Because of this desire to understand human beings and human behavior, a group of people emerge in Greece, particularly in the area around Athens, who are seekers of wisdom. In fact, they draw their name from those two words. The Greeks have a lot of words for love. They have eight or nine different words for love.
Like I said to you in an earlier lecture, basically the Greeks have wonderful words for nuances of ideas and feelings. So in Greek, you wouldn't say like we do in English. I love a hamburger and I love my husband. That's kind of dumb because it relies on the context in order to understand what you mean by love. The Greeks actually have different words for love.
And one of their words is phylos or phileo, spelled with a ph like it is on your screen. And that means a love between equals, almost like a love of an idea or a concept. That love was applied to wisdom.
The Greek word for wisdom is sophia. So, Philosophia is the love of wisdom or philosophy. Now, this, of course, centers around Athens simply because, well, Athena is the goddess of wisdom. And remember, wisdom is like this middle ground. It's this balance.
It's not just information. It's not just straight intellect. It's not logic.
But it's also the application of it. It's between abstract and practical. It's a middle ground, a balance between those elements.
There are thousands of Greek philosophers ranging a wide gamut and many of them are fascinating. For example, there's a group of ancient Greek philosophers who came up with this crazy idea that no matter what objects in our world look like, no matter what they appear to be, all of them are actually made up of similar tiny pieces. So if you break everything down to its basic parts, they're all made of the same tiny tiny things. They call themselves atomists.
And millennia later, when we actually were able to see the tiny pieces that make up things, we named them atoms, after those ancient Greek philosophers. No, they didn't understand that there were different types of atoms with a structure, but they had the basic idea all the way back there. In the same way, there's a famous Greek philosopher named Heraclitus, who we only have bits and pieces.
We have about 40 different sentences. That's all we've got. The dude wrote an entire book, but we're missing most of it.
He was considered one of the most important and influential philosophers of the ancient world, and just those 40 statements we have of his have spawned entire books talking about his ideas and his brilliance. Greek philosophy is incredibly important, but where Greek philosophy really takes off is in the time period after the Athens-Sparta War, after the Peloponnesian War, when the Athenians begin looking for answers. Now, before you took your Plato and Aristotle quiz, the little one, the baby, shallow level one, I mentioned the fact that Plato and Aristotle were both trying to come up with ways to address how could they have done things better?
What would the perfect government system look like? What did Athens do wrong that they could fix? That story doesn't really start with Plato and Aristotle, though.
It actually starts with Plato's teacher, a guy by the name of Socrates. Now, Socrates was actually a military general, a leader in the Athenian army. And Socrates begins to philosophize, to chase after wisdom after he retires. He's seen some pretty rough stuff in his military career. And between all the horrible death and destruction he saw, the horrible things happening to good men, and the fact that in the end they lost, the Spartans won.
All of those things come together to make him really struggle and ask difficult questions. He goes looking for answers, and he finds a group of people who claim they have those answers for him. That group of people, they call themselves the Sophists.
The Sophists are a group of scholars and intellectuals who claim that they know the answers to what Socrates is asking. They know the way to make the world a better place. They understand why things sometimes seem unfair.
and they will be glad to give Socrates all of those answers on a pay-by-pay basis. So if he would like to know why the world is unfair, well, he can pay, and they'll be glad to give him that answer. You know, if he wants to know why bad things happen to good people, they've got an answer for that too, but well, there's an upcharge for that. It's more complicated.
Socrates gets really frustrated with this. Basically, he says, look, you people, you people don't actually know diddly squat. If you actually knew how to make the world a better place, If you actually knew the secrets of success, you wouldn't be standing around conning people, selling things inch by inch. You'd actually be out there making the world a better place. You would be off in a mansion somewhere living the good life.
You are just a bunch of fakes. In fact, what Socrates ultimately declares is that these people are idiots, simply because they claim they know the answers to everything. And Socrates says anybody who says they know all the answers is an idiot. Socrates says the only truly wise person in the world is the person who admits they don't know. The person who admits they don't know and says, hey, I want to find out.
Let's find out. That, according to Socrates, is the only wise person out there. The only wise person is the person who says they don't know, but they wish to seek answers. Those are the people who actually have some degree of wisdom. Socrates says he wants to be one of those people.
He wants to be the one who actually is able to go seek answers. And he does it in a very interesting way. Socrates actually rejects the sophists.
