We can often think of philosophy as being completely impractical. While many people spend their time thinking about how to make their career, family or hobbies more successful, philosophers just sit around…thinking about stuff. Right?

Not Aristotle.

For Aristotle, his ethics are eminently practical. So much so, in fact, that his works on ethics and politics are focused primarily on how to live a good life and make your city better.

Moreover, these are not vague, “everybody should get along”-type answers. They have to do with concrete and specific ways that better living leads to happier people. So today, we are going to see three life lessons from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and how they can help us improve our lives today.

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You can find the Zoom link to tomorrow’s live discussion here.

Lesson 1: Keep The End Goal In Mind

One of the most important principles of Aristotelian ethics is that a thing’s goodness is determined by its purpose and the degree to which that thing achieves its purpose.

That might sound complicated or esoteric, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Consider it this way: what makes a good pencil? Presumably, it needs to write well, and do whatever facilitates good writing. So if it does, in fact, mark paper, does it smoothly, doesn’t smudge, is comfortable in the hand, and so on, it is a good pencil. And not for some moral or theoretical reason: its goodness is completely determined by what it is for.

This means that knowing a thing’s purpose is crucial for determining whether it is good or not. To keep a trivial example, imagine that you thought that a cue stick was meant to be a pencil. The cue stick could be the fanciest, most impressive cue stick in the world, but you would still think it was poorly made, by someone who doesn’t understand pencils; it doesn’t even have something to write with unless you put chalk on the end!

Frequently, poor solutions to problems come about because the solution forgets the actual goal the solution is supposed to pursue. This is what happens when disciplinary rules focus on external appearances but allow any manner of actual vice that gets around them. In especially bad cases, the solution can be worse than the problem itself.

So next time you have to solve a problem, stop and remember Aristotle, and ask yourself: what is the end-goal here? Why am I doing this in the first place? It will help you make a more focused solution. And that is important, because it is not always obvious what the right solution is. Fortunately, Aristotle has some advice for that, too…

Lesson 2: Virtue is Found in the Middle

Aristotle held that a sound ethics discerned good habits, called virtues, directed towards particular goods. But he pointed out that, typically, virtue is found in the middle of an excessive response and an insufficient response.

Pursuing justice, for example, is good. Virtuous even. But seek to exact every single “fair” result you possibly can, and you are going to be exacting and unmerciful in a way that is no longer justice. But be careful; in an attempt to not be over-exacting, you might also let too much by, so that justice is not served.

This theory is the famous “golden mean” theory of Aristotelian ethics, and it is a fundamental principle of wise living and wise governance. While it can be tempting in important circumstances to lean heavily towards laxity or exactness in every instance, that is not always what is demanded by virtue. Instead, the virtuous man is going to find the mean between excess and deficiency in every instance.

Importantly, this is not the advocacy towards a vicious passivity. You could read this and think that Aristotle never thought it was right to make a strong decision. But really, what he is calling for is that all of our actions be governed by reason. Unfortunately, that is not always possible on our own, which is why Aristotle offers this third lesson…

Lesson 3: We Can’t Be Good By Ourselves

Aristotle calls human beings political animals, which means that we do not exist solely for ourselves. Rather, we are directed not just for our own good, but for the good of our community.

This has two implications on what it means to be a good person living a fulfilled life:

Virtue is other-centered. A virtuous person is not focused only on his own goods. If someone is only ever looking out for himself, he won’t be virtuous, no matter how hard he tries. And as Aristotle points out, he will not be happy either. After all, Aristotle’s rules are not external instructions like “please do not step on the grass.” Rather, they are instructions on how to live a happy, fulfilled life. You shouldn’t be moral because it will make your Mom happy. You should be moral because you will be miserable otherwise. And without a healthy community that you are working towards, you will be miserable.

Virtue comes from a healthy community. You cannot be virtuous if you are surrounded by people making you vicious. The community you are in determines a lot about who you are, how you live, and what you live for. Since we are political animals, we grow in virtue or vice as our community at large does, too. Notice that this means that you and your friends have a responsibility to each other. You can, and in fact you should, help your friends become more virtuous people! And if you do not do so, they will not be as happy as they ought to be.

Fundamentally, Aristotle’s point is that no person is only responsible for herself. Whether you like it or not, your virtue both impacts, and is dependent on, the people around you. So choose carefully.

The Important Questions

To close, ethical philosophy at its best is not about coming up with annoying answers to bizarre thought experiments. It’s about answering the questions that matter most:

How ought I to live?

How can I be who I am meant to be?

That’s what makes Aristotle so powerful, and what makes reading him useful to everybody, even if you aren’t a philosopher…

Reminder that our third (and final) session on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is taking place tomorrow, July 7, at noon Eastern Time.

Please join the live discussion via Zoom if you want to participate or ask questions directly.

Here’s the Zoom link:

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A popular idea today — and perhaps the founding myth of modernity — is that mankind is gradually ascending from ignorance to rational enlightenment.

Progress, in this sense, is defined as gradual improvement in both morality and technological capability, so that mankind may eventually become fully rational and live in a kind of utopia.

Not only is this belief almost certainly wrong, but it turns out that the opposite may be true — because technological progress not only fails to guarantee moral progress, it can even become a sign of civilizational degradation.

This warning is nothing new. It was first sounded by Plato over 2,500 years ago, and later echoed, quite intentionally, by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings.

