Ancient Philosophy -- Plato and Aristotle & More with Robert Mayhew _ Yaron Brook Interviews

got an old bio. Doctor Maye's primary research interest is ancient philosophy, but he also has a serious scholarly interest in Ironrand and has done a lot of work related to iron Rand, from authoring books and editing, collection of essays and writing and speaking and doing talks regular talks at OCONN about irand Doctor Mehue also serves on the board of the Ironman Institute and the Anti Foundation for Objective Scholarship. Welcome, thanks for joining me.

to Aristotle before, but hadn't really done anything with the information. Okay, Aristotle, and then but this time it really caught Why is Aristotle the greatest of your philosophers? And why does she have a character reading this obscure you that this stuff from Aristotle's metaphysics in the Valley? And I thought, I want to look into this. Why Aristotle? You know, I'm thinking, you know what he's I don't think he's a champion

of capitalism. And so I went to the very beginning of the complete works of Aristotle and it was the category worries, and it's you know it it. I couldn't see the value in it at all, but I but I became fascinated with that. And while doing that, I got really into not just Aristotle, but ancient Greek culture, and I kind of made it a mission to find

out what was valuable in Aristotle. I started taking courses in ancient Greek because I knew if I wanted to make this my specialty, I needed, you know, to read the text in the original. And so that's how I got into it. And by the time I was, you know, really serious about doing graduate work, I I that was the field I wanted. And you know, I wrote my dissertation on Aristotle's politics, his his uh criticisms of of Plato's Republic, and that was that was that.

history of his influence on Western culture. But I just became very interested in him generally, and then his critique of Plato, his criticisms of the forms of the communism

of the Republic and all of that. And then I kind of I had this same interest in political philosophy that that really grew out of kind of my interest in reading dystopia novels and you know, anti communy, you know, Soviets, you know, criticism of the Soviet Union, and that com me into politics and and so it they kind of merged, and I started doing work on Ariosotle's politics, and but I wish there wasn't this aha moment. It was kind of just trying to figure out why would I Ran,

you know, you know, recognize him. Then when I started to read the non fiction and she refers to him in for who, you know, for the new intellectual and you know he is the founder of you know, everything. And then she has that one line about everything we you know, our language, you know, progress, industry, it all, you know, the founding of America. She she laid on his shoulder, put on his shoulders, and that I found,

it's kind of bizarre. It can't be right. And yet you know, so I really dug into that, and uh, yeah, that that kept me going for a long time, not just through through the pH d. But if you remember long ago when you when you organized conferences, you had one, that wonderful one in Italy, and and uh that's where I gave the lectures on I gave a pair of lectures Aristotle and the and the Renaissance, because I you know what she said that, you know, he made the

Renaissance possible, you know, was against everything that you read, you know, you hear in in courses in medieval philosophy and in into the modern era. And I wanted to look into that. Yeah, I think they I think they exist somewhere. Someone at the time said you should write this into a popular you know, you should write a bokular book. I said, no, no, you know, I'm a scholar, and no one would would buy it anyway. And then I think two years later, Aristotle's Children came out and

made millions. You know, it's all about timing.

and Plato was the philosopher of the Renaissance. And what they had in mind was that when Aristotle's works were rediscovered and reintroduced into the Latin West, I mean, they were immediately regarded as important, although they were also censored and put on lists. And you know, the Church was keeping an eye on that on it because they knew

this was it wasn't kosher to mix religions. So but you know, and by the time you get to Aquinas for example, I'm actually by the I think it was twelve fifty four something like that, to teach philosophy in the universities in the Latin West was to teach Aristotle. And I mean he was so that's why they saw

him as this medieval figure. And then in the Renaissance you get people like Galileo and others sort of pushing back or objecting to, rejecting this sort of ossified Aristotle that you know, Aristotle's view of the universe, his view of the solar system, that was you know, part of his philosophy. And at the same time, Plato's works, which weren't much known in the Middle Ages, were rediscovered in

the Renaissance and people loved them. You know. You you get these, you know, all a lot of these figures, even some of the really good ones who saw themselves as Platonists. So it gets very confusing. But what what people are starting to just to spend more time I think working on, is is that that story doesn't really fit that that Aristotle. Yeah, there were these people who

were pushing back against Arisotole. But even Galileo, for example, says, you know, while he's objecting to these these Catholic Aristotelians who won't look through microscope through through telescopes, he's also saying, I'm the real parapatetic. If you really understand Aristotle, I'm you know, because he wants to look at the world and use your reason to describe it. Yeah, and I think you see that. I mean, Aristotle's works were really influential at the University of Padua and where you had

Galilee and William Harvey and people like that. Jim Lennox is doing work, I think on on the the Aristotelian influence, uh, the unacknowledged influence of Aristotle on on science and things of that sort. So this story that you have Aristotle arrives in the Latin West, he's influential on a Quinas, he becomes this dogma in effect, which in a way

is true. That's what what happens. And then uh, and then you have these really good people who are you know, empirically minded in a good sense if there is one, and well, you know what I mean. And then you know, based on century observation and reasoning based on that and a good scientific method, and there's there's definitely an Aristotelian influence there, but it just doesn't it's not as clean, you know, clear cut as you would you would see.

must be work on that. I mean, he's done work on even you know, Aristotle's influence on Darwin, and you know, there's there's these interesting connections that haven't been thoroughly explored.

of those novels. And I said, no, I hadn't. So I read Anthem and it was clearly the best I know you could say that. I mean, nineteen eighty four was a longer novel, you know, it was. It was well longer, had a lot more events and stuff like that. But there was some thing about Anthem that I couldn't put my finger on at the time that was so much better and more inspiring. And I wasn't a really good,

very confident reader. So I went looking for her other novels and I saw Fountain had no that's too fat. I don't read these fat novels, you know. But you know, a couple of years later I did read it, of course, and then that led to Atlas Shrugged. And at the time I had no idea. I mean, neither of my parents went to college. I didn't have I didn't know what academia was or I was much more interested in in high school and backpacking around Europe and in saving

up my money to do that. I didn't have any I didn't know what I was going to do. So you know, I went to college not knowing what I was going to major in or anything like that. But I was becoming interested in ideas, and especially politically ideas.