The word sophist in our world has actually become an insult. Basically, it means someone who pretends to know what they're talking about, to be stuffy and smart when they're really dumb. And instead, Socrates says the only way to find answers is to go out and start asking questions.
And Socrates begins to seek answers in a really funny and really awesome way. Essentially, to put it in modern terms, Socrates goes out and starts trying to crowdsource the answers to his big questions. He goes out to the Acropolis, that big white stone hill in the middle of Athens. And Socrates begins stopping people and saying, Hey, hey, why do you think bad things happen to good people?
Hey, why do you think the world sucks sometimes? Why is it so unfair? Why do you think we actually lost to the Spartans? They're not supposed to...
He begins asking these big questions, and then he calls someone over and says, Hey, this guy says this. What do you think? He begins trying to find answers by getting people to talk to one another because he believes ultimately by talking, by thinking about these big questions, and discussing them as society, we'll begin to find answers.
This is an amazing idea. It doesn't usually work. We keep trying it.
One of our recent attempts to try it is something called Reddit. Oh, that didn't work. Now, basically what Socrates is doing is he's trying to get people to seek and find answers.
And many people think what he's doing is brilliant. He actually ends up with followers, fanboys, who follow him around, trying to listen in on every conversation that he starts. The problem is that Socrates is asking really big questions. And those big questions, they come down to really awkward things like, um, well, you know, we elected a government.
We're a democracy here in Athens. How come that our government that we elected doesn't really seem to be doing anything to help us? How come the government isn't making the world a better place?
Why don't they seem to care about us? Should we get rid of this government? I mean, what about religion? What about our gods?
Aren't our gods supposed to be good? Aren't our gods supposed to be concerned with our well-being? Aren't our gods supposed to help us out? When was the last time you saw the gods help us out? Are we sure?
Are we even sure that the gods are real? Socrates begins asking really awkward questions about religion and politics, and he gets himself in a lot of trouble. In the end, Socrates actually gets arrested for treason. He gets arrested for corrupting the young people of Athens, and he's condemned to death. Socrates goes willingly.
He goes ahead and... And, uh... is killed.
But as he says, he's just asking questions. He's not committing treason. He will not defy the government.
All he wants to do is find out how the world can be a better place. Socrates never writes anything down. He never writes a book. Instead, the only way we actually know about Socrates is because of one of his followers, one of those fanboys who followed him around, a guy by the name of Plato. Now Plato takes a lot of the ideas that Socrates, his teacher, had and he kind of looks at them from his own point of view.
Plato writes a series of books and his books are all what we call dialogues or dialectic. Essentially the books are written as a conversation between two different characters. Now when I say that I use the word conversation very loosely. When you guys do your your big quiz on Plato, the one on Plato's Republic, you will see exactly what I'm talking about when I say this next part. Basically, the conversation is between two characters, and one of them is the smart guy, and one of them is the dumb guy.
The smart guy is always named Socrates, because, well, Plato is a total Socrates fanboy, Socrates was his teacher, Socrates knew everything! So whenever Plato writes the smart guy, he names the smart guy Socrates. So it's Socrates says, is it really what the real Socrates, Plato's teacher, would have said? Well, we don't know. All we know is that Plato makes the smart character in his books named Socrates.
The other character is the dumb guy in the Republic, the one you'll meet is named Glaucon. That person, basically their job in this quote-unquote conversation is to basically stand around and go, Wow, Socrates, you're so smart. Tell me more.
He's not really helpful, as you will discover. Plato, in these dialogues, in these conversations, explores a wide variety of topics, including how do we know things? How do we learn things?
Do we learn them from the world around us? Are we born knowing these things? Who actually is the wisest person?
And how should we run our government? Who? Who should run our government? Who is actually qualified to take care of the city, to take care of the people?
Plato in his works actually concludes that there is a perfect realm out there somewhere. He calls it the realm of the ideals. He says that it is the realm where truth is actually found.
And he describes this truth, he actually sometimes calls it the Greek word, but he calls it enlightenment. Because he actually associates light with wisdom and knowledge. He says this world around us is a poor copy, a flawed shadow of that realm of ideals. He actually calls it a shadow because he says that knowledge is light. So basically everything here is a shadow.
It's cast by something getting in the way of that light, that knowledge. This world around us is not something that we can truly learn from because everything here is just a bad copy, a two-dimensional shadow of the true ideal, of the true knowledge. Plato says we know things are unfair.
