a Stoic. Life is dissatisfaction. That's what it really should be, because it is. It's not satisfying. It's not the way you want it to be. And there's a reason for that. We're aspirational creatures, which is why we're so unhappy and we're so successful. Yeah. Because we're in the hunt. Okay, so this is animal impulse versus moral aspiration.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Okay, the second noble truth is that the source of our dissatisfaction is, is, is attachment. Attachment to worldly things. The third noble truth is that the secret to actually breaking free from this dissatisfaction is detachment from these things. And the fourth, and you're like, okay, okay, okay, okay. And then the fourth noble truth is the eightfold path of Buddhism, which is the rest of your life and a whole bunch of other lives. Yeah. It's like, ah. Is what it comes down to, which is why Buddhism is hard. It's a really, really hard thing. But this sets in motion this whole idea that, and it's a fundamentally non-theistic religion, whereas Hinduism that it sprang from is, is profoundly theistic.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  And at its core, and this, what people really understand of Hinduism, it's not a thing. It's a family of related religions in the Indian, some, largely in the Indian subcontinent with a few other outposts like Bali. That, that, that where they're related, but there are very non-trivial differences between the variants of it. Fundamentally, at its most esoteric forms, it's, it's profoundly monotheistic. And it's very much like Christianity insofar as that you have Brahman, which is the godhead, has Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, which are the three manifestations, three in one, kind of a trinity. And then a whole bunch of other avatars and manifestations of God. The Buddhists are real different than that. Really come out of a very different tradition than that.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  And that's why Christianity is much closer to Hinduism than it is to Buddhism. We think of the karmic religions as kind of all the same. Yeah. Big differences, as it turns out. And Buddhism took over almost the whole subcontinent for hundreds of years. Right. And then there was a reconquista where Hinduism came back. And the reason that this India subcontinent is largely Hindu today is because of the claim, the, the argument based on sort of evangelists that were going through the countryside saying, don't you want God? Yeah. You want God, don't you? Don't you want to have a relationship with God who loves you, God who created you? And people like, Yeah, I want that.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  Again, that convergent evolution, that there is some part of the human condition that wants that, or needs it.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and anthropologists have studied this whole, and again, for those who are Hindus, who are like, you know, throwing stuff at the, throwing stuff at the laptop right now, sorry, I mean, this is a-

• 13:50Speaker 00

  This is the religious studies interpretation.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, this is, you know, this is a Catholic who spent the last 12 years talking and studying with the Dalai Lama, okay, so which is appropriate humility, you know, on this, but this is a really interesting thing because, you know, today, we lump the karmic religions together and the Abrahamic religions together, but in this case, Buddhism is super different than the Abrahamic religions, and especially different than Christianity, the goal of which is to live forever.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  The Buddhist, you know, goal and its essence is to break out of the cycle of birth and rebirth, which, because life is suffering, and stay dead, man.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, to embrace the impermanence of it all. So, the Bhagavad Gita is the Hindu, is a Hindu-

• 14:34Speaker 02

  It's one of the Hindu holy books, and that's the epic adventure of Lord Krishna, who's an avatar of Vishnu, the god Vishnu.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  What do you think that teaches us?

• 14:43Speaker 02

  So, a lot, because it's this huge-

• 14:46Speaker 00

  It's like the Odyssey.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  It's like the Odyssey, basically, and what it is, is that it's supposed to teach you about life itself, is the experiences of this guy who is an avatar, who has got heavenly side, it's sort of kind of a, what is it, the homeostatic union of metaphysical and physical in this guy, in this Lord Krishna, and fundamentally, it's about him living this earthly existence, but a heavenly, with a heavenly will, and the way I read it, and again, with appropriate humility, is that this is an opportunity for everybody to understand that they're spiritual beings living a, living a physical existence, that you are too.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  You would say in Christianity, there's a Christ-likeness to Ryan, and that when to understand the metaphysical essence of who you are, not to be Gnostic, not to say that the body falls away because it's unimportant, on the contrary, it's the fusing of these two things that's the essence of life itself, and that you can have a profoundly metaphysical, spiritual, transcendent existence in your ordinary life of like going into battle and marrying a girl and having your kids and paying your bills and all that.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  That each one is, each one of us is kind of a microcosm of this larger spiritual-