And also during this time, I'm starting to read anti Soviet literature, a lot of it, and that tied in with, you know, when I finally got around to we the living that was there, So I'm becoming I thought of myself as conservative, but that there were things I didn't like about being a conservative, particularly because of iron Rand. Like you know, I read Wreckage of the Consensus. Okay, there goes the Draft. Because I didn't have a good integrated view, I thought, well, if I have to choose,

I'm clearly a conservative, not a liberal. But then reading iron Ran, the more you read at this, the little parts of it get chipped away. No, there goes God, there goes the Draft. And it became clear that there was something very different about her. And then I did one of the most important things to do, I think when you're this point in your development. I went to a libertarian meeting and it became clear it was odd because someone had told me the Libertarians are the followers

of Iron Rand, and what did I know. I was twenty or nineteen something like that. So I went there and they were so it was so I felt, you know, almost an esthetic negative reaction. And then there was a speaker there. This was the Maryland Libertarian Partner or something like that, and he was defending Palestine and the and the American Indians. And I'm thinking, well, as the kids say today, WTF, you know, what the hell is this?

And then someone made a critical remark about iin Ran because I mentioned the influence and so in a way it was that was it for the libertarians, you know,

that was that was enough? And then yeah, so she was really I mean, you know, clearly was an important influence in kind of getting me in the right direction, even a very you know, this is before I read anything about epistemology, and I believe I read Virtue of Selfishness by around twenty or twenty one, and reading the novel, but just reading it and so much of it, you know, going past. But I was kind of figuring out what

I was. And you know, like I said, if they're not really integrated, if you hold a set of beliefs, because you know this is this must be I must be a conservative. So I guess they're in favor of the draft, I suppose, But those sort of things that aren't held very well, very totally, they're easily you know, uh, jettison and I mean reading Wreckage of the Consensus, Yeah, that is a violation of the individual rights. And then

reading I think some of the brand and stuff. When I found that the University of Maryland had the the Objectivist New Newsletter and and those volumes, I kind of read through those and yeah, so that's that really got me in the in the right direction, and I even I found that one of the things I was very proud of. When when I was starting to write papers, it looked like I was gonna I was majoring in political science and minoring in philosophy. I started to look

at what did I like about Iinrand's writing. I mean, this sounds presumptuous or whatever, but there was something very clear and logical about it, and I started trying to emulate that in the sense of at least having a

good structure and all that. And I was getting good grades, and I got good feedback from my professors who liked my writing, and so that made me think, well, maybe I could, Maybe I could do what these guys are doing, because I really, like I said, I didn't have a clue of what academia was.

was visiting professor, and that was wonderful. It was really that was my first semester, you know, officially as a philosophy student, and I met Allan and then you know it, I was kind of set. So you know, by the time I got my my PhD, it was really just a question can I get a job or not? And that was that. But well, I should mention going back.

I mean, the first conference was in eighty three and I went to that and and that really you know, the the not OCON, but it was the Thomas Jefferson Institute, I think it was called.

didn't go in eighty sex. We got married in eighty seven and eventually by the by the time I returned, with one exception, I think I was teaching at the conferences and then you know I did that with the Lyceum conferences and all those and yep, well i've been you know, I've been involved ever since.

but there's a lot of fragments. And fragments can mean either works that survive from antiquity that quote Aristotle a quota work that doesn't survive, or I mean more literal the Pyrus fragments something like that and one of the works he wrote. And there's kind of a big move now there's there's one guy in particular I've been working closely with at the University of Padua. The idea is that we need to reassess all the evidence for Aristotle's lost works, and the first work I have actually I

have my books here, some of them. Anyway, I don't know if you can see that. Is it aristotle Lost Homeric Problems? Yeah, that and you know it's Oxford University Press, and I mentioned the Irate Institute.

said to be in six books. That would have been six papyrus roles scrolls, so you know it would be a substantial work, and it was probably I mean, there was emerging a kind of culture where the they weren't sacred texts, but Homer's epics were very important to the I mean, if you were an aristocratic young male, you know, being educated, you would be reading and discussing Homer, I mean, and and and there'd be questions that would arise, and

these became known as Homeric problems. And it was probably Aristotle who got this started, but there may have been and partly was it was to discuss you know, problematic texts or parent contradictions and characterization. But also there was there were critics of Homer, like Plato in the Republic says Homer should be banned and uh. And one response to that was to say, well, we'll, we'll, we'll interpret

him allegorically. And Aristota rejected both of those, you know, Uh, he shouldn't be banned, you know, and for reasons deeper than just one's appraisal of Homer his view of art or literature anyway. But so I became really fascinated in that.