We know that this life sucks. We recognize things as being unfair happening to good people because we come born. with this sense of truth, this idea of what things should be like. Plato says even though we live in a world of shadows, there's something within us, something we are born with that tells us what good really looks like, what that ideal looks like.
We know this is wrong because we sense what right would be like. Plato says the only person who truly understands that, the only person who truly pursues it, the only person who can truly be brave enough to seek out knowledge, is a philosopher. that seeker of wisdom.
Consequently, kind of like Plato himself. Now, Plato describes this whole process of seeking for this ideal, of knowing something is wrong, of something in this world being not true, and reaching for perfection in his book, The Republic, through a story that Socrates, that's not the real Socrates, that's Plato's hand puppet, the fake Socrates, he tells a story, an analogy, an example. That example is given in Plato's book, The Republic.
Now, The Republic describes what Plato's perfect system would be like. You guys already know it relies on releasing anything that is selfish, property, family, gender roles, anything we use to define ourselves, and instead sharing everything, eliminating selfishness. For Plato, this society would actually group people. not based on their personal characteristics.
Remember, you give up everything that represents me. Instead, he places people in social categories based on their intellect. He suggests that everyone should be evaluated as a child to find out how intelligent they are, and then they should be trained for the job that meets their intellect. So basically, according to Plato, remember, kids don't belong to families anymore.
They belong to the group, the community, the government. Plato says, Every kid should be evaluated, and if the kid's not very intelligent based on their evaluation, they should be trained for being a garbage collector, manual labor, something that doesn't require that intellect. If the child is brilliant, then they should be given a wonderful education and trained as a philosopher, trained to be a leader.
Plato says that society should evaluate the children, and society should then place them in the social class which is more or most appropriate for them. If that sounds weird and kind of objectionable to you, Trust me, you're not alone. Now Plato in his Republic also says that art is not something we should be focusing on.
Because Plato says this world is just a shadow, a flawed copy of this perfect ideal place, Plato says that we shouldn't be creating copies of copies. Basically, if this world is a flawed version of a perfect one, why would we be creating a flawed copy of our flawed copy? It's dumb.
You're creating a shadow of a shadow. Plato instead says the only place that art has a place is his propaganda in promoting the ideas of the government. Other than that, he rejects artwork and says instead we should focus on knowledge and the intellect, looking within and trying to find a greater truth, getting closer to that ideal. The most famous example of that idea, that concept, is actually the Allegory of the Cave.
which Plato writes in the Republic. It is, as I said before, a story, an example. It's fictional. It's not real.
Told by, quote-unquote, Socrates, Plato's character. In it he describes a group of prisoners chained in a cave in front of them as a flat wall and the shadows appear on that wall illuminated by a fire behind a walkway Where people are carrying back-and-forth puppets essentially they cast a shadow on the wall The people staring at that wall think the shadows are reality because they've all that's all they've seen until one person tries to escape It gets outside and sees the true real world For Plato, this represents society, the philosopher, and truth. It's a complex analogy, but one that Plato believes explains the way the world works, and an idea or a story that we still see being used in our world today. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is probably the toughest quiz you're going to have to take all semester. And the reason I make you guys actually read the Allegory of the Cave, read the primary source, as hard and nasty as it is, is because this idea does show up over and over again.
The idea of seeing shadows as reality. The idea of someone escaping their captivity in reality and seeing the greater truth. It shows up everywhere from philosophy to movies like The Matrix.
Now, this idea that Plato comes up with is really important because it does shape our ideas and our society. It's this idea of finding a balance between what we see as reality and the world we have to live in and being able to... understand the truth and the greater unseen world outside. And for Plato, the person who can do that is the philosopher.
Now, not everyone agrees with Plato and his ideas. Not everyone agrees with his concept of the allegory of the cave. And amongst those who disagree very strongly is a guy named Aristotle, who's actually one of Plato's students. He also was a follower of Socrates.
And Aristotle understands. the concepts that Plato is putting forth, but he does not agree with them. Instead, Aristotle believes that we should be far more practical, far more hands-on.
It's far less about a philosopher king who understands the idea, the concept, but has little experience in reality, because Plato says we don't need that. Reality is just shadows. Aristotle instead believes in practical experience. hands-on expertise.
In fact, for Aristotle, everyone should be forced to serve in political office so they can understand politics better by being actually personally involved. Aristotle, as you know, believes that selfishness is actually a part of human nature and therefore it's not something we should try to get rid of. It is something we should utilize.