Today, then, we’ll look at what Plato (and Tolkien) warned us about human nature, how that warning is unfolding in real time, and what we can do to protect ourselves…

The Myth of Progress

Let’s restate the myth of progress:

Modern man is a product of evolution, descended from apes, and steadily ascending toward rational enlightenment. Religion, myth, and superstition were merely primitive stages of mankind learning to reason and gain mastery over his environment.

Over time, through rationality and science, man will master both nature and morality, and use this mastery to usher in a utopia free of suffering.

The problem with this theory is not science itself, nor whether one affirms the theory of evolution. The problem is the unsound philosophical assumptions smuggled in under the authority of science.

Evolution alone, of course, does not account for human consciousness, the origin of existence, nor the fullness of human nature. It is therefore not “scientifically sound” to assert that man is a creature of pure rationality, especially when nearly all philosophers agree that man is a mixture of reason and will.

Thus, it is not guaranteed that mankind is gradually becoming more moral, nor that technological advancement implies an improved understanding of the human good.

Plato, in fact, argues the opposite. Progress can be dangerous when it reshapes the soul without reference to virtue. Innovation for its own sake, says Plato, is a dangerous thing: “Change, we shall find, except in something evil, is extremely dangerous.”

But why?

Plato and the Decay of Regimes

In The Republic, Plato argues that excessive innovation — especially in education, culture, and moral norms — destabilizes societies. Civilizations, he says, do not endlessly advance; they tend to cycle and decay instead.

Famously, Plato identified five political regimes that any society can inhabit (for a more detailed breakdown, check out this article). To understand why Plato mistrusted innovation, we must first summarize each. Note, the five regimes are not just different governments; they represent successive deteriorations of the human soul.

Crucially, a city (or a soul) is defined by what it treats as its highest value…

1. Aristocracy

An aristocracy, as Plato defines it, is ruled by philosopher-kings: benevolent rulers with a perfect philosophic knowledge of justice and the Good. This is the ideal state for Plato.

In this society, wisdom is held as the highest value, and the aristocratic man’s soul is led by reason. Education must be carefully regulated to protect this, because citizens create governments that reflect their dominant values. Cultural or technological “advancement” must not be allowed to threaten society.

Plato, however, admits that mis-education of philosopher-kings is inevitable over time, and when rulers are no longer totally committed to the Good, society will devolve into its next form…

2. Timocracy

In a timocracy, rulers begin to prize honor, not wisdom, as the highest value. Plato points to the warrior ethos of Ancient Sparta, where timocratic man is led by his spirit instead of his reason: the part of the soul that craves recognition.

Timocratic man looks up at those of military status, but down upon producers and serfs — he is obedient to his rulers, but harsh with his slaves. Thus, timocracy produces order and vigor, but not justice. And over time, hunger for status mutates into hunger for possessions, because to accumulate wealth is the best way to protect oneself against an unjust state.

3. Oligarchy

The next form is oligarchy, rule by the wealthy. Wealth replaces honor as the highest good. The oligarchic man’s soul is ruled by his appetite, but this is restrained out of his fear of losing what he has.

Though the state may grow rich, wealth-inequality and social instability begin to arise. The state is brittle because wealth alone is not enough to secure unity — a city held together by money rather than virtue or wisdom cannot last.

4. Democracy

Plato (and most classical thinkers) heavily disliked democracy, where freedom is held as the highest value. It arises from the grievances of the impoverished classes of oligarchy, and charismatic speakers who can sway the crowd’s appetites rise to power.

Democracy unchains the appetite of the oligarchic man, and pleasures belonging to both bad and good desires are now accepted (since freedom of choice is the ultimate good). With nothing to direct the soul’s appetite, democracies end when one single appetite comes to enslave the others…

5. Tyranny

Out of democracy emerges a strongman leader who promises redistribution to the mob. He grabs power by playing upon the people’s appetites, and the state becomes authoritarian to preserve that power.

Tyrannical man is the most free to pursue his lawless appetite, and thus he is the most enslaved by it. The result is inevitable ruin.

Remember, earlier systems kept the appetite in check: at first through the pursuit of wisdom, then honor, then the oligarchic man’s fear of losing what he has. But when freedom became the guiding ethos, there is nothing to check the appetite. Ultimately, Plato’s point is that any society that cannot keep wisdom and virtue as its guiding principle will spiral into tyranny through the cycle he described.

An Age of Tech Worship

Ours is an age of tech worship. We all know that the rapid innovation in AI — which disrupts the way we think, write, and learn — opens up a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences that could fundamentally unsettle society. And yet, there is little attempt to slow down the rapid advancements being made in AI. We live in an age of unrestrained tech worship, where to endlessly improve the capability of technology at the cost of all else is deemed the greatest good.

In Plato’s terms, a civilization driven by “progress” in this way (defined primarily as material wealth and mastery over nature) is oligarchic in spirit. It may flourish externally, for a time, but Plato warns that such a society is doomed to decay.

And this is precisely what J.R.R. Tolkien witnessed a century ago, and which lies at the heart of his epic saga, The Lord of the Rings.

What does a story of a heroic, pre-technological age, have to tell us about technology and the decay of civilization?

Well, quite a lot.

What Tolkien was trying to communicate is the key to understanding both our decay and the narrow path out of it. For Tolkien, technology is not simply a tool, but an apparatus that replaces the formation of the soul, and amplifies the will to dominate…

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Episode 16 of the podcast is now live!

Jeremy is joined by Jessica Hooten Wilson, Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University, for a discussion on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

This novel, the last book Dostoevsky penned before his death in 1881, is often talked about today as the greatest novel ever written. Why is that?

