Live Like a Philosopher

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LIVE LIKE A PHILOSOPHER:
ETHICS AND CIVICS IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

For students in Live Like a Philosopher (Fall 2024), in partnership with the National Education Equity Lab.

This site contains all the video lecture content for our course, organized by unit. For the course syllabus, see here.

To review the material we’ve covered since the beginning of the semester, click on any unit or lecture below. Subtitles can be accessed through the “CC” button in each video player. Special thanks to Natalie Horberg for all the illustrations!

INTRODUCTORY UNIT — Socrates and the Life of Philosophy

Lecture 1.1: introduction to philosophy and to the idea of philosophy as a way of life; outline of course

Lecture 1.2: introduction to reading Plato; the figure of Socrates; Plato’s Apology; the Socratic method

Lecture 2.1: Socrates’ heroism; the Socratic method in action; more of Plato’s Apology

Lecture 2.2: Plato’s Symposium; Socrates’ refutation of Agathon; Diotima’s speech on love; “giving birth in beauty”; seeing the beauty in Socrates

UNIT 1 — Plato: The Life of Reason

Lecture 3.1: Plato’s Gorgias; Callicles’ challenge to the philosophical life; Socrates’ cross-examination of Callicles; Callicles’ hedonism; rhetoric vs. philosophy

Lecture 3.2: introducing Plato’s Republic; Glaucon’s challenge; Plato’s tripartite theory of human psychology; the just life as the happy life

Lecture 4.1: problems for Plato’s view of the just life; the role of reason in the good life; knowledge vs. belief

Lecture 4.2: Plato’s theory of forms; the cave allegory; the importance of mathematics; the form of the good

UNIT 2 — Aristotle: The Life of Virtue

Lecture 5.1: the distinctiveness of Greco-Roman approaches to ethics; Aristotle’s metaphysics; potentiality and actuality; Aristotle on the human good

Lecture 5.2: happiness as eudaimonia; Aristotle on what the human good is not; the function argument; reason and virtue

Lecture 6.1: Aristotle on the fragility of the good life; the need for politics and external goods; the importance of habituation; Aristotle’s particularism

Lecture 6.2: three criteria for virtuous action; phronēsis as a master virtue; the role of friendship in the good life; blindspots/challenges for Aristotle’s ethical theory

UNIT 3 — Epicureanism: The Life of Pleasure

Lecture 7.1: introduction to Hellenistic philosophy; background to Epicurus and Epicureanism; Epicurean physics; a materialist cosmos; atoms and void; the Swerve

Lecture 7.2: Epicurean psychology; the tetrapharmakon; Epicurus on the gods and death

Lecture 8.1: Epicurean ethics; an argument for ethical hedonism; Epicurus’ analysis of desires; static vs. kinetic pleasures; the value of friends

Lecture 8.2: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and its influence; virtue and pleasure in Epicurean ethics; problems for Epicureanism

UNIT 4 — Stoicism: The Life of Freedom

Lecture 9.1: situating Stoicism in its time and place; the development of Stoicism; a misconception about Stoicism; Seneca on the happy life

Lecture 9.2: the Stoic sytem; connecting physics, logic, and ethics; “living in agreement with nature”; Stoic cosmopolitanism; Stoic activism

Lecture 10.1: Stoic freedom; Epicureanism vs. Stoicism; a “cognitivist” view of the emotions; summary of the Stoic Sage

Lecture 10.2: the Sage vs. the Progressor; cultivating indifference; problems for Stoicism; Modern Stoicism