The 10 Best Philosophy Books I've Ever Read

Summary

このビデオでは、10年間大学と大学院で哲学を学び、博士号を取得した経験を持つチャンネルのホストが、彼のお気に入りの哲学書トップ10を紹介しています。彼は分析的哲学部門で訓練を受けましたが、ヘーゲルの「精神現象学」やウィトゲンシュタインの「哲学探究」など、さまざまな哲学的流派の重要な作品について語っています。また、彼は哲学と言語、真実、倫理学、そして人生についての自身の考えを深く掘り下げています。彼のトップ1はアリストテレスの「ニコマコス倫理学」で、これは彼が最も信じている徳倫理の中心的テキストだと述べています。このビデオは、哲学的探求と個人的な成長がどのように密接に関連しているかを示しています。

Takeaways

• 😀 ヘーゲルの「精神現象学」は、理解が難しいが魅力的な本である
• 😊 ウィトゲンシュタインの「哲学探究」とフレーゲの「算術の基礎」は、言語哲学の入門書としておすすめできる
• 🤔 デイヴィド・ヒュームの懐疑主義は根本的な疑問を提起している
• 🙂 アリストテレスの「ニコマコス倫理学」は、徳倫理学の基本テキストである
• 📚 聖アウグスティヌスの「告白」は、西洋哲学・神学の重要な一冊である

Q & A

ヘーゲルの「精神現象学」が筆者のお気に入りの哲学書トップ10に選ばれた理由は何ですか？

ヘーゲルは筆者が分析的哲学の分野で訓練を受けたにも関わらず、その複雑さと深淵な内容に魅了され、哲学的なギャップを埋める過程で再評価されたため。また、ヘーゲルの思想は後の哲学にとって基礎的かつ不可欠であり、そのテキストが宇宙の秘密を含んでいるかのように感じられるため。

ヴィトゲンシュタインの「哲学探究」とフレーゲの「算術の基礎」が筆者にとって重要な理由は何ですか？

言語哲学、特に言語がどのように機能するか、そして私たちがどのようにして互いにコミュニケーションを取ることができるかに対する筆者の興味を刺激したため。ヴィトゲンシュタインは言語の使用理論を提唱し、フレーゲは数学と言語の関係を探求し、言語を通じて数学的事実を記述する方法について考えさせた。

「ブリリアント」はどのようなサービスで、筆者がそれを推薦する理由は何ですか？

「ブリリアント」は数学、データサイエンス、コンピューターサイエンスを学ぶためのオンラインプラットフォームで、筆者が技術分野への転職を支援するスキルを身につけるのに役立ったため推薦しています。筆者は「ブリリアント」を使用して、日々15分の学習で新しい知識を習得できると説明しています。

「ブォエティウスの哲学の慰め」が筆者の哲学書トップ10に選ばれた理由は何ですか？

ブォエティウスが直面している死の直前の困難な状況の中で、哲学を通じて真の幸福を見出すというテーマが、筆者がアカデミアを離れた後に哲学への愛を再発見するきっかけとなったため。この書籍は古典哲学と実践的な人生の問題とを結びつけ、易しくアクセス可能な方法でネオプラトニズムのアイデアを紹介する。

「真理と客観性」が筆者の哲学研究において重要な位置を占める理由は何ですか？

クリスピン・ライトが提唱する真理の多元論は、筆者が博士論文で取り組んだ真理の概念に深く関わっており、この書籍は同じ問題に興味を持つ研究仲間たちとの議論の中心であったため。

「ニーチェの喜びの科学」が筆者のリストに最近追加された理由は何ですか？

ニーチェの生の肯定と苦しみを受け入れる力強いメッセージが、筆者の哲学的な見方や価値観に挑戦し、深い印象を与えたため。ニーチェの思想は筆者が持つ信念の反対であるにも関わらず、異なる世界観を理解する上で重要な役割を果たした。

