Introduction to Philosophy

I'm very excited to work with everybody. I do think this will be a meaningful experience. I'm hoping to offer a lot of value to all of you and I'm hoping to hear from as many of you as I can via email about what you find interesting and what you'd like to learn about as we move through this semester together. So keeping that in mind, the first few episodes, and I'm just going to call them episodes for the sake of, for the sake of this discussion, first few episodes, I'm going to kind of lead the way here. Right, so this first one will be about the syllabus, it'll be a little bit about our approach to philosophy that we're going to take this semester. And then after this, once we kind of explain a little bit about what philosophy is, I'm going to ask it to read the syllabus, it offers more information about this. There are a couple other episodes, I'm going to probably give to us that will get us thinking a little bit about types of techniques and practices we might want to establish. And then after these first few episodes, I really want to hear from people, right? So although this is asynchronous, I really want to hear from people in regards to what you all want to study for the rest of the semester, right? So we're going to talk today in a little bit about the books I've posted at the Blackboard. Those will be our only texts for our work together, so please don't buy anything. And what I would like to do, again after these first few episodes, is give everyone an opportunity to go into the books, see which topics you find interesting, right? Because the whole for philosophy is that it can improve our lives in a number of ways. Right, so practicing philosophy is valuable in and of itself, right? That being said, it could also serve us in every avenue of our existence, right? So being a misclass is an opportunity to improve the way you are in your friendships, the way you might be in your family relationships, it might help you be a better, significant other, it might help you become a better student, it might help you eventually, or if you're currently working too, right? Help you in your job, your career, your vocation, right? So when we're talking about what is philosophy, right? Of course, it's the love of wisdom, etymologically, when you break the word down, feel low and so fear, meaning love of wisdom, and we're going to approach it in the following ways, right? So we're going to look at philosophy as the art of living, as a way of life, and as a form of therapy. Right, so these three things kind of connect, we're going to be studying a lot of the ancient Greek, ancient Roman philosophical approaches among many others, of course, as you'll see in our books. That being said, this approach, there's a lot of very rich examples, philosophers, philosophies, from the ancient world that really embody these approaches very nicely. So you'll find in our books, we have a lot of stoicism, for example, one ancient school of philosophy that we're going to look at a lot, that really took this approach and ran with it, right? Really took this approach very seriously, and it's one that, as I said a moment ago, will help us not only in this sort of external moral development way, right? So when I'm saying, you know, friendships, romantic relationships, family relationships, work, right, work and love kind of being two major things, those are both functioning on a moral level, so the way we interact with the world, what we offer the world, how we interpret the world, we're going to cultivate all of that, right, to make sure it's as deliberate, as thoughtful, as intentional, as just, as truthful as it can be, and then we also have this sort of other element of philosophy where it's ethical self development, right? So we're developing ourselves, ourselves aesthetically, ourselves spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, right? So we're not only focusing, let's say, on how we could be the best friends we can possibly be, which that will come up. We have a whole chapter on relationships and love, friendships, a huge part of that chapter. But we're also going to focus on how could we become our people, maybe, right? Maybe we want to work on that. Maybe we want to work on being more patient, more confident, right? We have a great chapter on fear and confidence, for example. Maybe we want to lead a more balanced life, a more productive life, a happier life, a more joyful life. We want a greater sense of purpose, greater sense of meaning on a daily basis. All of these things are things that we're going to cover this semester, and again, I want to hear what you want to work on the most, right? Maybe you want to focus on the chapter. We have a great chapter on coping, right, which deals a lot with anxiety. For example, that's a huge part of that chapter. How can we be less anxious, right? So all these topics are sort of within the realm of what we hopefully will get to this semester together, right? So when we're talking about what is philosophy, philosophy is the sort of journey, this pursuit of working to know ourselves, right, that great, so-cratic idea, know-that-self, to care for ourselves, to shape ourselves, and transform ourselves, and then also we want to be focusing on how we can serve others. All right, so again, it's working in multiple ways, all of which I think are really useful, really profound, and we're going to be having a number of different types of conversations in our work together, one of which will be listening to this podcast or these recordings. And the others, of course, as we'll see with the syllabus, will involve reading and writing. Right, so there will be a weekly writing requirement in this class. We'll talk more specifically about it as we just continue the lecture today. And of course, also those writings will be fueled by what we read and what we listen to. Right, so let's, for a moment, stick with this idea of what is philosophy, right? What are the sort of goals of philosophy, and I've been mentioning a few of them already, but I want to dive a little bit more specifically into our syllabus, see me in one second here. All right, great. So on our syllabus, and we'll get to the first half, of course, we have the sort of basic general stuff of how the class will function, but before we get into that, as I said, I want to talk a little bit about the second half of the syllabus, which sort of answers questions, why come to class, why are we here, what is philosophy, and what can philosophy do? Right, so one common theme you'll see throughout the class that you see on the syllabus already is I tried to make everything, each reading is numbered to make it a little bit easier for you to go back into the text, see where you were, keep your place, right? And if we were in class, it'd make our conversation much easier because you could just call our attention to not only a page number, but the number of the section on the page that you're referencing, right? So ultimately, why come to class? When we have this great idea being offered from Pierre Hadot's work in this section, or a couple of good ideas, of course, about why bother showing up, right? So if we want to work on, let's say, creating