Hello and welcome to the last little stuff you should know. I am one of your fellow servants of knowledge, Graham Donaldson. You made it more awkward. I am joined today with Thomas Magby, the Dean of Student Life, and with AJ Hanenberg, the Dean of House Mueller, English teacher, fine dresser.
Although, Magby, you look pretty good, too. You can dress well. Thanks, but isn't I the one who's like the best? Yeah, we don't even buy a pair.
That's very funny. That was the result I was hoping for. And as maybe you can tell from being hopefully a long-time listener to this podcast that me, Berg, and Bees, well, we're friends. Yeah.
We are the Bergs and Bees. Oh, gosh. Oh, no. No.
Did you just come on the spot? Oh, my word. All right. I mean, we had Donald Berg as our celebrity name and the Berg and the Bees.
Let that never be spoken of again, although we are publishing this world. Anyway, if you've been a long-time listener, you will realize that we are friends. We have friendship. But what is the actual nature of friendship?
And did friendship exist in the classical world? Thomas. No. I can't believe there was no friendship.
Tiny Islands of Men. Well, that was a quick answer. All right, Thomas. See you later.
School us on friendship. First, I need to apologize. I had this horrible cough, but the only thing that really brings that cough about is laughter. Oh, gosh.
Yeah, so you all sound hilarious. That's why during the last episode we recorded, I was hacking up along the entire time. So I expect that to happen very much. So again, so yes, we'll be talking about friendship today.
We'll be talking about friendship in particular as Aristotle viewed it. He discussed his friendship in books eight and nine of the Nicomachean Ethics. And so that's kind of the basis for what we're going to be going into today. So Aristotle is a name you might have heard before.
Famous Greek philosopher. He is. So when you look at famous Greek philosophers, you have Socrates. Socrates taught Plato.
And then Plato taught Aristotle. And then Aristotle would eventually go on to teach Alexander the Great after he left Plato's Academy. Do you ever, as a teacher, wonder which one of your students is that one? Oh, I know.
Is the Aristotle? Are we the Socrates team in Plato or are we the Aristotle teaching someone that's going to like recap it on the earth? I've got a couple of things. We play a game called diplomacy in rhetoric class.
And we see, it's basically an exercise in statecraft. You don't have enough resources to do what you want to do by yourself. So you have to make promises. You have to break promises.
You have to use diplomacy. And rhetoric. And rhetoric, which is why we are allowed to play this game. And we don't get tossed out of our jobs for playing board games with our students.
But I've seen some students do some pretty magical things playing that game. Was it this year where someone signed a contract with someone else but they misspelled their name? That was this year. And then used that to void the contract and then backstab the person who they signed it with.
Oh yeah. They misspelled their name. And I'm not giving it away. But I'm pretty sure they wrote Orschley or Orschleen or something like that.
And then their last name was equally mangled. And so then when the contract, I mean the contract was never going to be held up in any kind of diplomatic. It's a high school. It's a real online paper.
And then the Supreme Court of Hanenberg and Dawson in rhetoric class was never going to rule in favor of this contract. But it cracked me up that the names were all garbled. So we train them in virtue of wisdom and then we throw that all out of the window of their senior year? Oh, yes.
Think of it more like catharsis. Get it out. I think the goal is partially to just make them understand what's happening at the state level. Because these are ways in which we typically don't think.
Where you have the promised resources, but can you actually spare them? And is there another opportunity? And it just sort of puts you on the level of someone who's running a country. And that's a totally different way to think.
Okay. I had no idea that you all actually tied it into the rhetoric. I thought you were just straight up playing, but I'm just like, that class is incredible. Because they need to talk to each other.
And convince each other. Oh, using pathos, ethos, logos. Did they play three rounds? One free trimester?
We play one game, and if they're still into it, we can play another one. So this should instead be a podcast about board games because it'll be really fun. I'm the faculty sponsor of the Board Game Club, so I like board games. Instead, we're going to talk about friendships today.
Sorry. So what's the best way to go into this topic? So like I said, the discussion of friendship starts in book eight. There's actually some belief that books eight and nine were added after the rest of the Nick McCain ethics were written.
Because book seven is about happiness and pleasure, and book ten is about happiness and pleasure. And book ten picks up almost exactly where book seven stops. So it's kind of funny that there are these two books. And so it's like a digression for a later edition.
So the line that he opens book eight with is, after what we have said, the discussion of friendship would naturally follow. And so he's talking about justice. So I guess we talk about the Nick McCain ethics is probably a good place to start. So Aristotle, so we talked, so Trinby Flago would eventually teach Alexander the Great, would then have to flee for fear of losing his life.
