269: Plato v. Aristotle

Summary

Classical Stuff You Should Know: Episode 269 - Plato vs. Aristotle

Release Date: December 10, 2024

In Episode 269 of Classical Stuff You Should Know, hosts A.J. Hanenberg, Graeme Donaldson, and Thomas Magbee delve deep into the philosophical dichotomy between Plato and Aristotle. This episode offers an engaging exploration of their differing methodologies for understanding the world, enriched with vivid analogies and practical applications. Below is a comprehensive summary capturing the essence of their discussion.

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1. Introduction to Plato and Aristotle

The episode begins with a brief recap of the Raphael's "School of Athens", highlighting the depiction of Plato and Aristotle. Thomas Magbee describes:

Thomas Magbee [03:50]: "In the School of Athens, Plato is pointing upwards towards the heavens, symbolizing his focus on the world of ideas. Aristotle, on the other hand, is gesturing downwards, representing his emphasis on observable experience."

This visual sets the stage for contrasting their philosophical approaches.

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2. Plato’s Epistemology: The World of Ideas

Plato is portrayed as a philosopher who seeks the essence of things beyond sensory experiences. The hosts reference Plato's Allegory of the Cave from Republic Book 7 to illustrate his view:

Thomas Magbee [05:58]: "Plato is all about the theoretical ideas, the world of ideas up in the sky. He wants to know the essence of things."

The allegory depicts humans as prisoners in a cave, mistaking shadows for reality. Thomas elaborates:

Thomas Magbee [08:11]: "Plato gives us the idea that the world we live in is the shadow world and that there are people who are pressing upwards into the study of the divine things or the realm of ideas."

This section emphasizes Plato's belief in a higher, immutable reality accessible through reason rather than sensory perception.

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3. Aristotle’s Empirical Approach: Knowledge Through Experience

In stark contrast, Aristotle is presented as a proponent of gaining knowledge through observable experience and inductive reasoning. Thomas Magbee explains:

Thomas Magbee [05:59]: "Plato wants to know the essence of things. Aristotle's methodology is more about coming to conclusions based on the world of observable experience."

They delve into Aristotle's Metaphysics, highlighting his focus on categorizing and understanding the natural world through empirical data:

Thomas Magbee [21:27]: "Aristotle is trying to create the category of everything that can be known and observed. He comes up with conclusions about the universe through observing the particular and coming to the generalization."

This approach underscores Aristotle's belief in the importance of sensory data and practical application in the pursuit of knowledge.

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4. Comparing Methodologies: Theory vs. Experience

The hosts engage in a nuanced comparison of Plato's deductive and Aristotle's inductive methodologies. A.J. Hanenberg summarizes:

AJ Hanenberg [10:31]: "The stuff we see in our everyday life is only the shadow of the real thing. It's not the actual reality."

Contrastingly, Aristotle values sensory experiences as the foundation for knowledge:

Thomas Magbee [23:43]: "Aristotle praises eyes because, through them, we get knowledge. He believes that experience is not inferior to theory."

They discuss the strengths and limitations of each approach, acknowledging that while Plato's method seeks universal truths, Aristotle's relies on tangible evidence and adaptability.

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5. Practical Implications: Sports Analogies

To illustrate their points, the hosts employ sports analogies, particularly referencing the movie Moneyball. A.J. Hanenberg uses this example to demonstrate the integration of both philosophies:

AJ Hanenberg [42:14]: "Moneyball begins with the Platonist view. He has a theory about how the game is to be played based on statistics."

Thomas Magbee continues:

Thomas Magbee [45:46]: "Aristotle is more about putting together a bunch of memories and experiences to form an idea. In Moneyball, once the theory is applied, you still need to work with the team practically."

This segment underscores the necessity of balancing theoretical frameworks with practical, experience-based actions to achieve success.

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6. Balancing Theory and Experience: The Path to Wisdom

The discussion culminates in advocating for a harmonious blend of Platonist and Aristotelian approaches to cultivate wisdom. Thomas Magbee posits:

Thomas Magbee [51:16]: "When you have theoretical knowledge mixed with embodied experience, you're probably better than just the theoretical knowledge."

Similarly, A.J. Hanenberg reinforces the importance of integrating both methods:

A.J. Hanenberg [46:39]: "Plato knows the essence because he wants to skip the eyeball part. Aristotle says, no, your eyeballs are telling you real information."

The hosts agree that both philosophies offer valuable insights and that their synergy is essential for comprehensive understanding and effective action.

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7. Conclusion: Embracing Both Philosophies

In wrapping up, the hosts reflect on the complementary nature of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies. Thomas Magbee concludes:

Thomas Magbee [54:08]: "Whenever you see the School of Athens and you see Plato pointing up and Aristotle pointing down, just know that both of those kinds of things are needed in order to cultivate wisdom."

They emphasize that wisdom arises from balancing abstract reasoning with empirical evidence, advocating for a versatile approach to knowledge.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Thomas Magbee [05:58]: "Plato is all about the theoretical ideas, the world of ideas up in the sky. He wants to know the essence of things."
• A.J. Hanenberg [10:31]: "The stuff we see in our everyday life is only the shadow of the real thing. It's not the actual reality."
• Thomas Magbee [23:43]: "Aristotle is trying to create the category of everything that can be known and observed."
• A.J. Hanenberg [42:14]: "Moneyball begins with the Platonist view. He has a theory about how the game is to be played based on statistics."
• Thomas Magbee [54:08]: "Whenever you see the School of Athens and you see Plato pointing up and Aristotle pointing down, just know that both of those kinds of things are needed in order to cultivate wisdom."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 269 of Classical Stuff You Should Know masterfully navigates the philosophical landscapes of Plato and Aristotle, offering listeners a clear understanding of their enduring legacies. Through engaging dialogue and relatable analogies, the hosts emphasize the importance of both theoretical contemplation and empirical experience in the pursuit of wisdom. Whether you're an educator, a student, or a classical enthusiast, this episode provides valuable insights into two of philosophy's greatest minds.

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For more insightful discussions on the classical world, visit classicalstuff.net or follow the hosts on Twitter @CLSS_CalStuff.

Transcript

[AJ Hanenberg]

Hey, everybody. Welcome. This is Classical Stuff. You should know. This is a podcast about the classical world. Old literature, that sort of thing. We talk about philosophy, sometimes art, sometimes the economy. Surprisingly enough. Talk about a lot of things. My name is AJ Hanenberg. I'm joined by Thomas Magbee.

[Thomas Magbee]

Hello.

[AJ Hanenberg]

And Graham Donaldson.

[Thomas Magbee]

Hi.

[AJ Hanenberg]

We're back, and I have only two questions for the both of you. Question number one is, is. Am I the only one who doesn't always shower before coming to record?

[Graham Donaldson]

You really want us to talk about this?

[AJ Hanenberg]

I mean, so here's what. Like, I know how far I'm gonna sit from you guys. I know you probably won't smell me. Usually I'm putting together an episode and don't always have time. I'm just wondering if that's just me or if that's.

[Graham Donaldson]

I think none of us have showered today, actually, is probably what's true.

[Thomas Magbee]

I have not showered today.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah, I have not showered today either, so.

[Thomas Magbee]

Cool.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Great. Clear that up.

[Graham Donaldson]

Three second voice.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah.