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so people see themselves in Lord Krishna.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  That's, that's, they kind of see, they see themselves in Ulysses.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  They see themselves, that's the whole point of a lot of these great epic-

• 16:01Speaker 00

  It's the hero, it's the hero's journey, but from India.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is. It really is. And that's because there's nothing new under the sun.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  But oh, back to the point that you were making a minute ago, though, that anthropologists have found that there are no civilizations ever found that that are not religious. That that and that what that suggests is that the humans are built to worship. Humans are built to, it doesn't mean every single person's religious. Because there's a ton of different experiences and different, I mean, just physical differences between people, to be sure. And the psychology being the biology, you might not have a very, you know, strong religious tendency. You might or might not.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  And and different people do. But the whole point is, in the main, humans are made to worship. That's the, that's a very, very strong hypothesis.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  It's interesting how easy it is to do the kind of religious studies interpretation of all the religions by your own. You know, you can be like, this is what they taught. This is where they lived. This is how it evolved. This is what it meant. This is the technology in it. Like, this is why it worked. But it was fascinating to me in in Athens this summer. You're standing at the painted porch of Stoic Pukile, where Stoicism comes, and you go, wait, wait, so Saint Paul came here, met with the Stoics. And then they walked up together next to the Acropolis. And he gave the one of the most famous speeches in all of Christianity.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  And when you just read the the Christian version, you're like, this is the Christian, you're not thinking that all these faiths and ideas are are intermixing with each other and walking the earth, like Jesus and Seneca are alive in the same time in the Roman Empire.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Right, for sure.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  They're both teaching philosophical teachings. One, we come to call a religion, and the other stays philosophy. But what do you think philosophically that the broad strokes Christian tradition can teach us?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  And that's harder for me because I'm in the middle of it.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  That's what I mean.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  So that's something like I go to mass literally every day. And so, yeah, so that's, and so for me, that's, you're Stoic, I'm a Catholic.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I also grew up Catholic.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So you've got some of that wiring.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  But I think that's why Stoicism lands with them, because they have this. Same cardinal virtue.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, for sure. But also, it's worth pointing out that one of the reasons, I mean, Catholicism, Christianity is unbelievably imperialistic.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  It's just, give me that. That's good. I'll take it.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  You know, I like it. I like.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Oh, you mean imperialistic in that they just take from,

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  from anything and then absorb it and they go, we invented this.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  It's sort of the America of religions.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  They like the Columbus thing.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a melting pot and, and, which is not to say that it's not true. On the contrary, I actually believe, I, I really, really believe it as a person. But I recognize that, that the best way for you to understand it, even from the inside, is by understanding the influences from the outside.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  That's a really important thing to do. And, and even in the ancient world, by the way, there was a lot of eastern philosophy that was worming its way into it. Because there were a lot of people coming from all over the place. I mean, you look at what in the Acts of the Apostles, what was going on in early Christianity? And they talk about people meeting from all over the world.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And so the idea that somehow because of the internet, we're able to see what's going on. No, no, no, then too.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, we think of the Romans as being like blonde with blue eyes or something, you know, and it's like.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Denmark or something, right?

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, no, no, there's profoundly influenced by Carthage and Turkey and, you know, like, I mean, the Romans land, Roman explorers land in China during Marcus Aurelius's reign.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  And so you're like, this is, they're all intermingling.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  But anyways, what's the, the main Christian philosophical truth that we?