I'm just find that really fascinating. Uh to dig up this old Aristotle and and try to, uh, you know, figure out what what's going on?

probably talked about that as well. But the first, the first book of the Poetics, which is the one that survives, is on tragedy and epic and especially tragedy, but which I think Aristotle probably I think he regarded as a superior form to Homer. But he did think Homer was a genius and brilliant and the main difference, though because he thought he created I mean, he went under the assumption that there was one man named Homer who wrote

both of these who wrote both of these plays. I mean, so modern Homeric scholars have very different views of those things. But he and there is a I mean, there's a

reason why he keeps getting translated. He's continually discussed. I find there's something really fascinating about these Homeric stories, and they really they contain something of value for understanding, not just the kind of the archaic period that it emerged out of, or the Bronze Age culture that it talks about, but the classical period, because they regarded it as so

such a value. Plato's problem was that he thought Plato thought literature and art, generally representational art, was anti philosophical. He thought that, you know, the forms. I don't know how much into Plato's metaphysics you want to get, but he was a metaphysical duellist. Plato thought there that this world, the world of our bodies and physical reality, was a quasi quasi real realm, a reflection of a greater you know, realm. The world of the forms, or the ideas called forms,

I think is better. And this world is a kind of imperfect reflection of the world of forms art. He thought representational art was a copy of a copy. It was a it was an imitation of this reality, this material world, and so he thought it was the opposite of philosophy. Philosophy is supposed to, for Plato, involves turning your back on the evidence of the senses, trying to

think more abstractly, using pure reason reason alone. That's why he thought mathematics was so important, because you know mathematics, it seems, you know, it might seem that that's what you're doing, turning your back on the sense is using pure reason, and then in kind of you suddenly will will grasp the forms or I'm being a little you know, it's it's more complicated than that. That's kind of a story. But the idea is that art does not contribute to that at all. Art is it's a copy of a copy.

It's someone a painter uses his sense perception to look at an artwork and he copies it. And it's often driven by emotion. And Plato seems to think that when their genius did happen, it was because the gods were speaking through you. Was kind of divine inspiration. It couldn't have been reason that was responsible for it. And that explains why. Since it's twice removed from reality, right removed

from the truth, it's dangerous. I mean, after all you have, you have Homer has these gods that do horrible things. Let's face it, they're not Christian gods.

of got the run of the place. And Odysseus, you know Odysseus, this is in a book eleven of the Odyssey. Odysseus sees him in says, you know, you don't have much to complain about. I mean, yeah, you're dead and you're here, but at least you know, you're a pretty big man on campus around Hades and Odysseus sorry, and Achilles says to that's did I mix that up? Yeah, Achilles says to Odysseus, I don't want to hear that, Odysseus, I would rather be the slave of a poor man

on earth than king of all of the afterlife. Because for the Greeks, the afterlife it's just your memories, you know, they go to some place and you have. But but for the ancient Greeks, the earth is where it happens. You want to be our hero, it has to happen here on earth, and that's where all you have is. It's like being a grandmother saying, ask me about my grandchildren. You know, that's kind of what Hades is. And for someone like Achilles, no, I don't want any of that.

He dies young. He knew he was going to die young. He chose to go to Troy, having been told that he could stay in Ithaca with no fame, but lived to an old age. He didn't want that. So but that that's a very brilliant expression of the Greek worldview, and Plato says, no, we don't want that. In the republic. That's going to teach soldiers that they shouldn't fear that

they don't want the afterlife. You know, we want warriors going into battle thinking there's something better when they die, and you know so so Aristotle's rejection of Homer, I think is not just on literary ground. I mean Aristotle's rejection, sorry of Plato on Homer. It's not just on literary grounds that Plato didn't understand. Plato was pretty much he had an idea of art as didactic. You know, it's it's it's a moral it's a morality player or something like.

That's a little unsophisticated, but that's sort of pretty much his view. And if you're gonna have art at all, it's got to it's it's got to encourage proper morals. And for Ariosot, I think he looked at Homer in a very different way. I mean, I don't know, you know, it's a story, it has a plot. In his view, it has characterization. You see, you can talk about this.

That's kind of what these Homeric problems probably were raising questions Odysseus would I mean one of the ones I just have I have a paper coming out in well, God knows when these things come out because I may I send them in on the deadline. And then you know, who knows what academics do. But it's a Calypso offered Odysseus, you know, on the eye on Calypso's island, offered Odysseus immortality, and he said no. And so that became one of

these problems. Why did Odysseus refuse immortality because Calypso and it's not boring Christian heaven. Calypso says, stay with me. You will be immortal, you will have pleasure in my bed every night. You will not grow old. And he says no. And you know, I'll take Penelope for all her aging. And so the question is why, And you know some people think, yeah, why and and I think it relates to that point about Achilles. It sounds really nice at first, right, you know, Eclipso is a nymph.

She doesn't grow old. You know, she's she's kind of semi it's supposed to be really good looking, of course, and she says that I'm you know, I'm not growing old like Penelope. Right, And but again, for Odysseus, to be a man means to achieve things. And now this was probably, you know, part of the Greek culture that that we might pause over but and to achieve things that other people see as great accomplishments. That was really important.

And if if, if, if, staying on an island with this really hot goddess for the rest of my life means that I'm going to disappear, you know, I'll be this obscure figure that no one's ever heard of. Again, No, I'm not going to do it. And there are other reasons as well, and and people talk about I mean, uh, there was one view was that, well, Odysseus was really smart and he knew that Calypso couldn't grant him immortality. Only Zeus can do that. So that's that's not as

interesting an answer. And Arizontle's answered aren't really brilliant, you know, they're not as interesting as some of the other ones that might occur to us.

I know, I wasn't this is you know, this was I think the last year of Allan's life and he's been gone what ten years something like that, I think twenty thirteen so.

