What is philosophy? What is at the core of philosophy as the art of living?

Hello everybody. How you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome back to our second day now, philosophy as the art of living. I hope you've had the opportunity to listen to our first episode. I give a brief welcome. We went over the syllabus a little bit and I also introduced us to Epic Titus and Marcus Aurelius, two stoic philosophers that we will return to a lot throughout the next couple weeks. And just a brief introduction with what is philosophy right? What is its true purpose? It's a you dimonic and fulfilling life for us and also encourages us to be of service to the human community. And for Marcus Aurelius as we'll see with his own meditations, right? By his own, I mean, we're going to look at that book extensively. He wrote it for himself. He did not expect to share it. It was his own way of living the quote I shared in the last episode that philosophy can be a companion for us and it can be a guide for us to leading the best lives we can lead. So now we have to break down what is philosophy and what is philosophy as the art of living. So philosophy, etymologically, when you break the word down, philo and Sophia, it's a Greek word, right? Philo means love and Sophia means wisdom. So these are huge ideas, right? And one of the readings I provided for you for today, it's actually an excerpt from my dissertation proposal, a large part of what my dissertation is going to be about is this idea of what is philosophy, what is philosophy as the art of living. So these brief few pages, I hope give us a good idea, at least such that we can move forward knowing the how, the why, and the what a little bit more effectively when we're engaging with these great works that come from the tradition of philosophy as the art of living. So let's start off with love. Great book, I recommend, I hope to return to it over the next few weeks with all of you as well on the podcast. I'll likely even share some excerpts in our books is the Socrates Express by Eric Weiner. And in this book, he talks a lot about another philosopher, Simone Vale. And in his discussion and examination of her ideas about attention, which is a word we're going to refer to a lot. It's powerful. We need to talk about our capacity to pay attention. It's one of the things in my dissertation. I describe as under attack by a, you know, by a lot of aspects of our modern world, our technology being the main culprit, if you will. But in this book, he says the following about love, he says, quote, attention is love. Love is attention. And I make the argument that we cannot love ourselves or others if we do not learn how to offer and direct our attention. If we cannot control our attention, we are damaging our ability to cultivate a self and we are damaging our ability to influence the world in virtuous ways. Those are things I think at the heart of love. Love is a huge idea, right? Love is like a constellation of other ideas, which is why it's so difficult to define. And even attention can be understood in various ways. Right? But what we're going to be focusing on a lot with our work with philosophy as art of living is another idea that comes from the ancient world called prosike, which means attention to oneself. And this according to Pierre Hadot, another philosopher, we're going to study a lot, another, let's say, also historian of philosophy, we're going to look at extensively so much of his work from philosophy as the art of living, I'm sorry, from philosophy as a way of life to what is ancient philosophy. That second book you'll see is one of the readings for this week as well describes and examines philosophy as the art of living in the ancient Greek and Roman world. Right? So in this world, in this type of philosophy, the fundamental attitude of the philosopher was prosike. And this attention to oneself was used to pursue self mastery. Right? And what that does is ultimately cultivates a type of self, a type of attention, a capacity to offer attention that will help us grow and will help us love. And we do this through exercises, which we'll cover in our last week together, and which we're going to be practicing now. Right? Because ultimately, as I hope is already clear, you are the center of this class. You never, of course, have to use the word I in your responses, which I hopefully may turn the syllabus. But it is important that when we read these texts, when we address some, you know, some of our questions, because some of them will be about defining things, right? Which involves you, of course, but isn't necessarily aimed directly at you. We have to make this the critic translation. And we'll hear it from socrates in a moment here, right? But in order to pay attention to yourself, we're going to not only look at questions about what is courage, what is justice, what is memento more? What is a more faulty? What do these things mean? We have to think about how we can apply them. We have to think about how we understand them as individuals and how they can help us lead the best, healthiest, most you dimonic and fulfilling lives we can. So I ask that you take that, you know, I call, I call it like a posture or approach to everything we do in here. This is for you. The art of living is not just an idea. It is about your art of living. That's what prosicae is. And in a moment, when we say attention to oneself, what does that mean? What