Jessica defends this claim by explaining how Brothers stands as the culmination of Dostoevsky’s life, philosophy, and faith. It is a piercing insight into the full spectrum of human experience, told through three brothers: passionate Dmitri, intellectual Ivan, and the striving Alyosha. Through three separate characters, Dostoevsky dramatizes the deep internal conflicts that exist within every human soul.

Watch the episode for free on Substack, or on YouTube if you prefer.

Enjoy!

Episode 15 of the podcast is now live!

Jeremy is joined by writer Liza Libes for a discussion on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and why the novel — written 160 years ago — still resonates so strongly today.

They explore the crucial Russian concept of Toska, a deep spiritual ache or homelessness, which sits at the heart of the novel but is sorely missed in English translations.

Through Raskolnikov’s harrowing journey, this 19th-century masterpiece still speaks forcefully to the spiritual and moral emptiness of our own age, while also revealing how love and self-sacrifice can resurrect a broken life.

Watch the episode for free on Substack, or on YouTube if you prefer.

Enjoy!

Our third and final session on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics will be at the same time in two weeks: Tuesday, July 7, at noon ET. See you soon!

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Reminder that our second session on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is taking place tomorrow, June 23, at noon Eastern Time.

Please join the live discussion via Zoom if you want to participate or ask questions directly.

Here’s the Zoom link:

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I saw this phrase circulating online recently:

Humans are designed to create.

This is why you get depressed when all you do is consume.

This perfectly succinct point can be derived from many great writers on the creative imagination and our innate desire to “sub-create”: J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, George MacDonald, etc.

G.K. Chesterton was another of those writers. He recognized that the ability to create ideas and worlds inside your own head is a domain with infinitely far-reaching potential, and, importantly, a fortress against nefarious outside forces. “The most essential educational product is Imagination,” he wrote.

Chesterton wrote about how to cultivate the imagination in various stages of life — this article discusses those stages, why the imagination matters, and why flexing it in adulthood is most critical of all.

But first, be careful to note that imagination is not escapism. For Chesterton, it is something far more powerful indeed. A healthy imagination works to renew an ancient consciousness with which you interpret the real world: “imaginative does not mean imaginary.”

In our time, safeguarding one’s imagination is an increasingly vital skill. It is your internal defense against the external forces that seek to hijack your mental faculties…

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Early Childhood: Ancient Wonder

A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door.

Chesterton notes that very young children do not need elaborate fairy tales to ignite their imaginations. To them, “mere life is interesting enough.” An older child is interested in romantic tales, whereas an infant likes realistic ones, because they already perceive them as romantic.

Nursery stories, therefore, are straightforward and only exist in order to gently prompt the powerful imagination that all children have at birth. They only “echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement.”

This, Chesterton intuits, is our ancient instinct for astonishment or wonder. We have an innate predisposition to experience the world we inhabit with awe and joy. As life continues, a working imagination is what helps adults return to this forgotten state…

Late Childhood: Heroes & Dragons

About the age of five or six is when we begin to enjoy things like fairy stories as a way of stimulating the imaginative process. These operate at the next level up from nursery stories.

The key consideration with fairy stories is that they help train the moral imagination. Play and fantasy, which augment the world with great beasts and greater heroes, equip the child with a sense of adventure and heroism that will later prepare him for life’s real battles.

A rich imagination matters not because the child can escape into a secondary world, but because the secondary world alters his perception of the primary world, imbuing it with a sense of challenge and meaning.

The fairy tale provides you with a kind of vision required to confront evil, because it awakens an internal sense of justice and, crucially, agency. It helps you see the world as a great story in which you are called to play your own, heroic part (this perspective will be useful later on). Indeed, by now you are already fully aware of dragons and the need for heroic action, and any attempt to try to shelter you from this won’t work. Chesterton writes:

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

So, reading fairy tales helps to form an internal moral language — a kind of consciousness that sees the world as something to be explored from inside your own mind. Life is a great story, and you can face it as either a hero or a coward.

Adolescence: Internal Dragons & Passivity

As you exit childhood for adolescence, you begin more and more to encounter internal dragons of doubt and temptation. You are hyper-self-conscious, at risk of becoming a passive creature only capable of responding to what others do and say.

A rich internal life is what protects you from passivity. Chesterton says that we are all called to be active creators and not consumers. An active imagination — stimulated by making things, writing things, playing instruments — makes you less vulnerable to manipulation by peers, the media, or trending ideologies. Why? Chesterton writes:

The man who can make up stories about the next-door neighbour will be less dependent on the next day’s newspaper.

Crucially, the imaginative mind is less dependent on external stimuli or validation. It delights in doing things for itself. Chesterton once wrote that cultural decline is marked by people paying for others to dance for them, rather than a whole room of individuals doing the dancing themselves, together.

Life was better when we all did the dancing ourselves, and so it is with thinking. The imaginative adolescent reclaims his agency at the stage of life where it is most at risk, and this shields him from the despair of living life passively.

We’ve talked so far in broad terms, but how does one actually protect and cultivate one’s imagination, particularly in the next stage of life: adulthood?

Well, recall that the infant enters the world with an imagination strong enough to see joy in the most mundane of objects — basic reality is already presented to him as romantic. In adulthood, the goal is to get back to this view.

To get there, says Chesterton, a radical re-framing of your perspective is necessary…

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When people think of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, they usually think of his four greatest novels: The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Demons, and The Idiot.