[Graham Donaldson]

Good.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Question number two is, you know, right before we come into an intro, we always ask what the episode's gonna be about so we can say something clever.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yes.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Thomas asked Graham, and then Graham said a lot of words. And my question is, what was all of that about? You said a lot of words that all seem to mush together. I don't.

[Thomas Magbee]

We're talking about classical stuff.

[Graham Donaldson]

Classical stuff you should know.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah. Okay.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Cool.

[Thomas Magbee]

Scratchy. I was reflecting on the fact that our name is pretty. Like, classical stuff you should know. It's like, pretty forceful, pretty direct.

[Graham Donaldson]

Like, you should.

[Thomas Magbee]

You should have known this. It's like.

[Graham Donaldson]

It's kind of embarrassing. You don't know this. Yeah.

[AJ Hanenberg]

So we should. So really, instead of our goofy intros that we still haven't nailed, we should open up, like, what up, idiots? Here's some stuff that you should already know.

[Thomas Magbee]

Cool. So what are we talking about today?

[Graham Donaldson]

I don't know.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Can you give the same summary you gave me and maybe the audience will understand me?

[Thomas Magbee]

We're talking. Well, I don't want to. I don't want to give it away.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Okay.

[Thomas Magbee]

So we haven't recorded in a while. One of the reasons we haven't recorded was I went on a vacation. Over. Over.

[AJ Hanenberg]

And that's the only reason.

[Graham Donaldson]

That's right.

[Thomas Magbee]

And I went to Rome. I've never been to Rome before. And we did the tour of the Vatican. We paid the, like, extra money to be there before everybody else shows up and have the breakfast in the Vatican, which is really fun. And when we were going to go on the tour. The little tour guide said, oh, we're, you know, here's what we're going to be doing on the tour. And he didn't mention the Raphael rooms. And we were kind of bummed. And so I was like, all right, well, that's kind of too bad, maybe because Rome's going under. They're doing all the, like, the re. Or they're cleaning it for the jubilee next year. Anyway, my wife raises her hand and says, will we see the Raphael rooms? And our tour guide says, no, we're not going to see them. I'll show you where they are at the end of the Sistine Chapel, if you want to circle back and go yourself. And we're like, okay, that's fine. Anyway, we go to breakfast, we come back.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Hold on. I just realized something.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah.

[AJ Hanenberg]

So last night when we were talking about your trip and you guys talked about how the Pieta was all like, it's just been cleaned. It was under. I said, well, that's really smart of you to go right after the Olympics, because I know that in Paris, they cleaned everything in that city. And for me, I guess my whole Europe trip blended together. And for some reason, I thought the Pieta was in Paris. So I said something really dumb to.

[Thomas Magbee]

Your wife and Amanda, and I realized it, but didn't call you out on in the moment.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I really appreciate that, Amanda. I love you. I'm sorry. I'm done.

[Thomas Magbee]

It's all right. Yeah, I was like, roman Olympics.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I just realized that. So 78 or something.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yep.

[AJ Hanenberg]

My. Whoops. Hard whoops.

[Thomas Magbee]

That's fine.

[Graham Donaldson]

I'm glad you realized that here.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Yeah, I just realized it just now.

[Thomas Magbee]

So anyway, we come back from breakfast, and the tour guide's like, hey, would you guys be cool if we extended the tour by half an hour and go to the Raphael rooms? And we're like, yes. Anyway, so we got to go the Raphael Rooms, and I got to see the School of Athens now. And this is what spawned this idea for the podcast. So in the School of Athens, for.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Those, is a painting you can see on our website, Right?

[Thomas Magbee]

Which is a painting you can see on the website, which is something you can Google right now. If you're driving, you can imagine it. Or if you're driving a Tesla, you can Google it because your car is driving for you.

[Graham Donaldson]

Terrifying.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah, it is terrifying in it. So the School of Athens, that famous picture of Raphael in the Vatican, of all of the famous sort of ancient pagan philosophers and mathematicians, like, doing their thing. You got one dude chilling on the steps. You got math going on. You've got. If you look at the far right corner, there's this dude looking at you, and that's Raphael. But right in the middle of it, you've got Plato and Aristotle. And Plato is the older guy on the left and Aristotle is in his famous blue robe on the right. And if you look at that. Are you looking at it right now? And so if you pull it up. So they're both gesturing.

[Graham Donaldson]

Right.

[Thomas Magbee]

And so Megby, what is the. Can you describe the gestures?

[Graham Donaldson]

Plato points up and Aristotle points down.

[Thomas Magbee]

That's right. Plato is pointing up to the sky and Aristotle is almost like pointing down. But it's almost like Aristotle is giving a, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy. He's like kind of like, like, looks.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Like he's dribbling a basketball.

[Thomas Magbee]

Exactly, looks like he's dribbling a basketball. And this is sort of visually symbolic of their methodology. And we're going to talk today about sort of the Platonic idea of how you understand something and why Plato is pointing up and the Aristotelian idea of how you know something and why Aristotle is pointing down. Now, they're not opposites, nor are they in conflict. And in a weird way, like, often Plato and Aristotle come to the same conclusions about topics, but they're using very different, different methodology. And I kind of want to like.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Like me and you.

[Thomas Magbee]

Like me and you. And I want.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I'm right. And you have to be convinced and.

[Thomas Magbee]

I have to be convinced and I want to talk about that methodology and like maybe some of the ways that if you just use one over the other, how it can go wrong and just sort of like how, how to. Just how you think about these two different ways of knowing something. So let's talk a little bit about Plato. So if I was going to give like a little summary statement of the Platonic view and the Aristotelian view, Plato is somebody who is all about like the theoretical ideas, the world of ideas up in the sky. He's pointing upwards.

[AJ Hanenberg]

He wants to know the essence of things.

[Thomas Magbee]

He wants to know the essence of things. If you've listened to our episodes that we've ever done on Plato, AJ's going to do another one after this. It is, it is done in dialogues, these Socratic dialogues where Socrates is asking basically strip away questions or he's asking questions to try to get to the essence of something. And we're going to look at the plate, the analogy of Plato's, the allegory of Plato's cave today to sort of give the example of like this is what the. What the philosopher man should do. So Aristotle's. Sorry, Plato's all about the world of the ideas up in the heavens. He's pointing up. Aristotle is all of his methodology is more about coming to conclusions based on the world of observable experience. So he is from the. He's pointing down and he's talking about experience and he's talking about that which can be observed. So it's like inductive reasoning versus deductive reasoning. It's. It's theory versus experience. And so these are the two sort of methodologies. And anyway, so let's look at Plato first. So we're. I'm going to read a little bit of Plato's cave and, and you'll get a sort of sense as to what Plato thinks, how we like sort of how we understand something. So for you keeping score at home, we're reading a little bit of Plato's allegory of Plato's cave, which is found in Republic book seven. And we're also going to be looking at the first chapter of Errors of Aristotle's Metaphysics. And, and the reason why we're sort of reading this is I kind of want to show the less the conclusions and more the method because the method is interesting. And. And yeah. And yeah. Anyway, so let's look at it. All right, so let me read some Republic Book 7. So the Republic is a dialogue between Socrates and a bunch of people. And they're trying to understand what justice is. And the way to understand justice is, is they build a theoretical city. They don't. They just sort of like build already. There's that idea that they are. Oh, to understand the nature of something, let's imagine an ideal. There's. They're literally just sitting around in the living room using their imagination to come up with the form of justice.

[AJ Hanenberg]

The perfect city.