is the self? We'll talk about that in a few minutes, right? But this idea of love as attention, provided by Eric Weiner really connects nicely to this ancient idea of philosophy as your art of living and prosicae, right? Or attention to oneself. To pay attention as Eric Weiner offers, right, is to love. I think we can expand on that. I think we could ask about, you know, making distinction between virtuous attention, right? As the attention truthful is the attention courageous, right? Love, when we think about love, I think we often in our modern understanding, we think of course about romantic love, which is one type of love, right? Eros, the Greeks would say. But there's also Filia, which is like friendship, family love. There's Agapi, which is like divine love. And then we have this great idea that we get from Socrates or we could even say Socrates and the Oracle of Delphi, right? An ancient Greek society at Delphi, they had this thing engraved in stone. It said, know yourself. What that really meant or what that implied was care for yourself. I think about who you love. You care for them. That's philosophy. If you offer that care in a way that is virtuous, that is truly philosophical, powerful, authentic love, healthy love. So these ideas, and I hope I'm not making too many connections here, but all of these things kind of work together, I think nicely to say love is attention is a very powerful idea, in my opinion. So if love is attention, we ask, well, what is attention? Right? And that's really what we're going to get into with this course. What asks us for our attention? I think questions. I picked tedious families. He said, questions are the engines of reason. In order to think reasonably, you have to be offering your attention. You have to be in an attentive state. And again, through exercises, we cultivate that type of attention. And at the heart of this, right, is the sense that with philosophy's art of living, and we'll get to this in a moment really exactly from Eric Wiener, right? We are here to lovingly scrutinize ourselves, examine ourselves with the idea that this class and philosophy is art of living in general is here to help us transform ourselves. Right? For Tignataan, a Zen Buddhist who we will also refer to frequently over the next few weeks, if love stops growing, it begins to die. So this class, philosophy's art of living, when we see Marcus, real is he's trying to get himself to grow to become more patient, especially a lot, you hear that in meditations or you read that in meditations, you feel that really, to be more patient, he encourages self to grow in his ability to be of service to other people. He encourages himself to grow really in virtue. He's practicing a form of love there. That's that is truly self love. And we get can again apply this to our relationships. So that emphasis on transformation on growth, you need to be attentive to something in order for it to grow. Let's think about a metaphor that connects beautifully to our painting, which is the inspiration of this class. How does that flower exist? Somebody planted a seed, somebody watered it, somebody paid attention to it. It's even the case and my barber believes in this, he has a beautiful garden in his backyard. I was getting haircuts in his backyard. He talks to his plants and he sees that they grow better when he talks to them versus when he doesn't talk to them. That's attention. So it's a beautiful metaphor. One of, you know, one of many we're going to pull from that painting, right? But that flower is huge. It's a huge metaphor for love and life. What does a flower do? It offers something beautiful to the world, but it requires attention, continuous attention, watering it every day. Make sure the soil is right. Make sure it's facing the sun, right? Even the idea that a flower has to face the sun is evidence of how powerful attention is. If the flower doesn't face the sun, which is to say the sun doesn't pay attention to it, it dies. If we as people do not cultivate ourselves, if we do not direct our gaze, both literal and more metaphorical, the gaze of our literal eyes, we could say, what we look at is very powerful, what we listen to is very powerful. All of that is food for the soul. And also we could think about our mind's eye, right? Our thoughts, Marcus really as famously in the meditation, wrote to himself, "When know your thoughts, organize your thoughts, that is your mind's eye." We're going to talk about the practice of self-writing. When you write on a piece of paper, you not only think, and then write, but you also read. That's in a literal sense, your actual vision, and also because it's reading, right, it's your mind's vision as well. So this idea of attention as integral or as necessary for growth and love is something we're going to spend a lot of time examining and it lies at the heart of philosophy as the art of living's emphasis on self-care. So love is attention, we're going to work with attention, we need attention to grow, growth is necessary for love to thrive and for love to be healthy. All of that is connecting to this idea of philosophy as art of living. And of course, philosophy, right? Now let's go on to wisdom. So what is wisdom, okay? In philosophy is a way of life. Once again, a great book by Pierre Hadot. We're going to talk about a lot this summer. He provides the following idea about Sophia or wisdom. Wisdom then for the ancients was a way of