But Dostoevsky produced far more than that: short stories, novellas, and lesser-known novels poured from his pen, well beyond just his “big four.” Indeed, these other works lay the psychological and moral groundwork for his major novels.

One in particular had enormous personal and historical significance that frequently goes unappreciated:

It’s called The House of the Dead.

If you have gotten through Dostoevsky’s major works and want more, or if you just want something easier than Demons, you should read this novel instead. Here’s why…

Don’t forget to join our book club!

We are currently reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

The next discussion is on Tuesday, June 23, at noon ET. You can watch back the first session here in case you missed it.

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We are 100% reader-supported. To support our mission and join our reading group, please consider a paid subscription. You’ll get:

• All live book discussions (biweekly) and recordings

• Access to our incredible community of readers

• Regular essays to guide you through the books we’re reading

• The full library of articles, essays, and podcasts

• Ability to vote on what we read next…

Dostoevsky’s Autobiographical Novel

Dostoevsky was not always a world-changing novelist. As a teenager he was sent to a military academy, where he quickly showed himself to be utterly unsuited to military life.

He was, however, a capable writer, and had several early novels and short stories published in literary magazines. After resigning from the military, he continued writing, but also found himself in a circle of social reformers and political activists. Such circles could be dangerous, as a denouncement may mean prison for political crimes. Unfortunately for Dostoevsky, that is exactly what happened to him: his circle was denounced to the government, and he and his friends were banished for four years.

Russian prisons were brutal: located in one of the coldest, most desolate environments on Earth, Siberia, prisoners were forced to live and work in dehumanizing, unsanitary conditions. While Dostoevsky survived, he never forgot the experience. And when he was finally released, he wrote what was to be one of his most influential works, based almost entirely on his own experiences in the prison: the novel The House of the Dead.

This makes The House of the Dead an insight into Dostoevsky’s personal psychology in a way that few other books are. The thoughts and experiences of the main character are often the very thoughts and experiences Dostoevsky himself had.

The Power of Cruelty on Human Nature

The House of the Dead follows Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, an inmate in Siberia who has been convicted of murdering his wife. The novel follows Goryanchikov as he discovers the struggles of prison life, from the decrepit living conditions and hard labor to the spiritual harm done to the prisoners.

And indeed, the spiritual harm is much greater than the physical: moral and spiritual degradation are rampant throughout the camp. Because the inmates are treated so poorly, and live so miserably, there is little-to-no sense of companionship among the prisoners.

Thievery, in particular, is a massive problem. Goryanchikov relates that even his friends in prison steal from him. And when he confronts them about it, they treat it as a completely neutral fact, neither one to be apologized for nor explained. That is just what you do in Siberia; if you are not paying attention to your belongings, you will have them stolen.

This is not the only problem that the prison has, but it will serve as an example. In general, though, the prisoners are deprived of their ability to trust one another, and the prison guards treat them horribly. This means that where humans normally rely on community for safety, friendship, and identity, in Siberia it is the opposite: everyone around you is against you, and you have nobody to trust but yourself.

Moreover, the criminals themselves have a negative moral and spiritual impact on one another. They are cowardly, conniving, and cruel; in a word, criminal. Thus the purpose of community is further corrupted: whereas the people around you are meant to, in some way, build you up, the community of the House of the Dead only serves to make you worse, and to make you less yourself.

Goryanchikov eventually realizes that this system is not helping anybody, and amounts to little less than a total dehumanization of the people subjected to it. Instead, it simply hurts both the prisoners and those who are responsible for maintaining the prison. The novel, while it lacks a strong plot or clear conflict beyond the conflict between Goryanchikov and the culture of the prison, is therefore a piercing psychological piece, concerning the need and nature of friends, family, and community.

But that is not the only reason you should read this book. It is also the historical ancestor of an entire genre of literature that yielded a much more famous work…

The Birth of Prison Literature

The House of the Dead was not just a novel. While all of Dostoevsky’s novels are profoundly psychological studies and haunting moral dramas, this book, in particular, served a social and political purpose, as well.

It was meant to help people realize the evil that was occurring in Siberia. That evil was not, of course, the punishment of the wicked; as has already been discussed in previous newsletters, Dostoevsky certainly believed in just punishment for criminals. But in Crime and Punishment, the punishment is meant to serve as a humanizing effect on Raskolnikov — it makes him more human.

In The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky is arguing that some punishment, including those used in Siberia, are not doing that. And this argument would become highly influential in modern literature: the book was an early, foundational text in prison literature, which is meant to help people consider and advocate for those who are punished unjustly. This literary tradition, of course, reached its pinnacle with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago. But while Solzhenitsyn’s work is (in my opinion at least) sprawling, occasionally plodding, and bleak, Dostoevsky’s novel is engaging, brief, and much more approachable.

One of Dostoevsky’s greatest skills is writing novels that take the psychology of his characters, and his readers, for that matter, seriously. The House of the Dead does so.

What makes it unique among his other most popular novels, however, is its sociological and autobiographical nature. It is unquestionably one of the greatest novels you’ve never heard of, and it is a must-read for any fan of Dostoevsky.

Thanks for reading!

Don’t forget to join our book club!

We are currently reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

The next discussion is on Tuesday, June 23, at noon ET. You can watch back the first session here in case you missed it.

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Few men understood the Great Books of Western Civilization like Leo Strauss.

He spent a lifetime studying, lecturing, and writing about the deepest narratives and ideas produced by our civilization.