a greater sense of order in our lives, order for what end? Well, order towards our own purposes, and what should our purposes be? Well, as we said, our purposes should be to lead maybe confident, tranquil lives where we are of service to others, and we have to work on ourselves, right? And that's one huge part of this why comes to class, the opening statement from Friedman that Hadot highlighted in his work, philosophy, is a way of life that we're going to be referencing a lot this semester, right? He's saying here, and we could agree or disagree with this, this will come up again for sure, but maybe things are chaotic, right? For the Stoics, for example, they didn't necessarily, they didn't believe that the universe was chaotic, or random, they believed it was ordered. Let's say for arguments like their rival school, or a school of philosophy that was different than theirs, it put different emphasis on different things, the Epicurean school, also in the ancient world, said that the universe was chaotic and random, right? But the Stoics like, look, even if you're right, don't you want to be, or don't you want to create a sense of orderliness in your own life, a sense of clarity in your own life? And for that, they would say, we have to practice philosophy, right, and that's the work on the self that we're talking about here in this first section of the syllabus, why come to class. Friedman's telling us, trying to get rid of your own passions and vanities, and the itch for talk about your own name. So get out of your own, let's say, obsession with your ego, don't worry about that. Love all free human beings, become eternal by transcending yourself. This work on yourself is necessary. And then below that we're saying, we come in this class to craft a common effort, a community of research, mutual assistance, and spiritual support for the aim of working on ourselves. Right, so that's why I also, in my head, I'm like, let me try to create some podcast episodes such that we could at least communicate with each other in lieu of meeting in person, right? This community of research, well, what are we researching? A lot of what we're going to talk about in this class, or let's put it this way, you are the main subject of this class. What we'll find with one major element of the course that I'm hoping that we take seriously of course, we're not in class, so it's a bit difficult for me to make sure we're doing these things, although for the take home writing, two of the three options I'll provide to involve this book, right? But we will be practicing what we will discuss, you know, what we'll be doing pretty much every week hopefully, is something called philosophical meditation. Right, so philosophical meditation, as we'll understand it, is more or less taking time out of your day, if we were in class, it would be about 10 minutes every class, to examine ourselves through questioning. Right, so I have a whole book for us that is an analog to the other book called Biblio Therapy, right, which is a collection of texts that I've compiled for as it's an anthology, they will be reading from that every week as well. Ease Chapter in the Biblio Therapy book is accompanied by a chapter in the philosophical meditations book. So let's say we have the chapter on fear and confidence. That chapter in the philosophical meditations book, and I can remember the exact number before arguments say, could be like 30 questions, most of which will be aimed at you. Okay, so I'm asking you to really examine yourself. Consider your own ways of being, your own ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, such that you can move beyond your current limitations, and that's the work on the self that Friedman and, you know, through Hadoz's eyes here is highlighting for us and why come to class, which is to say in our case, right, why listen to the podcast, why do the readings, why do the writing, well, philosophy is an opportunity to transform ourselves, and we should all want to do that. Right, we should all, let's say even ceaselessly, all of our lives try to grow in the healthiest ways possible, try to develop ourselves. Each of the conversations and beyond that, each episode of the podcast hopefully, each quote of the book, each opportunity to write, is a chance to do what Friedman and what Hadoz are saying here, right, and even the idea of a common effort, although we're not meeting, right, these philosophers become your interlocutors. They become the people with whom you're talking every week, right, even the podcast becomes something that you can engage with in a kind of common effort. I'm here, I'm given these lectures, I'm also working on me too, right, I'm seeing all of this as well as an opportunity for my own growth and development, not only as a teacher, but just as a person, right, because even for me, of course, I have, you know, some of the stuff this semester is new, I always try to develop something new for my classes, but ultimately some of the stuff I have seen before, but I'm not the same. And that's the approach I take, right, I'm looking at this with new eyes now. So even for me, someone who's been teaching for a few years, working on, you know, working with similar syllabi and what have you, these ideas still give me the opportunity to grow and to work on myself, right, and the idea to have spiritual support, especially in these times, that's what philosophy is here for. Philosophy is like a companion, right, Marcus, it really is, we're going to talk about him a lot, famous, stoic thinker, famous Roman emperor, featured prominently in the great movie Gladiator starring Russell Crowe, watched that movie if you get a chance, said, right, you know, life is chaotic at times, or life is difficult at times, let's say. Life is challenging. He was a Roman emperor, the most powerful person on the face of the earth, right, yet to deal with plagues, invasions, famine, right, and we watch him in his meditations, really writing four and two and with himself to develop himself to be the best leader, the best person, the best father, the best friend, all these things that he could be. Right, the meditations, the text that we'll return to, you know, see it throughout the book, I include a lot of it, was not written with the intention of sharing it, right, so not only do we get these great philosophical ideas from someone who was trained in the stoic school of philosophy, but we're also getting a very inside look at what an effective practice is, right? To write for ourselves, we have a whole book in our black, in blackboard called self writing, I'm going to call it self writing guide, I'm going to be doing a lecture on that that I'll be sharing with all of you, right? We need to be perhaps self writing. At the very least, I think we need some type of spiritual practice, right, self writing is a form of philosophy, it's a form of a spiritual practice that helps us work on ourselves and we're really not going to talk too much about that now, because again, we have a whole book on it, we'll return to it, but I really strongly suggest that you all consider adopting some type of self writing practice on a daily, if not every couple days or even maybe weekly