Aristotle, Happiness & Saving a Turtle
Good morning, everybody. I am currently in Aristotle's Lyceum, which is, you know, arguably one of the most important places in human existence where Aristotle was Plato's number one student, and I spoke about Plato in another voice note. He had his certain beliefs and all that, his mantle, Socrates, and then, yeah, so Aristotle, after Plato died, he trained with him, well, you know, was in his thing for twenty years, and then he kind of went around, he became Alexander the Great's tutor and eventually came back to Athens, set up a school, the Lyceum, which basically is in not like a school as today, it was consisted of morning walks with his advanced students, and I can see the perimeter right now, and then walks in the evening with the more beginners, and then I'd imagine for the day, because it was a gymnasium, they were training naked, again, training, chatting amongst each other, a lot of things, you know, Just a lot of basically chatting and he did so much work. He was what we would call a polymath, like he was did work on physics, biology, he did in ethics, metaphysics, all, like, literally everything he did.
Speaker 1:He was looking at the biology of animals, was the first to, like, create an account, a system of things like that, kind of like the first encyclopedia in a sense, Aristotle was, or he tried to make it, because his way of looking at knowledge was, I will take what people have done before and I'll add to it, you know, and that's essentially what he did, and he was limited in this time, of course, like, didn't he couldn't he couldn't measure temperature, he couldn't measure a lot of stuff, and even though he knew things would get hotter and colder, he was like, well, your definition of hotter, my definition of hotter is different, so we can't have a a strict, measurement there. So, he'd never really got to that depth, and that's why in the modern times, people are like, well, all this stuff's proven not to be accurate, but it's because he didn't have the instruments, had what they were called the poverty of the time of the instruments. If he had the instruments, he would of course have been a piece of information. What's most interesting I find about Aristotle, I hope you can hear me on his voice because it's not too windy, is that he looked at what we'd call eudaimonia, and a lot of you would have come across this listening to the stoics.
Speaker 1:So, he talks about things to do with character, what we call ethics, and the word arite, which means goodness or excellence. Aristotle wanted to know what made a human excellent, you know, what makes a good human being? And he didn't make a direct connection to virtue. He didn't say to be a really good human being, you've got to have the virtue of justice, for example. That's not what his line was, even though that might come into it.
Speaker 1:He didn't make that direct connection, and he also spoke about eudaimonia as a mental, as not a mental state of euphoria, not in terms of what we think is happiness. He didn't think eudaimonia was just to be in a state of happiness. That's not what he meant. He he he meant eudaimonia as as flourishing to make a success of life and to flourish. And the connection between the eudaimonia and happiness isn't direct.
Speaker 1:It's an indirect connection. So a lot of people think eudaimonia is happiness. I think a lot of this come from a lot of people think it. I don't think I've I've read a quite a lot about this topic now, and I would say that they didn't think they didn't mean eudaimonia as happiness. Right?
Speaker 1:So what he speaks about eudaimonia, he says, and I quote, eudaimonia is an activity of the soul in accordance with excellence. So active eudaimonia is an activity to flourish and as opposed to a state of being, say a state of love or a state of happiness or a state of mind. And he says flourishing is not a state, but an activity or set of activities, and it concerns the soul or the animator. Is it to say that human flourishing requires the exercise of certain faculties by which life is defined? In particular, a person cannot be said to flourish as a human being unless he or she is exercising distinctively human faculties.
Speaker 1:Finally, eudaimonia is an activity in accordance with excellence. To flourish is to do certain things excellently or well. A man or woman who exercises his or her faculties but does so ineffective inefficiently or badly cannot be said to be making a successive life. And the interesting thing about this is we all flourish differently, and this is what he gets at. He's like, he's not saying you've gotta be happy twenty four seven to flourish in your life because happiness, sadness, all those emotions are part of life.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people, their goal is to be happy. It's like, if your goal is to be permanently happy, it's not happiness because you don't have the sadness to to correspond with what happiness is. You're gonna be in states of joy and happiness sometimes, and sometimes you're not. There's no point trying to hold on to them. But what we can control is are we acting in accordance to our own excellence of character?
