Online Great Books Podcast

This week, Scott and Karl read Josef Pieper’s Leisure the Basis of Culture. The duo dives into the Pieper-style definition of leisure, work, and their relationship. Pieper shows us that the Greeks and medieval Europeans understood the great value and importance of leisure. But do we? Most of us have been brought up on heavy doses of careerism, or what Pieper would define as work related to the servile arts, with the sole purpose of survival. Leisure, in effect, becomes a bad word, merely a way of recharging our batteries. For Pieper, the whole point of civilization is leisure, or the active engagement in higher things that aren’t economic. Idleness isn’t the point. Leisure should be contemplative, divine, and distinctly human. What must be present for contemplation to occur? How can you be more intentional with your leisure time? Tune in to this week’s episode and let us know your thoughts.  

This week, Scott and Karl discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The America Scholar.” This address was delivered at Cambridge in 1837, before the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. According to Emerson, there’s a fundamental challenge American scholars are faced with— what is it they ought to be doing? Emerson has a reverence for work and the common man. The scholar must realize the importance of action in the life of the American intellectual or risk becoming a mere thinker. Emerson believes you must do action, and the deeds you do become your vocabulary. If you are in your head all the time, you lose touch. Emerson writes, “Instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm.” On the surface, this may appear to be a challenge to what we do at Online Great Books. However, a big part of what we do is achieved in our seminar discussions. As Scott points out, “the seminar is where you take action on what you read. The seminar is where you start to incorporate the book into the self. The seminar is where you dodge the bullet of potentially becoming a bookworm.” Tune in to this week’s episode and find out why Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. declared this speech to be "the declaration of independence of American intellectual life."

Scott and Karl discuss the importance of defining why and how we read. They explore Adler's four questions for active reading and advise being patient with yourself. Tools, timing, and note-taking methods are essential for tackling Great Books. They highlight the value of engaging with challenging texts and diverse perspectives for personal growth.

This week, Scott and Karl discuss Book I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle may seem like an intimidating figure that you can’t tap into, but this just isn’t true. As the author of the first book on ethics, Aristotle treats human behaviors like a science. If you believe in reason, if the world is a place you want to learn about and explore, what things must hinge on each other? Are things good because we aim at them or do we do things because they aim at the good? Aristotle asks readers to consider the highest good and how it can be achieved. In doing so, he devotes his first book to a preliminary account of happiness. But as Karl points out, you must first differentiate the English and Greek definitions of happiness. Happiness is not the correct word for what Aristotle is talking about but it's as close as we could get. "In English, happiness means a smile on your face, it is related to the word happen," Karl continues, "so you’re walking down the street and find $20 and you’re happy because something happened to you. But you didn’t make it happen." Aristotle uses the Greek word eudaimonia, meaning “good spirit” or flourishing. Unlike the English definition, Aristotle believes this is the only human good that is desirable for its own sake. According to Aristotle’s definition, happiness is action in accordance with virtue, not contentment. It's an activity, not a product.  Tune in to this week's episode and let us know your thoughts!

In this week's episode, Scott and Karl discuss an essay by Plutarch, “How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue.” As an eminent biographer and moralist, Plutarch is best known for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans arranged in tandem to illuminate their common vices and virtues. To Karl’s initial dismay, Plutarch’s essay is less about the metaphysical elements of virtue and more of a self-evaluation for the reader. Presuming you already want to be a good person, what are the signs you’re doing alright? How do you know your vices and follies are in abatement and that your virtues are in ascendancy? If you know all about virtue and you still don’t get any better, do you really know all about virtue? Plutarch is in opposition of the Stoics— he believes you can get better, even if it's hard to see progress. It just takes practice and habituation. Tune in to this week’s episode to find out what virtue looks like according to Plutarch and how to take real action towards becoming a more virtuous person.

Explore the lost tools of learning with Scott and Karl as they discuss Dorothy Sayers' paper, emphasizing the Trivium and the purpose of education. Dive into the importance of learning how to learn for personal growth and development. Challenge traditional teaching methods and explore the impact of media on society. Delve into the critical need for clear definitions in education, emphasizing the significance of precise language and effective learning strategies. Discover the essential role of memorization in building a solid educational foundation.

One year ago, Karl decided to give up his 20-year teaching career as a university professor of humanities and philosophy. Why did he make this decision? In Karl’s own words, “It was no longer rewarding for me or valuable to the students.” Towards the end of his teaching career, Karl started to notice a decline in his student’s ability to read and a general reluctance to share opinions. Scott and Karl dig into the dismal state of higher education today and the problem of chasing credentials. These days, Karl is helping people get strong in body and mind. He’s a barbell coach and an interlocutor here at Online Great Books. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear Karl’s full story! 

In this week’s episode, Scott and Karl pay homage to the recently deceased Harold Bloom, a great ally to our mission at Online Great Books. Once hailed the most notorious literary critic in America, Bloom was a professor of humanities at Yale and a fierce defender of canonicity.  His version of the canon, with Shakespeare reigning at its center, is far more extensive than the Adlerian version. Scott and Karl read Chapter 1 of Bloom’s The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. The two discuss what makes this book so controversial to begin with, the problems with postmodernism, and the aesthetic value of books. What is your goal in reading the canon? Do you read because it’s good for you or just because it’s good? According to Karl, your goal should be “to seek as hard a pleasure as you can.” Here at OGB, we welcome the simplicity in reading from the canon– it narrows down how you should be spending your time. We think Dr. Bloom would agree. If you are interested in starting your journey with the Great Books, use the discount OGBPODCAST to save 25% on enrollment at Online Great Books.

This week, Scott and Karl read Chapters 1-3 of Gabriel Marcel’s Man Against Mass Society. Mass society doesn’t just include people for Marcel, he also includes art, media, and technology. Marcel is concerned with human existence, or more specifically, with the quality of human life in relation to the transcendent.  Written in 1952, Marcel’s discussion of these topics is remarkably contemporary. He believes we are in danger of losing our humanity and certain “techniques of degradation” in modern systems are the root cause. Scott and Karl talk in length of these dangers and the problems that lie with giving in to a spirit of abstractions. For Marcel, the problem with abstraction lies in the ability to fascinate, its tendency to draw us into thinking that the abstraction itself is the reality in which we move and relate with one another.  In Karl’s own words, “if all you can get into your mind space is thin gruel, that’s all you can digest.” How can we avoid flat, diluted access to the transcendent that leaves us all with the same dull experience?  Tune in to this week's episode and let us know your thoughts! 

Thomas Hobbes is the type of writer you love to hate– but he’s also the guy you’d love to play cards with. Scott believes Hobbes’ Leviathan is one of the most fruitful books he has ever read. It’s a founding text of western thought filled with original ideas that are still relevant to contemporary politics.  In today’s episode, Scott and Karl dig into chapters 13-15 and 17. It's only 36 pages so make sure to read it before listening in! For Karl, Hobbes says things about human nature that he doesn’t want to be true. But that he’s not sure aren't true. Around the time “Leviathan” entered the English lexicon, Britain was engaged in a time of civil discord. The tooth and nail mentality of the time might explain Hobbes’s summary of man as “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” In order to improve these conditions, the duo considers what makes people want to live in a commonwealth. For Hobbes, it was 3 things: fear of death, the desire of commodious living, and hope of getting it. Hobbes then provides 19 laws of nature he derives from that. Tune in to the episode to hear Scott and Karl’s rendering of Hobbesian liberty. If you are interested in starting your journey with the Great Books, use the discount OGBPODCAST to save 25% on enrollment at Online Great Books.