「ヒュームの人間本性論」が筆者にとって特別な理由は何ですか？

筆者がヒュームのテキストを深く読み込み、研究し、解釈する上で重要な学習体験を提供したセミナーでの経験があるため。この経験は筆者にとって哲学的テキストを解釈する方法を学ぶ上で非常に形成的であった。

「聖アウグスティヌスの告白」が筆者のトップ3に入った理由は何ですか？

アウグスティヌスの自己認識、時間の本質、および記憶と自己知識の関係に関する深い洞察が、筆者にとって哲学的な問いと人生の実践的な問題との関連性を示したため。

Outlines

00:00

📚 哲学書トップ10の紹介

このセクションでは、チャンネル運営者が哲学の勉強と経験に基づいて自身のお気に入りの哲学書トップ10を紹介しています。ヘーゲルの「精神現象学」が驚きの一冊として挙げられ、その理由としては、著者の分析哲学部門での訓練背景と、グラデュエートスクールでの苦痛の体験が語られています。しかし、ヘーゲルの哲学に対する新たな理解を求め、フィロソフィカルギャップを埋める試みとして、再評価が行われました。次に、ルートヴィヒ・ヴィトゲンシュタインの「哲学探究」とゴットロープ・フレーゲの「算術の基礎」が言語哲学における重要性と、それらが著者の学問的な道に与えた影響について語られています。

05:00

🔍 哲学と言語の探求

このセクションでは、哲学と言語に関するさらなる探究として、フレーゲの「算術の基礎」が話題に上がります。フレーゲが数に関する言語の使用法を探求することで、言語哲学に新たな視点をもたらしたことが紹介されています。さらに、著者は自身の学問的なキャリアにおける哲学と言語学の交差点について述べており、フレーゲとヴィトゲンシュタインの影響下で言語の哲学的な問題に取り組んだ経験が語られています。また、スポンサーであるBrilliantとのパートナーシップを通じて、哲学からテクノロジーへの移行過程が共有され、学習ツールとしてのBrilliantの有用性が強調されています。

10:01

🤔 哲学的自己省察と教育

このセクションでは、デイヴィッド・ヒュームの「人間本性論」を中心に、哲学的探究と教育の価値が探求されています。ヒュームのスケプティシズムと、彼の思想が著者に与えた影響が詳述されており、特に知識の可能性に対する懐疑的な見解が強調されています。また、聖アウグスティヌスの「告白」が紹介され、時間と自己認識の哲学的な理解への貢献が語られています。

15:01

📖 哲学の歴史と倫理

このセクションでは、アリステア・マッキンタイアの「徳倫理の後で」が取り上げられ、現代哲学と古典哲学の対話が探求されています。マッキンタイアの仕事は、徳倫理の重要性と歴史的な文脈における倫理の理解を強調しています。さらに、哲学と倫理の個人的な意義と、著者が哲学に再び情熱を抱くきっかけとなった経緯が共有されています。

20:01

🌟 アリストテレスと友情の哲学

最終セクションでは、アリストテレスの「ニコマコス倫理学」が、著者にとって最も重要な哲学書として紹介されています。この作品が徳倫理の中心的なテキストとされ、友情の哲学におけるその深い洞察が強調されています。アリストテレスの思想が現代の徳倫理に与える影響と、個人的な生活と哲学的探究の統合が著者によって強調されています。

Keywords

💡analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy is a style of philosophy that utilizes logical analysis and emphasizes clarity and argumentation. In the video, the narrator contrasts it with Continental philosophy. He was trained in analytic departments but later came to appreciate thinkers like Hegel who are more identified with Continental philosophy.

💡linguistic philosophy

Linguistic philosophy is a school of analytic philosophy that uses analysis of language to address philosophical problems. The narrator studied this extensively and did interdisciplinary work in linguistics. Books by Wittgenstein and Frege sparked his interest in how language enables communication.