• 19:32Speaker 02

  So the, the Christian philosophical, well, truth, the advance.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  As far as I see it. Um, and again, this is where my humility has to hit its apogee because, you know, I'm, I'll, I'll be learning this for the rest of my life. And my wife's a theologian, by the way. So, I mean, I'm getting, I'm getting it, you know, mainlining it at home all the time. So Christianity is purely about the space of moral aspiration, right? It doesn't deny that there is animal impulse. It doesn't say that animal impulse is evil. But it's all about getting as far into being the person that you're meant to be, which is in the image of God as you possibly can. And it's a worked out version of the entire method.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Of actually how to do that. And so often, you know, people ask, who is it? What, at its essence, what is it? Your animal impulse for you to live the best possible life is sort of three principles.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  And the three principles are, um, uh, love things, use people and worship yourself. That's animal impulse. And the reason is because stuff out there is just like, I want, I want a bigger cave. I want more animal skins. I want more buffalo jerky.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  More people.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  In the ancient environment, we were, we lived in bands of 30 to 50 individuals.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  We owned slaves and conquered.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  But, but even before that, I mean, in our environment. And so, so even in the time of, you know, the ancient philosophers, they were still, that was a graft from the brain that had, the human brain that had been evolved 250,000 years ago.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Which hasn't changed very much.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  And we've had the more or less the same intelligence for the past, since the beginning of Pleistocene.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  About a quarter million years ago. And so we're designed to be a kin-based hierarchical species and we want to rise in that. And that means that other people are there for our pleasure and advancement.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  That's how we see other individuals. And now, of course, we bond to them as kin and we have, you know, all this biochemistry that makes us, you know, you see your kids and oxytocin goes, right, et cetera. But fundamentally, your people are there for your pleasure and use.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  And then you're the center of everything because, you know, the, the prefrontal cortex has got you in the psychodrama, which in the psychodrama is, you know, it's Ryan's lunch and Ryan's money and Ryan's podcast and Ryan's, and bookstore and Ryan, Ryan, it's so boring.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  And so the result is the, the animal, the world of animal impulse, it makes you animal successful and utterly.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Miserable. And God, according to the Catholic Church, according to the Christian religion, can set you free to your moral, to your moral aspirations. And that has a different formula.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  It's like, this is kind of the transition from Old Testament to New Testament, right? Like, like, right? It's like clans and families and people doing fucked up stuff to each other. Then Jesus and everything after Jesus is, is about this moral aspiration.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yes. The new covenant, which is that, you know, today I give you a new teaching.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Matthew 544, the Sermon of the Mount sums it up, right?

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  And, well, I mean, the summary is the Shema, which is Deuteronomy. Five, you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your means. In the original translation, that means everything you got.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  You're gonna love the God, you're the Lord. And then Jesus says, and you'll love your neighbor as yourself.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Well, that's what I was gonna say. Do Hillel's summary, he's asked to, you know, to define Christianity while standing on one leg. And he says, uh, love thy neighbor as thyself. All the rest is commentary.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  You feel like that's a fair summary?

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Except the Shema is incredibly important, which is the love God. That, I mean, okay, love thy God. No, no, love God. And that's huge because everything in that is about faith.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Like somebody you can't see with whom you have apparently one sided conversations, a lot of cumbersome rules, love. No, no, no. Love him. And that's really important. Why? Because Aquinas in 1265, defined love as to will the good of the other as other notwithstanding your feelings. Which is super, but very stoic, very stoic. Love to love is to will the good of other people. Whether you feel it or not, because it's not a feeling.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  It's an action?

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an action. It's an action. It's a decision. It's a commitment.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  It's a, and that's huge. And that's really, really central to Christianity. And that really gets to the, the Christian formulation of a good life, which is the formula, which is different. It, remember, it's like, love things, use people, worship yourself.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  It's kind of changed the verbs and nouns around. Uh, use things.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, abundance. Beautiful.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  Dominion over the.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But it's just, it's, it's great.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  It's great. Uh, love people, love people. Because that's what we're made to do is to, that's what we were just talking about.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  And worship the Lord.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  And worship God. Because only God is made for worship.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  And, and once, and that's the, that's the Christian teaching for the life that we want to live, which is the life of the people we're supposed to be. That was sort of that simple formula.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Well, and it's interesting that the, that the Romans clash with the Christians so much. And you realize what a radically transgressive idea Jesus is bringing into the world by saying, love thy neighbor as thyself. Good Samaritan, care, basically care about.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Love your enemies.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Right. But care about the. People that the Roman Empire uses up.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  And smashes and destroys when they get in it's like when you read about the Roman Empire, as fascinating as it is, you go, unless you're the emperor or a senator or one of the families, it's a shitty place to be.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  And so what, what, what, what, what the Christian sort of invention is that, no, no, no, it's actually, you know, the meek shall inherit the earth. It's the little guy that actually matters. That's who this is all about. That's who you have to care about.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Roman philosophy of might makes right is then is articulated again, again, and again, and again, throughout history, most notably Nietzsche. And then Ayn Rand. I mean, it comes back and it comes back and it comes back. And the defense against that is always Christianity. Christianity is always the defense. No, no, no, no, no, no. Read it again. Read it again. The truth of the matter is this, you know, the whole concept of the Enlightenment, as problematic as it is for Christianity, comes from the idea that if you, and again, this is Matthew 544 in the Sermon on the Mount where he says this like, Jesus says this crazy thing. He says, you have heard that you should hate your enemies and love your friends. Today I give you a new teaching. Love your enemies