[Thomas Magbee]

The perfect city. And in the perfect city, they can understand what the nature of justice is. So already right there you've kind of got that Greek Western, we can come to conclusions purely based on visualizing in our minds as opposed to like the real world. Okay, so here we go. This is what. And when they're talking about education and they're talking about how you learn something. Plato, through. Through the character of Socrates, gives this analogy. Next I said compare the effect of education and of the lack of it on our nature to an experience like this. Imagine human beings living in an underground cave, like dwelling with an entrance a long way up, which is Both open to the light and as wide as a cave itself. They've been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them because the bonds prevent them from turning their heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning above and behind them. Also below them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path, a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers, above which they show their puppets. And Glaucon says, I'm imagining it. Cool. Yeah. And then he goes on, imagine there are people on the wall carrying all sort of artifacts that project statues of people and other animals made out of stone, wood, and every material. Some of them are talking, and some of them are silent. And then they have to sort of look at these shadows. And then it says they can't sort of escape. They refer to this as a prison. And he says, and if the prisoners could talk to one another, do you think they'd suppose that the names they used apply to the things they are seeing passing before them? Well, of course. And what if their person also had an echo from the wall facing them? Do you think they'd believe that the shadows passing in front of them were talking? Whenever one of the carriers passed along the wall, the little partygoer said, yeah, of course. Then the prisoners would in every way believe that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of those artifacts. Okay, so, all right, there. Plato is giving kind of, like an analogy of reality. Can one of you guys kind of, like, give, like, a summary with the summary of his analogy of reality?

[AJ Hanenberg]

The. The stuff we see in our everyday life is only the shadow of the real thing. It's not. It's. It's all kind of illusory and not really the actual reality.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yep, that's right. So when you see a dog or when you see a tree or when you hear something and when we talk about it and our experience, it is. Yeah, illusionary to. If that's a word, it's an illusion of the reality.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Or maybe at least a derivative.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah, that's probably a better word. Yeah, it's a derivative.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Not full illusory. It's really there. It's just you're not seeing the reality itself. You're seeing something derived from the reality itself. You're not seeing a, like, full dogness. You're seeing the shadow of a dog. Individual account of the dog, which is deficient in some way.

[Thomas Magbee]

That's right. So it's deficient in some way. And when you talk about it, you are only able to talk about what you experience. And that experience itself is going to be derivative and deficient.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yep.

[Thomas Magbee]

Of course. Okay. And then he says, imagine that somebody kind of breaks out of their chains and fetters and climbs up. He. Here's a little phrase. Consider then what being released from their bonds and cured of their ignorance would naturally be like. Remember, he's describing this as education. Education is like this. If something like this came to pass when one of them was freed and suddenly compelled to stand up, turn his head, walk and look up towards the light, he'd be pained and dazzled and unable to see things whose shadows he'd seen before. What do you think he'd say if we told him that what he'd seen before was inconsequential, but that now, because he is a bit closer to the things that are and is turned towards things that are no more, he sees more correctly. Or to put it another way, if we pointed to each of the things passing by, asked him what each of them is and compelled him to answer, don't you think he'd be at a loss and that he believed that the things he saw earlier were truer than the ones he was now being shown? Much truer. And if someone compelled him to look at the light itself, wouldn't his eyes hurt and wouldn't he turn away and flee towards the things he'd able to see, believing that they were really clear than the ones he's being shown? Of course. So you get the. The prisoner breaks out of his little prison, and when he begins to go to the thing itself, he kind of naturally rebels against it because it's too bright, it's too dazzling, it's kind of scary.

[Graham Donaldson]

It's not the same as what he saw.

[Thomas Magbee]

It's not the same as what he thought before. And he would want to go back to what was familiar anyway. And then. But if he perseveres and he goes up, he's going to see. It's going to take him a while and he's going to have to, like, observe what's real only at night because the sun is too bright. But then as he adjusts to it, he'll be able to observe the true things. And when he goes back to the cave to try to tell everybody what's real and what's true about everyone's going to make fun of him and ridicule him and Plato even says and kill him, which is kind of strange. Whereas everybody in the cave they would give each other honors, praises and prizes for the one who is sharpest at identifying the shadows as they passed by, and who best remembered what usually came earlier, which later, in which simultaneously, blah, blah, blah. So all the people in the cave that are chained are like, giving each other Nobel Prizes for how well they are at identifying and understanding the shadows, whereas the dude that broke out and sees reality for what it is comes back and is ridiculed and mocked. And then here's sort of the. The end of this little section I want to read, because here's. When Plato sort of tips his hand in this little parable, you know, he sort of reveals what he's talking about. This whole image, Glaucon, must be fitted together with what we said before. The visible realm should be likened to the prison dwelling and the light of the fire inside it to the power of the sun. And if you interpret the upward journey and the study of things above as the upward journey of the soul to the intelligible realm, you'll grasp what I hope to convey, since that is what you wanted to hear about. Whether it's true or not, only the God knows. But this is how I see it. In the knowable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it. Come. Then share with me this thought also is. It isn't surprising that the one who get to the. Sorry, the ones who get to this point are unwilling to occupy themselves with human affairs and that their souls are always pressing upwards, eager to spend their time above. For after all, this is surely what we'd expect if indeed things fit the image I described before. So Plato gives us sort of idea that the world that we live in is the shadow world and that there are people who are pressing upwards into the study of, like, the divine things or the. The. The realm of ideas. And this is why Plato was pointing up, because he says that it's. And it's kind of obvious that for him, that he lionizes this idea, this is the goal of the good enlightened man, is to try to, like, almost disembodied. Well, if you sort of take that at its word, almost disembody himself from the shadow world and try to dwell in the.

[Graham Donaldson]

The real world.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah. The real world or the world of the good. The world of the beautiful. It's all. I mean, there's no. There. There's a reason why Platonism, as it went on, almost took on like a quasi mystical religious enlightenment bent. Sure. That, like, not. Have we ever talked about Gnostics in the podcast?

[Graham Donaldson]

I'm sure.

[Thomas Magbee]

How would, maybe. How would you, like, how would you like, describe Gnosticism?

[Graham Donaldson]

It's like this belief that there's like, secret knowledge that certain people get access to and that whatever. Whatever group is offering it is like they are the one source of truth. Right. So that's kind of like more broad and typically.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Body. Evil spirit. Good.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yes, Body. Yeah, There's. There's sort of knowledge.

[AJ Hanenberg]

The secret knowledge was usually.

[Thomas Magbee]

Usually that was usually that. That like there's like a realm above and beyond the physical realm that is good and the body is bad. And so we see this even play out today with any kind of like, sort of new agey stuff or even like startup bros that are taking mushrooms in the Amazon to try to. What's that like, famous drug that people are taking?

[AJ Hanenberg]

Ayahuasca.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah, because there's that idea that, like, oh, if we can sort of ascend to some sort of higher plane, we'll please our investors. Well, please. Yes, the investing gods will be pleased that we will sort of attribute some sort of secret knowledge and then we can like, I don't know, like, crush our KPIs or something.

[Graham Donaldson]

It sounds like a religion, though.

[Thomas Magbee]

It is.

[Graham Donaldson]

The Platonism stuff you're talking about.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah.

[AJ Hanenberg]

And what's a KPI? I mean, I already know, obviously.

[Thomas Magbee]

Performance indicator. It's like business.

[Graham Donaldson]

Business Speak.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah, speak.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I mean, I knew. I just wanted to.