Aristotle says the physical world is important. It's where we operate. Unlike Plato, he does not view it just as a shadow world.
He believes it's something really important for us to understand. For Aristotle, that practical application, that hands-on, is important. As I said, he believes that everyone should be forced to serve in political office, whether they like it or not, simply because then they will have real practical experience of how politics works.
They're actually going to understand it's harder to criticize a politician and say, oh, he's just not getting enough done, hard it is to get things done. You're more likely to understand and want to change the system in real practical ways if you have experience, if everybody has experience in the system. Aristotle believes the best way to find answers is by dialectic, by argument and debate, not a one-sided, oh you're so smart, the way Plato does it, but a true argument that causes compromise to happen. He says we learn and explain things by rules of logic. and his ideas are later on going to serve as the foundation for what we call science and the scientific method.
Now, we believe part of the reason that Aristotle is so focused on the practical may be because his own father was actually a doctor. Now, Aristotle's father died when he was very young, so it's not as if his father taught him these principles, but it might have served as an inspiration, and it certainly seems to shape Aristotle's view. Aristotle's a philosopher, but he's not a philosopher who just sits around and talks. Aristotle's hands-on. He also works as a teacher.
He tutors a number of students in the ancient world, and some of them actually have quite spectacular futures. For example, Aristotle actually serves as the personal tutor to a young prince from a country north of Greece called Macedonia. Now, Macedonia, in the ancient world, is at the very northern end of Greece where it connects to Europe. Today, Macedonia is in a slightly different geographic location, so don't confuse ancient Macedonia with modern Macedonia. They're a little bit different from one another.
Now, ancient Macedonia, if you look at it on this map and you ask me, I would tell you, well, that's part of Greece. The Macedonians are Greek. For the record, if you said that to an ancient Macedonian, they would probably punch you in the...
face, okay? Macedonians in the ancient world do not consider themselves Greeks. They consider themselves far superior to Greeks.
Essentially, the Greeks, well, they're those people. Now, the king of Macedon, a guy by the name of King Philip, actually has a serious problem because he's married to numerous wives. That's common in the ancient world.
Polygamy is a thing. However, the wife who actually gives him his firstborn child, the wife who gives him a son, the crown prince. Happens to be a woman named Olympias who is from Epirus. Now if you look on the map on the screen You actually see Epirus right there that little orange country on the left now to us 21st century people This is so dumb. The people of Macedonia get so mad at King Philip because his crown prince his son Is actually a half-breed his mother's not Macedonian.
She's one of them. So this kid isn't really really suitable Well to inherit this is so stupid simply because guys Greece is not that large when you look at this This is like two counties. Okay, this is like here in Florida This is like one person from Pasco County marrying someone from Hernando County All right, and then the people from Pasco County going. Oh, no, you married one of those Hernando people.
It's so stupid They're like next-door neighbors. There's not that much difference, but to the Macedonians this is shameful, this is horrible and King Philip takes all kinds of pressure for this. Now Philip is actually a really good king, and he's frustrated because he's taking all this negative pressure from his people over his choice of wife and their son.
But Philip eventually caves. He takes good care of the crown prince. He makes sure his son has the best of everything, including the best tutors.
He actually hires Aristotle to tutor his child, and the son gets a practical education with a focus on leadership and hands-on skills. Eventually, however, though, Philip does cave. He agrees to marry another woman from Macedonia, and he agrees that if she has a son, that son will become the crown prince, essentially eliminating his earlier crown prince, his earlier child.
That, the wedding reception with his new wife, stories, and again, this is not necessarily reliable history, the stories say that there's a lot of smack talking, there's booze, and people say some... pretty bad things about Olympias, his first wife, and their son. Philip of Macedon is murdered shortly thereafter, and there are a number of different ideas as to who did it. One of the leading candidates is his first wife, Olympias. When Philip dies, his half-breed son comes to the throne, and no matter what the people of Macedonia say, he's pretty darn capable.
He actually goes down in history as Alexander I. the Great. Now Alexander the Great is one of the greatest generals in history.
He is absolutely phenomenal. He is a remarkable leader with hands-on skills. And we think, again, this could partially have come from the fact that he was actually tutored by Aristotle, a very practical and hands-on guy.
Alexander's brilliant. He wins the loyalty and respect of his men. He's hands-on.