What I want to do is as part of this big project centered in Padua, in the University of Padua, I want to have an edition of the the the Greek and some Latin texts, translation and commentary. And that's what I'm working on now, and I'm hoping that'll in

another year or so that'll be finished. Now I will say this, I think it's a more boring work because what I argue is that this was and one of the things Alan talks about in his works on aerosol's biology is that there was a collection of data stage, an organization of data, and then the explanation of the data, the causal explanation, and we have his works on the collection of data that hasn't survived. Well, that's what I argue that the zoeka is, the animal matters is and

I'm one of the things. I spent a week in Padua, which is really lovely because it's thirty minute train ride to Venice, which is pretty cool, and it's a beautiful city in its own right. What I did is I worked with some of the people there and I looked at you know, I gave a two hour presentation of you know, the evidence for Aristotle zoeka in Byzantine etymological works, and you know, so I'm scraping the barrel right now. I mean, there's not a lot of stuff left. I've

collected the material that exists. But I'm finding it a fascinating activity. Although if I had to choose, which work would you like to be discovered in the sands of Egypt or in you know, Papyrus, or in Herculeannium. I definitely want the work on Homer. I think it'd be a much more fascinating work.

until fragments of it appeared in Rome centuries later. And there's those are the stories we get from Plutarch and Athena, these these ancient authors, and there's disputes about how much we should we could rely on. I don't think. I think his Lyceum which continued after he died, of course, I think it had. It must have had a copy of most of his works. I find that strange that

it wouldn't. But it just happened that the rival school, Plato's Academy, which continued Plato's academy was in continuous operation from when he found it until five five twenty nine a d. When Justinian banned the teaching of any pagan philosophy. Aristotle school didn't do so well. That is, his Lyceum continued to work. And that's one of the things I'm interested in now is I've become more involved in Project Theophrastis that's recovering as much evidence as we can about

the the followers of Aristotle in the early Lyceum. But I think his philosophy just wasn't as popular. It didn't catch on as much during the Hellenistic period after, you know, when when things changed very pretty radically from the Classical period to the Hellenistic after the death of Alexander the Great, and even before that with the the kind of the Macedonian conquest of the whole you know, the whole world in effect ultimately, and and and so what you get

is Plato's philosophy, I think had was more popular. And then the new philosophies that emerged Stoicism, Epicureanism a bit later, skepticism of various forms, these had I think they were more influential, and I think, uh, and then a lot.

I think a lot of the works just may have been not as interesting because Aristotol was you know, he wrote works that were probably collections of data about animals and collections of data about uh well, one of the works I'm interested in his Aristotol wrote a work on weather signs, and you know that is predicting, predicting the weather based on the you know, what what the birds are doing and what animal you know, if the setipedes are running towards the wall, you know, maybe there's going

to rain. And I think he didn't believe all this stuff, but he thought that if a lot of people believed that, we should collect this data and see if there's anything to it. So I imagine some of those works were rather uninteresting to philosophers. In fact, it's it's not philosophy at all at all as we know it. And since it's very expensive to copy works, and I think they weren't interesting to a lot of people, and and so it's that's what I think happened. On the other hand,

it's not just boring stuff. I mean, he wrote dialogues on justice, on on he wrote, you know, a treatise on the River Nile, and you know, an explanation of it. He has all these interesting works that are well. He wrote works on medicine. I actually I published an article on a possible fragments from that work as well. But so I think it was a lack of interest in some of his works, that his school was not as

influential as the other ones. Plus Plato wrote a set number of you know, fairly however, thirty four or whatever it is dialogues, and no, it's more going to be more than that, but they kind of were carried on by his school, and you know, they never really went

out of favor. And by the time you get to the period, I mean, the crucial period is when they start copy papyrus onto vellum or or different you know kind of you know, into manuscript books that it's very expensive process, and the ones that people weren't interested in got lost.

means Latin for little works in a way. And they're not none of them are by Aristotle, likely even though they come down what's in his name, But they're probably by students of Aristotle. And they're kind of interesting works. And I'm doing a couple of them. And then I found other people who are experts in mathematics or music theory or whatever to do the other ones. And that one was supposed to be ready a year ago, but one person is holding us up, not me. But yeah,

I enjoyed. I enjoyed the translation works I also did. This is the producust the Sophist. It's a collection of the fragments of his I dedicated that to to Leonard Peakoff, Uh, not knowing that after right when the book came out, I was asked if I would, And I actually have this one here too. I'm bragging. I'm sorry, I shouldn't do that. This is Theophrastus of on Winds. It's a

it's the Greek text with translation and commentary. Had I known that I was going to be doing that, I would have dedicated that one to Leonard because I referred to him in one of my talks in Athens as iron RAN's Theophrastus. And he he called me and and said he he loved that description, and so I was I would glad because I kind of looked at it now in a way, I think he's much more than than iron RAN's Theophrastus. Theophrastus was the person who followed

Aristotle on the school. He kind of did work because Aristota was a scientist as well as a philosopher. He you know, he kind of he did work in botany that Arizonto only got a start on. And he did work on you know, wins and and he wrote a treatise on fire and stuff. So he's not whereas Leonard, you know, wrote opar As as a favor to iron Rand in effect, and he kind of and I think he's in a different position. Theophrassis is among a group

of people working in various sciences. Where Aristotle was aware that this is my theory given you know, the best of the knowledge, you know, and so if someone comes along and disagrees with him, that's no big thing. Whereas iron Ran, it wasn't a science. She wasn't a physicist, uh, and an expert in botany and things like that, where it all just kind of come together. She was a philosopher, pure and simple, and that is very different than than

the science. And my point is that one of doctor Peakoff's roles, I think was to ensure the purity of the philosophy beyond her death to the extent that he could. And that's what and and unfortunately he was challenged to do that very early on by people who want to open objectivism up to anything. And uh, and I you know, to do that without in a you know, in a dogmatizing sort of way is really difficult. I think he uh, what he did in the eighties was was just and

early ninees were really important from that perspective. So what what I see happening in the eighties in a way was in when when understanding objectivism came out. That was dealing with this the the rationalism in the movement, and then with fact and value and things of that. It

was dealing with the subjectivism in the movement. And and so from that, you know, as in you know, Theophrastis was Aristotle's intellectual air, and he did what he did, but it wasn't the same and it wasn't as monumental I would say, an achievements as well. I mean, they both have hard acts to follow, Theophrastus.