[Thomas Magbee]

Very. That's very accommodating. Sorry. Okay, so Plato's got this idea that, like, human life and philosophical inquiry is to be done in the realm of the idea. It is to be sort of done above the common bound. And yeah, it almost takes on this quasi sort of like enlightenment, spiritual aspect to it that the physical world. He doesn't go so far as to say that the physical world is evil. But even in the analogy, there's sort of disdain for the people and almost mockery for the people who are staying in the cave. And like, the real ones are the ones that can kind of escape it. Now, this is the passage that launched a thousand insufferable, like, philosophy undergrads, I.

[Graham Donaldson]

Was going to say.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Yeah, don't you.

[Graham Donaldson]

Don't you hate this person, like, as. It's like, no Matrix mag me.

[AJ Hanenberg]

The funny thing is how much this is playing into my next episode. Oh, good. Oh, so much. Yeah, so.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yes. So I mean, yeah, it is kind of this insufferable thing because you have lots of people that are like, I've reached. You know, I live in the world of ideas. I don't live in the common. The common realm.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I knew. I knew a philosophy major like that in college. He's like, for sure. They're all like that Nietzsche stuff. I could have thought of all that. Like, but you didn't.

[Graham Donaldson]

Like, that's right.

[Thomas Magbee]

But. So there, there. I think it's right to say that there is a certain kind of arrogance with this. And. But this is a. The realm of. Yeah, this sort of.

[Graham Donaldson]

Are you gonna tell me it's deserved?

[Thomas Magbee]

Like, no, no. But I think there's the. Where I'm going with this, with this podcast. We'll look at metaphysics in a second. Is. I'm trying to figure out, like, when is that kind of mode of thinking necessary in human affairs? Having a philosophy about something, having an idea about. About saying there's. About trying to find the ideal of something versus its opposite, which is going to be what Aristotle talks about, which is coming to conclusions based on experience. And so let's look at metaphysics. So we've kind of covered Plato. Plato is. Is. The things that you can experience in this life are derivative, illusionary, derivative at best, you know, maybe even manipulative at worst. That by looking at them, you're not getting the real thing. And if you turn into somebody that really pats yourself on the back for, like, categorizing the shadows, that's almost a laughable thing, right? That passage where he says, and if there had been any honors, praises, or prizes among them for the ones who was the sharpest at identifying the shadows as they passed by and who best remembered what usually came earlier, which later and which simultaneously. So it's like, oh, this person predicted that the dog shadow preceded the cat shadow on the little, like, carousel of. Of whatever. And yay. And Aristotle and Plato sort of making fun of him. Okay, so keep that sort of. I'm also not doing a good enough job being neutral. Like, I'm sort of making fun of it a little bit. I do think being a. A first principles kind of person is important, like, not having to experience something, but. But thinking through it. Anyway, I'm putting the card.

[Graham Donaldson]

I'm probably seeking to, like, break out of, like, there's a way things are in your current year, your current city, whatever. And, like, trying to find true things beyond that.

[Thomas Magbee]

That's right.

[Graham Donaldson]

Like a lot.

[Thomas Magbee]

So you don't need to be completely relied on, just your own personal experience that you can sit in a room and build a city in your mind and come to real conclusions about the.

[Graham Donaldson]

World and learn things.

[Thomas Magbee]

And learn things you can. And that's a really important thing. Okay, so that's why Plato's pointing up. Here's why Aristotle is pointing down. So we're looking at the metaphysics. Now. If you. I have this. This is. This giant book I'm holding is the basic works of Aristotle. Just the basic, basic works.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Doesn't have his sonnets.

[Thomas Magbee]

What Aristotle tries to do. What Aristotle tries to do. You know what? I want a bust of Aristotle. I've decided that this is probably not a surprise, but I'm a huge Aristotle fanboy, that if you just look at the. Are you looking up how much it costs?

[Graham Donaldson]

He just found your Christmas gift, obviously.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Duh.

[Thomas Magbee]

If you kind of look at the books that Aristotle writes, Aristotle is trying to create the. Basically the category of everything that can be known and observed. So Aristotle comes up with conclusions about the universe through observing the particular and coming to the generalization. Whereas Plato kind of wants to leapfrog the particular and just go to the generalization in his mind. If you just. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, let me just read. I want. I was thinking of maybe reading the entire table of contents just so you can get a sense of what Aristotle's books are. It's. Well, here we go. So he talks about, like, what actually is a category. How do you. How can you interpret something? The prior analytics, the posterior analytics, what are the topics? What are. How do you refute? Then he has a book on physics, a book on the heavens, a book on generation and corruption, a book on the soul, a book on memory, a book on dreams, a book on prophesying, which is interesting. A book on animals, on parts of animals, the generation of animals, the metaphysics, the ethics, the politics, the rhetoric, the poets, the poetics. So, like, Aristotle is trying to. He is writing basically notes on everything that you can observe in the world. And this is why Aristotle is somebody who is depicted pointing down. He is. Plato can be perfectly happy sitting alone in a room thinking about things, whereas Aristotle is the one that, like, wants to. Wants to explore the entirety of the world. So let me just read to you a little bit of chapter one of the metaphysics. You can get a sense of his methodology all men by nature desire to know.

[Graham Donaldson]

Just off the bat.

[Thomas Magbee]

Great first sentence.

[Graham Donaldson]

That's great.

[Thomas Magbee]

And you know, how would he, how would Aristotle have come to this conclusion? He's a man. He observes men, he sees it. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses. For even apart from their usefulness, they are loved for themselves and above all others, the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing, one might say, to everything else. The reason is that this most of all the senses makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. So already at the beginning of Aristotle's book about knowing, he praises eyes like our eye. He's like, isn't it a great thing to be able to see? So the Aristotle, the observer. I'm not saying that Plato could be blind, but Plato does. When he, when Plato writes about how we come to know, he starts off by having men in a dark cave, not seeing properly. And Aristotle talks about how we innately love our eyes and we almost see viewing as a, as a good in and of itself, even though it is in the service of a greater good, which is knowing.

[AJ Hanenberg]

So I'm not trying to spoil next week's episode, but that is literally the opposite of what Plato says. Yeah, he has, he has interesting Socrates saying he is desirous of death. And one of the things he says is like our, our senses lead us astray. We are never seeing what's actually real. And so trying to get away from our senses into the essence of things and not trust the silly things our senses are telling us, that's the real way towards wisdom, which is literally the opposite of, like, crazy. So Aristotle saying our eyes are such great things because through them we get knowledge is almost a direct contradiction of what Plato said.

[Thomas Magbee]

I, I don't know if we want to go as far as to say that this can be woven into personalities, but it's probably a good thing for everybody in their own life to investigate. In what way am I more on the Platonic side of things in thinking that I don't trust my senses, I trust my sort of my logical or my own sort of reason, my own logic, my first principles, my coming to conclusions in my head versus are you more the person that says, I want, I want to sort of like, experience lots of things and be able to come to conclusions based on getting reports from other people and getting advice and, and, or, or getting statistics on something? Well, we'll get to that. That's kind of where I want to go with this. But let's sort of lay some groundwork with Aristotle first. Pardon me.

[Graham Donaldson]

We're so back.

[Thomas Magbee]

I shouldn't have had fuzzy water.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Bubbly water.