He leads from the front of his army instead of riding at the back. Now, let me be very clear. I had a student a number of semesters ago got really mad at me because she did her section project on Alexander the Great, and she was like, you said he was awesome, but when I researched him, he was not a nice person.
Guys, guys, I didn't say he was an awesome, sweet, nice person. I said he was a phenomenal military leader. Those two things are not always the same.
Alexander isn't a bad person, but he is definitely a strong-willed person who does what it has to be done in order to succeed. And boy, does he succeed. His soldiers look up to him, they trust him, and they have good reason to.
Alexander is one of the most remarkable generals in history. He actually fights against and defeats the Persian Empire. Yeah, that Persian Empire.
And then he moves on and he conquers the Egyptian government, one of the longest standing governments in the world, a country that's very hard to get into and take over. Within less than a decade, Alexander manages by the age of 33 to conquer parts of three continents, most of the known world. His empire, his expansion is unbelievable. He is able to conquer all of this territory quickly and efficiently. And please remember, he's got like no wheeled vehicles other than chariots.
He doesn't have tanks. He doesn't have planes. He doesn't have cell phones. Heck, he doesn't even have telegraphs. Everything is being done.
Horseback, boats, and infantry. Alexander is remarkable. He's brilliant. He's a strategist.
He is passionate about what he's doing. And not only that, Alexander has a forward-thinking tendency. Alexander doesn't do what a lot of generals in world history have done. He doesn't conquer new territory and then beat up and mistreat the people in the area he's just conquered.
Instead, Alexander understands. that every area he conquers needs to be made to feel as if they are part of a group. He needs to make them feel like they are all unified.
Alexander emphasizes the idea when he conquers a new country, that country now is a part of his family. They are now all this unified nation. Excuse me. Unlike other generals, Alexander doesn't come in and, you know, rape the women and kick the puppies.
Instead, Alexander says, yes, yes, you lost, we won, but come on, we're all on the same team now. Look at those people over there. You want to go beat them up?
Come on, let's work together. In fact, Alexander not only does that verbally and ideologically, he does it practically as well. Alexander marries someone from every country he conquers. I mean, we have actually a story, again, history questionable, of Alexander and a number of his high-ranking military officers. In a huge marriage ceremony, depending on which account you're looking at, the numbers of how many people are married at once range between 300 and 800 people.
Mass marriage. Because that marriage creates political and personal connections. When Alexander goes to Egypt, he starts a city named Alexandria.
Imagine that. He actually marries into the Egyptian royal family. And the DNA of the inbred Egyptian royal family goes, yay!
But Alexander marries into that family because again, he's creating this unity. He's creating this connection Not only does Alexander do this he encourages his generals to do it. He encourages his soldiers He does not stop anyone from intermarrying and making half breeds Instead Alexander encourages these personal ties to blend cultures together to create those connections In less than 15 years, Alexander's conquest spans large portions of three continents.
And he does all of that before the age of 33, when he dies under really mysterious circumstances. There's a lot of theories that have been floated in history of exactly what Alexander dies of, and they're still all theories. We still don't have a definitive answer.
It's fascinating and occasionally horrifying when you dig into some of the different theories. Now, as Alexander brings his military... to the world, he also brings the culture from back home, from Macedonia and from his mother's country from Greece.
Now as Alexander brings this culture, he's bringing Hellenic or Helladic culture across three continents and it mixes and mingles with different other cultures. Ultimately that mixing and mingling brings us a style or a culture that we call Hellenistic. Hellenistic means that you're doing things the Greek way outside of Greece and you're letting that Greek culture mix and mingle.
You're finding a balance between different cultures, a compromise, taking the strengths of each culture and mingling them together. Think of it this way. Let's say that after you get done with what you're doing now, you decide to go out for dinner and you decide to go get some Greek food from a restaurant in your area.
Guys, technically what you're doing in that case is you're eating the Hellenistic way. What do you mean? well you're eating Greek food but you're not in Greece and technically you're eating Greek American food because you are actually eating food that's Greek style food but it's been influenced by American taste and culture and it's delicious So you're doing it the Hellenistic way.
You're finding a balance between Greek and American influences. You're bringing it together. Now this Hellenistic style impacts different areas of culture.
It certainly impacts artwork, and next lecture I get to show you the prettiest stuff. It's awesome. But it also impacts philosophy. Hellenistic philosophy, this mixing of Persian philosophy, Egyptian philosophy with Greek philosophy brings us four new styles or schools of philosophy that you're going to see show up again later.