💡Hegel

Hegel was an influential German philosopher known for his dialectical method. The narrator struggled to understand Hegel but recognizes his foundational role in subsequent philosophy. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is discussed as a complex, intriguing work.

💡virtue ethics

Virtue ethics is an ethical framework focused on cultivating virtues and good moral character. The narrator identifies as a virtue ethicist who sees it as the most viable ethical theory. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics lays the groundwork for this school of thought.

💡truth

The nature of truth is a timeless philosophical issue about what makes a statement true. The narrator wrote his dissertation on theories of truth, which grapple with this difficult metaphysical question. Wright's work Truth and Objectivity is a key text on truth pluralism.

Highlights

ヘーゲルの『精神現象学』は、複雑で分かりにくい本だが、この本には「宇宙の秘密」が隠されていると感じる

ウィトゲンシュタインの『哲学探究』とフレーゲの『算数の基礎』は、言語哲学の入門書として重要

ボエティウスの『哲学の慰め』は、実践的な人生の意味を探求する古典哲学の良い例

フリードリヒ・ニーチェの『快活な学』は、ニーチェの思想と文体の良い入門書

デイヴィド・ヒュームの『人間本性論』は、懐疑主義の古典的名著

Transcripts

this is a really commonly requested

video on my channel and so today I want

to finally talk about my 10 favorite

philosophy books I studied Philosophy

for a very long time I earned my PhD in

2019 and that meant that I spent about

10 years in college and then in graduate

school studying philosophy and reading

philosophy books and even though I've

left Academia I still read philosophy

and now I talk about philosophy

sometimes on this channel with all of

you so I think it could be fun to go

through and talk about those philosophy

books that really have stood out to me

as I've read all of these books so the

first book I think is going to sound

rather surprising and that's hegel's

phenomenology of spirit this is

surprising for a couple of reasons for

one you might know that I was trained in

what would typically called analytic

departments and these are philosophy

departments that mostly talk about logic

language seeing philosophy is kind of

continuous with the sciences and these

are contrasted often with Continental

departments that tend to put a bigger

stress on thinkers like Hegel another

reason this is surprising is because one

of the the worst experiences of my life

in graduate school was with this book my

very first semester of graduate school I

took a class on Hegel and the task that

we were given was to become as familiar

with Hegel as possible in a semester so

we were told to just read as much hagle

as we possibly could and I don't think

that I really understood it at all I've

lately undertaken a mission to try and

really kind of fill in philosophical

gaps and Hegel is at the top of my list

and because of Hegel I need to read con

and other things and so it feels weird

to put this in a top 10 right except

that there is something so invigorating

about reading Hegel even though Hegel is

not a thinker that I fully grasp Hegel

is a thinker that man I I hold the

phenomenology of spirit sometimes and

just think this book might contain the

secrets of the universe and I'm like

wrestling with this text over and over

again another reason I've really come to

appreciate Hegel and really felt moved

to put him on the list even at number 10

is that Hegel is a crucial and

foundational figure for so much later

philosophy I would say that if you're

talking about German philosophy in

particular the only person who could

really compete is Kant and and what

happens is that I end up encountering

people talking about Hegel while talking

about other topics that I find really

interesting and so I'm just drawn to

this book over and over again and maybe

it sounds a little bit weird to talk

about me being so attracted to this book

and thus I'm going to put it at my top

10

but I as I did it it just felt right I

felt like I really had to include Hegel

so the next two number nine and number

eight I actually want to talk about in

tandem uh even though they are very