[Thomas Magbee]

How dare you. So then he's all right. He says animals are born with the nature of sensation, but humans are different. Let's see what I want to read. By nature, animals are born with the faculty of sensation. And from sensation memory is produced in some of them, though not in others. And therefore the former are more intelligent and apt at learning than those which cannot remember. Those which are incapable of hearing sounds are intelligent, though they cannot be taught. Example, the bee and any other race of animals that may be like it. And those which, besides memory, have the sense of hearing can be taught. So if you have the capacity to remember stuff, you're in a better spot than if you can't. And you. And if you can't hear, you're not going to be able to. To learn. Like B. Apparently bees can't hear. I don't know.

[Graham Donaldson]

Okay, fair enough.

[Thomas Magbee]

The animals other than man live by appearance and memories and have but little of connected experience. But the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now, this isn't interesting. Now, from memory, experiences produced in men for the several memories of the same thing produced. Finally, the capacity for a single experience and experience seems pretty much like science and art, but really, science and art comes to men through experience. For experience made art, as Paulus says, but inexperience, luck. Now, art arises when from many notions gained by experience, one universal judgment about a class of objects is produced. So that's probably the big thing. When you have many experience about something and you come to what he called the general universal judgment about a class of objects, you have now understood the art of something. And I think he's getting at the same thing as, like when Plato wants to see the form, the essence, the real thing. Aristotle says, you can come to that by seeing a bunch, by having a bunch of different experiences, having them in your memory, coming to a generalized conclusion. And now you have the art of something. And he says when you've gathered a bunch of different arts, he says, that is wisdom. That's where he's going with this.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Man, I love Aristotle.

[Thomas Magbee]

Aristotle's awesome.

[AJ Hanenberg]

He just makes so much sense. It feels like Plato is sort of searching, like he's the guy who's just escaped the cave and is kind of dazzled. And then Aristotle's like, here's what you're actually seeing there, bud.

[Thomas Magbee]

Now for to Have a judgment that when Callias was ill of this disease, this did him good. And similarly in the case of Socrates and in many individual cases is a matter of experience. So you're like, hey, callous, like, had a stuffy nose. And I like, you know, shoved a root vegetable up there and he was fine. And I did the same thing with Socrates. But to judge that it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution marked off in one class when they were ill of this disease. Example to phlegmatic or bilious people when burning with fever. This is a matter of art. So it's experience to say, I rubbed a bunch of dirt on Magby's face when he was sick and he got better. And it's an art to say, if I rub this specific kind of dirt on people with this specific kind of malady, that is the art.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Well, and it's not just one kind of person. He's like, it actually works with all sorts of people. Like, so he's done it twice. He's like, that's pretty decent. And then he's like, okay, it works if you're big, if you're small, if you're tired, if you're old, if you're.

[Thomas Magbee]

Young now, okay, then he's gonna come. Then he's going. But he is going to come down a little bit on the pure theoretical person. And the theoretical person is like the Plato person with a view to action. Experience seems in no respect inferior to art. And men of experience succeed even better than those who have theory without experience. The reason is that experience is knowledge of individuals. Art of universals and actions and productions are all connected with the individual. 4. The physician does not cure man except in an incidental way. But Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such individual name who happens to be a man, if then a man has the theory without the experience and recognizes the universal, but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure. For it is the. It is the individual that has to be cured. So Aristotle seems to be saying, if you could jump to the. To the holy real, to the spiritual realm and get out of the cave and learn science, learn medicine, you could have the form of medicine and you came back. You probably wouldn't be all that good at curing men because you. You would have lacked the experience and you wouldn't have sort of the art that presumably gets built up over time. Does that, does that make sense? Am I reading that right?

[Graham Donaldson]

I'm not sure I agree with it, because I'm trying to think of like, who do I want to be my doctor. Like, do I want Plato or Aristotle? And I think I want Plato. Right. Like if there, if you get to the theoretical realm and you find the cure to whatever disease I have. Yeah, I'd rather that than like Aristotle goes. Your example of the dirt, I think is like spot on. Right. Like he, he knows a guy who got cured by dirt, so he's going to like try and apply that again.

[Thomas Magbee]

But would you want the surgeon that right before you're going under says, I've never done this before, but I've read a lot of books.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I was just going to say that.

[Graham Donaldson]

I think I do the one who's.

[Thomas Magbee]

Read books instead of like, I don't know, man.

[Graham Donaldson]

Because even Aristotle's hasn't probably gone to school. I don't know, like, there's going to be problems. I'm sure we can get to extremes on either one of them. But the person who has studied this and knows like this is in general where, like how this works as opposed to I did this a couple times and now I hope you're similar to the people I've known.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I think we're underselling what art is. Like a guy who's done it a couple times. Like, for example, if I'm going to send my kid into a classroom and there's two different teachers and one has just come out of college, they just did extensive studying, they have a PhD in teaching sciences, they know all of the theory. And then there's a guy who's been teaching for 20 years. I'm going to send my kid to the one who's been teaching for 20 years because he actually knows how to control a classroom. Because all the theory, like I can read a whole bunch of theory about how to control a classroom, but I know like personally, like when I like my, my experience in controlling kids and developing relationships with them is invaluable. Like over the 15 years I figured out how to do that. Right. But walking in, even if I had like studied it, I wouldn't know what I was doing. And so maybe we're talking about.

[Graham Donaldson]

Your example though is taking like one is much less, has spent much less time on it than the other.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Right.

[Graham Donaldson]

One is spent a couple years learning and the other has been 20 years in experience. So you need a more comparable comparison between those two of one who has thought about and gotten to the person who is well read in the classical works that they are teaching as opposed to the one who has taught A few classes we need to get more on more similar comparisons between the two. I hear you, but I think what.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Aristotle is saying about the art is that you have to have a massive breadth of experience to develop the art. And so it wouldn't be just like a doctor who's done it a couple times. It's a guy who's been in the field for 20 years and has seen the dirt applied a thousand times. And some other guys like, ah, that's not the essence of. He's like, yes, but this is the thing that works.

[Thomas Magbee]

He does say later in this, Aristotle says that men of experience can't teach. He says, only the artist can teach. So I think Plato, when he describes the person who's broken into the realm of ideas, and Aristotle, when he describes the artist, I think he's talking. They're talking about the same thing, that the artist is a person that knows the idea of the essence of something. And Plato was talking about the person who knows the essence of something. But Plato seems to denigrate the experience.

[AJ Hanenberg]

How you got.

[Thomas Magbee]

And Aristotle seems to say. To say that the experience is the necessary function that you need to do in order to get to become the artist. I don't think you become an art. I don't. I think Aristotle would say, I don't think you can become an artist any other way.

[AJ Hanenberg]

You can't just leap to the essence like Plato wants you to. Aristotle says you have to get there through experience.