He was most proud of his works of prose. Aristotle's most proud of his works of prose. None of those works of prose have made it to us. So what we have in the Nick McCain ethics, the, I always mispronounce this, but the Eudomonian ethics.
Oh, it's lecture notes. They are lecture notes. So they are notes or outlines. It's a distilled version of what he would get up and teach.
So he didn't write this. Okay, I think Aristotle's rhetoric was the same thing. And so when you read it, you're like, what is happening? Oh, it's a kid.
And it's only the notes. And we're not getting the full. If my students class notes, the only thing that remain is life, that would be hilarious. The only thing about deep joy, Graham, from your class, is the notes that they can get us all together.
Yeah, that's kind of a terrifying thought. Depends on the kid, I guess. Depends on the student. But this guy did pretty well.
He did pretty well. Yeah, Nick McCain ethics. Actually, it makes sense. You'll see sections in there where they'll put a bracket in there.
So they kind of added a sentence because it didn't make sense in the original Greek. But by and large, all the ideas flow together. It's just very dense because it's the notes that someone's taking off from what he's saying. So that's kind of a bummer.
And writing materials were expensive. Yeah, sure. It'd be hard for him to... And I'm kind of curious how it slid up.
Like, did he teach 10 different lectures in authority of 10 books? Is this over the course of years? Yeah, I didn't say much on that. So what does friendship say about that?
Well, let me get there. So in general, he's answering with the Nick McCain ethics. The name Nick McCain is very funny. It's often thought to refer to his son, Nick Marcus.
He wrote these lectures for his son. Graham, I recently was watching your Pidea talk on Can Virtue Be Taught? And you... Is it this one you're quoting where he's writing a letter to his son?
And it's like, if you do nothing else, acquire his own. Yeah, and I think Hamburg's made reference to that same letter. Yeah, we're talking about that in his podcast. Let's go.
But I just think Aristotle's doing the same thing to his son. He put all this material together to give to his son and say, this is what you need to know to live a good and flourishing life. Aristotle's answer to what that flourishing life looks like is the life of virtue. And we've referenced before in the podcast, 7th of Lee Sin was probably where we talked about it the most.
He defines virtue as this mean between two vices. So courage is the mean between cowardliness and headstrongness, just running into every battle. And justice is the mean between giving or receiving less than one deserves or giving and receiving more than one deserves. That's the mean of justice.
So from the discussion of justice, he wanders into a discussion of friendship, which is kind of a... It's a weird transition once he starts it, but somewhere in the middle of book eight, it finally starts making sense. Is friendship a mean? He gets this layer of what is the virtue that friendship is addressing.
He will eventually... We'll get there later. But he eventually talks about... Just because I usually say I'll get back to that later and I never do.
So the beginning of friendship is benevolence. And so benevolence also, you can give too much or give too little, the mean of which is benevolence. That is the beginning of friendship. So too little is being cold and then too much is being magoo?
Yeah, that's good. I like that. My sister called it. When someone's way too nice and they would walk up and say, hey, what's up?
They grab your shoulder and say, how are you? That's a little magoo. A little too much. Yeah, never heard of being a magoo before.
But yeah, it's a good way of modernizing that. That makes sense. So yeah, the mean of those two would be benevolence. And then what sustains friendship is love.
But it's not receiving love. It's showing love to other people. And so I don't believe that's a mean. The language is funny because if we talk about courage itself, there's no such thing as an excess of courage because courage is defined as that mean.
There's no such thing as an excess of justice because justice is a mean. It's like a sweet spot. It's a pocket. It is.
And so showing love to others, it is that sweet spot. And that's why it sustains friendship. So this podcast can get mushy. It goes, we're so top of our feelings.
We love you guys so much. So we might actually not because friendship sounds like an awesome word. But he says that there are three things that people look for. So when we use the word friendship, we're gathering a lot of ideas into one with that word.
And so he tries to disinviguate. He tries to separate those between each other. And so he says that there are three things that we are looking for when we approach something that we end up calling friendship. So if you all can think about your close friends, can you think of any things that you're like, this is why I'm friends with that person?
Shared interests. We do things. We like the same stuff. We like the same stuff.
Mutual respects. Oh, that's a good one. That means you get more points than Donaldson. Oh, he doesn't.
There is a third one. So this is the final question. You can figure this third one out. So the one that Graham said was liking the same things.
And so Aristotle calls that a friendship of pleasure. So AJ and I both like one of the movies. We both like talking about movies. So we both have the shared joy of movies.
And so, yeah, that is a source. Oh, I think I remember what it is. Is it the friendship of where we can do stuff for each other? Yeah, yeah.