But he didn’t observe it all from an ivory tower — his own teachings carried clear political and philosophical implications to help you know yourself, live well, and understand the world. Perhaps the greatest message of his work was this:

Civilization finds itself in a crisis because modern man has rejected the central idea that underpins the Great Books.

You can trace this decline through three stages in history, which Strauss calls “The Three Waves of Modernity.” Each wave introduced a new, “modern” belief that further eroded the foundations of society.

Today we’ll explore these three waves of modernity, how they helped deconstruct civilization, and what the Great Books can teach us about its renewal…

If you’d like to support our mission and join our reading group, please do consider a paid subscription. You’ll get:

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What is the Good?

From the opening lines of his essay The 3 Waves of Modernity, Strauss describes the key idea driving civilizational rot in the West today:

The crisis of modernity reveals itself in the fact that modern western man no longer knows what he wants—that he no longer believes that he can know what is good and bad, what is right and wrong.

Agnosticism is the definitive feature of modernity: that man cannot know truth, good, or evil with certainty.

For Strauss, an agnostic society is a dying society. A civilization divorced from morality is divorced from knowledge of Truth, Good, and Evil. To put it simply, you cannot be good if you don’t know what goodness is. Such is true too for civilization — if you cannot know, nor agree upon, the Good, then mankind cannot be united behind it.

Instead, modern agnosticism gives rise to political ideology (liberalism, communism, fascism), divisive individualism, and increasing polarization.

But if we’re to diagnose the root of modern rot, we have to go back 500 years, to an unexpected thinker who begins the first wave of modernity…

Wave 1 — Machiavellian Politics

Most thinkers point to Descartes as the founder of modernity, but Strauss suggests someone else: Machiavelli.

He points out that, prior to Machiavelli, all politics was based on the question, “What is the good life?”

Classical politics was aimed at knowledge of virtue to be in harmony with the Good. Plato says politics aim at harmony of the community through justice. Aristotle says mankind flourishes by taking virtuous action in accordance with the Good. Christian politics agrees, grounding the Good in God.

Machiavelli uproots all of this.

He divorces politics from morality, arguing man was not meant to pursue the good, but to maintain power. In The Prince, he argues a prince should know both “how to be bad and how to be good.”

The Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes take Machiavelli’s philosophy a step further. Hobbes argues man only does politics to protect individual rights and security. So modern politics abandons the good and becomes about social engineering. As Strauss laments:

The political problem becomes a technical problem.

Notice how this shift seems subtle, but drastically lowers the aim of politics.

It’s no longer a practice for building community, practicing virtue, and helping human flourishing. It’s now devolved into a “dirty,” morally ambiguous realm of chaos, power, and manipulation.

So, Machiavelli ushers in the beginning of modernity, but it will be the second wave that induces dramatic change in the individual.

Wave 2 — Interiority is King

The second wave of modernity is spearheaded by Kant and Rousseau.

Kant argued that morality is grounded in rationality. He held that moral laws are universal, but that they are known through human reason — not derived from nature or a transcendent authority like God.

In other words, the standard of morality is no longer embedded in nature, the cosmos, or the divine, but located in man’s rational will.

Truth is no longer something that transcends man, rather, it’s located within man’s rational faculty. This shift to interiority of morality, ironically, makes morality vulnerable to relativism:

If Truth is interior to man, then man believes Truth exists inside him, rather than beyond him.

The implication is, if man rationally discovers morality, then perhaps he is the creator of his own morality. In other words, one might wonder whether or not good and evil are mere social constructs.

This Kantian shift plants the seeds for what will become modern agnosticism — the belief that we cannot know good or evil as something objective and given. As moderns, we speak of “living our truth,” by grounding moral claims in our conscience and inner convictions.

The French philosopher Rousseau advances this turn inward by emphasizing the primacy of inner experience over external moral standards. He believed man is naturally good, but corrupted by society.

In his own words:

Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.

Where the premodern view exhorted man to cultivate virtue in accordance with a higher order, Rousseau suggests that man’s deepest aim is not toward virtue as conformity to nature, but toward freedom and self-expression. The problem is no longer vice in man’s nature, but the external constraints imposed on man from his environment.

We get the sense that Truth — and anything that constrains one’s authenticity or freedom of choice — is oppressive. Anything that is oppressive is inauthentic, and therefore, bad.

Here, we recognize the new, modern morality: an exhortation to live one’s personal truth.

And finally, we have one last wave of modernity, which Strauss calls the deathblow that finalized the ruin of the West.

He traces it to one thinker who brought the West to ruin, but also gestures at the one solution that might just save civilization…

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Our second (of three) session on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics will be at the same time in two weeks: Tuesday, June 23, at noon ET. See you soon!

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Reminder that our first session on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is taking place tomorrow, June 9, at noon Eastern Time.

Please do join the live discussion via Zoom if you want to participate or ask questions directly.

Here is the Zoom link:

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C.S. Lewis is often referred to as a “medievalist.” And not just because he had such an affinity for medieval literature — Lewis saw our modern modes of thinking as being in profound tension with those of our medieval past.

But why would one of the sharpest minds of the 20th century turn to the intellectual traditions of the Middle Ages for guidance?

To Lewis, the medieval worldview possessed a genuine answer to a very serious modern affliction: the feeling that we are strangers in our own universe.