life which brought peace of mind, inner freedom and cosmic consciousness. Think about this. If we are more wise, if we work to cultivate wisdom, we'll be in a greater state of peace. Inner freedom, what I think that means, and potentially a few interpretations of this, we want to create the important stoic distinction between what we can control and what we cannot control. If we allow what we cannot control to affect us, right? Let's even say, let's give ourselves a little leeway here. To affect us more than it should. To affect us in ways that are not helpful, that are not truthful, that are not just. Our inner freedom is being damaged. We are being controlled. Seneca is obsessed with anger, right? He has a whole essay about it. If you let someone anger you for Seneca, you are detracting. You are taking away your own inner freedom. And of course, there is such a thing as righteous anger. Sometimes we should get angry. But that's because we say, you know what? No, this is unjust. I'm going to get angry at this. But when we're pushed and pulled by external forces and/or when we are too easily pushed and pulled by our internal forces, our freedom is damaged. Wisdom will help us there. Okay, and cosmic consciousness is a beautiful idea from ancient philosophy. I will once again refer to the stoics. Marcus Aurelis was obsessed with this. We're all connected for the stoics. And that really matters. The stoics, you know, according to Gordon Merino, who compiled some beautiful anthologies of philosophical works, were kind of like the founders in the ancient Greek world of the idea of universal human rights. We're all a part of the human community for the stoics. And we have to serve that community. At the heart of that lies wisdom. Why? According to Sharon Ryan, another philosopher, wisdom not only involves knowing, quote, how to live well, but also includes quote, a general appreciation for the value of living well, close quote. If we're all connected, living well doesn't just involve me feeling good. It also involves an obligation to be of service to others, to live well together. So the wise person does not only know things. Maybe we could say just for the sake of this brief introduction into these ideas, the knowledgeable person knows things. The wise person knows how to use them in the world. The wise person knows how to use them in their life. Right? And we use them in our lives, of course, to improve ourselves. Pierre Haudet, among others, talk about philosophy as the art of living as a therapeutic, as a form of communal therapy or individual therapy, right? This is an asynchronous course. So we're not going to necessarily meet, although again, I will offer some Zoom meetings in the evenings. If you'd like to show up, that'd be great. If you want to make a meeting with me to meet on Zoom, let me know, of course. But ultimately, right, if we were together in class, it'd be a communal therapeutic thing, or a therapeutic experience. Whereas in asynchronous, it's going to be a little more personalized. Either way, philosophy in the ancient conception of it, especially as the art of living, was designed to be therapy for the soul, right? Eric Wiener, also in his book that we've already mentioned, loves this idea. He refers to philosophy as something that's practical. This is very much a comment on philosophy as the art of living. He talks about it literally as, quote, self-transformation, as, quote, practical, as therapy, as medicine for the soul. So we acquire knowledge, OK. But we have to apply it. That is where the self-care actually happens. We're going to talk in here about how to get rid of anxiety. We're going to talk about strategies. The stoics really cared about this. They cared about living in the moment. Marcus really is over and over again in his meditations, and encourages himself, live today, live today. This is enough for you. He wrote to himself, look at this task, address this person. But we could read that all day if you don't actually try to apply it by maybe writing every morning in your notebook, this is enough for you, live today. By having that mantra with you as epictetus would say, ready at hand, by memorizing it, as he would say, engraving it into your soul, you won't be less anxious after this class. We have to go from thinking, writing, and reading to actually living. That is true wisdom. It's the pursuit of the application of the ideas that we're going to discuss. And this is really what Socrates wanted people to do, right? We mentioned Socrates with the Oracle Adelphi. He believed he got a message from a higher power to go out into Athens, into the Agora, into the marketplace, and convince people of all different walks of life, merchants, poets, politicians, lawyers, teachers, whoever, to care for their souls, which is to say to practice philosophy, to question themselves, to see that they may be needed to learn a little bit more about how they lived, about what they believed, what they valued, how they interact with others. See where they might have some, let's say, some flaws, some things to improve upon, and where they might have some strengths, examine themselves, examine the world around them to strive for this idea of philosophy, of paying attention, offering attention to the right things in the right ways, to live wisely, to live. We could even say, for the Stoics, by the four virtues, to live a life that was characterized by courage, temperance, which