The only reason I'm friends with Hamburg is because the only reason I'm friends with Hamburg is because Hamburg can help me on my career or whatever. That's good. Yeah, that's weird. I'm not sure what you can call that friendship.
Maybe I'm giving a bad example of utility. No, you're giving a great example of utility. So because even Aristotle kind of looks at utility, he himself has questions about utility. And it's like a good business partnership where you've mutually benefited each other and that is you are okay with each other.
But the source of the friendship is, well, sorry, let's start with pleasure. The friendship of pleasure is that you all both take pleasure in a shared activity. So shared activity is important for that. It's, we'll come back to it later.
The friendship of utility is exactly like Graham is saying. It's that I get something out of that friendship. So we have a coffee shop here at Veritas. And if I were to mean, you know, I actually really like people who work there.
But if I didn't actually dislike those people and I just wanted more coffee from them, I would be nice to them. I would get to know them. I would ask them questions about their lives for the purpose of getting more coffee from them. That would be a friendship of utility.
Because sometimes if you're mean, they will give you whole milk instead of skin milk. There you go. And you will. But does this one always have to leave you feeling icky?
Like, can there be a friendship of utility that doesn't leave you feeling like it's just pragmatism, but it's actually like a real friendship? So Aristotle says that some people are more prone to friendships of utility than other friendships. So I think he doesn't like old people. He talks about, so he also uses whatever the Greek word for icky is to describe the friendship of utility and then says, yeah, old people have these friendships.
So later he'll say, is friendship necessary? He opens the gate with, is friendship necessary? And then he says, well, let's find friendship. And then a hundred pages later, it's not that long.
But he comes back later and says, okay, so is friendship necessary? And to the question of utility, the answer is no. You don't need a friendship of utility. You need a few friendships of pleasure.
And if you are a good moral person, you'll have this last form of friendship, which we'll come back to in a second. So you don't need this friendship of utility. Even describing it, it sounds icky. I don't know.
It's icky to the three of us, but I know people who this is the majority of their friendships, that they can do things to help people get ahead in business, and that is the only reason they're friends with one another. Now, they're friendly toward that person, but I wouldn't, whatever. You can call that friendship. It's just politeness, right?
But it's not that you're just polite, like you're polite to the person. There's a sustained relationship throughout time, but it's a relationship of mutually benefiting one another. It seems to lack the heart, unlike what AJ was talking about, which is this last step. And I think that's exactly right.
I think I would also say that the friendship of pleasure, it lacks something also in that it's kind of shallow. It's the only reason you're friends with someone is that shared interest. Aristotle talks about how shared interest will come and go, and interests are kind of randomly distributed if you think about it. Some people just happen to like certain things, and so there's a randomness to the friendship of pleasure.
So these are like your fantasy football buddies that you have nothing else that you can talk about except the shared interest of football. And then when it disappears, you don't talk to them anymore. Or it would be like weird when your fantasy football person came up to and was like really wanting to talk about a serious topic of life, and you're like, am I going to trade me a wide receiver? If not, then...
So he, to define this, therefore, those who love because of utility love because of what is good for themselves. Those who love because of pleasure do so because of what is pleasant to themselves. And the account term here, I don't know if the account term in the original Greek, and not because of who the loved person is, but insofar as he is useful or pleasant. And thus, these friendships are only incidental.
For it is not as being the man, he is that the loved person is loved, but as providing some kind of pleasure. So it's what that person can do that they are loved for utility or pleasure's sake. It's not for the person themselves. Which is also, when you describe it that way, both of them kind of feel...
They just feel like they're lacking humanity in some level. This is if the only reason I hung out with you was to go see movies. And we both really liked movies, but you kind of add to the pleasure, I guess, but you might feel like we don't just go and see movies by yourself. But the movie is the important thing, I guess, in that relationship.
The only reason we did this was because of the mountain of podcast dollars. Yep, all the podcast dollars. Question mark, question mark. You can't see us, but when one person is talking, the other two of us are swimming in a mountain of gold coins.
Screw your duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck. We're just getting handed envelopes full of cash. You open up the computer, CD drive, and money comes out. It's from the internet.
It's amazing. I'm not going to have a CD drive. Oh, no, that's why this is working out. Like poverty.
That's why I got to go PC. So that is pleasure and utility. And then this final version of friendship is, it has different names. It's a friendship of Arate.
Craft? Virtue, right? Virtue. It's a friendship of excellence.
It's a friendship of perfection or a friendship of characters. You can call it any of those things because the word is really difficult to translate. Sorry, sorry. And so he says that bad people can have friendships of pleasure and friendships of utility, but they are not capable of having a friendship of excellence of perfection because they themselves do not have excellence of perfection.