Medieval man felt that he was an integral part of the universe, because of the “Medieval Model” through which he interpreted it. This Model may hold the key to reviving a sense of meaning today…

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The Medieval Model

In the last book he ever wrote, The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis laid out what he called the Medieval Model: the framework through which medieval people understood the universe and their own place in it. This Model has its roots in the Medieval (and Ptolemaic) understanding of cosmology…

To give a (very!) brief overview for the purpose of this article, medieval man believed the cosmos to be geocentric. Just as in Dante’s Paradiso, the universe was understood as a series of celestial, concentric spheres (usually nine of them), with Earth, unmoving, at its centre. This cosmos hummed with harmonic music, as each of its rings was moved by a certain angelic Intelligence. Beyond the rings lay the realm of God.

Everything in the universe had its proper place in the Chain of Being, and the medieval scholar sought to integrate all new scientific discoveries within this framework. The universe was considered intelligible by the minds down here on Earth, who, crucially, were part of its very structure, and Man himself was felt to be a microcosm (literally a “little cosmos”) of the universal macrocosm.

Lewis referred to this unified whole as a “finely ordered multiplicity” — yes, the cosmos was known to be vast and enormously varied back then, but it was also orderly and unified. Where modern thought tends to have trouble reconciling multiplicity and unity (seeing them as opposites), medieval thought saw the overwhelming scale and variety of space and nonetheless agreed that it could be placed within the system.

This all meant that medieval man looked at the night sky and saw a comprehensible system that he undoubtedly was part of. Space, of course, wasn’t understood back then to be infinitely expanding, and so looking up at space was more like looking up into a beautifully ordered cathedral than into a massive, unsettling abyss.

In Lewis’s language, medieval man stood at the bottom of a stair whose top was “invisible with light”; modern man stands at the top of a stair whose foot is “lost in obscurity.”

The 7 Liberal Arts

Lewis concludes his description of the Model with an explanation of the seven liberal arts. Integral to a medieval education was the idea that academic subjects weren’t distinct disciplines, but a connected web through which a soul was trained in its capacity to understand the universe as a whole. Scientific discoveries were not separable from, say, theology or philosophy, for they all came together to explain the pattern of reality.

A medieval university curriculum consisted of the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). Subjects were connected because they worked together to explain the nature of reality — music and math, for example, stood together as sciences because the universe was interpreted as a great symphony. Lewis explains how each discipline prepared the mind for the next.

Ultimately, the liberal arts trained a mind by mapping it to the inherent order of reality: “the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe.“

Under the Medieval Model, all manner of human pursuits were pointed toward the same objective, the same telos: understanding ultimate Truth.

Lewis contrasts the Model to where we find ourselves today:

If I am right, the man of genius then found himself in a situation very different from that of his modern successor. Such a man today often, perhaps usually, feels himself confronted with a reality whose significance he cannot know, or a reality that has no significance… It is for him, by his own sensibility, to discover a meaning, or, out of his own subjectivity, to give a meaning – or at least a shape – to what in itself had neither. But the Model universe of our ancestors had a built-in significance.

Lewis knew full well that we cannot return to the Medieval Model, not least because advances in astronomy have contradicted its scientific claims.

But he saw great value in how it communicated to man a purposeful universe with built-in significance:

I have made no serious effort to hide the fact that the old Model delights me as I believe it delighted our ancestors. Few constructions of the imagination seem to me to have combined splendour, sobriety, and coherence in the same degree.

So, what did he recommend we do?

Unfortunately, there is no single, easy answer — but there are ways that we can subtly reframe our perspectives and see our reality as more meaningful.

In a short but profound essay, Lewis suggested one way to unshackle our modern minds…

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Over 2000 years ago, the Ancient Greek Philosopher Aristotle composed one of the foundational ethical texts in Western Civilization: his Nicomachean Ethics.

The book, named for and dedicated to his son, Nicomachus, laid out an ethical theory that became the dominant one in Western Civilization for well over a millennia, and remains one of the major views in academic philosophy: Virtue Ethics.

It also stands as one of the most robust examples of how to demonstrate that ethics are objective: that an individual’s personal opinions do not make ethical claims true or false.

Today, we are going to go through three important steps to understanding Aristotle’s crucial argument, and why it shows that ethics are not up to us, but are instead rules that, if left unfollowed, lead to self-destruction…

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What is the Purpose of Ethics?

People often make long arguments about ethical claims without setting out what the goal of ethics really is.

• Why live a moral life?

• What are we saying about an act when we say that it is immoral?

Aristotle claims that the purpose of all human beings is eudaimonia, a word that roughly translates to happiness. But unlike how many people think of happiness, this happiness is not a merely emotional, feel-good phenomenon. Rather, eudaimonia as Aristotle thinks of it is the fulfillment of a human being’s purpose. You achieve happiness when you are what you should be.

What you should be, however, is not entirely up to you. You have a nature with particular powers and capacities, and those powers and capacities have purposes, or ends, that determine what it is to be good. Indeed, Aristotle argues that what it is to be good is determined by a things purpose; a good cue stick is a terrible pencil, and both would be horrible fly swatters.

So, to be good, you must act towards your purpose of eudaimonia. And if to be happy comes from fulfilling our end, then happiness comes from our objective nature: we can only be happy if we do what we are made to do. That makes the study of ethics clear: it is the study of how to be happy.

And it helps us figure out what things make us miserable. Which takes us to objectivity.

Why Some Things Are Wrong

So how does this get us to moral claims?

Well, if the study of ethics is about how to live happily, and that happiness comes from achieving our purpose, then there is a real way to achieve our purpose and, conversely, a way to live that fails to achieve that purpose. For Aristotle, moral reasoning is meant to figure out the best way to achieve our purpose.