basis, right? But adopting a practice, philosophical practice, a spiritual practice is something I think that this class will encourage you to do, and it all flows back to this idea of working on ourselves, and of working to craft a common effort, mutual assistance, and working to be of service to other people as well. All right, so that's just again, a brief overview of the why come to class section. I do think you should give this a read, of course, I'm going to ask you to do this for homework, and let's go to the next section, right? Why are we here? What is philosophy? What can philosophy do? As I already said, right, and this is right from the syllabus, philosophy has many purposes, many epochs, and schools of thought, right, so the following on our syllabus is generally saying, you know, speaking to how we will approach it, right, so what are the goals of those of us who would say we practice philosophy, right, which is, you know, now it's all of us because we're all here, right? Our goals in life, peace, serenity, right, huge ideas. How can your life be more peaceful, is a really interesting question, why should we strive for peace? Right, what other type of spiritual goals might you want to set for yourself this semester, as we're now sort of unpacking this idea of what philosophy can bring to us and what it is, right? We might train ourselves to be indifferent to indifferent things. Big ideas here, train. How do we train ourselves? Well, the same way if you want to train to be a boxer, you have to learn certain techniques to be great, you have to practice them very frequently, very intensely, with focus, with passion, to say anything we could do for ourselves, right? So again, back to this idea of techniques, applying ourselves, focusing, learning, right? Now, the idea of being indifferent to indifferent things, that's not just a stoic idea, although the stoics were very much, were very, very into this idea, right? Why? Well, if we can start deciding and seeing and practicing the idea that we should learn to react differently to things that we can control versus things that we cannot control, right? We need to do that for the stoics and others. This idea of benevolent or good indifference, we will constantly be bothered in life for the stoics if we do not understand that we need to be indifferent or work to be indifferent to the best of our ability, to the things that we cannot control, okay? We move as philosophers to be above our passions, which is to say to control them. We're going to talk about certain words a lot this semester, passions, this idea of the ascent, right? Ascent is when you take something you're thinking, or something, let's say thinking still works here, but something you're thinking and/or perceiving, and to give it ascent means to make it in your mind true, to accept it as true. So you might be accepting things as true that are just false because you're not gathering enough evidence or you're not looking at the evidence correctly. So another part of philosophy is we're learning to pursue truth, and that's truth within ourselves, and that's, you know, truth as we perceive them in our world, right? So we're training ourselves with that by learning to question ourselves more effectively. And to not just be carried away by any, let's say impulse or passion or emotion that rises up in us, or be carried away by any perception we might have in terms of, oh, here it is, and we assume it's true. We have to learn how to stop and question, again, ourselves and others. That's how we keep ourselves above our passions, emotions, impulses, our doxxa, right, doxxa's a Greek word basically means opinion, right? So our doxxa could either be good or bad. Well, if it has substantial evidence that we've questioned, it's a good doxxa, right? But if it lacks that evidence that we haven't questioned it, well, then we have to not just accept it. It might be bad, right? It might be faulty, okay? As philosophers, we're working to, you know, we're practicing the idea that we do not give in under the blows of fate, right? Which is to say random stuff happens in the universe, Aristotle and Nicomac and Ethics is talking to his son, right? He tells them, look, nobody escapes chance. We're all going to have to deal with this stuff. This fortune, you know, good fortune. What do you do under this? Well, philosophy can train us to, as this piece from our syllabus is saying, calculate things in advance to create, let's say, useful understandings of potential misfortune. So we're not as surprised in life, right? Worst thing getting punched is getting punched by surprise. But the very least, and this is, you know, very much, let's say, a stoic idea, we could prepare ourselves for certain things that just kind of prepares for life in general. We're going to talk about the stoic emphasis, and we could agree or disagree with this. It's a great point to argue some whole schools of philosophy would disagree with this idea, right? But one powerful idea we might even want to take with us today is the idea of memento mooring. To remember we are mortal, we're really going to get into this, and I don't want to give too much of it today, but one of the points of this is, look, if you're aware of the fact that you're going to die, that everyone around you is, you know, also going to pass away, not only will you take greater care of life, because we take care of things that we know are fragile, right? So we're going to live in a more conscious way. One of the key ideas we're going to talk about a lot, the semester is prosike, which, again, I'm going to give it a general understanding, means vigilance. It's over ourselves towards the goal of self-mastery, right? So let's apply this idea of memento mooring. If you know you're not here forever, you're fragile. If you know you're loved ones, you're not here forever. They're fragile. You're going to care for yourself, and you're going to care for them more. If you're going on vacation, and you're packing a suitcase, right, maybe, you know, t-shirts, jeans, whatever, if you were also going to go see a family member or someone you cared about, and you had a gift for them, and it was like, it was made of ceramic, right? You would wrap that gift. You would take greater care of that gift because you were aware of its fragility. It's the same thing with one of the reasons why you think of memento mooring. I think about an expiration date. This is a worse analogy, but I'm staring at my fridge right now, sorry. Think about an expiration date on food. If you know that expiration date's coming up, you don't want to waste that food. You're going to eat it faster, or you're not going to leave it, because you don't want to, again, have to throw it away. You don't want to waste it. So we won't waste life if we know we're running out of it, so maybe we need to remind ourselves of that. And again, think about how this can affect our relationships, right, if you're aware of the fact that everyone you know, and this is this, this sounds upsetting, right, and maybe this, again, this doesn't work for everybody, but if we confront that enough, we might love more passionately. We might love more consciously. We might be awake to the