[Thomas Magbee]

And yes, now the thing is, I think Plato does believe that you can leap and get to the essence. And that's what he. And that's what Socrates. That's what he has Socrates doing the dialectic, the asking of questions. And we've had this debate on the podcast before of can you come to anything true. By talking about what everything isn't, but if you can, like, strip away what something isn't, can you get to what is Aristotle? My understanding of Aristotle is that Aristotle says, no, you can't. You actually have to go and do a bunch of experience and then come up with those general categories and become the artist. So I want to see if there's anything else I wanted to read here. But yet we think that knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience. And we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience. It is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know that the former can teach, and therefore we think art more truly, knowledge and experiences. For the artist can teach and men of mere experience cannot. They can know that fire is hot, but not why fire is hot. So the. Sir, the way I think about it is that I'm trying to think of like maybe examples that drive this home. And if this is too repetitive for people who've listened to this podcast for a long time, I apologize. There's a scene in Romeo and Juliet where Friar Lawrence and Romeo are arguing and Romeo is lamenting his the fact that he's been banished from Verona and he's gonna leave and because he's killed Tybalt and he's been banished and he's not going to see Juliet anymore. And Friar Lawrence is trying to reason with him. And Friar Lawrence is clearly correct in reasoning with him that like, dude, it's okay, go to Mantua, hang out there for a little bit. And Romeo says to Friar Lawrence, you basically says, you can't, you can't speak about what you've never felt. He says, if you were like me an hour but married, Tibalt murdered you, you be yourself being banished, then you can give me advice, then you could tell me about this. But because you've never done any of these things, you don't know what it's like. Friar Lawrence, it's like wrong. And Friar Lawrence is like, I do know what it's like. You know, Friar Lawrence can be like, I may not have experienced this, but I like, I'm a man, I'm a human being. We, you know, I've. I also have emotions and I can tell you that you're being an idiot. And Romeo says, but you haven't experienced this so precisely and acutely that you actually don't know what it's like to have this. The feelings that I have, which is a very like 19 year old person, person thing to say, feeling it stronger.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Than you ever have.

[Thomas Magbee]

Exactly. But the thing is, okay, maybe that's a comical. And in that sense, like Friar Lawrence is clearly in the right on this, but that is kind of illustrating a little bit of this problem, which is there are benefits and limitations from being purely a first principles thinker. Friar Lawrence, who lives alone in a cell, but has a lot of knowledge about things. And there are benefits but limitations of being somebody who experiences a lot and sort of goes off into the world. And my question is like, how can I phrase this? Some there are times when you need to be one and there's times when you need to be the other. And it's hard to know when those times are. So without driving too much of a wedge between Plato and Aristotle, one way you can Think of Aristotle is that Aristotle is the kind of thinking that would put a lot of sort of weight behind statistics. A bell curve.

[Graham Donaldson]

Right?

[Thomas Magbee]

Because that is. The bell curve is like the experience of the world. So here are all. Here's all of these scenarios that play out, and here's the distribution of the outcomes. And because of the distribution of the outcomes, we can look at the fat middle of that bell curve, and we can make sort of predictive results about the world. That is the Aristotelian kind of ethos. That is the hand pointing down. And there's a lot of times when that is really, really, really helpful. And that kind of thinking is great and carries a lot of water, and you can be very successful in the world doing that. But then there are other times where you need to sort of, like, have an idea and try to have, like. And then work to have, you know, the context conform to that idea. All right, there's a big football game today. UT is playing Georgia. Right. Let's use a sports analogy. There's two ways to build a team to succeed in a game, right? One is you're like, play. D'oh. And you have a philosophy, an idea about how the way the game is to be played. The game should be played like this. You should have players. I can sit by myself, and I can play the game in my mind about how. Or I could write it on a piece of paper in a coffee shop of how the game should be played. And then I can go.

[AJ Hanenberg]

I've seen this episode of Ted Lasso.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Season three.

[Thomas Magbee]

And then I can go, and I can tell my players to confront, conform to my realm of ideas, my finger pointing up, and that's. And we're going to win playing that way. Then there's the Aristotelian way of playing it. You look at the team you have in front of you, and you say, all right, I've got aj, and he's tall, and I've got Magby, and he's strong. And I'm going to have Magby, like, you know, kick the ball as hard as he can to AJ, who's going to head it in the goal because AJ's taller than everybody else.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Are we talking about football?

[Thomas Magbee]

Soccer?

[Graham Donaldson]

Okay, we switched.

[AJ Hanenberg]

We were just talking. Now people are heading things into goals. And I was like, I don't think that sounds. It's about right for a classical podcast.

[Graham Donaldson]

It's really good.

[Thomas Magbee]

Do you play football with your feet? Because there's a little kicking.

[Graham Donaldson]

Okay.

[Thomas Magbee]

Have you seen that sketch? The SNL sketch?

[AJ Hanenberg]

No.

[Thomas Magbee]

Oh, okay, never mind. All right, sorry. So there's different ways. Okay, we can go back to American football. So like.

[Graham Donaldson]

But they're both good, right? Like, they're both, they can both win games, right? And I think this is AJ's point about the teacher with 20 years experience, both are trying to get to winning the game, right? Yeah, the end is the same, but. And you'll need both, right? You'll need theory, you'll need some. What's your team look like?

[Thomas Magbee]

I guess so maybe my question is, is one more fragile than another? Is one. Is it more dangerous to be the pig headed platonist who says, I'm going to play the. There's a right way to play the game regardless of whether or not I have the players to play that kind of game? Or is it more dangerous to be the eternal pragmatist that is just looking at stat at bell curve statistics and isn't paying attention to the wings and getting blown out every now and then? Because you're not. Because you're like. Well, the, the, those, those risky events on the tail ends of curves only happen like 1% of the time. So I'm not even going to worry about them. I guess it's like, is it better to be one or the other or do you have to be a Platonist and an Aristotelian at different points in something?

[AJ Hanenberg]

Let's use another sports analogy. You fellas ever seen the movie Moneyball?

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah. Yes, exactly. This is a perfect example.

[AJ Hanenberg]

So Moneyball, I think begins with the Platonist view. He says, I have a theory about how this is going to go, right? We need to look at the stats, which would be kind of like, it's sort of a combination. He's like, this is how we're going to put the team together. A team wins when the guys get on base. Doesn't matter what else they're. As long as we can get on base, the guys are going to win.

[Thomas Magbee]

Even if they do it on aggregate?

[AJ Hanenberg]

Yeah, even if they do it like on aggregate. If it's by getting like getting walked, I don't care if they hit or get walked. If he gets walked five times out of six when he's at bat, I don't care. He's on base, right? So they go out and they find players that are undervalued because they have high get on base statistics, right? So there's his principle, his essence. Teams win when they get on base, right? That's the, that's the play. D'oh. Perfect. The Aristotle comes in when they take those individual players and he gets into a conflict with his coach, who's. Or like his manager, whatever it is, he's the general manager. I forget what I think.

[Thomas Magbee]

Anyway, no, there's that scene with the scout. All right, I'll let you finish your point.

[Graham Donaldson]

The scouts will disagree.

[AJ Hanenberg]

So the scouts all disagree. And the guy who's actually putting people in the game is still trying to run it like an old baseball team. And so the, the team is not functioning because that principle isn't being put into practice. And so the old coach with experience. The old coach with experience is like, this isn't really doing it. And I'm going to get, like, I'm going to get laughed out of here when we lose a whole bunch of games and they. And they continue to lose because he simply won't put the Aristotle, the Platonic ideal into practice. Once they do put it into practice, you still have to work with the team. There's still a guy that needs a little more confidence. They're still, like, they still got to teach them on pitching. And so you sort of see the, the Aristotelian come back when they are dealing with individual guys, so they have this idea they put into practice. And then after they get rid of this joker who won't actually put that principle into practice, those guys who have those years of experience still have to work with the ballplayers and, like, make them, like, there's one guy who doesn't know how to play first base, and they help him understand how to play first base because. Yep, you can get on base because.

[Thomas Magbee]

You need Giambi, because he gets walked all the time.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Yes. So he gets walked all the time. But they need him to be able to actually play a first baseman. And so they have to take some time and teach him. So they, they need a little bit of both.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah.