Dang. Yeah, so it's harsh. Maybe that's why whenever you see an evil villain, all they have is henshin. Or a cat, right?
Or a little cat. Or like Minnie, which is an awkward relationship. It's more like a cat than it is like a true pain cat because I very rarely do you see two evil people who are in good shape and, yeah, because the thing that makes them evil is the presence of vices and those don't lend themselves to a long-term friendship, right? Does Agamemnon have friends?
I'm just trying to think of people that I would constitute as other villains or just ones that I would think are deficient in virtue. I don't know if Agamemnon is a villain. But he's deficient in virtue. He makes some goofy mistakes, but he's just kind of your typical stronghead, I think.
And we'll come back to you later. King Agamemnon, right? From Illion. With all due respect.
I just wanted to know, just a second. Can you please address him by his title? No, I said that just because the honorifics of the office demand. What have I done?
I think I'll talk about kings later in book 8 to say why friendship is really hard for kings and for really common people so there's some good difficulties there heavy lies the head that wears the crown what does that mean? ah, heavy like the cares of the world heavy lies the head, sleeps the head that wears the crown what's the story about the guy who's had to sit under a sword? damn please the sword's damn please you know the same? so this guy wanted to feel like what it was to be a king and so the king's like, alright, here and he sat him on a chair and then hung a sword over his head by a thread and he's at any moment this thing could come down and he's like, that was awful that is the worst thing ever I could die at any moment and the king is like, now you've felt like what it is to be a king that's that, yeah let's be kings I guess we could say governments in book 8 to me there's so much here so the only friendship that is about the person himself is that friendship of excellent perfection it's, I have a level of moral excellence I see that moral excellence in you and we encourage one another in that we both desire the good for that other person so whereas pleasure and utility are about what that other person can do this one's about the person themselves but surely all of these things can be present in a relationship like think of Tolkien and Lewis, right?
there's a friendship of pleasure they both like fair stories there's a friendship of utility they can help themselves write better stories but then they recognize the excellence and the high moral character and they generally love being with each other and there is that love there that you talked about and the way that you get to that friendship of excellence is not just you walk up to someone like you're a really outstanding guy we're going to be best friends I recognize the excellence within you we must be companions and you're probably, well if the person looks at you and is like yes, you have found you're a perfect person I actually had somebody say that to me once and this is a true story I did not know him very well I was in college and he was like a math grad student and I was an undergrad student and he came up to me and he says I see things in you and I want to be your friend and I was like, cool we can be friends yeah, let's hang out we hung out once or twice it was super weird and the friendship did not continue that's weird it was after a Bible study or after something and he came up and he's like he was a bit of a strange dude most math master students are quite odd full stop he said on the lines of like we are going to be friends I think it was like his lead out his opening line I was like but you're the one who agreed to handle them yeah, I mean, hey confidence goes a long way I got a friend who does the same thing with the ladies and how well he just walked up and you said we are going to date not well unless you're persistent even then probably not I mean, you might have devastating problems but you've got to take a shot so here we are talking about friendship dating, apparently that is a yeah, we're putting that on the list dating in the classical world let's do this thing didn't you do a Romeo and Juliet or dating advice according to Romeo and Juliet that was just to get people in the auditorium oh, I didn't name that did you just talk about Romeo and Juliet there was very little actual there was actually an email saying I was upset that there was not enough dating advice from Romeo and Juliet I told you I was talking about my email anyway, so the friendship of excellence is for the person themselves and the joy is found in the person themselves in that person improving in that person setting goals and achieving the family in that person being successful and thriving so this is the Nick McCain ethics named for the son this one is the Eudaimonian ethics Eudaimonia is the good life so helping your friend of excellence to live that good life you take joy in that and even in describing all these things it is probably clear that it's very hard to have many of these friends of excellence to know them to the depth required to take joy from the things they accomplish to take joy in the way that they grow it's just it's hard to have enough time to have more than a few of these does Aristotle put like a time thing on it him being a very thorough man and sometimes since this is his notes his early little footnote says this will take about five years like last time we were talking about Dorothy Sayers where Dorothy Sayers said learning Latin will help 50% of all this other material thrown out so we're in book 8 and we'll spend most of our time in book 8 but book 9 he addresses what happens when you enter into one of these and the person does not live up to the expectation that you have of them and just spoiler alert because we probably won't talk much about it he says to cease that friendship is this a lead in that you're quitting the podcast this is awkward it's been a really fun 10 episodes but no it's not oh this is episode 21 boys is it really? oh man shots that's why episode 21 yeah yeah okay so break up with people who are who you enter into a friendship because you think that they're going to be more like to listen than make shot jokes okay so that is those are the three types pleasure, utility, excellence, and perfection something that I find