importance of these relationships. We might be less numb to them if we wake ourselves up from with the idea that we're not here forever. Let me make sure I put my best effort in right now, right, and in the same paragraph from the syllabus, we're talking about the capacity to find joy in virtue. So it is virtuous to take care of the people in our lives that we care about. It is virtuous to, let's say, fulfill that duty, that obligation as fully as we possibly can, right? And as we have these conversations, again, we're getting some different ideas. My hope with our first day conversation is always to kind of talk about the class, but also offer you something useful that you might take away, right? Some of mental more great idea for philosophy and/or potential tattoo idea, just saying, think about it. Extra credit for any tattoos inspired by the class. That's a joke. Don't email me. Like, I got a tattoo, and I can't do that, but just a good idea, right? Epic Titus, one of the philosophers, we're going to study a lot this semester too, another stoic would say to think about that a little bit every day, and maybe that'll give you some drive. We'll also talk about how my mental more and my connect to helping us be afraid of the right things in the right way, such that we're not controlled by small fears too much. We'll get into that a little bit on another conversation likely, but I just want to give us a little bit of a brief overview of that idea. So a little more philosophy, right? As we've already been saying, kind of highlighting, and let's say, not highlighting, but rementioning some things here. It's a mode of existing in the world, right, which we can pretty much practice constantly, and the goal of which, once again, is to transform the whole of the individual's life. And think about how that might be, right? If you were 10%, let's say, more confident, that might carry over into every aspect of your life. And that'd be a beautiful thing. You might be 10% more patient. That would make you, once again, a calmer person. You'd move in the world differently, right? Even think about for a moment, the somesthetics, right, like the way somebody moves when they're confident. They walk different. And you do that constantly, right? They engage, they look at people differently when we're a little bit more confident maybe. That's a general form of engagement, right? So that's what we're looking for this semester. It's unlikely, right, even let's even say with, in regards to life in general, right? At this stage of life, let's say you're, I don't know, how do I say this? Let's say you're grappling or you're struggling with a lack of confidence, for example, right? We're able to get 10% more confident. We're able to work on that. We're not born with a certain level of confidence and that's it, right? We're not born with a certain level of patience and that's it. And maybe this is naive, right? Who knows? But I think from our perspective of philosophy, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that this might be the case, right? We can take control of some of that growth, right? We will have conversations, I'm sure, about the degree to which we can, right? What is free will? Is free will? Really a thing, right? These are really beautiful, profoundly meaningful conversations. But for the sake of today's discussion, let's assume that at least to some degree, we have the capacity to transform ourselves. And that this class, the practices within the class, the ideas in the class, can give us some techniques, some tools, some inspiration for that process, right? Wouldn't you want to be, again, I'm just using confidence as an example. But for myself, I would say I'm working on, even with this class, right? I'm getting more confident in writing emails. True story. I really like, for me, I'm paranoid about writing emails. I'm always worried about making errors and looking ridiculous. I'm worried about people judging what I write in terms of, like, it's, because here's the thing. I know I don't know where to put a comma, so I'm using Grammarly, which has been very helpful. And I think it's likely the case that in high school or something, I had a teacher who was like, rude to me or something about just my writing. That being said, I'm getting more confident, because I have to be writing on emails now. We're all online, right? So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start doing this. I'm going to learn by doing. I'm going to implement new things at K-A Grammarly. And I'm not going to hold myself back. I'm not going to read the email over 20 times. That's the real issue, right? I used to read emails over 5, 10 times, and I'm like, you know what? I just don't have a time for this anymore. This is the first week of the semester, and I'm like, I'll get nothing done. I'll be writing emails all semester. If I don't learn how to be a little more confident, again, implement a new strategy, learn how to focus intently, and, you know, again, with prosa K over that first rereading, and then just got to click send, right? And if I made an error, it's okay. It's not the end of the world, right? The idea, too, of being judged, that's because I'm also a little bit of a perfectionist. And we will talk about that, because that's a very common thing. Me being a perfectionist about emails will prevent me from sending emails, which is worse than me sending an email with an error in it, because at least with an error, we're communicating something meaningful or useful potentially, right? So being a perfectionist gets in our way of doing anything. And getting something good, getting something done that's good enough is better than not getting something done at all. We're going to get into that, right? So that being said, I need to transform myself. So if you'd like to do that, I took the idea, I don't, I used to be, you know, lacking confidence sending emails, and I'm still rereading them, I'm still using Grammarly, I'm still trying to be careful, I'm still talking about it now. Because ultimately I haven't, you know, totally left behind, let's say that perfectionism and that fear of being judged that played my old email habit, which is reading them over 10 times, and just taking way too much time. Right? So I have to practice philosophy, I'm like, I asked myself, what am I really afraid of here? We're not being perfect. All right, well, nobody's perfect. What do I have to do to be the best professor I can be, I have to send these emails out? Let's get to it. Right? That's spiritual progress. Small example, of course, but nonetheless, I do think I'm calmer when I'm sending emails, and that helps me a lot, because I'm sending a lot of emails now. I'm more effective, I'm calmer, I'm less of a perfectionist. All of this is because I was able to have conversations with myself, get down to the root cause, and everybody will benefit from this. Right? So let's keep going here, and this is number four, and again, I'm highlighting certain elements of our syllabus. I do think the, I'm hoping my lectures will be useful in and of themselves, but I do think it would be beneficial to have maybe the reading out in front of you a little bit. If not, maybe you read it