different kinds of books they Center on

some similar topics and I think it's

easier if we just talk about both of

them so that's number nine which is ludw

Vicken Stein's philosophical

investigations and then the foundations

of arithmetic by Gob fragum my real love

in philosophy especially when I was in

graduate school was with Phil philosophy

of language the questions of how

language operates how we manage to

communicate with each other at all just

fascinated me early on in my career with

Vicken Stein I had an amazing seminar

experience when I was an undergraduate

still there were just three students in

the class but somehow it was still able

to be taught where we just read the

philosophical investigations from cover

to cover we read it slowly we would

sometimes talk about a single paragraph

if you know anything about the

investigations you'll know that it's

divided into two major parts and those

parts are just divided into paragraphs

and it's kind of unstructured sometimes

the paragraphs will form sequences where

clearly vicin sign is exploring one idea

um

progressively but many of the times it

can feel a little bit half-hazard to

read it's not maybe the ideal when we

talk about Clarity in philosophical

expression but it is a really amazing

work viai was actually turning against

himself when he was writing

philosophical investigations he had

written an earlier book called The

tractatus Logical philosophicus often

times just call it the chatus that book

Vick sign develops what's called a

picture theory of language it's highly

regimented and it's highly logical even

though still sometimes when you read the

tractatus it almost feels like reading a

mystical mathematics text or something

and viin became progressively

disillusioned with his picture of

language and so he wanted to pay more

attention to the use of language in the

investigations vicenin is sort of

famously putting forward uh a use theory

of meaning which is a very intuitive

idea but it's actually hard to make that

precise in a way that's like really

compelling and one of the ways that he

presents his ideas though are not

through clear arguments where you have a

premise and another premise and then a

conclusion and we just sort of build on

this but rather through a series of like

interesting examples we have this whole

thing about private language for

instance or the beatle in the Box

example or even just the very beginning

of the philosophical investigations this

book hooked me on philosophy of language

really and that actually became the

subject to my dissertation I wrote my

dissertation on theories of truth but it

was from a heavily link linguistic point

of view and I ended up doing a lot of

interdisciplinary work in linguistics

when I was in graduate school and I

wouldn't have done that if it weren't

for Vicken Stein or for that matter if

it weren't for Fraga and the foundations

of arithmetic it sounds a little bit

strange to think that a book on

arithmetic so on mathematics and

exploring the concept of number would be

so important to a philosopher of

language but actually fra ended up while

thinking about number actually ended up

usually thinking about the way that we

use language to describe mathematical

facts the foundations of arithmetic ends

up presenting a very different kind of

way of looking at language than you find

in Vicken Stein and fro would develop

this in other papers like on sense and

reference or one of the great

philosophical essays ever written which

is called thought FR is probably more

friendly to the mathematical analysis of

language that you would see in for

instance a lot of formal semantics now

being done in linguistics departments

and that's the kind of work that I did a

little bit of even though I was in a

philosophy Department I really saw

myself as being kind of

interdisciplinary between philosophy and

linguistics now before we go on to our

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is completely different than anything