This means that Aristotle thinks of “this is morally right” to mean, roughly, “this is ultimately going to contribute to my own and other people’s human flourishing.” In other words, “this is good for me and the people around me.” Similarly, “this is morally wrong” means “this is going to prevent me and the people around me from flourishing.” In other words, “this is bad for me and the people around me.”

Importantly, Aristotle does not think that this boils down to “do whatever you think will feel good” because happiness is not determined by personal preference. It is eminently possible to want something that is self-destructive. And if you want something that is self-destructive, you should not get it because to have it would be bad. Moreover, to pursue it would be immoral: you are hurting yourself and everyone around you.

This makes Aristotle’s ethical theory objective, but it is also grounded in reality in a way that makes it unique amongst ethical theories. Here’s how.

How Aristotle is Unique, Even Today

Most of the rules around us are not grounded in any inherent way that the world around us works. The speed limit may be 35, and there may even be good practical reasons for it to be 35, but there is nothing intrinsic about the stretch of road you are driving on that means that it must have a speed limit of 35 miles per hour. It is just the rule that has been given, and the main reason we must follow it is that an authority, i.e. the lawmakers of the city, has told us so.

Many people think of ethical theory in this way: moral rules are a series of “shoulds” and “should nots” that have very little to do with the actual world around us and much more to do with what seems awful to us or what God tells us to do. They are, in essence, just rules like a speed limit.

This is why so many stick-it-to-authority types also reject traditional moral laws; they see moral laws as nothing more than one more way that some authority, which may or may not include God, is trying to keep us from doing something we want to do.

What makes Aristotle unique, as well as the ethical systems that sprung from his thought in St. Thomas Aquinas and others, is that his ethics are deeply grounded in the world around us.

Why should human beings take care of others? Because we were made to do so, and will be miserable otherwise. Why should human beings refuse to steal? Because our nature is directed towards honesty, stealing hurts both others and ourselves.

So, why is morality objective? Because reality is objective. There really is something that human beings are directed towards, and there really are consequences to failing to achieve that purpose.

Figuring out that purpose, and dodging the self-destruction that comes from failing to reach it, is exactly what Aristotle is doing in the Nicomachean Ethics.

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The Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotle’s most influential work, and has become the foundational work for moral philosophy in Western Civilization. The premise is fairly straightforward: “How do I live a good life?”

You’ll find Aristotle is a practical thinker. He doesn’t deal in abstractions, rather this work is pragmatic and to the point. You can think of this work as a sort of “how to manual,” for living a good life. If you take his writing seriously, and implement his teachings into your daily life, he asserts you will achieve a meaningful life of virtue and flourishing.

With that said, turn your attention to his definition of eudaimonia in Book 1, Chapter 7:

“The human good is an activity of soul in accord with virtue”

This becomes Aristotle’s working definition of flourishing (happiness), throughout his ethics. For Aristotle, happiness is not an emotion, but a disposition of one’s soul in accordance with their actions.

Some questions to consider as you start reading:

• What actions constitute virtue?

• What actions constitute vice?

• Why is knowledge of virtue not enough by itself?

• If someone has knowledge of virtue and vice, what are likely the biggest obstacles/hindrances that prevent them from living a life of virtue?

Consider these questions, and see if Aristotle himself offers answers in later chapters down the line. Share your thoughts in the community chat, along with any questions you have — and we’ll incorporate them into next week’s discussion!

Few stories offer a richer meditation on death and life’s meaning than Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

It tells the tale of Ivan Ilyich, an ambitious court official driven to succeed by any means necessary.

He follows the exact playbook society tells him to follow: works hard, succeeds in school, gets a good job, and a trophy wife. But it’s at the height of his career, midway through life, when he falls ill.

Not only does Ivan realize he’s going to die, he uncovers a greater spiritual horror awaiting him behind his sickness. He questions if his entire life was nothing but a lie.

And yet, it’s in the very clutches of death where Ivan, for the first time, discovers what it truly means to live.

What exactly did he discover?

Today, we’ll look to uncover just that. Here’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Tolstoy’s wisdom about finding life’s meaning in the face of death…

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A Man of the World

So first, who exactly was Ivan Ilyich?

Aside from his ambitions, Tolstoy writes:

He was a capable man, cheerful and kind, sociable and convinced of the need to follow the path of duty — duty being anything so designated by higher authority.

This simple sentence is the creed Ivan lives by. He orients his life and manners around the “higher authorities,” of his world. With each new job he takes, or city he visits, he seeks out the affluent, learns their ways, and joins their company.

By his 40s, he’s wealthy with a wife and two children. His marriage was not based on love, but status. He and his wife tolerated each other, and their lives were comfortable.

Yet soon, he’d discover this very “happiness” was doomed to crash down.

A Fall From Grace

One day, Ivan is hanging upholstery in his dining room, when he slips and slams his torso into a piece of furniture.

The fall wasn’t terrible, but the pain lingered in his ribs.

Worse yet… the pain grew. Ivan consulted doctors, but their medications didn’t help. The pain worsened, Ivan grew feeble, and eventually bedridden.

Finally, one evening, the inevitable dawns on him:

‘Oh God! Oh God!’ he muttered, ‘It’s not going away…

My life is steadily going away and I can’t stop it. No. There’s no point in fooling myself. Can’t they all see — everybody but me — that I’m dying?’

These words mark the beginning of a spiritual crisis that will haunt Ivan to the last minutes of his life.

But there’s a long road of despair to travel first, before Ivan can be granted a death he so despises.