• 25:43Speaker 02

  and pray for those who persecute you. The most transgressive teaching of all time, which is use things, love people, worship God. It's, it's the gospel of love, notwithstanding your feelings is what it comes down to. This Stoic principle that comes through the, you know, this, the metaphysics of the Stoic principles, what it comes through.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  It's like fight against that lower part of your nature to aspire to the Christlike part of your nature.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  That's what you want to do. And that will give you the best life. That will give everybody the best life. That's who you're supposed to be. That's how you get to heaven and heaven starts here is the whole way. But by the way, this changed back to philosophy. You know, the idea in, in ancient Roman times and most of history forever is that might makes right. That if you want, there are people who disagree. Coercion is the only tool. Negotiation and persuasion come from that idea that you can love your enemy. Sure.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Whether your enemy, yeah, even if they're wrong, even if they do bad things, you're equal in some sense and.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  And you, by the way, if you persuade somebody, it's win-win. If you negotiate with somebody, it's win-win. If you coerce somebody, it's win-lose. We went from a world of win-lose into one that's largely win-win because of this idea.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  The Crusades and religious wars, not with.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Of course, because there's always the exceptions.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Well, that's the human.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Of course. That's the animal impulse that's puncturing its way into the moral aspiration again and again. And it will always be thus.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  We'll do kind of a lightning round with some of these other ones as we wrap up because we've.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Are we almost done? How long we got?

• 27:10Speaker 00

  An hour.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Really? I thought it was like 15 minutes.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  We'll be here for five hours if we do every school. But I think Ayn Rand is interesting. I always have loved Christopher Hitchens, rejoinder to the idea of the virtue of selfishness. And he said, I'm not really sure humans need any help in that department.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  I know.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  And I've always felt that like there's an interesting parallel or contrast between the allegory of the cave, which we were talking about, and Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged. It's like, hey, the little guys are parasites. They're taking from you. They don't appreciate your genius. They don't understand that you know truth. Retreat to your fantasy world where only the smart entrepreneurs and the geniuses hang out. Fuck everybody else. That is the opposite of what Plato was saying you do with enlightenment.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  It's quite, it's quite Nietzschean. It's really quite Nietzschean. There's a version of that in more modern America that I love. It's my favorite philosopher.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Ralph Waldo Emerson.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  I love Emerson.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  You think he's Randian?