Speaker 1:Like, what are we born to do, essentially? And people are I don't know what I'm born to do. I don't go in. I have no idea. People talk about passion and all this stuff, and it's like, what is it in your life that you feel like you're flourishing and doing?
Speaker 1:Because we've all got something. Some people, they flourish helping people in as a nurse in the NHS. Absolutely help, love people. Some people flourish using numbers, mathematics, just working in the accountants and numbers. Some people flourish teaching even though it's a tough job.
Speaker 1:They won't be happy all the time because of the workload, but they are flourishing and teaching, educating. They get they think that's aligned with their character, completely aligned with their character. So your question is, what is I what are you doing right now? Is it in alignment with what you would say is yourself flourishing? And not don't think of happiness.
Speaker 1:Think of what are you born naturally? Have you what gifts have you got? You know what, we've all got certain gifts. Some of us are introverted, some of us are not, some of us are extroverted, some of us are really witty, some of us can speak to anyone, some of us can't, some of us are more, you know, just reserved. Some of us love being in groups of people.
Speaker 1:Some of us prefer to be solo workers. Some of us were more thinking, wanna help people. Some of us wanna create things, make things, think over things. Some of us wanna work in technology, coding. Some of us don't wanna build nothing.
Speaker 1:They wanna help someone else build something. There's there's it just keeps going on and on. And in today's world, there's so many ways that we can we can flourish in what we would define as what went. Doesn't you not be good at it in a sense? Maybe you do have to be good at it.
Speaker 1:Don't know. Just be good at something to flourish or kind of be something you're just completely resonant with. And this is the thing. What would you define as good? Because some people are gonna be better than your exit, and there's always gonna be someone better than all of us and everything.
Speaker 1:So we can't compare, plus what we feel we are aligned with and what our as a human being, where we are best placed amongst the society of humans because we are social animals. We are you know, Aristotle also said that the state and society is not something we've made to live in. It is actually part of our nature, like ants have colonies, like an ant on its own isn't an ant. Oh my god, there's another tortoise and there's a cat gonna attack it. No way.
Speaker 1:Cat, you better leave this and go. Oh my god, guys, I'm gonna save a tortoise here. But yeah, I think, guys, gonna leave you with that. I'm actually have to save this tortoise because there's a cat like on his back, but, have a think about that. Where do you flourish?
Speaker 1:What are you doing? Actually, I'll be back now. Let me just save his Tortoise. He's going back. He's saved, but now he's actually in the Lyceum.
Speaker 1:I can't get to him. This Tortoise is now in the forbidden zone. Hopefully, he's saved, Is that me? Is that my is that my accident of character saving turtles, tortoises in my friend? I don't know.
Speaker 1:But that's it for today. Have a think about it. Do you have to be happy all the time to flourish? The answer probably is, I wouldn't say is no. But with flourishing, we're gonna have battles, gonna have struggles, we're gonna have obstacles.
Speaker 1:For us to fully flourish, we have to come across obstacles surely. Who would Hercules be if he didn't have any obstacles at all? Well, you wouldn't have been Hercules whatsoever. You would just been an average person. So when you think of these challenges stuff, you know, you you've decided to be a teacher, you've decided to be a scientist, you've decided to work his job at that job, you decided to go to university for that.
Speaker 1:They're there gonna be times where you hate the work you're gonna do, sometimes it's gonna be overworking and all that, but flourishing, it doesn't mean you have to be loving it all the time, and I think if we can see it like that way, it's a better for us, surely. A lot better, so you don't have to be in a permanent state of happiness, which is quite a weird state to be in. I think if someone in a permanent state of happiness, it's a funny person, I have no idea, but I can find joy in everything, even my struggles, and I find that I've really started feeling a lot. These struggles and stuff, I feel joy in them because I know what I'm doing is aligned with my being essentially. Luckily for me, I've found it.
Speaker 1:And for other people, maybe it takes longer, but have a think about it and let me know what you do think.