before, maybe you read it after, I think that would also be fine. Yeah, so that being said, I think maybe have a pen in hand also, when you listen to these, it might be a good idea, but I do think, and I'm trying my best to give episodes that are useful. You can listen to them when you're going for a walk or something like that, too. I think that might be an interesting part of the class as well. So why are we here? Once again, why RISDM then was a way of life in the ancient world, right, in ancient philosophy, which should bring us peace of mind, inner freedom, and cosmic consciousness. These are three really great goals, right? Peace of mind, back to this idea of peace. Right, how do we create peace for ourselves, tranquility with our thinking? Well, some thoughts we have to learn how to maybe, let's say, relate to in a healthier way. Right, again, maybe we're dealing with situations where we're feeling very anxious. When we're anxious, we're not at peace. Well, next time you get anxious, try this. Again, this is a good kind of first day author, we'll revisit this, too, right? When you're anxious, try this. Take the thoughts, are you true? Are you real? Is this happening now? Are you useful? If the answers are no, right, we could try to move away from that thought. So we're acknowledging the anxious thought of the anxious line of thinking, right? Let's define anxiety just as a negative thought or a negative thinking about the future. So you're seeing the future, you're seeing it negative. I think another part of anxiety usually is that, not only do you see the future as negative, but you see yourself as incapable of dealing with that negative potential future, right? So we have a whole, again, a whole lot of readings on anxiety. I think we're going to love those readings because it's such a common thing. It's almost a natural part of, I would not even say almost, I think being a person it's like we're all anxious a little bit at least, at least, right, because we're blessed and cursed with the capacity for imaginations. Other animals don't deal with this. You know, my sister's dog just wants to hang out, eat peanut butter, eat my rug. I mean, this is true story. The dog just doesn't, you know, they're not worried about tomorrow. We have this capacity. We have to learn how to control it and fix our peace. Those questions get us one out of our feelings a little bit because now we're thinking, we're examining the feeling, we're examining ourselves. Questions have a tendency to stop us, slow us down, which is a good thing, get back to philosophy, right? We're pursuing truth through questions, it's a good thing to do with anxiety. Because if it's not helping us, if it's not true, why bother with it? We're acknowledging it and we're not letting, we're not, again, as we said earlier, we're not getting carried away by it. We're stopping it with a different type of questions. Not what if this happens and what if this happens, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is any of this true? Is any of this helpful? Why, you know, so again, it changes the conversation. Another freedom, once again, is the idea I think that we don't succumb to or we're not carried away by our emotions. Because to say that we lack freedom might be, to say that when the external world influences us, we're unable to disconnect ourselves. We're too easily controlled in influence, perhaps by external or internal things. One major idea we're going to talk about that'll come up a lot. I think I invented this word. It's the idea of a flying thought or a "float" is what we'll call it. So how do we deal with thoughts that seemingly might come out of nowhere and start in. Hello again, apparently the recording app I'm using will cut off my lecture at 30 minutes, noted. So this is part two. We're going to continue with our discussion with syllabus. And I think I closed off the last episode with a conversation about "floats" or "flying thoughts." So these are. Again, I think I'm pretty sure I defined it. So they just maybe hear a song, you smell something, you're just driving, you're walking, whatever. And something just hits you. We might have some "floats" that are, let's say, habitual, like there's a pattern. And those warrant our consideration. And that's a part of what it means to do philosophical meditation. I'll do an episode where I talk about that practice more specifically. And we're really learning how to talk to ourselves. Understand ourselves. We're learning how to see different parts of our minds, different parts of our souls. And that's really meaningful for dealing with "floats" because a "float" can mess you up. Right? Or get a "gurgy." Right? And you get a positive "floats" as well. I get for me like a negative "float." This is another bad analogy. I'm looking at my window here. Kind of like pigeons, you know, like pigeons, generally speaking. I'm not sure who's from New York listening to this, but as a New Yorker, as a New Yorker, my whole life, you know, my relationship with pigeons is like usually I don't want to get involved, right? But usually, I mean, I just don't. Like some people feed pigeons. I get that. I can see how that could be relaxing. I've never done that. Power to you if you do that. But generally speaking though, if I'm walking on the street, I'm seeing a pigeon. I'm not really going to like, like, I see a little, oh, there's a pigeon there. I'm not going to approach the pigeon, right? And if the pigeon like flies away, I'm not going to follow it. Right? So that's kind of like a "float." Right? They're kind of walking around. They fly. Whatever, right? You can choose to acknowledge the floor. And if it's not a positive one, see that it's there, right? And just kind of learn how to maybe even walk alongside it, because sometimes pigeons do that too, right? Walk alongside the pigeon. And then kind of let it be there and not let it bother you, right? Or you can, you know, maybe follow it with your gaze all the way up. And even that, right? The idea of ascending. Because when we talk about a special something like anxiety, which come up today, and might start off as a "float," a little idea, and you'll just spiral on it. Right? And just to say, you'll look at the pigeon on, not great, not really a fan, right? Cool. It's here. And then instead of letting it fly away and like looking somewhere else, you just keep looking at it. Well, that's you looking at the anxious narrative, or the any other type of negative thought as well. It's learning how to focus, right? Tell me what you focus on, and I'll tell you who you are. So if you focus on anxious narratives, you'll be an anxious person. So stop staring at the pigeon. That's the third, not great analogy I've done. We're going to work on it. We're going to work. Let's keep going with the syllabus a little bit here, okay? We're getting into some points that I think are really interesting. Once again, a number 12 here. This concern for living in the service of the human community, and for acting in accordance with justice, is an essential element of every philosophical life. This is a great idea, and I apologize about this. I may have a, it's not a mic situation I do. I have a tendency to really