interesting is that book 8 starts with this definition of what friendship is and it ends with the ideal form of government he is all over the place with this one but the way that he gets to this topic it was one of those lectures we all had those kinds of classes start rambling and then you look at the kids' notes and it's like yeah we should talk about Peter Rabbit so far of course just like on that physical basis of Peter Rabbit all right so walk us through do you think it's a relevant thing that he gets to government at the end? yes kind of so we haven't this isn't said many times and I feel like I haven't said it yet so I want to say one time in the future we should do an episode on the poll list so when the Greeks are talking about government they're typically talking about a smaller thing than we're talking about when I say the government is great or the government is bad I'm usually talking about the federal government so overall 330 million people in the United States that's the number that Aristotle would never he would not be able to comprehend that many people under one government I think it's Plato who writes in the Republic that the size of the poll list should be such that he references the character I don't know who it is sorry that his voice everyone should be able to hear his voice when he yells so it's a very tight-knit small community we have Twitter oh no so Twitter's the reason we have moral communities wow okay you solved all our problems nevermind probably no I don't wait what so the community's supposed to be small enough that one person yelling you can hear them it's a metaphor but you know the leader would be able to be to communicate to everybody in the poll list that's right so now we have Twitter for that no we don't sorry I can only yell in a certain number of characters yeah which please can we call an individual tweet a twit someone who tweets is a twit I feel like they have like Twitter has been trying to push down this nomenclature and I feel like it's a missed opportunity past tense is quoted quoted to tweet I do I use it more as like a content aggregator and then I sometimes do fall into the like saying sarcastic things that I regret I feel like you gotta be real careful I signed up for Instagram but the only things I signed up for and then cute cats and then somebody falling over and hurting themselves it's perfect every day so we go through these different types of friendship pleasure utility and excellence and the so when we're talking about the former government it's this very small tiny community and so of these three types Aristotle's a little bit shady on utility but there's no condemnation of having friendships of utility as long as you are understanding that this is what you're going into it for I think they arise naturally probably and he does raise concern of so there will sometimes be friendships where people are in it for different reasons so one is in it for pleasure and the other is in it for utility all said yeah it is said so he talks about the lover and the beloved and so one is in it for the pleasure of you know experiencing love and the other is in it for the utility of I get paid one day and that would be bad so like the gold digger kind of situation but in general utility it is fine to have mutual tiny is a huge end of the podcast can we get tiny references into all the rest of our podcast that would be a success for me so a friendship with utility in of itself is not a bad thing a friendship with pleasure in of itself is not a bad thing Aristotle would even say it is necessary to have some of these he talks about the virtue of prudence elsewhere and prudence is the mean between being a stick in the mud and being debauched there's a mean between those things one should experience pleasure in life so that is friendships with pleasure pleasure are good what is it necessary for you demonia like is friendship a necessary quality of a good life so in book 9 for the end he asks the question of what about the contented man or the life of solitude can that person be complete for that friendship and his answer is no there's a type of contentedness one can have by oneself and that is good and it's better than most people but it is not the fullness of life so you are a lover of Thomas Aquinas who is like baptized there what does he say about that about that solitary life thinking about a nasty tradition and that kind of thing so does he recast that Christians don't need friendship for the holy life or whatever so I would have to read more to have a more thoughtful answer to this I'm just trying to think a way to get out an analogy for the monastic life is the story of Jesus with Mary and Martha and so Jesus comes to the house and is hanging out and Mary is hanging out with Jesus and Martha is running around doing all this stuff and so Martha says to Jesus yo make Mary help me out because I have stuff to do and Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better thing and so that story is often used to say that that monastic life that commitment to Christ above activity so that the vita contemplativa is superior to the vita activa but I believe this is Aquinas there's a level above that and it's those who teach the contemplative life so it is a teacher that is above the contemplative life that is above the solely active life so I believe that's an Aquinas interpretation but I don't have a book to point to and say this is where he says that Aristotle was wrong on this but there are many points in this so Aristotle has a discussion of mothers and children and he says that it's A-OK if a mother has a child and then sends that kid off to like the equivalent of a boarding school and just like as long as they take care of them that's totally fine and that's loving to the kid and Aquinas would disagree with that he defines love as desiring the good of that person and desiring union with that person so Aristotle is incomplete in his view of love according to Aquinas so Aquinas loves almost everything Aristotle says but he does not affirm everything 100% how do we get here so government so friendships of pleasure and utility are A-OK but it's in the name itself it's friendship of perfection it requires the best of a person and the best of a second person for them to experience that friendship of excellence and so Aristotle's view of the best form of government is the one that