about language and this book is the

constellations of Philosophy by boethus

which is a fairly recent addition to my

top 10 I read this several years ago and

it's really stuck with me ever since the

constellation to philosophy tells the

story of boia

he's he's a Roman politician who has

sort of found himself in a kind of

political trouble and he's likely going

to be executed and he's imprison and

he's distraught and he's visited by Lady

philosophy and Lady philosophy walks him

through a series of arguments which are

presented as a form of kind of discourse

but there's also poetry and song about

what what actually matters in life about

what is truly good and about how even

though boethus is about to lose

everything through philosophy can still

find happiness you see I experienced

something kind of strange when I left

graduate school because I had left

Academia primarily because the job

prospects were just so bad I kind of

felt like I had to give up on philosophy

and I think part of that was like a

coping mechanism and I'll talk more

about that later when I get to another

book but one of the things that helped

me fall back in love with philosophy was

reading more classical philosophy that

was interested in those deep

metaphysical questions but somehow

didn't think that those were separate

from the Practical questions about how

you can live a good life the

constellation of the philosophy is just

a great is a great and very accessible

work of neoplatonism you know a lot of

the work that we would call neoplatonism

like the work of platinus is incredibly

dense very hard to read the

constellation Philosophy by contrast is

actually really simple it feels very

pastoral in a way and thus you'll be

introduced to the ideas of neoplatonism

and generally classical Greek and Roman

philosophy but in a way that makes makes

it uh very digestible all right so now

we're getting to the top five and we're

going to go back and talk a little bit

more of that analytic philosophy

philosophy of language stuff and talk

about truth and objectivity by chrisen

Wright truth and objectivity was

actually a series of lectures that

Chrisman Wright gave and in this these

series of lectures he is exploring the

notion of Truth and is advocating for a

theory that's something's called Truth

pluralism which they idea that there are

many different properties of Truth in

the world I ended up writing my eration

on the subject of truth and truth and

objectivity was one of those books where

a few of us in the graduate program U

who were all interested in these issues

about the metaphysics of Truth this was

one of like our go-to reference texts

this was the the text that all of us

talked about all the time I was not even

like the biggest lover of this text

compared to some of the people that I

went to graduate school with um but it

was such a foundational work that all of

us had to reference it at least in some

capacity and and so I kind of almost

used truth and objectivity as a kind of

standin for all of those books about

truth that ended up being really

important to me but if you were

interested in like those other books

another one would be Truth by Paul

horwitch uh truth is one in many by

Michael Lynch who was on my dissertation

committee and um conceptions of Truth by

wolf Guna and I was drawn to talking

about theories of Truth in part just

because it's like this foundational

problem of figuring out what truth is

what it means for a statement to be true

just felt like one of those grand

Timeless philosophical puzzles that I

perhaps in my hubris thought I could try

to solve and that's kind of one of the

crazy things about doing philosophy is

you're often going to be dealing with an

ancient question a question that

philosophers have tried to answer for

thousands of years and then you come

along and you're in your 20s and you're

going to graduate school and you think

yeah you know what they couldn't have

done it but I bet I can solve the

problem so now that we're in our top

five I think we're going to start seeing

a bit more focus on just like classic

works of philosophy that most of you

would probably recognize and the fifth

book on my list is the gay science by

friedr nche this was a recent read for

me like really recent but the book

skyrocketed on my list people have kind

of asked me about like my philosophical

Commandments you can sort of pick them

up from various videos but I think that

if I were going to like list a few of

them like I'm a theist um so I do

believe that God exists I'm typically a

moral realist I'm a virtue ethicist so I

believe that um ethics is a matter of

cultivating virtue and good character

and if you took all of those things

together and then thought like what is

the antithesis of all of that the answer

would probably be n and so it might be a

little bit surprising to see n on this

list however for one I believe that if

you're going to believe something you

should be willing to wrestle with the

best versions of the arguments against

it or the best representatives of an

alternative way of viewing the world and

N is one of the most compelling writers

that I've ever

encountered the gay science is an

amazing book it's written as a series of

aphorisms those aphorisms are collected

into books again it's hard to follow the

strict arguments that you would find but

he's not writing in that kind of

analytical logical style he's an

evocative Pro stylist and he's trying to