[AJ Hanenberg]

And I think the, The Aristotelian comes into practice as they're choosing players, because it's not just that they get on base. They look at a realm of statistics. Right?

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah. Now, what I think is really interesting is you get these back and forth. So let's take, for example. Let's say, for example, that the Moneyball came into baseball at a time when people were more Aristotelian, that they had, like, the way of playing, and everybody kind of got locked into this way of playing through experience, through the sort of. Well, maybe this isn't going to work. I. Yeah, I guess the point I'm trying to make is, do you swing to be more of this like idealist when everybody else is playing bell curves and do you swing more to be bell curves when everybody else is being an idealist? Like, someone comes in with this new way of playing the game that is based on a philosophy that he's concocted in with, you know, in his. In his mind. And then he tries to conform reality to his idea, and he's successful. But then when everybody starts. Starts doing that, everybody sort of has analytics teams that are putting together to try to play the game in a different way. You're going to have somebody that's going to have to innovate. And do they. Does it swing over to the other side? Does anybody. Do you sort of innovate back to, you know, going back to basics or going back to pragmatism or. Or are you sort of swinging back to this more Aristotelian way of thinking about solutions?

[AJ Hanenberg]

I think maybe we are underselling what Aristotle is actually trying to do. I think we're trying to say, like, he's like, just be practical. Figure out the knowledge that way. But I think what Aristotle is saying is the opposite of what Plato said. Plato said, can't trust your eyeballs. Right. They're never going to tell you the truth. You have to do it just with pure mind. And what Aristotle is saying is like, no, your eyeballs are telling you real information. And the way you get to the essence is by bringing together a whole bunch of memories and a whole load of experience and then putting an idea together. And so going back to the Moneyball analogy, the guy who concocted this plan ran across a statistician and said, like, I like what you were saying in there. And from experience, he recognized, now this is a guy that knows what he's talking about. Teams win when they get on base. And he knew that because of years and years and years of experience and an aggregate of memories that he had with different baseball teams. And so I think it's unfair to say it's just lock in, do the bell curve?

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah, no, you're right.

[AJ Hanenberg]

That guy knew the essence. He did, right? Plato knows the essence because he wants to skip the eyeball part. Aristotle says, no, you still need to know the essence. That is the art. You both get to the same principle, but you're only going to do it by trusting your eyeballs. I think it's more an epistemological position, like, this is how we earn knowledge than. Than a statement about, like, pragmatism versus theory.

[Thomas Magbee]

Aristotle, I think when he gives that analogy about doctors have to cure individual men, they don't cure. Man really gets to it. Because when you come to the real. When you come to being an artist, when you get to the actual. When you get to the idea of something through experience, there's all these other factors at play, like muscle memory, the fact that you are, you know, you. You. Even if you do something with experience, you also develop an intuition for something that you sometimes can't quite put your fingers on. And you kind of have that, like, embodied experience that comes to a knowledge. And then when you have theoretical knowledge mixed with embodied experience, you're probably better than just the theoretical knowledge. Pardon me. Than just the theoretical knowledge, which is what he got at.

[AJ Hanenberg]

One of my favorite, like, teacher theoretical, like, experience things that I put into place is you need your kids to believe that you've got eyes in the back of your head. So the way that I do this is I have a rule for no gum in my classroom. So if I see a kid is chewing gum, I don't call him out yet. I wait. Wait for a few minutes, and when I'm turned around writing notes on the board, and I'm like two sentences in, and I haven't looked at them in 20 minutes, I say, jeff, go spit out your gum. And they're like, how do you even see me? And so then they believe that I see, see all.

[Thomas Magbee]

It's like a noble lie, right?

[AJ Hanenberg]

Yeah. So that's. That's like one of those things that they don't really teach you in the. The theory. But.

[Thomas Magbee]

So another way that we can sort of think about this and this is going to continue on with it with a sports analogy is there is a ethos of playing soccer in South America that is different than how you play it in Europe. In Europe, they are much more. They have this idea of a philosophy. You have the manager, and the manager has an idea of how the game is going to be played, and he is going to conform his team into playing according to his ideals. That's a very European way of doing it. The best coach in the world, Pep Guardiola, like, has an idea of how the game is played in his mind, and he has his players conform to that idea. Players and coaches in South America, one of the. The most sort of a very influential coach in South America. He was the coach of the Brazilian national team for a while, and he coaches a team named Fluminenzi in Brazil, Fernando Denise. He's got this way of coaching where it's like the pl. I don't tell the players how to play. I have the players sort of figure out they need to be in a relationship with each other as players and solve the problems of the game through their sort of intuition of where each other are on the pitch. The European model is maybe I'm going to tell you that if. If AJ does this with the ball, you're going to do this, and you memorize that, and every time he does that, we're going to drill it. You're going to move here when AJ does this. So in the game, when it happens, we're a machine. Whereas in the South American version, it's like, I need you and AJ to become buddies, have some beers together, get each other's sort of vibes, and kind of know each other. So that when you're on the field, you kind of like, intuit what's going to happen, and you play it in this relational way, as opposed into this prescribed way. I think Aristotle is. Is more. Lends itself to that second way, which is through lots and lots of repetitive experience of the world, you not only get an intellectual theory of how things work, but you also get a, like. I don't want to say vibe, but I'm going to. You get like, sort of a vibe of how nature works about how things work. Like, you can get a feel that when this person is sick in this way, like, maybe my theory isn't going to be perfect because there's all these other variables that I've experienced before, and I know that. Well, in this case, actually, I think my. My rubbing the dirt technique isn't going to be as effective because of all. Because of all these other variables that aren't necessarily part of the theory, but they are part of the experience. And so you. You can sort of then, like, come to the solution. You can be successful in whatever realm you're doing because you've sort of built up that. That experience of doing something.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Yeah. You know that rubbing the dirt might not fix his running nose, but it sure will make him beautiful.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yes. And his skin is going to be exfoliated.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Yeah.

[Thomas Magbee]

So, I mean, there's. There's no lie. I am much more of a fan of Aristotle than I am of Plato. I think Plato is a little naive in saying the world is a lie and you have to jump over it to get to truth. And I. I think Aristotle is much more correct when he says he's much more forgiving, where he's like, we can come to statements about what is, but he's also says, we're going to leave room for mistake. There's going to be mistakes like you need to cure Callius, you need to cure Socrates. You know, you can't cure mankind. There's always going to be all of the. We can't control all of the variables. Plato wants to know the form and control. Aristotle gives room for, you know, not pr. Not pure pragmatism, but he gives more room for, like he has. He sort of gives intellectual wiggle room.

[AJ Hanenberg]

So, for example, Plato, when in his republic gives the form of the perfect city. And so Aristotle would go in and say, well, sure, that's all great in theory, but what if these people are like a seafaring people and they live on the seashore? That's going to be a little bit different. What if their warfare isn't necessarily on the ground, but really all about sailing? That's going to look different. And what if they're people of letters or people of philosophy versus mostly a farming people, Right? What, like different kinds of nations do different kinds of things. A mountain people is going to look different, right? So maybe just. But if you have experience of all those, if you know what a seafaring people looks like and a mountain people and you've lived in all of these places, then you have to go start a city in a desert. Well, you've got the art, you know how to deal with different kinds of people. You still know the principle, what a perfect place is supposed to look like. But really you're concerned with this individual city, the one built near a desert oasis. And you're not going to be sailing, it'll be more like a mountain, more like a plains type of people. And so you have all that art, you still know the principle, but you don't just try to skip the experience which is governing in all of those different places.