Ivan Against the World

As Ivan wastes away in his bed, he begins to despise mankind. Why?

Because no one else acknowledges that he’s dying.

His wife tells him to trust in doctors and stop worrying. The doctors themselves are impersonal and indifferent. His friends don’t inquire — at best they show disdain when his illness inconveniences their games of cards.

So Ivan hates them for their willful ignorance, yes, but there’s a deeper reason, too. He hates the hollow, superficial nature of their souls. And yet, this leads him to an even deeper epiphany:

He hates the world, yet he realizes that the world is but a mirror held up to himself. In other words, the very people he hates are but a reflection of the very person he became — someone solely concerned with trivial matters of status, wealth, and fame.

In despair, he fears his life was but a lie.

He succumbs to a massive bout of physical and spiritual suffering. For three days and nights, he will writhe and scream in delirious pain, and he won’t escape this fit alive.

And yet, in these final moments of despair, Ivan finally discerns the one true Light that had ruled over his life all along.

Here is what Ivan sees at the very end….

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We are about to take a vote on what to read next inside the subscriber chat.

The first discussion on the next book will then take place on Tuesday, June 9, at noon ET — see you all soon!

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Reminder that our third (and final) discussion on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is taking place tomorrow, May 26, at noon Eastern Time.

Please do join the live discussion via Zoom if you want to participate or ask questions directly.

Here is the Zoom link:

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In our last article, we examined how Fyodor Dostoevksy’s novel Crime and Punishment argued for the objective moral evil of murder.

The book showed how sin, and evil more generally, is fundamentally self-destructive. Rodion Raskolnikov commits a murder, but one gets the impression, and indeed the novel seems to endorse the position, that it is Raskolnikov himself who suffers most due to this evil decision.

Most of the novel is concerned with Raskolnikov’s crime and attempts to escape punishment. But one aspect of the novel that is not always noticed is the nature of rehabilitation that is argued for in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece. Raskolnikov’s eventual conversion is not inevitable, even on a narrative level; it is, instead, carefully written, with a close eye on human psychology and the nature of interpersonal relationships.

Today, we are going to talk about the person most responsible for Raskolnikov’s conversion: Sonia.

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Why Raskolnikov Committed Murder

As the novel follows Raskolnikov through his struggle with his own conscience, one thing becomes apparent: Raskolnikov is terrified of his own insufficiency.

For just one instance, one of the things that prompts his choice to murder the pawnbroker in the first place is his sister’s financially driven marriage to a terrible man. Raskolnikov is ashamed that his sister would be driven to such meanness, and is willing to do whatever it takes to avoid such shame on his family and, by extension, on himself.

But Raskolnikov has plenty of reasons to be ashamed: he is a failed student. He has little career, less money, and no obvious way to find a new path forward. So, as Raskolnikov himself reflects, the murder is meant to find a way for Raskolnikov to reclaim control and power in his life:

“I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her…I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I⁠ ⁠… I wanted to have the daring⁠ ⁠… and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!”

Raskolnikov is convinced that he is shameful, cowardly and unlovable. The murder is meant to fix that. It is meant to make him strong, courageous and admirable. But as we saw in the last newsletter, it does the opposite: Raskolnikov is even worse off than before.

So, in a fit of desperation, Raskolnikov tries the one thing he has been avoiding: he admits his sin to somebody. The somebody he chooses is the woman who loves him: Sonia.

Why Raskolnikov Tells Sonia

There is a tremendous risk in Raskolnikov telling Sonia about his murder. She could tell the police, after all. But that is not what Raskolnikov fears. What he really fears is that she will abandon him, telling her:

“I asked you for one thing, I came to you for one thing⁠—not to leave me. You won’t leave me, Sonia?...And can you love such a mean wretch?”

Raskolnikov seems, multiple times, to be most worried with the impact that his story is having on Sonia’s opinion of him; he asks her whether she will leave him, if she can still love him, and what she thinks of him.

The remarkable thing is how Sonia responds:

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Episode 14 of the podcast is now live! This time, we’re discussing a modern work.

Jeremy is joined by the fascinating Johann Kurtz to discuss his new book, Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, & Thousand-Year Families.

They explore why so many wealthy families lose everything in just three generations (“shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves”), why celebrities publicly disinheriting their children reveals a failure of purpose, and what truly multi-generational families do differently.

Johann explains the importance of passing on not just wealth but also purpose and duty. If you enjoy the episode, we highly recommend you get a copy of Johann’s book!

You may watch the episode for free on Substack, or on YouTube if you prefer.

Enjoy!

Reminder: we are a 100% reader-supported publication.

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We do what we do because we’re passionate about spreading the stories, wisdom, and virtues of the Western canon as widely as possible — but we need your help.

If you want to support our efforts, please consider a paid subscription. It makes a huge difference to the time and resources we can dedicate to this project. You’ll get:

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We are currently reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment! The next discussion is on Tuesday, May 26, at noon ET — come study it with us!

Thanks so much for joining the book club on Tuesday. That was easily one of the best discussions we’ve had so far — electric! 🙌

Ahead of our next discussion on Crime and Punishment (May 26, noon ET), below is a breakdown of the most important themes and questions to carry in your mind as we continue reading on.

Next session, we’ll cover Parts V–VI of the novel. Part V largely follows Luzhin’s failed attempt to frame Sonya for theft. His denunciation, however, backfires and he’s publicly humiliated. But by far the most important scene follows on from this scheme:

Raskolnikov confesses his murder to Sonya…

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