• 28:09Speaker 02

  He's like, he's Randian, but not, but not awful. Self-reliance is everybody, everybody should read Self-reliance.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Self-reliance is like a tall glass of cool water on a, on a summer day in Bastrop, Texas.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  It's Stoicism and Christianity mixed together.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  But with a little, little Randianism, a little objectivism in there, right? It's like the sturdy lad.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  From Vermont or New Hampshire.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Who builds it, makes it, farms it, and always lands on his feet like a cat.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  That's a moral superiority as far as Emerson is concerned.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  But the difference between Rand and Emerson is Emerson is that guy.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Right? Although most of his money comes from his dead wife.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  There's that.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  But, but, but he's funding the whole transcendental scene. He's paying for it.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  I know.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  He's generous. He's helping slaves in the Underground Railroad.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  He's a good friend.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  He, he is, he is generous to a fault, right? There, the obligation is there.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  That's why the Rand stuff doesn't do it for me, but Emerson, but here's the problem that I have though. Here's my internal conflict. I'm a Catholic.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  And Emerson's not, man. I mean, Emerson is like a.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  He is maybe.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Well, he's a, he's a heretical Unitarian.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Right? Which, you know, we think of Unitarians today as people who believe in up to one God.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  And, and it's all cool, man, but no, no, no. I mean, Unitarianism was a real, was a real going concern.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  You know, in that part of the 19th century, the 1840s, et cetera. But the rugged individualism, which just speaks to me. I love it. I love it so much.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  That's the best part of what being American is supposed to be.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  That's what it's supposed to be, but the truth of the matter is that it's, it's, it's very, very incomplete. Because we need community. We need people. I believe we need God. We need to transcend ourselves. The only way we can transcend ourselves is to transcend ourselves toward the divine and transcend ourselves toward one another.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  What about nature though?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Well, and.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Emerson would say nature is that form of transcend.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Sort of. I mean, but basically he's an individualism.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  And so I'm always, my, my inner conflict is the fact that I'm, you know, 75%. You know, right on board with, you know, the Pope.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  But there's that 25% of Emerson that's calling me and pulling at me all. And, you know, I have a big, big, a big, strong libertarian streak in me, but it's an Emersonian libertarian streak. That's what it is. It's not that, it's not that kind of mild creepiness that actually comes from the radical. Me only and the weak are cursed.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  If it's liberty fused with a strong sense of personal obligation and virtue, it works.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  If it's, you're free to do whatever you want and fuck these guys, it's a pretty. Vicious place really quickly.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Everybody.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Yes, right. Fuck everybody but me.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  That's a problem.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  It seems to me, and there is a balance in there, and this is actually one of the things that's really great about studying multiple philosophies, which of course you've done, is that you don't, you can live in multiple worlds at the same time and you can understand yourself better. The problem is, and this is the academic problem, is when you go in one particular direction, you're not actually going to be testing any of your ideas.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  As a result of that. And that's how you can get more and more and more and more weird and wrong. And that's a lot of what's happened in academia, these weird exotic ideas of the human person that lead to these fads and panics in American life and ruined universities.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Cancel culture and, you know, radical activism and, you know, the whole anger that actually that we see in a lot of it today has to do with the fact that we're just, we're just not good intellectuals enough.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  So, speaking of a multidisciplinary approach, let's go back in time a little bit. He doesn't get a school attached to him, but I think Montaigne is a.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  I know very little about Montaigne.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  Really?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  I know very, I mean, I've read Montaigne, but I know very little about Montaigne.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  But I think it's interesting of all these guys, he doesn't get a school, but, but has so much to teach us about intellectual humility.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but epistemic humility, that's where that comes from.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  What do I know?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  And that curiosity, I just think it's fascinating. And I have a book in the bookstore, I'll give you that, it's my favorite biography of him. But, but like, the idea of, it's, when you realize he was living in the middle of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation where

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  thousands of people are being burned at the stake for having differing religious beliefs. And he's like, what do I know? And they're discovering the new world and people are like, oh, it's filled with cannibals. And he's like, we draw and quarter people.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  We're not so great. And I think there's something beautifully open-minded and, and yet, based in, very much in the, in the classics in Montaigne that's worth.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every time I read Montaigne, I say, I wish I knew more.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  You know, for sure. And it's funny, because there's a balance there, too. I mean, you can become the cynic who says everything is every, you know, everybody's fat and stupid. Right? But that's not a good way to live either. I mean, it's a good thing to say to actually be able to recognize all the wonderful things that that your culture does well, maybe better than other places, and then want to share it as opposed to being triumphalist about it.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  And then also having an open mind to say there are other things that we can learn and we can be better at at the same time.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Yes. He traveled a lot. And one of the lines about him is that he loved meeting anyone he came across on his travels, except other Frenchmen. Because he didn't need to, he didn't need to meet another, he was French. He didn't need to meet any friend. He wanted to meet people who are different than him.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, that's, that makes sort of makes sense. And, you know, you see that a lot. You see that a lot with people who are really trying to learn about the outside world, that there's almost nothing more annoying, knowing the people from their own hometown. It's like, I don't want to talk about the Seahawks.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  What about Camus?

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So the absurdist school, often distinguished from the existentialists, of course. Camus is super interesting. I mean, Camus, because his medium, he's kind of like Ayn Rand, in the sense that he was a novelist.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  But he's actually good at it. His novels are short and exciting and interesting, and there's no 90-page speeches.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  There's no 90-page speeches. There's, that's, that's absolutely true. Camus is, I mean, it's, so what's, if we read one Camus, we'll read The Myth of Sisyphus, right?