ground a lot of our discussions in daily life. I will try my best to also provide other examples, but for me with this, this maps perfectly to the idea like, if you're practicing philosophy, you're able to question yourself. And if you're practicing philosophy, you're able to pursue and embody virtues, right? So being just, being fair is a virtue. It's virtuous to be just towards other people. And for me, I can think about this just on a daily basis, like for myself, if I'm having a bad day, sometimes I'll unjustly be rude to a family member or to a friend, or whomever, right? Or I'll be unjustly rude to myself, even if I've got bad news at work or if school would have you, right? I'll start treating myself in a way that's unfair. Well, philosophy is going to help us again, question that and realize this isn't what we should be doing. Now, of course, we can connect it, as I said, to both ethical and moral development, as always. And I think this is a great piece to remind us that that moral development is really important. Because of the human community. If you carry that with you and everything you did in life, right? If you saw and really on a daily basis, you were striving to embody the idea that what you do on this earth with the way you work, your job, and the way you love others, what you offer to the world, if you really were striving to be in service of the human community, how might your life be different? Right? So one thing we're going to talk about in the next, one of our early conversations on cultivating a pursuing purpose is that you don't want a job, you don't want a career, you want a vocation, a vocation will keep you full because it's the most fulfilling. So vocation involves two things, once again, that's recurring a lot today. It involves doing things on a daily basis that give you a sense of personal fulfillment, but also doing things that are of service, that fill some type of public need. So all these things connect, right? Also the philosophy, vocation doesn't have to necessarily be a job, you could have a vocational approach to a hobby, you could have a vocational approach to being, once again, being a friend, being a member of your family, being a significant other to somebody, right? You want to get personal fulfillment and you also want to, again, offer goodness and service to the world, you want to feel useful because that also is very rewarding. You want to treat others justly, that should be your reward in and of itself, to treat someone fairly should in and of itself, once again, without even necessarily requiring anything and return all the time, should make you feel good. I did the right thing by this person today. Philosophy helps us get there because again, we're managing ourselves and that daily example I gave of treating a family member unjustly when you're upset or when you're angry, well, philosophy is going to help us talk to our anger, deal with it more effectively so we're not carrying it with us, makes it easier for us to treat others justly because we're not blinded by our anger. It's not really, let's say you're sibling asking you to help them, that's aggravating you with something else that happened. All right, so let's move on here to the last part of our syllabus. I'm going to highlight this. This is a great reading. I do, again, I do ask that you read the syllabus for homework this week. From Epictetus is the art of living, I'm going to highlight a few points here, but this is sort of our mission statement, right? Once again, Epictetus, stoic philosopher, he himself was a teacher, right, a famous teacher, and he kind of, he described his school essentially as a hospital for individuals who were sort of suffering from what we would characterize as like philosophical or spiritual emotional, let's even say, for argument's sake, pathologies, right? So you went to his school to become more patient because your impatience was torturing you. You went to his school because your desires were torturing you and you've constantly felt unfulfilled and you felt maybe even envious or jealous even, right? You went to his school to learn how to deal with these things that are very real, right? These things torture us. So he believed that you would go to his school again and it was sort of like he would be a doctor giving you prescriptions. Try this practice. Read this. Tell me what you think. Let's talk about it. Let's see how we can interpret it and then apply it to our lives so we can get rid of this stuff, right? And here are some people who like to highlight from this idea, right? Philosophy is intended for everyone. That's great for this class, right? This is an introduction or an introductory course, right? It's a course where a lot of us are coming from various disciplines. That's a beautiful thing, right? And Epic Titus, this is like 2,000 years ago, is a dream with me, right? It's intended for everyone and it is authentically practiced only by those who read or connect it with action in the world towards a better life for all. So once again, that emphasis on serving the human community, don't just act selfishly, try to benefit the people around you, right? Once again, if it's truly beneficial, if it's authentically beneficial, which is to say once again, it's not Voxa, it's evidence-supported thinking because you've asked yourself questions, you've cultivated that capacity and you've gathered evidence, that's what we should be doing here. Philosophy's purpose, this is major, is to illuminate the ways our soul has been infected by unsound beliefs, unscrained, tumultuous desires, and dubious life choices, and preferences that are unworthy of us. How do we figure this out? Self-srutiny, applied with kindness, is the main antidote. That's what our philosophical meditation sessions are. And again, we're not meeting synchronously, but I do ask that at the very least when I post the episodes, you take 10 minutes to sit down with a pen and paper and scrutinize yourself as kindly as possible. Now of course, and we'll talk about this, sometimes you don't want to be kind with yourself. There are times when you have to be, let's say, a little bit tough on yourself, and that might get you to what you have to do, right? That might get you to the goodness you're searching for. Of course, that being said, generally, try to be kind to yourself. Also, don't not scrutinize yourself. Don't not examine yourself. It's important to make sure you're doing what you think you should be doing. That's for your own definitions. Okay? A little bit more here. We get into some, let's say, some examples of practice here, right? The skilled use of logic, disputation, and that developed ability to name things correctly are some of the instruments philosophy gives us to achieve abiding, clear-sightedness, and inner tranquility, which is true happiness. This happiness, which is our aim, must be correctly understood. Happiness is commonly mistaken for passively experienced pleasure or leisure. That conception of happiness is good only as far as it goes. The only word, the object of all our efforts, is a flourishing life. This is, I think, a really key point that we've maybe, or, let's say, in the past as philosophers have