really actually evoke a response from

you rather than compel you with the

force of his deductive prowess is I I'd

always thought n is kind of dark I'd

always thought of n as a as presenting a

fairly dark alternative to how I

generally see the world and I real

that's just a caricature of n it's just

not true instead with n there is

actually genuinely like this like love

of Life maybe you partly see this in n's

opposition to schopenhauer's pessimism

ideas about eternal recurrence or the

Uber MCH actually have

a kind of Vitality to them where it's n

saying that even if you knew for

instance that the world would recur over

and over again and you would have to

endure all the same suffering over and

over again could you find a way to still

be happy and that's sort of the

characteristic of the Uber mench so my

fourth favorite philosophy book Is A

Treatise of human nature by David Hume

now some people are going to say in the

comments that there is a book that is

better than a Trea of human nature by

David Hume and that's his later inquiry

and they have a point here so one of the

things that happen with Hume is that

Hume publishes A Treatise of human

nature it totally flops Hume described

it as falling stillborn from the press

as a matter of publication it was a

total failure and Hume went about

actually refining his arguments changing

his presentation and later publishes a

very similar book called an inquiry

concerning human understanding because

of this fact a lot of people think that

you only need to read the inquiry and

for some people that may end up being

adequate however A Treatise of human

nature really stands out to me um one

biographically I took a seminar on this

class and I found that even as I have

gone in my own directions

philosophically some of those most

formative books actually involved great

teaching experiences uh and uh being in

a seminar on a trace of human nature

with a terrific H scholar named Don

Baxter um was one of those really

formative experiences for me really

teaching you how to truly interpret a

text it's where I think I learned it the

best and because of this I ended up

wrestling with fairly Niche issues in

hum's Treatise about the relationship

between the mind and the world when it

came to doing metaphysics something that

Hume the seems to be anti- metaphysical

and yet he does a lot of metaphysics on

those pages as well and I was trying to

figure out like how can you make sense

of that on humi terms and sort of

solving a problem internal to Hume or

trying to uh and and it's this beautiful

example of trying to get inside the mind

of a thinker and so you really have to

understand how their mind and how their

system works so that you can then try to

take it further the thing that's kind of

lurking over all of this discussion that

I have to point out is that Hume is one

of the great Skeptics so Skeptics are

people who deny the possibility of

knowledge or at least claim that lots of

things that we think we can know we

actually can't and Hume is following in

that great tradition of skepticism that

you find not just in Western philosophy

but in eastern philosophy as well I

realized that the foundations of a lot

of the things that I believe were

incredibly fraught in ways that I still

can't quite reconcile believing anything

is often kind of taking a bit of a leap

of faith Emanuel Kant describes Hume as

Awakening him from his dogmatic Slumber

and that's what happens when Kant enters

from the pre-critical phase to the

critical phase where he starts writing

books like the critique of pure reason

and I feel like I experienced something

very similar with Hume again coming from

am I a humean about like the mind no do

I think that Hume is someone that you're

going to have to wrestle with yes so my

third favorite philosophy book is the

Confessions by St

Augustine St Augustine if you don't know

this is like a towering figure in

Western philosophy and Western

Theology and the confessions is probably

not his greatest work probably his

greatest work is a book called city of

God the confession that first reads like

a memoir it is Augustine explaining his

con version but the confessions is

actually so much more than that within

the page of the confessions while you're

learning about St Augustine's story

you're also hearing his Reflections on

language probably the most profound

stuff is on Augustine's nature of time

and the relationship between time and

knowledge of the self Augustine is sort

of painfully aware of the fact that we

actually know ourselves through memory

because even as we reflect on ourselves

we're reflecting on ourselves in the

past a thing that no longer exists

Augustine is again one of one of those

great examples of classical philosophers

for whom fairly esoteric seeming

discussions like the nature of time or

Augustine's sort of idiosyncratic

interpretation of the first couple

chapters of the Book of Genesis ends up

actually becoming relevant to how

Augustine views himself as a living

being just trying to make it in the

world my second favorite philosophy book

though is after virtue by Alistair

McIntyre after virtue in a way is kind

of like the framing device for a lot of

this list because if you want to look

for like the fundamental claim of after

virtue it's that we have to make a

choice and that choice is either n or

Aristotle and spoilers my number one

pick is a book by Aristotle he will then

also go on when to say even if we become

