Nicomachean Ethics

There are other things you could be learning.

I mean, you could be reading Nicomachean Ethics.

You could be reading Aristotle.

You could be reading Plato.

Now, we know ethnic studies is not to blame.

And per se, you know, I mean, there's a lot of things to blame, but I'm putting ethnic studies in that list.

The fact that students are being taught ethnicity instead of being taught Nicomachean ethics.

I just think if they were taught ethics, it would be different.

And much of life is about finding that sweet spot.

Aristotle had explained this to us more than a few millennia ago in his Nicomachean Ethics where he talked about the golden mean.

If a soldier is not at all courageous, if he's cowardly, that's bad.

If he's too courageous so that he becomes a reckless martyr, he dies quickly, that's not good.

And so you have this guy Aristotle that builds a whole system of ethics.

And he writes a book called or several books or a collection of books called Nicomachean Ethics.

And this is where we know really his views on ethics.

But what is important is that it is all about virtue.

You

cannot, you know, that is outside of yourself completely, right? And his whole thing is that everything is based on reason.

That's how he wants to achieve that virtue, right? And the second thing that I also mentioned is, very interestingly, in chapter 9 of book 2 of Nicomachean Ethics, he uses, and probably throughout the book, but he uses a very interesting phrase.

Word for failing.

Because some of their ideas may be right, but you also have to think a lot of the weird and odd wrong takes they have are due to the time that they lived in.

Like Aristotle, I think it was in Nicomachean Ethics, said that like a husband or a wife has to love a husband more than a husband would love a wife by far.

Like the level of love a husband could have for his significant other is is incomparable to the amount that she must love him because he provides for her.

And it's like the lame take, you know, like there's a lot of things that they'll say or and he mentioned slavery a lot, too.

It's tough to beat, it's tough to beat a mother's love.

But anyway, we crave that, and so once I, once I read Aristotle's Ethics, I thought, gosh, Boys are really struggling, it feels like, in America today, and I think kind of worldwide.

And they need...

We don't talk much anymore about virtue unless...

Okay.

So the politics and, uh, Nicomachean ethics have got to be on your list.

And in order to put those things in context, there are secondary sources, you know, um, Leo Strauss and a guy named Joseph Cropsey.

There's this book called The History of Political Philosophy, which is an outstanding book, and it's not full of, like, Straussian bullshit or anything like that.