it as far as that goes, I think. And then and then I did Song of Russia, which I read the the Iron Ran and Song of Russia, which I really enjoyed, was.

she she was asked to. She worked in Hollywood. She knew what was going on with the Hollywood Communists, how they were influencing filmed in very subtle ways, even say very clever ways.

the proper function of Congress. I mean, she thought, if they're if they're you know, they if they're worried that there's actual foreign governments, uh, you know, influence, then then that's a proper understand you know, but that should be the FBI or someone like that having these congressional hearings. But she she thought that there was no one really speaking on getting really what was going on, and she wanted to talk about that, and unfortunately all they talked,

all they asked her about was the film Song of Russia. Uh. And so that's what we have the information where she talks about, uh, what in what an obvious whitewashing of Stalinists Russia it is uh And so it's very interesting I thought to both get into the making of that film, what that said about Hollywood. It was an interesting time because I could interview one of this the one of the screenwriters of the play who later turned Soviet He

turned evidence against the Hollywood communists. So he was treated like dirt for the rust and the whole idea of that the Hollywood Ten. You know that these people were horrible victims of of American oppression when they were defending Stalin and I mean were some of them, you know, into the eighties were we're defending the Soviet Union and and Scott and we're not apologetic at all. In fact, they want, they demanded that you know, they be treated

as as heroes. And and I Ran, I think she had some both her testimony and the things she wrote about it, and I try to gather all that information together and to tell the story of it. And uh, and I enjoyed that project very much, but I also came to the conclusion at the end, I never want to read another Soviet dissident, you know, you know, any more stories about how horrible it was in the Soviet Union, although people ought to keep that alive, of course.

and I was. It was we'd also reached a point where I thought, even if the the you know, the really top objectivist intellectuals didn't agree to write essays for me, we had all these other people who were coming up and uh so, yeah, I think they're terrific. I think they're really uh important essays. I also was very interested in doing all four and doing them in order, even though that that might not seem like a good idea.

And I liked the the the historical parts of it, that is, the the information we have on on the on the history of the works and how they were written, and when, particularly with the earlier ones, we the Living and and Anthem, when Iran was really struggling to get things published, and whereas by the time you get the Atlas, shrug, there's not my history there except for the drafts, which are fascinating themselves, the drafts of of of these works,

because by then she could pick her own publisher after the fountain Head. But yeah, so I'm very proud of those and I wanted kind of historical stuff, literary analysis and also philosophy, and and so there's really good, really excellent pieces in there by on car On Cargate, Terra Smith, Greg Sel, Mary Tora Buckman has some really good literary

analysis in there. And yeah, and I'm and I was really pleased that aar I took the initiative to contact the publisher and see about making an arrangement to release them for free on I think it's new ideal, Right, it's or yeah, I forget be.

by iron Rand is really bad. But about iron Rand, did I Yeah, about iron Rand is really bad and from people who don't know what they're talking about. This includes some of the biographies that are out there. But there's also I think there's one Iron Rand as a Jewish thing, you know, person.

But I think people don't have the same standards if it's Iron Ran, because okay, any stuff that some historian can come up with, they would never in a million years. I think if someone in ancient philosophy tried to to have such a shoddy job of making connections between between two thinkers, at least I haven't seen works like that.

But yeah, I think for the time being, these these are essay collections are really really valuable, and there's some real gems in there, and I'm glad you can find them, you know. You know, the New Ideal has been publishing them fairly regularly, and I think they've gone through them. I don't know if they've done all of them, but a great many of them.

my mind. It's just I've got so much ancient philosophy stuff I've I've said yes to, so it'll be a while. But yeah, I definitely I want to write more on on Iran, that's for sure. But there's I should mention one piece that I wrote a long time ago but will be appearing. There's the Iran Society. Philosophical Studies is a series published by University of Pittsburgh Press, really beautifully published. They recently published Terry Smith's book Egoism Egoism Without Permission,

which really I recommend that book. But the series, the collection of essays series that I referred to they have. I think the next one that will be out is on Aristotle and iron Rand or iron Rand and Aristotle, I forget what title they arrived at, by Jim Lennox, edited by Jim Lennox and Greg sel Mary and I have. I have a piece in there on iron Rand and Aris iron Rand as a as Aristotelian literary aesthetics. So

it's comparing Aristotle and iron Rand on literary aesthetics. So you've probably heard a version of it in the two thousands at some point, yes, yes, But finally it's you know,

it's ready to go, you know. So yeah, things are happening, and I think you know, you go to a conference and you're introduced to a young objectivist intellectual you've never heard of, and that's, you know, a really good time for someone who's been around for a while, I imagine like you, that's always a good sign that you know, whoa you know, there's more and more of them and fresh blood fresh yeah yeah, yeah, so that's that's very encouraging.