would promote and reward those who are good people themselves and so it is easier to have one good person than many good people and so he points to that and says the best form of government is a monarchy but it's like he describes the most idealistic form of monarchy you've ever heard in your life it's like this king loves his citizens and is only doing what's good for them and doesn't care about himself for keeping power it's a very high-minded view of what a monarch does I've been a few of those in the past but they're pretty rare and as I describe what how we're doing Paradise Lost in English class and I describe how Milton describes what heaven is like as this monarchy it very much is this where God is sort of completely loves all of his subjects and serves them to the point of sacrificing himself for them and all the subjects just think God's amazing except for Satan and think that God's doing a great job and it sort of works with this sort of self yeah so I mean as long as you have a ruler who is God or a high world character that's what they only care for their citizens and I think that's true I think Aristotle is bumping up against an actual universal truth on this that that monarchy of the good man is the best that we can think of the way to organize it I mean think about how much would get done it's one man that's intelligent that has the full authority yeah the full authority and can change things instantly it's a good system if you didn't have human flaws that's the reason we have checks and balances so that we can't let any one dude screw up too much stuff but there have been other good rulers like this like Solon was one of these where they said hey we want you to be king and he was like no don't want to be king and they sort of forced him into it and said unless you're not king we're going to kill you so if I remember right and he did it and he was a great king and he was very pious and it worked out but the rarity of that kind of thing that's the reason we tell stories about it still like it's such a rare thing for yeah one king to Cyrus the Great is another great example yeah I still think Lycurgus the guy who started Sparta was one of the you really like Sparta I like early Sparta I like Lycurgus' Sparta I'm not sure if I was super into the militant one later but the way that Lycurgus set up his country was awesome they ate together they worked together they raised kids together his institution of iron money was one of the most genius things a monarch has ever done to keep vice out of his city to he wants iron money so Lycurgus collected all of the gold and silver money that everybody had and instituted iron currency and it wasn't worth very much it's like saying everyone only gets to have pennies and so if you were going to be wealthy you needed to have some place to store all of this iron stuff and if you ever wanted to buy something you had to have an oxen to draw a cart to do it right so no one really wanted that much of it just because you had to have a ton to be wealthy and not only that but traveling people from other countries also didn't want this money so it kept out prostitution it kept out grafting it kept out all of these vices from elsewhere because no one wanted this stupid iron money from Sparta because they couldn't use it anywhere else and so Spartans got really good at selling simple things chairs, cups like Spartan chairs and cups were like the modern furniture of today they were really good really sturdy lasted forever incredibly crafted but not complicated they were making modern furniture before anybody else and on top of that he said everyone has to eat together so even if you had all this extra money there's nothing to do with it if you ate a whole bunch of food before coming to the common meal everyone made fun of you freaking like a tiny bird and so you couldn't eat by yourself you had to store a ton of it if you wanted extra furniture and so in one stroke in taking away gold and silver money he basically evened out class differences everyone was on the same page which is incredible to me that he could take away class difference with one move I think it's a great example of what Aristotle was talking about here is that a good monarch can accomplish all of those things and bring about more virtue in their society by passing good laws but he can't have any friends so I'll go to this point and then come back to the other form of government so the difficulty with the king is that it's kind of makes sense if you think about it for a friendship of pleasure so imagine two people and their activity that they do together is fishing and one person kind of likes fishing and one person loves fishing been there yep no I'm sorry one person kind of likes hockey and the other one loves hockey well we're talking about moral efficiency there we go and so the one who loves hockey wants to go play hockey watch the time play on him while he's skating that's the only thing they want to do and the person who kind of likes hockey is like you know I want to do like one hockey thing a week so there's an inequality between those two yeah I think the person who loves hockey just will think that the person who doesn't will eventually get there yeah it will come around but in the meantime that friendship probably won't last very long so imagine two people find out oh we both like hockey but then they realize they like it at different amounts and so that inequality between the two will lead to the friendship fracturing because it's hard to maintain it's hard to maintain that if you're like the guy who doesn't like hockey you're like dude I can't do another hockey game this week and then a friendship of utility in the same way so imagine a friendship of utility where one person gets a little bit and one person gets a lot the person who gets a lot will want to maintain that friendship the one who gets a little will not want to maintain that friendship nearly as much and so this is where this is how Aristotle's connecting justice to friendship is that there is an inequitable distribution between two that will lead to a fracture that will break up friendships of pleasure friendships of utility but also a friendship of excellence if one person is super morally excellent one person is kind of morally excellent and is not improving themselves that division will lead one in a way to judge that other person or to question