misconstrued, right? Happiness is not the real word, let's say, for example, in Aristotle's Nicomakian ethics. That's a bad translation. The ancient Greek word we're thinking about here, and I'm even thinking about changing the name one of the names of the chapters in our book we're going to talk about, because it's on happiness. It's cold. I don't like that word. I don't like that idea. I think happiness is great, but happiness is not our main goal, right? The main goal, why, let's say, should not be our main goal if we want to lead as healthy a life as possible. The ancient Greek's had a word, you dimonium. We're going to watch a video on this, it's a great idea, right? This is, again, give you a general day when understanding of it. It's more about fulfilling your potential, leading a meaningful and fulfilling life. That's what it's about. Right? So, within that, because it's obviously absurd to be correct, that's a fuller understanding of what life is than simply saying, "I just want to be happy." Right? Eudimonia makes room for happiness, but it also makes room for suffering and pain in the pursuit of actualizing our potential, which is meaningful. In the pursuit, another part of Eudimonia, sort of, is like leaving something, but let's say, leaving the world better as a result of our presence in it, as a result of our actions. Right? So, next to his idea that, and this is right from the service, the only worthy object of all our efforts is a flourishing life. That's what Eudimonia is. It's the pursuit of flourishing. Right? So, that's bigger than happiness. It's more profound than happiness. And he tells us, even here, it gives us a little more information on happiness, I think, is very useful. True happiness is a verb. It is the ongoing dynamic performance of worthy deeds. The flourishing life whose foundation is virtuous intentions is something we continually improvise, and in doing so, our soul is mature. So we see already, right? Virtuous intention. It's a very cool idea from the Stoics, I'll keep this brief. But the Stoics love the idea of archery for the following reason, right? As an archer, it makes sense to have the intention of hitting your mark, hitting your target, right? The intention, why even show up, right? So the idea for the Stoics, again, is the power of focusing on what we can't control or we cannot control. The Stoic archer, with everything in their being, wants to hit the target. Whether, again, metaphor for the target's truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the target is doing the adjusting, the target is inner peace, the target is discipline, whatever, right? Okay. So you have to have that intention. You have to know yourself well enough to know that these are my intentions and I stand by these, right? That being said, it's connecting to a conversation about you dimonient being greater than happiness, right? The archer plants their feet, the archer pulls the bow back, holds the arrow, right? They can control large portions of that intentionality, right? Once they release the arrow, though, they cannot control the wind, they cannot control if it starts raining, they cannot control if for some reason the target moves, they cannot control any of these things. So once you let go of the arrow, which is to say, once you move from intentions into action into the external world especially, things become out of our control, that is what our happiness if we allow it to, gets damaged. That's a study for the test, a study for the test, you control your thinking, you control your intentions, you get through that day, it's a different set of questions. It's not asking you about what the teacher said, they would ask you about. How do we learn to be indifferent to results out of our control? Now indifferent doesn't mean, let's say, numb, we should learn from them, of course, but even that learning, just what to say, we are creating the intention to learn and we're working with the best of our ability, the best of whatever people we have to learn. That's more in our control than the actual result itself, right? You dimonia makes room for failure, whereas, you know, well, that even makes you lonely with play, it makes room for the feelings that often and most easily accompany failure. Happiness doesn't, it's too narrow, right? So another point here, we're moving on a little bit from different ideas here. Our life, we have to strive for this, our life has usefulness to ourselves and to the people we touch. Great idea, like I said, ethical development, moral development, here we are. We've become philosophers to discover what is really true, we've got to pursue truth, it's important. External truth, external truth, gotta do it, questioning method is a part of this, right? We have to make sure this is a great set of ideas you're saying here, right? We have to learn what is merely the accidental result of flawed reasoning, our own thinking's messed up, we have to question it, isn't messed up. Recklessly acquired erroneous judgments, so to acquire an erroneous judgment, it's like acquire or to assimilate or, let's say adopt an idea that doesn't make any sense. Okay, well intentioned by misguided teachings of parents and teachers, hugely important idea, right? Questioning those that came before us and really asking, right, what of what they've offered me is true, what of what they've offered me, what of what they've offered me is useful, right? We should learn how to question things before we accept or reject them. We want to move past it, let's say we want to make sure we're not making assumptions basically, right? And unexamined acculturation, we have to examine the acculturation, how has our culture impacted us, right? With the examines things. And then he finally answered this really powerful note, right? To ease our soul suffering, we engage in discipline and introspection in which we conduct thought experiments to strengthen our ability to distinguish between wholesome and lazy, hurtful beliefs and habits. Beautiful point. Thought experiments, that's how we'll look at listening to this, that's how we'll look at our writing, our reading, and also our philosophical meditations. All of these can be viewed under these things, right? To ease our soul suffering, great way to end that piece and two other questions that the transitor Sharon Lebel provided, which I think are great, that she describes as, you know, sort of being of the utmost importance to epictetus, how do I live a happy, fulfilling life? Again, happy, but also fulfilling, and how can I be a good person? So, this was a good, oh wait, hold on, that was a good conversation about the second half of the syllabus. Now let's get into the first little bit, all right? So as an asynchronous course, there's gonna be two things that we're doing in terms of writing. We have short take home written exercises that are between 250 to 500 words, which pretty much is one to two pages, right? So this is on page two of our syllabus, and I do, once again, strongly suggest you take a look at it. So I'll just explain this a little bit. You, I suggest that you choose from one, I'm sorry, you choose one of the three options I get, right? So once again, every week you'll be getting