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  That's the one thing to read. I remember trying to read it in eighth grade.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  If we're talking happiness, that's the one we should.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  That's the one to read. And I've written about The Myth of Sisyphus, because there's one key idea in The Myth of Sisyphus that I just, I tried to, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that Camus says, but, and it's basically this. So that everybody knows that something is Sisyphean, is, is an exercise in futility.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  The whole idea, something's futile. He's pushing the boulder up the hill. He almost gets to the top and falls back down because there's, you know, the Greek myth of Sisyphus who's being. Punished for all time by never being able to accomplish his task is the whole thing. And he goes through this and he does a philosophical treatise on this, but here's the last part. The last point that Camus makes. The most important point is what everybody misses because everybody's like, yeah, Sisyphus, that suck. Yeah, life is like that. Life is kind of absurd and dumb, right?

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Yep. You roll it up and it rolls back down.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  And that's just like another day, another day, another day. And but Camus says in the end, one must suppose that Sisyphus was a happy man. Because he had something to do.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  But that's the point.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  That's the point is that he had, he had a purpose. Was it a futile purpose? Yeah, but welcome to life, man. I mean, just like feed yourself and keep your biological organism running and, and try to pass on your genes a little bit and you're not, you're actually just like everybody else and trying to pretend that you've got this unique goal and, and it's got this mission like unlike any, you know, a world historic figure here, you know? And, and actually you're just like absolutely everybody else and you're rolling the boulder up and it's rolling back down. But you know, God bless you. You got something to do. Lucky you.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  What I think is fascinating about Camus, and I'm just starting to read about him more, is you, he's supposed to be the embodiment of these modern philosophers who like Nietzsche go, God is dead. It's all meaningless, stupid, absurd, silly. Then you look at his life and here he is speaking out about the moral issues of his time. He's in the French Resistance in World War Two. He is actively, this is not a, this is not a nihilist in practice. And he is in fact, you know, in the thick of, he is involved in public life in the way that Stoics say you have to be involved in public life.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Uh huh. Or because you can't work out your ideas unless you're completely alive, which is what they.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  But also they aren't ideas. They're ways to live.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  You have to, the philosopher is not just a person who arranges them well on the page.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Which is the problem with a Pecurus.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Because he was sitting in his garden.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Right? He was actually out, he wasn't out in the world.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Most great religious movements, by the way, have been those that are in the world.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's, it's really interesting when you actually look at it in. Even in the Catholic world, you find these great movements that are trying to, you know, work for a better world at the individual level.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  Catholic worker, etc.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Catholic worker, but even even some that are not not utopian and not even progressive at all.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  What they're trying to do is to build a better world and they they're understanding their own theology, like Mother Teresa.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Through the way that they're lifting people up at the margins of society in the poorest places in the world.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Which is a really interesting thing and an important thing to do. And that's kind of it's kind of Camus.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  You're right.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  In the way that he's actually living his life and a lot of the and which we don't remember, of course. But then you've got, you know, like Sartre, you know, just sitting there smoking up, you know, Camel Straight and the, you know, a Gallois and his, you know, sipping an espresso. And he was kind of living this intellectuals existence, this hermetically sealed existence, which is one of the reasons that when you read Camus, you're like, I can kind of understand life through this. And you read Sartre, or at least I read Sartre and I'm like, I don't get it.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  I don't get it. It doesn't. This is all theory. This is just theory as far as I'm concerned.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  Well, I think the fall and both the fall and the plague are two striking books for this moment. I mean, the fall is basically this smart guy is walking through the streets of Paris and he hears someone go into the river. And he's busy. So he's like, not my problem.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  And he's haunted by the idea later that he could have done some. It's a moral allegory about indifference to the suffering and pain of someone.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Else. It's basically he's talking about World War II. But he's probably also talking about people like Sartre who are philosophers in the this moment where the world is on fire.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  And they go, I've got some reading to do.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  I know.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  You know?