is sort of, we could interpret that to as a little bit, I would say, balance and discipline, to live life justly, and to live life, of course, with wisdom, ready to go. So that's a little bit of an intro, what is philosophy? I'm going to go, now the next episode, we're going to break down a little bit, what is philosophy as the art of living, what are its key ideas, what are its main aims, and of course, in that also, we're going to get into what is the self. So this is a brief first episode, what is philosophy, ultimately, again, is the love of wisdom, and I hope my remarks on what is love, and what is wisdom are helpful. All right, so part one, what is philosophy? Part two now, we're talking about what is philosophy as the art of living, more specifically. So in my opinion, at the heart of this type of philosophy is self-care. So we have to ask a couple of questions here. What is the self? What does it mean to care for that self? And how does that look? For this class, whenever we say one self, yourself, myself, that word means my soul, your soul, their soul. We're approaching this from the platonic and socratic sense of that word, and that idea. The self is the soul, and the soul is to be understood as that with which we live our active lives, our assessment of values, our decisions, our desires, our choices, all of these depend essentially and directly upon the soul. The soul also functions as the ruling faculty of the body and is in governance or control of instrumental action, of relationships with other people, of behaviors, and attitudes in general, and the subject also of relationship to oneself. This is the thing Socrates wanted to ask people and did ask people, of course, to examine. Think about your choices. Think about your desires. Do you really want to want that? Does that thing you think you want really lead you to you demonia or a fulfilling life? Or is it empty? And you haven't questioned it. When you're speaking with your loved ones, are you being healthy and word as Marcus really this would say you have to examine that? That thing you're afraid of is it really scary or is it not that scary you're just making it scary because of a habituated way of thinking and feeling that you've made for yourself? Or maybe that someone years ago offered to you and you accepted it as your own. That story you keep telling you about yourself is it true? Is it fair? Is it wise? That thing you did last week was it really in service of your highest purpose or were you procrastinating? These are all soul conversations and we need to make time. Socrates was going up to people in the marketplace, merchants, poets, politicians, lawyers, teachers however, and encouraged them to think about these things. Take a moment. As I said already, Epictetus said, questions are the engines of reason. Questions make us think. Socrates was asking people questions in his dialogue. He was going back and forth with them, encouraging them to explain themselves. And again by themselves we mean their souls, the way they understood themselves, the way they understood the world, those are all soul conversations. The ways we live depend on this thing we call our souls. It is not our wealth, it is not our strength, it is not our status that should define us. These are not the things that we should pay the most attention to or be the most attentive with or about. Instead we should care for the soul. That is what self care means. Self care is a special way of relating the self to the self, the soul to the soul. We have to apply our attention to ourselves. And by that we mean once again to our desires, to our decisions, to the ways we conduct ourselves in our relationships, to the ways we are attentive or inattentive. We have to exercise ourselves on ourselves by doing this, by asking these questions, by adopting these perhaps new habits, or again maybe reinvigorating some old habits. The inner dialogue within ourselves, the inner examination, that is the soul work that we are pursuing this summer. And the aim of this is to develop and transform that soul, to want things that are righteous, to want things that are fair, to want things in a way that is wise, to make choices in a way that is just, to make choices in a way that is helpful. And also to attain a certain mode or way of being. You want to be more patient, that is a great goal for this class. You have to examine yourself about what causes your impatience, what triggers it, why might that be the case? How can you act in a new situation? What are examples of choices you have made that were impatient, others that were patient, gather new evidence, that soul evidence, that examination is a part of self-care. And that word examination will come up again in a couple of minutes, right? I'll explain why in a second. But first, let's talk about this idea of a mode of being. Our soul, again, is, let's say, comprised by all the things I just mentioned. Now, the care comes in the form of virtuous transformation. We have to acknowledge, through the cultivation of self-knowledge, that we're missing some things, or we're imperfect in some ways. We don't know. And in that wonder, that we only find through dialogue, through asking ourselves, what's going on here in my soul? What's going on with these desires? What's going on with these choices? What's going on with the way I look at myself? We facilitate that wonder through the questioning. We understand we need some