aristotelians again and so we Embrace a

sort of virtue theoretic version of

Ethics we have to understand how any of

that stuff is mediated to us through

tradition you know one of the examples

that he gives that I think is really

interesting is the way that Thomas

aquinus takes Aristotle's ethics but

because he's a Christian Theologian he

inserts charity or kind of Christian

love into the list of Virtues and this

isn't just an addendum where you get to

just kind of tack on a virtue to

Aristotle's big list it's actually that

uh kitas the Latin here transforms all

the other virtues why is that an

interesting example well what an example

of a thinker inheriting an idea through

history but then mediating it through

you know these other factors and then it

trans so it's both inherited and

transformed and then passed on and this

is what it means to actually be sort of

informed by history or tradition instead

of it being merely regurgitating all the

things that have come before and all of

the things that people have said before

it ends up being a creative act and a

sort of ongoing conversation with the

past and anticipating that conversation

with the future one of the main reasons

though that this book is so high on my

list is that this is the book that saved

my love of philosophy so when I had left

graduate school I had gone into the tech

world and you know I was bitter because

I felt like I hadn't made it in Academia

and you know I think nowadays the

majority of humanities phds cannot get

academic jobs so this wasn't a unique

problem to me and I sort of wondered

like what was the point did I just waste

a decade of my life and I took a long

time off reading philosophy and then I

read after virtue and I was like oh I

love philosophy again and this is what

inspired me to read more of the Greeks

this is what inspired me and tell me I

one day would really need to read n this

was someone putting Hume and

schopenhauer and kirkyard into

conversation this this book was one of

those invigorating reads that sort of

changed how I was going to do philosophy

going forward or in this case actually

want made me want to do philosophy at

all going forward that if you have

Alistair McIntyre as your number two

pick in philosophy your your first pick

should be Aristotle and that's true for

me that's that book is Aristotle's nican

ethics Aristotle nickan ethics is the

central text for virtue ethics which I

think is really the only viable ethical

Theory out there that's my bold claim

here I think utilitarianism is bankrupt

I think Conan ISM doesn't work in the

end I think basically the only kind of

Ethics that really makes sense is virtue

ethics

and I am not a strict Aristotelian right

anyone who listens to this channel know

that I like the stoics the stoics

disagree with Aristotle about virtues

but also there have been many different

interpretations of virtue that you see

throughout history you see this um for

instance in the Christian tradition see

this both in Catholic and Orthodox

interpretations but you'll also see

non-aristotelian versions of virtue for

instance in the Chinese tradition and I

think you need to kind of assimilate all

of these if you're going to give a

comprehensive theory of virtue speaking

biographically again this was another

one of those seminar books that I read

where we only read one book for an

entire seminar and maybe that's just the

key to really loving a book is just

spending time with people who are

engaged and interested and just talking

about it in depth for roughly three

months that might be the way to really

fall in love with a book and what's

interesting about is I think on all of

the details of virtue or almost every

detail of virtue I often disagree with

Aristotle because Aristotle when he

wants to sort of figure out his theory

he will often appeal to the sort of

conventional wisdom of ancient Greece

and we live in a very different time

than ancient Greece now and that means

we also have very different conventional

wisdoms so what he took to be kind of

intuitive and obvious about moral life I

view as sometimes abhorent or ridiculous

and so you actually have to figure out

the details of the theory sort of

independently of reading Aristotle but

Aristotle is giving you a sort of

framework to think about virtue that is

in my mind indispensable but you can't

talk about the Nick mechanic ethics

without talking about the prolonged

discussion of friendship friendship is

one of those topics that I think we all

take for granted in act as if it's sort

of obvious of course friends are good I

like to have friends friends are just

people that I like Aristotle gives you a

full-blown theory of friendship in the

Nicki McAn ethics one of the surprising

conclusions that you're going to reach

but I think that is just true and anyone

who doesn't believe this just doesn't

understand the matter is that you

probably don't have very many friends at

most you're going to only have a handful

and that's because friendship is

difficult friendship takes a lot of work

and friendship is something that really

can only be shared between a few people

who are like-minded and kind of almost

in Aristotelian language almost share a

soul it was those kind of things about

friendship again where classical

philosophy was showing me that me being

a philosopher and me living my life were

actually one of the same

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