Welcome back to Young Heretics.

Riddle me this.

What does Aristotle have to do with Brexit?

Okay, here's what I'm not going to do. I'm not about to tell you that Aristotle would have

voted one way or another in the UK's Brexit vote. I have my suspicions I will confess but I don't really think that's the best way of using ancient texts.

I don't want to sit here and be like, well, Aristotle was a smart guy and I'm a smart guy, so Aristotle

would have voted the way I voted.

But what is a good use of ancient texts and classical wisdom is to ask how some of the greatest thinkers who have ever lived

would instruct us to think about the problems of our day.

So whether it's Brexit or whether it's something personal like last week I was

mentioning the example of whether you should start your own side business or carry on in a job

that pays well but doesn't really bring you joy. These sorts of questions, which are prudential

questions both at the personal level and then at the political level, these are the sorts of questions where practical wisdom becomes of political practical wisdom ain't dead baby it's still important it still matters because there is still such a thing as free will no matter how

minutely our current governmental overlords promise to track our movements no matter how exactly they think they can predict exactly what's going to happen

they always end up coming up against the reality of human freedom,

smashing on the rock of free will.

And I've argued that that's necessarily the case,

that it will always be the case case that it's inherent in the structure

of the universe for there to be some uncertainty into which the will can enter and

that means there will always be what Aristotle calls things about which it is

possible to deliberate. Things that can be otherwise, things

where our moral certainty is not so precise that it's impossible to have a legitimate argument about what to do or not to do.

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