And and and we have I mean, I've liked the fact that you know, well Alan is Alan God health has gone now, but but he was a big scholar in ancient philosophy. It's terrific having you know, Greg who's often been really good with feedback on the translation projects

of mine. And in fact, we just had a workshop on Eudemian Ethics book eight in Austin that Greg kind of hosted and we we kind of organized that together where mostly just reading Greek and looking at my translation with Greg and Jason Rhyans and good for a certain kind of person that is a blast, you know, that's and I'm one of them.

But you know, jettisating all the I think she calls it the nonsense about the moving spheres and you know, the prime mover and all that stuff, which is really in a way it's kind of astronomy or or something like that. Not exactly, but because he calls you know, he refers to gods and things like that, So she she doesn't accept that. I mean, she would accept, you know, the importance of logic. Now he mentioned some things in ethics,

they're gonna be real differences. I don't know about the average. I mean, she doesn't have a theory of the mean, you know, virtue as a mean between extreme you know, so so the details will be quite different in her ethics and in Aristotle. You could say in very broad brush terms that you know, they're both virtue ethicists. I think I would call them. I know, in the case

of Aristotle, this is sort of a controversial issue. I think they're both egoists in the sense that the purpose of a person's life is to achieve one's own, you know, happiness in those terms, but that how he formulates it and and all of that. There's gonna be a lot of divergences. But the person to ask there is Greg So Mary. He's done some really excellent stuff on the differences between Aristotle and iron Rand on ethics. He gave a talk at Aristotle's Lyceum on an aspect of this topic.

I'm pretty certain I haven't seen the table of contents recently, but the work I just referred to the Aristotle and nine Ran volume. Greg will have something on that, and there must be lectures of his available that where he talks about these issues. So and then in politics, by the time you get to politics, you're so far removed from the basis that. Yeah, to say he has a larger role of government, Yeah, that's true, but it's such

a strange context, the ancient Greek world. You could focus on the positives he rejected Plato, he rejected explicitly, And that was my doctoral dissertation in my first book was Arizotl's criticism of Plato's Republic. And there are these kind of themes running through his criticism. And it's not just the he's not criticizing the forms and all that in this in the part of the politics I'm talking about,

he's criticizing the communism of the republic aristotol Is. He says Plato is focusing too much on He's trying to create the unity of an individual human being out of a city, and that destroys actual individuals. And so he has a lot of good things to say about why we don't need philosopher kings in fact, why we need you know, there is the rule of law rather than a rule of kings. You know, he has a kind of a side where he sorts of defends kingship in

certain context. But I think that's a nod to his Macedonian patrons.

you know, what do you expect? What can you expect from you can't have I think a really an actual advocate of individual rights when there has there is no conception of rights yet, and you can have you know, he talks about freedom, and he says positive things about freedom, but his conceptualization of what freedom is is very dubious in certain aspects. So by the time you get to to by the time you get to politics, it's they're they're no longer worth comparison comparing. However, they are worth

comparing when you get to their aesthetics. And that's what I do in the article I mentioned earlier.

but I don't know how easy it is. But Greg saw Mary gave a course years ago on Aristotle's theory of knowledge something like that where he goes into detail about all the you know, the different kinds of intellectual virtues and what's going on. And it can get very complicated. And I guess the real point of comparison in epistemology would be their theory of concepts. And iron Ran describes Aristotle as I forget the expression she uses now, a

moderate realist, that's it. And there's I think real questions as to whether that's whether Aristotle was actually even better than that. I mean, he was certainly better than than Plato, he was better than the Sophists. But how close he is to object? I mean you can find passages that sound like measurement omission, but you know, but what you can make of that? I mean, we want we don't want to massage Aristotle into into iron Ran, but I think she would say the important thing is he's pro reason,

he's this worldly. He recognizes, you know, things are what they are. I mean, the primary objects of reality, according to Aristotle are the physical, the entities around us, and he recognized entities, and he made the distinction between entities and attributes and entities and actions, and all of that is crucially important. And she's she recognized that.

really enjoyed that course generally. So thank you for you know, you never know what happens these courses that we gave decades ago. Now I think that's right. I think it's decades plural that whether they just kind of float into the ether or whether people are still listening to them. I've not done in my own teaching. I've I've kind of worked on some of these plays that that aren't in that course that you know, the Youth, the Euripides, Medea,

and Sophocles. I think oedipis the King. No, I may know. I did oedipis the King in that course, and Leonard did antike it. But anyway, I've done some other things, but I haven't given lectures on it or anything of that sort. I did translate a play of Aristophanes called The Assembly of Women, which is Aristophane's critique of egalitarianism and communism. It's a fascinating play.

resisting the sophists who claim that justice is just. It's obeying the law and if you can get you know, if no one's watching, you can get away with it. There is no it has no harm to you. There is no justice. It's a human construct, as you know, the postmoderns might say. He was rejecting that, and for

good reasons. He thought it was very important that there we could that we think there there must be something that justice refers to that is what it is right, and the same with the other virtues and other concepts like the human human being, for example. It can't just be a bunch of stuff that people make up. He thought that was very dangerous and and we would collapse into we might say nihilism or something like that. So

he was aware of that. He also thought it was very important to answer people like Heraclitis who thought that you know, you look at the world, there are no real entities. It's just all this flux. And I think Plato thought the only way to combat that into him, to improve it is to say, yeah, yeah, that might be true. Of this world. Things come into existence, go out of existence were constantly changing, but it's not true

of the other the forms. So he wanted he didn't know how to come up with an objective view of concepts of universals, and so it's easy to criticize him for doing it the way he did, and he deserves some of that criticism, I think, but I also I'd want to cut him a little slack because I think his motives were to some extent, you might say or good, let's say, that'd be a better way of putting it. However, if you try to achieve in trying to defend that view,

you start to denigrate sense, perception, denigrate this world. Then there's got to be something wrong with you. There's something not healthy, not good, and it likely connected to a sort of contempt for the world around him and a kind of a lofty conception of what philosophers were that was not at all admirable.