• 38:41Speaker 02

  And we didn't even talk about the Russians who are contemporaneous, the Russian existentialists, who are having this huge moment. I mean, you gave me the Diary of Wisdom from Tolstoy.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  Oh, Calendar of Wisdom, yes.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Calendar of Wisdom. You gave it the last time I was here, as a matter of fact. But yeah, yeah. And Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are having this huge moment right now. This is the next big thing for young people.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Think so?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  For sure. I mean, it's like a lot of people that that are continue to be super interested in Stoicism. But the Russians and apparently, and how do I know this? Because my publisher says that everybody, there's manuscript after manuscript that's coming in about the about Russian existentialism.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Largely on the Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who are contemporaries but didn't know each other. But a lot of what we're talking about here, you can learn just by reading Brothers K.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Well, what's interesting too about that Tolstoy book is that.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Calendar of Wisdom, that's right. It's so good to read right before bed.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  And it's very, I mean, there's a lot of Catholic teaching there too.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Well, he was super religious.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Yes, but what I thought was interesting is I did a lot of research on Gandhi for the justice book. And it was actually, so people know, you know, civil disobedience, so they think there's this through line from from Thoreau to Gandhi, who were not that far apart in time. But actually Gandhi finds out about Thoreau through Tolstoy. And you go, oh, okay, this is, this is how it's all floating around. And that it was his, it was Tolstoy's religious thinking. Like, as far as we know, Gandhi doesn't read any of Tolstoy's fiction, but he reads his sort of spiritual and religious writings. And that's partly what inspires like the movement that changed the world. And then we get the civil rights movement from there.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  It's just incredible. And the Dostoevsky stuff that is really coming back right now. And by the way, the, the, probably the most interesting thing that informs a lot of the stuff from Tolstoy is his autobiography.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Where he talks about his near suicide at 51. And he's looking for meaning, he's looking for, I have a book coming out on meaning in March, the end of March called The Meaning of Your Life. And one of the, the, the main first big chapter starts with the story of Tolstoy. Where he says, I, I, I thought I could find meaning through my writing and, and, and I couldn't.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  And then I tried to find meaning.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  By the way, one of the best and biggest to ever do it. And he's like, it didn't work.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  He was, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  I mean, that's how, by the way, how new he is.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  To people, it's like 1910, you know? But he says, and then I looked to biology and science, which we're, we were in this technocratic moment then, which Dostoevsky called the Palace of Crystal. Which meant all a mathematically worked out world, awful lot like AI.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  And he said, I looked for in biology and science and he studied assiduously and he couldn't find meaning there. And he concluded that meaning didn't exist. And since his, by the way, he had 13 kids.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  And, and so he had a lot going on. And, and, and he said, I concluded that life had no meaning. It was meaningless. And so I had nothing left to, to kill myself.