the other person or to be frustrated at the lack of growth that they see in the other person the less virtuous person will have a better friendship if it is an equal level or relatively equal amount of virtue between the two and so the king being his ideal type whatever I shouldn't use that word because we talked about already but the king is this ideal figure who is super virtuous he does not have people who are equal with him but they can do nothing for him so he's always in a difficult place and I imagine it's the same way with Kanye I mean I bring it up partially because it's a joke and partially because it's true Kanye is incredibly wealthy if he is on a track your track will go through the roof and so the number of friends that he can have is limited to a few select individuals only what's the new guy what's his name you were asking the wrong two friend people oh man you were asking the wrong but he did DNA and he did yeah Kendrick Lamar so I feel like they Kendrick Lamar Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z and those guys can be friends with Kanye but I could never be friends with Kanye I can give nothing to him and he can give me rides and Lamborghinis so there's this no matter how much I want and Kanye if you're listening please be friends I do want it's just not going to happen our friendship never be equal and so the more and this is a point that we came across in east of eden as we talked about it a couple days ago is he talked about how greatness is lonely right every man must choose between greatness and loneliness or mediocrity and friends and that is why i just aim for the middle no you said that's funny but it's kind of true like if we are supposed to be on the quest of improving our moral character and becoming more virtuous people are we not then in a way condemning ourselves to a life of less friends uh like if you put all these pieces together if the good man can only be friends with other good men and the good men are rare are we just going to be um lonely yeah so i said so the ethics are improved when they um when whatever you want to use it when they when um when aristotle meets christian thought and they come together so when i hear the description of the friendship of excellence i hear the i hear the christian brothers yes i hear um uh i hear small groups i hear bible studies i hear the people uh pushing one another on toward that moral perfection on toward putting on the character of christ starting a podcast to talk about things like this yeah well is that kind of what we're trying to do it is oh for sure yeah yeah and i mean um the way that you won't like say we're in this for more friends yeah but we have more people that listen to the podcast and if you are out there and this sounds awesome to you come to austin texas we'll build a little village uh we'll eat together we'll pay you an iron probably by literally and uh yeah this thing works that's okay um so uh just to start moving forward landing uh so uh uh being a king is very lonely and uh but still it's great to have a superwoman person with lots of power monarchies are great the opposite of a monarchy is a uh is a tyranny uh a tyranny is one where there's a supreme leader but he does things for himself and uh or i'm sorry there's a funny line where he says that the um the opposite of the best is the worst and so his best form of government is monarchy his sixth best form of government is tyranny his second best form of government is uh ruled by aristocracy it's like a buzzfeed article top six you won't believe exactly the forms of government rank but uh so uh our research means the best aristocracy is ruled by the best so it's a very small group of people and again they are virtuous people and so they are considerate of those who are governed and uh the opposite of this is an oligarchy and oligarchy is a small group of people who are concerned with their own interests and so they rule less well than an aristocracy and then the third best form is a temocracy uh temos um uh is a reference like courage or virtue of tim rules timocracy and aristocracy and monar is the first one it's like a Godzilla monar what okay so uh a democracy is a rule by a larger group of people than an aristocracy but again a virtuous class of people the idea he's kind of getting at here is um like a soldier citizen uh when Aristotle talks about the virtue of courage earlier in the book courage is only understood in the context of battle and so uh democracy the most virtuous the most courageous people would be those who are soldiers they have learned about courage that is how Aristotle thinks about it and then the opposite of a democracy is conveniently enough a democracy uh so the one that we have uh so we're number four number four on Aristotle's top forms of government but but it is the best of the worst which is a observation and then i had a conversation with our um a government teacher um who uh she knows the ethics so much better than i do and i just kind of brought this up you know democracy being the fourth best haha but uh these top three are his ideals and this is kind of what we've been ragging on Aristotle before like it is really easy to imagine a great monarchy it is hard to implement a good monarchy same with aristocracy that's kind of the revolution they thought i mean whatever they had an aristocracy but they were not really well um in a democracy i guess you'd probably get smart out um that they had this rule by a soldier citizen um and then they also did not last forever um so democracy is kind of in the real world what's the one that has worked out best and that's democracy um so it also um whatever these these better forms of government promote uh virtue in us uh they bring out the best in us uh Aristotle's concern is that tyranny oligarchy democracy bring out the worst in us and twitter was brought up as like a joke before but i think that's kind of in the same vein of like uh twitter is this is a democratic social platform and that anyone can use it and so we see largely the worst of human nature through that right youtube comments yeah and on top of that you also have it's the anonymity of it yeah and also have you know like like uh so if you do 420 can be like talking about you in comments and uh saying terrible things it's like the worst worst case scenario for democracy is everyone gets to be anonymous and do what they