So let's go through them quickly. The first of those four styles of philosophy is something called cynicism. Now, cynicism is founded by a guy named Diogenes. And essentially the heart of cynicism, Diogenes'central idea, is that we are miserable in our lives.
Because society tells us what we should have to be happy and most of what society tells us has to do with getting more Stuff or getting the right stuff Diogenes says we're unhappy because there's always something new out there We can never catch up and society is always shoving things in our face and saying we need this new thing You need that new thing. Oh, you have an iPhone 8. Well, you need an iPhone X. Oh, you have this.
Well, you need that basically, it's constantly pushing us forward and Diogenes said as long as you're willing to chase that, you're never going to catch happiness. It's not where it's found. Instead, reject what society tells you and seek happiness and simplicity. Don't run after things. Live a simple life.
Now, that's beautiful in a way. I mean, we still do that kind of thing today. We talk about simplifying our lives, but Diogenes is pretty hardcore about this.
According to accounts of the time, Diogenes like really lives a simple life. He lives, I'm not joking, guys. He lives in a wine barrel in a public space. So basically the modern equivalent would be like Diogenes lives in a dumpster, okay?
He lives in a wine barrel in a public space. They call him a dog because basically he doesn't actually work for food. Instead, he like hangs out and dumpster dives at banquets.
He fights the dogs for the bones and the scraps that people are throwing from the banquet tables. He's really hardcore about this. Now, cynicism as a whole. says that you don't try to fight the system.
You don't try to shape and civilize things because things will break down. No matter what you do, things will fall apart. So instead, you live in harmony. You don't try to change. You accept.
You train your body and mind to not want, to be content. The only thing that will give you happiness is virtue, living a simple life and trying to find the good in things. You should reject what society tells you. Those things are artificial.
They're fake. They basically say that society tells you artificial goals, things that don't really matter, and you should reject those. The promise of cynicism is that you will have peace and stability no matter what your circumstances are. You can never be unhappy when you lose something if, in a way, you knew it was passing and temporary anyway. If you don't hold on to it too hard, it won't hurt to let it go.
Cynicism is going to pop up over and over again throughout history. Like I said, we still use some degree of cynicism today, although we don't go as hardcore as Diogenes in most cases. But that idea of living simply and in harmony, not reaching for the goals that society tells us, it shows up over and over again and it comes about because of this blending of cultures.
Now, for some people, the idea of simplicity is beautiful, but the idea of living with nothing, like Diogenes and the wine barrel, is a little bit hardcore. Some of the people who walk this back a little bit are known as the Stoics. Stoicism is also going to be very important for us, particularly when we get to Rome in the next section.
Stoicism says that the cynics have some things right, but they have some things really wrong. The Stoics say it's not reaching for the next big thing that ends up making us unhappy. It's actually the emotion. It's the want.
It's the desperation. In fact, most of our unhappiness, most of our discontent in life, comes from being ruled by emotions. And the Stoics say if you want to find true contentment, true peace, you need to turn to logic and away from emotion.
The Stoics say we need to filter our world. We need to look at things reasonably rather than emotionally. Basically, they say we can't control the world.
It is what it is. And you've got to accept it. You can't fight it.
There's no way around it. It is what it is. You can't control what happens to you in life. Stuff happens. You cannot control it.
All you can control is your response or your reaction to it. And your reaction should be rational, not emotional. So take this as an example.
For a Stoic, you cannot control if you're on your way to work or school and somebody reruns your car. That's not something you had control over. There was nothing you could have done.
It happened. The Stoics say what you can control is how you respond. If you have a breakdown, a meltdown, if you end up in tears and hysterics, if you come out of your car furious and punch the other driver in the face, all of those things are emotional responses. They don't help.
Either they stress you out and make you look like an idiot, they get you arrested, put an assault charge on top of your ticket. All of those things are a bad idea. Instead, you need to recognize you couldn't control the accident, you need to look at it reasonably and calmly, and you need to do everything you can reasonably and rationally do to make the best of a bad situation.
You can control yourself even though you can't control the circumstances. The Stoic idea is going to be incredibly important for the Romans because the Romans want control over everything they can. The Romans are going to be big believers in honor. And essentially, the Romans believe you cannot control your circumstance, but you can control your behavior. And controlling your behavior is what marks you as honorable.
So, for example, you guys may be familiar with Antony, Mark Antony of Antony and Cleopatra. When Antony loses his final battles. Antony actually chooses to commit suicide because he's a stoic. What? Okay, wait.
