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PROFESSOR: So we have quite a
bit to do in lecture today,
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but there are two main things
that are going to happen.
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The first is that I finish up
the discussion of Aristotle's
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views on happiness and harmony,
and the second is
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that I want to introduce
you to the topic of
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the disordered soul.
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And for the second part
of the lecture, we'll
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be using our clickers.
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You do want to make sure you
have them out within the next,
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I don't know, eight
minutes or so.
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So as you may recall, what we
were talking about in the last
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lecture was this ancient idea
that there's a certain sort of
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thriving that's available
to human beings.
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A certain sort of flourishing,
a certain sort of what the
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Greeks called eudaimonia,
available to people whose
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souls exhibit a certain
kind of harmony.
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And you recall that the ancient
picture as articulated
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in Plato and taken on in many
ways by Aristotle, was that we
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have reason, rationality.
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We have spirit, a set of
emotions that are concerned
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with things like honor.
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And we have appetite, which are
concerned with things like
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the consumption of food and the
procreation that allows
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our species to continue, and
the procreation that allows
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our species to continue and the
procreation for the sake
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of doing procreation.
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And that the person who is in
a position to thrive or
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flourish is the person whose
instinct in the domain of
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appetite and in the domain of
emotions are in line with his
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or her reflective commitments.
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That is, somebody who acts
automatically in the way that
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he or she would like to
act reflectively.
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The person who instinctively
sits down and does her reading
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when she's committed
to do her reading.
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The person who instinctively
avoids the chocolate cake when
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she's presented with the
chocolate cake, if that's what
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she's committed to do.
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So what Aristotle tried to
do in the segment of the
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Nicomachean Ethics that we read
is to give us a formula,
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a strategy, a method, for
getting to the point of having
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our soul in order.
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And just to remind you where
this fits in the context of
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his argument, the claim that
Aristotle makes is that
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there's one sort of thing that
we pursue for its own sake,
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and it's exactly the thing
that I just referred to.
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It's this flourishing
or eudaimonia.
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It's this feeling that one
is living up to the
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greatest one can be.
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And Aristotle points out that
the sort of flourishing that
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we're interested in here is
not the gratification that
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