I mean I don't I don't get claims about likeliness. Now, I could imagine a case where you know, you're reading what is that Picketty, the guy who wrote Capital, you know, who comes across some statistic and it's purely arbitrary or the best example, in fact, I have my students read this Alex Epstein's first book, What is it called The Morality of Fossil Fuels?

would be a statistic. That is, it is arbitrary, and the people who malvet are just you know, accepting something passively or are purely dishonest, and either one of those is an unattractive thing to be. But I don't know if that's really addressing your question. But and I really don't know statistics.

planet other than Earth, that was purely arbitrary. It wasn't really based on anything, whereas now it's quite different. But I don't have you know, but if someone so, if someone said there's no evidence of life on you know, in other galaxies, I don't know what would the point of a statement like that be except you know, okay, they haven't landed here yet or we haven't communicated with them. But so and there has to be a good reason.

It means the evidence that the context, the whole you know is possible, right, I think there's an equivocation of evidence. Adam says, for Robert, who were the philosophers who influenced a comedies?

at it that way. You know, there might be things I disagree with, but none of them are important or fundamental. I don't have strong views on dancing, but I don't think tap dancing is my favorite. But you know, I'm open to persuage. So it would be on the level of that, or a kind of novel. You know, maybe there's a novel she liked that didn't do much for me. But I have a hard time.

other things wrong besides her aesthetics. And it's it's a it's fascinating how that that works in a way, but it really is an integrated system. Uh, you know, and I've not I've not encountered anything on the contrary that I find the more I read, you know, and go back to those essays you haven't read in a long time,

it's like, wow, that is clarifying that connection. And I've done that recently with with going when I started taking you know, becoming very interested in in her views on the arguments against the existence of God and you know, her particular view of of atheism. You find how brilliant the philosophy is and how tight knit and how everything's connected. And if you go wrong on plug in, if you go wrong on on one little area, you start messing up the kind of a cascade effect.

from Jesus wasn't around yet, but it was. So you see that in early philosopher Philo of Alexandria, and and Justin Martyr and some of these early Christians, they love Plato and they were right to do it. Augustine said that it was it was the Platonists. He never read Plato in the original, but he said it was the Platonists that allowed him to see that it made sense to believe in spiritual beings entities that had no physical embodiment.

The Plato, you know, Plato did that. So you know he's wrong on those issues, But the people who are influenced by him don't think he's wrong. They think he's brilliant. And that's often how it goes. I mean it content is even a worse example. How could he be so influential, influential given what he's done and what he says and how wrong he is?

at sea level or something like that. That's a synthetic statement, according to this view, because you can't analyze it just on the basis of the terms. Now, Einran rejects that entirely, that all statements are analytic or synthetic, depending on how you look at it. And her view is that if you, I think she calls it the anti effort in one of the marginalia, the anti effort mentality that if you really understood everything there is to know about a concept

in a statement, you would see that it's quote unquote analytic. Now, and she wouldn't put it that way. But so for example, you say, you know, ah, you know, all bachelors are men, you know, just by yeah, uh, And you compare that to a synthetic statement like iron floats as iron sinks

in water. Now, her view was, if you know all there is to know about water and all there is to know about iron, and all there is to know about you know, et cetera, that that that it's all there, it's it's not somehow not quite as clear or or not quite as crisp beneath.

on on infinity. I wish I could remember, but he's he's kind of you know, if you want to talk about infinity. You can't use science. Science is can't handle the concept of infinity. But that doesn't mean it's bad to talk about infinity, because you know, all that means

is science can't handle it. And he goes on to talk about it, and I think I Ran quotes it somewhere, and I'm trying to think where she she quotes the passage, but it might be an it oe where you know, uh, you know, the attempt to analyze, you know, infinity, it you know it it melts in the crude acid of logic or something. In other words, you know, I discussed the topics, but I don't use this mundane logic and

scientific reason that you people down there. I now, maybe I'm interest in not interpreting Heidegger correctly, but I've always found him impossible to read, and not because he would weigh over my head. I mean, I find higher mathematics impossible to read, and that's my problem because I'm ignorant. But reading Heideger, I think, you know this is this is Nietzsche's poets muddy their waters to make them appear deep. Well, it happens to philosophers too, and Heideger, I think, is

one of them. My understanding is he's more difficult than Kant in Germans.

is epistemology, his ethics, his political philosophy, esthetics. It's all there, and it's an interesting dialogue. I must say. With Aristotle, my recommendation is to follow your values. What is of interest to you. If you like ethics, start reading his work on ethics. If you like his politics, start reading that. If you're interested in literature, read the poetics. For the rest.

It gets difficult if you're interested in meta physics. If you jump right into the metaphysics, that can be pretty difficult. You know, maybe get a copy and flip through the table of contents, find a topic. I mean, his discussion of the law of non contradiction is fascinating.

what I'm doing. I was hoping the Republican Party would be shocked by Trump and and you know, his his claim, you know, his his behavior. Uh, and would would come up with someone halfway decent? I mean, you know, we're we're pining for the days of Mitt Romney, right, yeah, I would you know, Uh, yeah, that's just you know, I don't know about George Bush, but so yeah, I

mean Trump is impossible. I think I think he's destroyed the Republican Party and and the creatures who were coming up in his place are in some respects more dangerous. They're worse because they're articulate, they're intelligent, they read books, and they're not sociopaths, and you know, but he's made them possible in a way. And I would say in this connection, I think it was in twenty twenty than we did that podcast together, you on car and and me.