want and have their voice heard so in that way Aristotle's right so his question is not what is the most politically efficient form of government his answer is which form of government will bring out the best in people and i think he got it like i think he nailed it i was saying that democracy like again whatever democracy can bring out the worst in us uh when we think of it like in the social media platform particularly that when anyone has access to to say whatever they want to there are not great parts of people that get expressed um you know i think twitter and youtube is it now i'm but an immigrant to the syrian nation well is it thomas jefferson who sort of i'm paraphrasing said i know the quote but that like our form of representative government does not work insofar as we are not moral is that is that jefferson i can't reject i don't know but there's something there's i remember isn't that true about every form of government it's more specifically so for this because of of uh because it's the rule of people the majority the majority are like dirtbags and you have a dirtbag laws but that's still true i mean even a monarchy if that's what if the king is it's way worse that it's way worse or if the king is virtuous and the entire population is evil then he's fighting against a rising tide and eventually they're going to kill him right so even even the ideal if the entire populace is not virtuous we've got problems um that is largely in book eight but kind of book nine uh baritone's making ethics talking about friendship but uh it is as always a pleasure to have friendship with you all and likewise i hope that this is a podcast i mean podcast a friendship of a friendship of uh of what was it excellent yeah i mean i i i care about the things that we can do for one another and we have the same common interests but i feel like yeah that there's a higher uh your growth as as godly man is something that i care about and there's certain imbalances in the things we like like i i generally like any movie with swords horses explosions like pretentious movies and maybe like pretentious movies and donaldson doesn't like anything i just love movies i just get frustrated at movies that um are like they they just sort of signal the plot very easily anyway um so hanberg in your tradition of ending a podcast with a commonplace book quote i have one yeah i picked it before the topic so i don't know it doesn't really ring true but this is a little story so this is uh william marshall otherwise known as william the marshall um he did that now you know he was like call me william the marshall so william marshall was a knight and he was considered one of the greatest knights the flower of english chivalry and he served five kings in history well you told me about this guy this guy's amazing um he was a young man under henry ii and then henry ii's son uh who's i can't remember his name because he died before he became he was like technically king but died anyway william marshall was also the ruler of england while richard the lionheart went on his crusades and fought in france and then got shot in a shoulder in the shoulder by a man wielding a frying pan true story um and died uh and then prince king and then king john who was one of the worst rulers in all of england and then king john's son was henry the third and william marshall was an old old old man when henry iii became king at age nine so henry the third is king and they in england had just come to this huge period of incredible turmoil where prince john king john's not a good person um still to this day there's children's nursery rhymes that go king john was not a good man and not a good man was he well yeah um and magna carta came out of the evil reign of king john anyway william marshall on his deathbed he was the mentor to henry the third and this is what william marshall said to henry the third i beg the lord our god that if i ever did anything to please him that in the end he grant you to grow up to be a worthy man and if it were to cause that you followed in the footsteps of some wicked ancestor of some wicked ancestor and that you uh and that your wish was to be like him then i pray to god the son of mary that you die before it comes to that oh wow and little king henry the third either very pious or very terrified replied amen amen for yeah and then william marshall died um and that was his deathbed speech um because he'd seen so much in his life anyway william marshall awesome dude and that's um yeah he's got lots of awesome stories uh part of it but i also read a book just on william marshall's life because he's fascinating he once got in a fight um uh and uh he got so beaten up that uh his metal knight helmet uh was dented and stuck to his head and he had to go to the blacksmith and the blacksmith had to like use pry the head off of him by putting his like foot on his shoulder and pulling it off and he hurt my neck um all right so we this is that has been classical stuff you should know you can reach us at classical stuff at veritasacademy.net you can also check out our website at classical stuff.net we've got some paintings to go the episodes there pretty much you know the episodes are just the same ones you're gonna find on itunes and on google play we're not on spotify yet but hopefully soon if they ever check their email yeah if you have ideas for subjects that you'd like to see covered if you have something you want to hear uh that you know we're familiar with we can we can sort of jump on that we're gonna keep on putting stuff out as far as we know we haven't even gotten to talking about individual books so much and that i'm sure we'll get there eventually so if you're a teacher yeah i just got a bunch of them on facebook so we got some requests that are coming uh just be patient we'll get them all doing it this is really fun for us and it's been sort of a project and we are still just completely dumbfounded that we have listeners like that is who are you yeah yeah we're just so thankful that you guys listen hopefully it's not just a friendship of utility with you and and and so yeah we're thank you for listening and uh we appreciate your patronage i guess and uh and once again kanye if you're listening uh we can be friends i will carry i will care about your betterment we need to just have you do the thing and record that so i can stop using actual jazz thanks you