knowledge, we lack in some ways. We maybe make time for some silence to examine ourselves. We once again apply some questions. Maybe we take out a pen and a notebook, and we take some notes about what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we've done, what we would like to do, how we would like to feel, how we would like to think differently. We may be turned to this class and other sources as well, books, songs, movies, what have you, and we take a primitive approach to them, which means, in terms of primitive reading, right, which is in the excerpt I'm referencing here in our reading, ironically, for this class, take this stuff personally. As we talked about with wisdom, none of this matters unless you live it. I'm never going to ask you to memorize anything. That's not what this is for. This is so we can get some tools, get some ideas that can then fuel new ways of life. So, we can become more patient, more confident, just for some examples, right? That's what Socrates was trying to do. Trying to help people develop spiritually, philosophically. We can use those words a little bit, and I say this with absolute respect to both terms, right? We can see them as a little bit interchangeable here. Okay, for Pierre Haudet, one must always approach a philosophical work of antiquity with the idea of spiritual progress in mind, so philosophy and spirituality working together here a little bit, right? For Foucault, we have to fashion a self with philosophy, and our whole lives become a part of this conversation. The way we conduct ourselves becomes a part of this conversation, and we do this so we could flourish, so we could lead the best lives that we can, right? So, we're going to deal with some sicknesses, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's stress, maybe it's irrational fear, but we're here to practice the art of living a good life that only happens through dealing with the soul and caring for it. As Appictita says in his famous book, The Art of Living, translated wonderfully by Sharon Label, "Police fees main task is to respond to the soul's cry, to make sense of and thereby free ourselves from the hold of our griefs and fears. Philosophy as art of living is going to give us strategies for that, right? Effective self-care that can function as a pathway to self-transformation and positive growth in the face of life's changes. We need this as people, and I'm sure a lot of us, not all of us already have the ability to articulate clearly practices that we have for this type of thing, right? So, when I say spirituality, philosophy are similar, right? Or we could see them as, you know, at times interchangeable. Again, maybe you have something you'd say already in your life that's a spiritual practice, keep it. Philosophy, I hope, will improve it. Right? So, we're not replacing anything, necessarily, or I'm, and by that I mean, we're not replacing, let's say, a therapeutic practice of a different sort. We're not replacing psychological therapy, we're not replacing religion, we're not replacing spirituality. We're seeing, I think, these beautiful connections, and how all of these things can be pathways to flourishing. Right? And again, pathways to the art of living, we're responsible for this, for this care of the soul. Socrates, again, was a teacher in a sense, he was helping people do this, he called himself the "gadfly," right? He went around and kind of made people move, and they bothered them a little bit. But his intentions were to help people see that you are the art, and you are the artist. If we understand self-care, and we take it seriously, and we understand that, we can change our desires, we can change our choices, we can transform ourselves. For Plotinus, he famously said, "I never stopped sculpting your own statue until the divine splendor of virtue shines in you." Marx really has wrote to himself, "Wherever life is possible, a good life is possible." What is a good life? We might think of, immediately in our society right now, material things, maybe even in ancient Athens, they thought of material things. Marx didn't mean that, I don't think, he met a virtuous life. And there's going to be things that get in the way of that. Right, there's going to be things that rise up within us, there's going to be external factors that influence us. But for Dr. Loverty and Dr. Gregory, as we have in our handout, right, many of the ancients employed a medical analogy, describing philosophy as a set of therapeutic or curative practices for various diseases or afflictions of the soul. In this tradition of philosopher, as anyone who was engaged in self-confrontation and self-work, we have to confront ourselves in here. Michel Foucault famously said that self-writing is a weapon in spiritual combat. I know, this is me, literally, I know I'm impatient, I have to work on that. What's behind the impatience fear? Fear of what? Fear of not getting enough done. Well, why do I fear that? Because I associate my worth as a person with how many things I get done in my accomplishments there's a problem there. I only can, particularly that because I've spent time like, why am I always impatient? Why do I always feel like I'm not doing enough? And I have to work on myself. I have to encourage myself to see new things. All right, well, you know what achievements at work aren't the only important thing. I'm kind to people. That's important. I have to go easier on myself. All