[Thomas Magbee]

In his politics, Aristotle says, here's how monarchy works. Here's how monarchy falls apart. Here's how a republic works. Here has how the republic falls apart. Whereas Plato in his version of the politics, which is republic, says, here is how a city, the best city should function and we're all going to be married. And we've done a whole episode, 10 episodes on it. It was like, we're all going to marry each other and like we're going to lie to the ugly people so they have no kids and we have.

[AJ Hanenberg]

A weird sex lottery and tell the. Tell the army that they have golden blood. And I think Aristotle's like, you know, none of this works. Right.

[Thomas Magbee]

But that's sort of indicative of the problem, is that, like The. The. The more Platonist thinker can get so married to the theory that you can be so divorced from reality that you end up being absurd. Whereas is there a way. I'm trying to think of, like, how can Aristotle go wrong? I mean, Aristotle can go wrong, but there's some.

[AJ Hanenberg]

There.

[Thomas Magbee]

There is a.

[AJ Hanenberg]

There is a danger.

[Thomas Magbee]

You.

[AJ Hanenberg]

It's. It's getting entrenched in a small sample size.

[Thomas Magbee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[AJ Hanenberg]

That's probably the problem with Aristotle is he describes a large. A large set of experiences to develop the art. Right. To get to the principle through your eyeballs over a long period of time. Well, you can say you've. You've been all over Italy and you know the Italian temperament, you know, all sorts of different people, and you end up making claims about man. And then when you travel to France and they're like, man is not like that. You're like, yes, he is. I've been all over Italy. Right?

[Thomas Magbee]

That's right. You can be limited by the sample size that you have.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Sample size is the danger.

[Thomas Magbee]

There's.

[Graham Donaldson]

And you might pick up things that are unrelated like that. And I know we keep using the dirt example, but I have successfully healed this many people of this ailment. I have used dirt every single time. Therefore, that's the correct way to heal it every time going forward, as opposed to. Can I come to some theory of some germ theory that's like, what's actually causing whatever disease that I'm treating or.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Accidentally prescribing the wrong causes? So you've been rubbing dirt all the time, but before you rub the dirt, you put an ointment on their face so the dirt sticks. But really it's the ointment that's doing the curing.

[Thomas Magbee]

True. My favorite. My favorite example of this is there was a. A tribe in South America that their main diet was a specific root vegetable. And they had. And they. But they had this really complicated way of preparing it. They, like, soaked it for, like, days, and then they, like, beat the crap out of it, and they would dry it and then they would cook it, and then they would eat it. But if you just cooked it and ate it without doing all that, it made no taste difference whatsoever. It tasted exactly the same. All right. So the South American tribe had this, like. They didn't tell you why they. When you. When asked why you do this, they would say, like, they gave some sort of religious release reason for it. And so the. It was one of these situations where so this happened in. You know, this is an ancient way of preparing this food in South America with this root. This root could also grow in certain climates in the, in the Global South. So it was imported over to Africa because it was a easy to grow root. And they thought maybe it could help with, with some food scarcity problems over there. And they had the, the local tribes in Africa grow this root and prepare it and, and eat it. But they left out all that religious nonsense of like, about straining it and drying it and all that kind of stuff. And they just gave it to the, to the, I think the colonial powers had like a colony in South America and brought it to their colony in Africa, something like that. And they, but they didn't teach the, the people that they gave the route to about all this, this preparation. Well, turns out that it was not detectable in a small, in a short period of time, but over like a generation, cyanide poisoning skyrocketed in this, in this African tribe. And it was because turns out that that ancient way of, of preparing the food actually leached out this like small trace samples of cyanide that when you didn't do that, would build up in your system and then you would die of cyanide poisoning after, after eating this for like 25 years. And the tribe in South America didn't know it in theory, but they had a real, they had sort of a religious sort of reason behind it. And when they were, when they asked, well, what happened if you don't do it? Well, it's just a bad taboo thing to do. You need to do this. But it actually, in reality, it had a real reason for it. But they didn't know, they wouldn't, they didn't have the language, they didn't have the theory to say, talk about cyanide. They didn't know the biology of the human, of cyanide poisoning.

[AJ Hanenberg]

They just knew that people who don't cook it properly, but they knew that.

[Thomas Magbee]

The families that do it in a different way, the gods get them in the end, right? And they died early. And so we prepare our food in this way. And it turned out that you actually had this, in that sense, like the experience. Oh, in that sense, almost like the, the superstition saved them, but the superstition was acting as the theory. When you didn't have the, you didn't have the, the scientific theory behind it, but you did have the benefits of this, of the spiritual theory behind it. And so I, I think about that example a lot when it comes to people that. So this is sort of like the not having Enough sample size or just jumping to conclusions about what is causing what and then, and then rolling out a program and not really knowing why you're doing it. And then you can actually create a, a hazard and not realizing that hazard. So like, you know, like you have a theory about a new way to teach kids how to read. And so then you develop this huge program of how to teach kids how to read. And then in 20 years the data comes out that actually it doesn't work and kids don't know how to read. Yeah. And now you have a generation of kids that are like screwed because you didn't teach them phonics. You taught them total, total language or whatever that thing was called in the 90s.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Or the other fun one is the self esteem movement. Yeah, right. Which they're like, it'll make people feel better and they'll be. But just made a whole bunch of jerk wads that thought they were awesome and didn't actually try it anything anyway.

[Thomas Magbee]

That is, that's all. We'll sort of wrap it up there. That's. So whenever you, if you ever see the school of Athens and you see Plato pointing up and you see Aristotle pointing down, just you can sort of know that both of those kinds of things are needed in order to cultivate wisdom. There are times when you need to kind of like not trust your eyes and stick to the plan in your mind that you have in your mind. And there are times when you need to gather advice and get statistics and. Or you need to do it the proper way. You need to have embodied experience before you can be considered wise at something. And yeah, so that's, that's what we have. That's what we talk about today.

[AJ Hanenberg]

There you go. Well, this has been classical stuff, you should know. And all those words that Graham said before we started recording now make a whole lot more sense.

[Thomas Magbee]

Oh, he didn't talk about literature. Well, maybe we do that in the in between.

[AJ Hanenberg]

He, he added a whole bunch of other extra words that, that didn't necessarily get make it onto the main episode. So if you're looking for the side stuff, you can go support us on patreon, which is patreon.com classical stuff, isn't that right? So you can find us there and hear our in between banter where we talk between the episodes. Uh, you can also Hear our monthly AMAs. You can also find us online@classical stuff.net that's our website. And you can email us@theguys classicalstuff.net and we're also on Twitter with CLSS C A L stuff, and I think that's it. We're not on anything else. Not on, like, Blue sky or Mastodon. Is that still a thing or like TikTok? Yep, Mastodon. What's Mastodon?

[Graham Donaldson]

Another Twitter clone. Right.

[Thomas Magbee]

I'm on TikTok. I do a lot of dancing.

[AJ Hanenberg]

You take cool. You TikTok.

[Graham Donaldson]

It's search for Graham the investor on Tik Tok. Thanks.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Anyway, we, you know, we're. We're doing stuff, so thanks for listening.

[Thomas Magbee]

Ciao.

[AJ Hanenberg]

Bye.