What happens is Antony loses and he knows what's going to happen to him. He's going to get captured. He's going to be put in prison.
He's going to be marched across the country and shown off as kind of a freak show, captive, everywhere he goes. He's going to be tortured. And then he's going to be killed in some sort of horrible public execution that's going to be painful and nasty.
He knows that's going to happen if he stays around. He has another choice. He can choose his own method of death and commit suicide.
As a stoic, Mark Antony chooses to commit suicide because he cannot control that he lost. Those circumstances are done. That's past. What he can control is his emotions and his response.
He can look at it rationally and pick the better of two bad options. by being a stoic and simply looking at the situation in terms of logic rather than terms of emotion. Now, for some people, that sounds kind of deterministic, depressing, and you can't just eliminate emotion. Come on. For those people, you're going to want to seek happiness in some way.
And the answer for that may be Epicureanism. Epicureanism says that there is a cause for unhappiness. But the cause for unhappiness is not emotion. It's not what society tells us we want.
Basically, for Epicureans, the source of your unhappiness is believing in some sort of supernatural intervention or divine good luck, if you will. They say that we end up skipping things because we're afraid that we'll anger the supernatural or anger the divine. We're worried about what God wants us to do or what the gods don't want us to do.
And instead of worrying about that. We should instead seek peace, harmony, and comfort. We should try to find, well, there's your magic word again, balance. For the Epicureans, modest pleasures are the ultimate goal.
An Epicurean says you should try to balance everything. It's not that you can't do something. It's that you should do it in moderation.
Test it out. Sure, have a glass of that lovely wine. Have a drink of that aged whiskey or scotch. But just have a taste.
glass oh just a shot don't overdo it because you'll regret it later and that ruins the whole point you need moderation do everything try everything create balance in your life through moderation understand what brings you comfort don't go rich don't go poor find balance in the middle don't go over the top don't eat too much don't starve yourself find balance in moderation The Epicureans believe in trying everything a little bit at a time because that harmony and balance is the true source of pleasure. But you might say, okay, fine. That's great.
But you gotta go over the top every once in a while. Come on, you gotta cut loose on a Friday night. You know, I don't care if you're on a diet. Sometimes you just gotta dig into the pizza. You gotta, that's where happiness comes in, right?
And the Epicurean says, no. And the Hedonist says, Oh, heck yeah! Hedonism says, look, the only thing we got in this life is pleasure. So you should go find your happiness. Whatever makes you happy, whatever gets your rocks off, that's what you should be doing, man.
Happiness is achieved by living life to maximize pleasure, minimize pain. Find that good happy spot, chase it down, man. Now, for a hedonist, seeking pleasure is the ultimate goal of life. You should avoid anything that makes you unhappy.
Anything that causes pleasure. Or sorry, anything that causes pain. Anything that causes discomfort.
Don't do that, man. Go find what makes you happy. Now, sometimes hedonists are characterized, stereotyped as the party till you puke people. Sometimes they're characterized or stereotyped as the pleasure seekers, overeat, overdrink, orgies.
That can be true. Certainly those things are places to find pleasure and a hedonist would say, go ahead, indulge. But any behavior that brings pleasure carried to an extreme can be hedonism. So, I mean, think of it in our terms, in modern world terms. Someone who gets their pleasure, they find joy from getting affirmation on social media, likes, loves, comments.
If that is the thing that they find absolutely satisfying and they spend like 24-7 trying to post on social media, trying to find things that will get them those likes, they chase them down. They're willing to humiliate themselves, humiliate the people around them, violate people's privacy because that's what brings them pleasure. You could say they're a social media hedonist. They're chasing down whatever brings them pleasure, regardless of the consequence, because, well, pleasure is the only joy in life.
If there is any limitation, it's to avoid the negative consequences, because that would be pain. So you do everything that brings you pleasure, you try to avoid anything unpleasant, and that brings you the ultimate satisfaction. Those four philosophies... are going to stick with us.
I mean, they're still around today in some measure, some degree, and they all come out of this intermingling and mixing of cultures. Finding balance, trying to define what that balance looks like, trying to define what creates harmony, happiness, peace, and contentment. But not only does this Hellenistic style, this mixing and mingling of cultures doing the Greek thing outside of Greece, bring us philosophy, It's also going to bring us some really spectacular artwork.
And that's where we go next. I get to show you some pretty pictures.