listening to, to listen to, you'll be getting pages in our bibliotherapy book, or one of the other two books to read, and that'll be the fuel for your responses, right? So I suggest that you either one, choose a question from the philosophical meditation's book, and use a quote or idea from our bibliotherapy book to address it. So that's simply our, I meditated this question, interested in me, oh, this quote helps. Let me explain it, and then apply it, and we'll talk about a strategy for that in a minute. Number two, choose an interesting or meaningful quote from the bibliotherapy books, so maybe a question generally stand out to you, choose a quote, right? Elaborate upon it. We'll talk more about that again in a second, or maybe create your own question or questions and work to pursue them with sections or quotes from the bibliotherapy book. So the only real common element of all these things aside from the fact that they involve the same set of books is that I asked that you always include direct textual evidence, and that's very important, right? I show you how I would like you to cite it. I need you to quote from a philosopher, so we're getting into the practice of interpreting and getting into a dialogue with another thinker, right? So I really, we have to make sure we do that, we have to make sure we hand it in on time, and again, for me, I was very open about my struggle with grammar. I ask that we please read over our essays, use grammarly into great free resource to help with some punctuation stuff, we have to make sure we're writing with clarity, right? And the assignments are already posted to blackboard, so I asked you to upload it to blackboard before midnight every Sunday, all right? So the way to approach this, we scroll down to our, on our syllabus to page three, we'll see a section called a suggested approach to our readings. We're answering the following questions with the reading, right? And the supplies to how we write as well. What does it say? That's the quote. What does it mean? That's you interpreting it. How can I apply it to my life? That's you making it real, right? And by my life, I want to make this clear, please never think you have to write in the first person, right? Feel free to write it in whatever voice you want, you never have to talk directly about yourself. Of course, you can, but please do not feel at all obligated to do that, right? In the writing. But I do suggest in your thinking and your philosophical meditation writing, which I will never collect, you do, right, from the first person perspective. And the fourth one, why does it matter? Is it kind of a greater elaboration upon how you would apply it, right? So, okay, so this quote is saying, for this, for example, is saying to strike balance. Well, what does this mean? Well, it means you have to avoid excess too much and avoid deficiency or being deficient too little, right? So, how can I apply it to my life? Well, I could definitely do this or that more and do this or that less to lead to healthier life. And that matters because I want to, let's say, create more time to move forward in life in X, Y or Z direction. And why would balance matter in general? Well, according to Aristotle, right, balance is like the virtue. We should always be striving for the golden meat. And that matters because if we have more balanced lives, maybe people would be happier, maybe we would be more productive, people maybe would have a greater sense of eudimonia. So, you kind of unpack it, right, with those four questions. So that's that. That's as simple as it is, right? Okay. So, for it to let me know, of course, reading these, yeah, that's how I move forward. So each week, you'll hand those in, I'll give those a read. I do have a lot of students, so here's what I would like to say as well. If you would like, let's say, specific feedback or, yeah, or to have a conversation about how your papers are going, please feel free to email me. It's the beginning of the semester. I'm, yeah, I'm very new to the online format, so I'm still getting used to this slight increase in written work. I think it's a good idea to have a weekly practice for a number of reasons. That being said, if we were all in class together, I would not likely be doing weekly assignments, so I'm going to be sort of experimenting with how I'm going to keep up with it. So if you ever want more feedback or, again, to have a conversation, please email me, we'll set up a meeting, or we'll go back and forth via email, all right? Of course, there will be, or we should definitely have a conversation around midterms throughout the posting grades, and/or reach out to me for more specifics, so that'll be a time to check in as well on that. We have, please always feel free to email me, because, yeah, I'm getting used to this sort of format as well myself. Then we will also have a final take home written exercise, which is longer than our weekly take homes, and no surprises there. I'll give you the handout, which describes it, which will be a collection of prompts, weeks and advance. We'll talk about it together, and therefore, that'll go well, okay? Below the final take home, we have a quick note on email communication. I will do my best, please do not ever take it personally if I don't respond right away. I check my email pretty much five, six days a week in the morning, and then about three, four days a week also check it at night, so I'll do my best there, but, yeah, I'm teaching a lot of classes, and the online format I get a lot. Please, it's me, it's not you, don't take it personally, and also feel free to reset the emails, all right? I won't get offended by that or annoyed, I get it. Below that, a brief note on our schedule, I want you to shape the class. So, I have a few episodes, again, these two being a couple, that I'm going to just give to you initially, and then I think I'll also probably all need the class a little bit. Well, do the opening conversation on cultivating and pursuing purpose to chapter in our book, definitely warrants mentioning, and then I would love to have the class, everybody, please email me, let me know what you want to focus on the most, take some time and maybe look at the chapters in the book. If you go to our bibliotherapy book, there's a glossary or index, I always get those confused. Either be in the book, there's a list of the chapters with the titles that are really self-explanatory, so let me know which topics interest you all the most. I'll make sure I put those earlier in the semester and make sure we spend enough time on them. If there's ever an essay you want to cover that we don't, once again, tell me, I'll lecture on it. Yeah, so just as much as possible, please, I want this to be a student directed course. I've done this in the past and it's been much more engaging for everybody, and I want everything we do to be useful for you, so let me know what you want to focus on the most, and I will definitely be as responsive as I can possibly be. All right, so that's it, all right, thank you all for listening, hope this is useful. Again, keep your eye out for a couple other episodes, I'll be emailing all of you soon with some homework, and have a great week, thank you.