I thought that was really good and I thought it was it's worth listening to again, where the three of us talked about the president presidential elections, and we focused on we spent a lot of time talking about Iron Rand and the what she says about presidential elections. And I think we did a really good job, and that's that's worth you know, surprise, surprise, A lot of those issues are still alive now. But I would there are some things in the case of Trump that I regard

is unforgivable. I mean, we could make a long list, but I mean saying he loved the dictator of Korea, his his admiration for thugs, for Putin, it's abysmal. And I made the point in this podcast that he's so bad that even if he does something good, you can't say, well, he's done this. The good things he does are an embarrassment. And I think I mentioned the time, you know, moving the capital to Jerusalem of Israel, and and pulling us out of the Peace Accord, the the what is the

Paris Accords, the Environmental Accords. Those would be great from anyone else, but when you come from him, it's just this more nutty stuff from this guy who's now you know, in is RFK really going to be.

more editing here. And I was aware at the time that people are not gonna, you know, like this, but I assumed people would could be good spirited for almost because almost all of it is available, and you know, any of the cuts that were made you could see, and I mean, it's I think it's possible that I made cuts that I shouldn't have, but I stand by

the work. But if it weren't for the fact that the the a State of iron Ran was behind the project and had control of it, I I probably would have done some things differently, but then it wouldn't have been published by pay when it would have been a different kind of book. Now, I don't remember that particular one, but there was some issue that that Leonard had issues about,

but I just don't remember it. So if if if you have the original and you're comparing it to the Q and A, and the Q and A is different in a way that you don't like, then I you should you should blame me. I mean, I I did it. What can I said? I'm not gonna throw Leonard under the under the bus because I could have you know, if if I objected to something, I could have said so, and sometimes I did and sometimes he said okay, and other times he didn't.

And in creating a civil society, you're going to have laws that that if if it's a just society, you know, et cetera. So it's not it's gonna there won't be a conception of rights. There a conception of of the initiation of force. If if there is anything that comes close to that, I'm not aware of it.

can still hear her voice. This is from the There was a kind of extra Q and a session that went off topic which was wonderful in the in the nonfiction writing course, and someone asked her a question about romanticism and painting. Would you call this one? And she said something to the effect of, you know, sometimes, yeah, there's something like that, but basically someone has to do the work that she did in literature. Yeah, that is

she reconceptualized what we what romanticism was. Now, she didn't rip it out of its historical context. Romanticism is something that happened in history in the history of art. And it's not something that you could, you know, say that, oh, that's what Homer was doing. Now you might look at you know, he's heroic and romantic art, but it was something particular. And what she thought was that the people

who talked about Romanticism, they they conceptualized it improperly. They said things like the Romanticists and in really really bad ways. The Classicists were the ones who concerned with reason, and the Romantics rejected that in favor of emotion and national identity and things like that. She said, no, no, no, that is that is such identification through non essentials. What was really going on was with Romanticism was an emphasis on values and on the independent choices and values of

the artist. And what you see is, you know, it's not you know, some kind of music from the you know, the medieval period where that all kind of sounds alike or whatever, or certain kinds of sonnets or something. Well, I don't want to get into poetry, I guess, but romanticism you see that it's it's it's the recognition of values, and that means that human beings have volition, they make choices that are based on values and it's the interaction of those choices that create a plot. That that's why

the plot is so important in romantic literature. So she's reconceptualizing what and that's why she called it what is Romanticism? Because it needed to be identified. And it's brilliant because she doesn't, you know, she goes into a field and even if you ask kind of experts in romantic literature who are the major and they'll mention five people and not mention Hugo and you know, so with her, you know, you go as tops and Dostievskin and and they're very

different from from from Tolstoy. And so she did some really heavy lifting intellectually to say the least to do that. And what she said in this one little Q and A is you have to do that. Someone has to do that. In the field of the visual arts, for example, and I imagine, I mean there's been some work that's been done and that, you know, and not just by objectivists, but I know Toro Buckman was starting to do some

in painting. He has a really excellent essay on cosper David Friedrich, who regarded himself as a romantic and saw himself as a romantic painter. But what it would mean what were the painters who were calling themselves romantic, what were they doing that was different from other schools, and what were their motivations? And did it have anything to do with the philosophers who were calling themselves romantic, who

seem you know, Schopenhower seems very different from Hugo. I mean, I'm rand had to do that work, and you have to do that work in all the visual fields. What you can't do is or it can't because people do. What you shouldn't do is claim that romanticism is anything that I like, anything that especially that it glorifies human beings or something like that. And you know, you can make in a there could be an a static statue of a of a human being, and what would make

it romantic? Maybe it is, but maybe it's it's not, Maybe it's something different. Someone has to identify what exactly romanticism is an apply because literature it's a conceptual, you know, it deals with concepts, and so you know that's something

very different. And so if ein Ran identifies that what's central to it is not only the artists own value judgments and and values generally, but also that the the the characters in the fiction, uh, have free will and they're acting according to it, and it's all integrated by plot. What would that mean for a painting, It's it's really it's quite difficult, uh, I mean to to sort that out.

So I I tend not to use the term. And if you're talking about I mean, there are some painters in their historians who speak of a period that is, you know, Romanticism in the visual arts, and certainly Romanticism and music. And I mean, at a gut level, roch Mononoff seems different to me than Bach. But how I would identify that. Yeah, that's not my area at all. But but yeah, so I would. I would not. I would not put your own in this place.

are those are synonyms in a way. Now, maybe if I gave it some thought, which I haven't done, I would think that there's existence emphasizes different, something different.