that doesn't stress me out and ironically gets in my own way. Then that work comes in. I have to tell myself mantras. I'm obsessed right now, back to our painting for a little bit. I'm obsessed with that hourglass. I'm writing it everywhere. It's a reminder to me. To take my time. It's a reminder to me that time will keep moving no matter what. I have to choose whether I enjoy it. It meaning the moment what I'm doing or if I fight with it constantly. You have to understand the philosophies here. as we talked about in "Rothmarx Relias" to guide us, right? To help us as Dr. Loverty and Dr. Gregory Offer here, to work on our character, we can understand philosophy as a program for improving our character or otherwise making us better individuals than we currently are. This is about transformation. Philosophy helps us transform when we understand it as philosophy is art of living with an emphasis on self-care. We're here to shape ourselves, that self-care, to move from impatient to a little bit more patient. So we get these great metaphors of art and medicine, where we examine ourselves, we take some resources, we apply them to our lives. That's that lived wisdom, right? As we talked about in our last episode, and we do that with love through attention. We have to pay attention to what we're creating in order to create it. And again, the "it" there is a self and that self, once again, is the soul. We want to generate healthier, more eudaimonic existences. And all that can happen through philosophy as art of living. We're working here to strive towards healthier ways of relating to ourselves and to the world. We're striving for more truthful ways of understanding ourselves and understanding the world. We can shape ourselves through philosophy as the art of living and that is its main goal. We have to also keep in mind that a well-conditioned soul that is cared for makes good use of all things. And then also, let's say it makes it possible to make good use of all the things. And also, a poorly-conditioned soul leads to the opposite. We can see a lot of great examples of this. For example, if you value wealth too much, so much so that you don't cultivate justice within yourself, you have to think about how you earn that money. You have to think about how you use that money. Socrates will call you out. If you're lying to your customers just to get money, that's a serious problem. You desire money more than you desire truth, not a good thing for your soul. You're damaging yourself. And we have to care about these types of things. Because that is literally where eudaimonia exists within the soul of fulfilling life. You know you're lying. That does not lead to fulfillment. So, we're here to care for our souls. We're here to transform, once again, our choices, our desires, our relationships towards virtue, to make them as just and as fair as they could be, as truthful as they could be, as wise as they could be, to help ourselves become as confident as they could be, and as courageous as we could be. This is a great time also. It's our second conversation. Now we know what we're talking about with the soul. We know a little bit about what that care is. It's transformation. It's growth. Set some goals for yourself. How would you like to use this class to help you transform and care for yourself? For me, as I said, I'm always working on patients. The main motivation for me to put that painting in the syllabus, because one, I have it in my apartment. And two, because that hourglass has really been standing out to me. And I thought to myself, I can make a class out of this. All aspects of that painting have helped me in my life. A mental mori helps me get rid of stupid shit that I'm worrying about. Get rid of it. I'm going to die. This, really. This is what you're going to think about today. You're running out of time. You're going to waste today. Weren't about this. That's how it helps me. And other ways too, but that's just one way. Right? The flower life. You have to accept life. What's out of our control? What's in our control? We need to know the difference there. That flower helps me realize it is what it is. A more faulty to love what has happened. To try to make peace with it. Then, of course, the hourglass I already talked about. Time is moving. I want to value this moment. I want to remind myself, even when I'm in traffic. This is still life. This is still something good here. I don't need to rush. I need to be impatient. Things will be okay. So, my goals, as you can see here, right? Be more patient. Maybe relax a little bit. I hope lecturing and reading more and organizing these books and these PDFs for everyone helps me. And likewise, again, I hope we take our approach to wisdom that we're not here to memorize. We're here to learn and we're here to apply. So set some goals for yourself. We've got about three weeks, three and a half weeks together. Set some goals. Maybe you want to be more patient. Maybe you want to be more confident. Maybe you want to have healthier conversations with your family. With your friends, with your significant other. All of that can be possible if we take a certain approach to philosophy as the art of living. So, hope is as helpful. We know what the soul is now for our understanding. We know what we're here to do with philosophy as art of living. I'll provide some reading, some more videos to get us started. Hope you enjoyed this and I'll talk to you soon.