Ep. 21: What Are You For?
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2020
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Want some self-help that actually works? Despite being complicated and somewhat intimidating, Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" is actually a very practical book with advice you can use. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan unpacks Aristotle's profound insights in one of the most life-changing books you'll ever read.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are some works of Western culture that are so Titanic, so toweringly great, so |
| 0:08.0 | hyped up that we can kind of just feel afraid of even approaching them. |
| 0:16.9 | Hello, today I would like to make your life a lot better. |
| 0:21.3 | Actually, like for real, I am not kidding about that. The work that we're talking about today |
| 0:25.5 | is called the Nikamikian Ethics by Aristotle is one of the maybe top five works of Western |
| 0:33.4 | literature that have actually changed my life. This is a question that I've gotten a couple |
| 0:37.7 | times on this show, right? What are the books that really change your life? This is an astoundingly |
| 0:42.4 | practical book about how to live better. And what's funny about it is, you know, there are some |
| 0:49.2 | works of Western culture that are so Titanic, so toweringly great, so hyped up that we can kind of |
| 0:58.7 | just feel afraid of even approaching them. And this is one of them, right? The Nikamikian Ethics |
| 1:04.3 | is one of those books. I've addressed a lot of these questions from you guys already about, |
| 1:09.8 | I don't feel like I'm a good reader or I don't feel like I have ownership over these texts |
| 1:15.0 | because they're very complicated and I open them and I feel confused and all that stuff. |
| 1:18.4 | And I've talked a little bit about how to deal with some of that, but the Nikamikian Ethics |
| 1:23.4 | or the NEEs they sometimes call it can be particularly challenging in that regard because, |
| 1:30.2 | first of all, an entire branch of philosophy, ethics, it basically rests on this book as a cornerstone. |
| 1:40.4 | And it can be incredibly hard to read for reasons that we're going to talk about. And we will get |
| 1:45.0 | to all of that. But I think the major thing to keep in mind when we're talking about Aristotle and |
| 1:51.5 | the Nikamikian Ethics in particular is what I said at the beginning that this ultimately in the end |
| 1:57.4 | is an actual book about you and your life and the practicalities and the practical questions of how |
| 2:04.9 | you're going to live your life better. And that is not something and Aristotle is quite clear about |
| 2:10.4 | this. That's not something that you approach from a merely academic standpoint. That's not |
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