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  So he goes off to just like. To a little village, this little tiny little village, and he just lived among the peasants who he, he was a super famous rich guy.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Nobody knew who he was.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Like, nobody knew who he was. And they were just going, they were, they were illiterate and they were, they were farmers and they were just going to church and saying their prayers and living their family lives and having their parties and having a good time and all that. He realized, oh, oh, meaning is love.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Meaning is love for God. Meaning is love for your family. Meaning is authentic friendship. Meaning is actually working for other people by sanctifying your work through what you do. If it's, you know, plowing the field. And, and he said he understood meaning after that. And that's how he found meaning in his own life, was by actually living his life in real life as opposed to using highfalutin ideas to try to find it somehow out in the ether.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Which is ultimately, man, that's, that's us too.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  You know, it's, it's us too. It's like, you know, your, your grandfather, grandfather holiday, you know, he never, I guarantee you never came home from work and, you know, said to your grandma, honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is too busy.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Well, because he was too busy living.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And, and he understood the meaning of his life. That's a very Tolstoy-esque idea, very Dostoevsky-esque idea that's, that people are starting to rediscover in these, in these Russian existentialists. Christian existentialists.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  So, so maybe to, to bring it to a close, talking about meaning, talking about the existential vacuum, maybe we conclude with Frankl, Viktor Frankl.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Man's Search for Meaning, it was his most famous book, of course.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, he starts by quoting Nietzsche. In the introduction of the book, he quotes Nietzsche and everybody says it's Viktor Frankl because it sounds like Viktor Frankl, it's Nietzsche. A man can, can, can, uh, what does he say? He can, uh, bear any what as long as he has a why.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  And, and Nietzschean concept, but of course Viktor Frankl, his whole point was that meaning is everything.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  That, that if you don't know the meaning of life, there is no reason for life. And, you know, that's one of the three pillars of happiness. There is enjoyment, there is satisfaction, but meaning is absolutely the most important. And that's of course, the one that is most Most absent today is meaning, the why of what we're actually doing. That's why, I dare say, besides the fact that you're just an incredibly good writer, people want your stuff because they want meaning. They're looking for the meaning of their lives and they can't find it in all the baubles and doodads and googas and nonsense that the distracting world is giving them. So this new book that I've got talks about how we've changed our brains, that we've walled off literally physically the parts of our brain that we need to assess questions of meaning. And the only way we can do that is by going back and living more like Grandpa Holiday, but with Ryan Holiday's books.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  But also, I think, uh, maybe a through line between most of the philosophists, particularly the eastern ones who talk about it so much more specifically. Viktor Frankl is saying, and then of course, his experience is confirming it. There is none of these things without suffering. You have to transform suffering into meaning. That's, that's the trick of the human experience.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  And in fact, if you don't suffer, there is no meaning, which of course is one of the biggest mistakes that we make in a therapy industrial complex today, is to say that if you're sad and anxious, there's a pathology that needs to be, that needs to be fixed.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  You know, I tell my students, they're studying at Harvard. If they're not sad and anxious, they need therapy.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  You know, that's the truth of the matter. And unless they lean into it, I mean, the, the, the great trick, the great stoic trick, the great Christian trick, the great trick of life is not just to start each day and say, I'm, I'm grateful for the things that are gonna, that are, I'm gonna enjoy this day. It's to say, I'm grateful for the suffering that will befall me this day. Bring it on.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Yes, I can handle it. That, that's, that's what resilience is.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  I'm gonna learn from it. It's not even just, I can handle it. It's just that my life, it's like, I will, I'm not fully alive unless I have aversive experiences and I'm dealing with them like a responsible, grown up, fully developed person.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  And that's our goal.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  That's the goal. And, and if meaning can be derived from suffering, then it means you can be happy and thrive in any condition and any kind of life. If happiness can only come from things going very well, then it's only available to a small percentage of people, a small percentage of the time. It's a much more resilient and robust formula.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  That's right. And that's why, that's where epicureanism gets it wrong, is that it's got one pillar of the happiness formula.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  And there are a lot of people who are really, I mean, it's like they, they take what they see to be Stoicism, and they push it to the, okay, if it's not hurting me, I don't like it anymore. But that's wrong, too.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  I mean, that's, that's incorrect. That's also a misunderstanding of Stoicism, of course. But that's why epicureanism is an incomplete philosophy for the human person, in my view, because it doesn't understand that core fact that we are, and again, this gets back to my Christianity. Why does God allow these things to happen? Because they must, because we actually can't become the people that we're supposed to be. We can't be fully alive. Who was it? It was Saint Arineus, who said in the fourth century, "The glory of God is a man fully alive." And today it would be translated as a person fully alive, of course. So there's no gender exclusivity about this. You're not alive, that's the glory of God, if you're actually not having a full range of human experiences.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  And if your whole goal in life, your philosophy and practical life strategy is to eliminate

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  the normal parts of life that you don't like, you're dead.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  You're dead. And that's one of the reasons that people can't find meaning today is because they're being told that.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Well, I think we did it. We did about 2,500 years of ancient philosophy in one hour and 22 minutes. I think this is quite a masterclass we just did.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  And, you know, it's like a folk story for all the stuff I got wrong. That's all I can say. I'm, I'm, I'm just a French horn player who got a PhD as a social scientist. There's a lot I don't know.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Well, I don't even have a PhD. So this is just us, as we said, remixing things we've heard from other people. But that's, I think that's what philosophy is. Philosophy is not specializing in, in arcane or specific period, right? Philosophy should be a survey course of all of the wisdom, the sum total of wisdom of 5,000 years of human experience. That's what it's supposed to be.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's right. And we can title this Ryan and Arthur Make Sour Dough.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Well, you wanted to check out some books? I got some for you.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  All right.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  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.