 Today we discuss Seneca's on the shortness of life and instead of having an old man berate you about how short life actually is and as you all find out once you reach the dreaded age that I have, instead of doing that, I thought what we would do is go around the room and have you identify a passage that stood out to you that you would like to comment on or ask a question about. This is one of the essays that I start underlining and then the whole thing gets underlined or it's like you shouldn't you should have underlined the parts that you don't want to emphasize because there's so much in there that seems relevant and good and you would say ink that way but I'm sure you noticed some of this outstanding rhetoric and so forth and so I'd like to hear your thoughts about it including thoughts about what does any of this have to do with stoicism and what is what is the virtue at stake in any of this or is this even an issue of virtue? I see a lot of virtue in vice talk but what is once again I'm like in the case with mercy seem to be dealing with some subject it doesn't look like a standard stoic topic doesn't look like the name of the stoic emotion doesn't look like the name of the stoic virtue or vice all we care about is emotions virtue and vice is stoic so what is this doing here? So how don't we start randomly with you Bronson and we'll just go around the room this way you give us a passage and make a 30 second or a minute long comment. Okay so in section 14 on page 155 I thought it was interesting that we highlighted all of the various philosophical schools that we've been talking about and it seems to me that he almost said at least if you're thinking philosophically you are living your life as you should be despite the fact that life is short you're not wasting it looking into the future looking to the past you're discussing philosophical arguments and even if you're discussing the wrong schools it seems that you're at least still doing something correct does that seem to be a good interpretation? Well of course you picked my favorite passage because it says you're only really living if not only you do philosophy but specifically history and philosophy so it turns out that only those people doing ancient philosophy are really living life correctly so I don't know if you're just pandering to the relevant audience here but yes this one has got lots of red ink on it for me and it's a good observation to make that he's very inclusive here if we wish by the greatness of mind pass beyond the narrow confines of human weakness there is a great track of time to wander through we may hold argument with Socrates, field doubt with carnades, find tranquility with Epicurus, conquer human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Senex, Senex and then he goes on later in section 14 the ones you should regard as devoting time to the true duties of life for those who wish to have as their intimate friends every day Zeno that's a Stoic that's the founder of the Stoic school Pythagoras, Democrates neither of those are Stoics those are pre-Socratic philosophers and all other high priests of good learning Aristotle and Theophrastus two more non-Stoic philosophers so this is a very ecumenical statement very open not a partisan Stoic thing and so we've seen that tendency in him before almost a tendency towards what Michael Alvarez was was calling eclectic philosophy on the basis of that book that we read and the point is that basically the only way to not feel like life is short is to dwell on things that have happened over long and great stretches of time and to dwell on those things of how to do with the mind and so on so that's that's a very good one I don't think I have anything else to say about that but that's a good one to mention all right next so on section two on the tranquillator the mind pages 117 sort of goes like this passage where he sort of speaks against like the the habits of like more well off roads to go off and sort of like take tours through the rest of Italy to kind of escape from like their problems at the moment and like when I was reading this like I don't know if you kind of like jumped out to me like this isn't particularly philosophically inclined but was travel like a particularly common pastime for Romans or just like you know ancient people of the era to like participate in and if so like did the stones have anything in particular against travel I know that there have speaking on how exile away from one's homeland isn't necessarily a bad thing but like is there ever any mention about how you know there's sort of things now travel being good for you and spanning your horizon yes well I think I think I mean yes there is this stuff about exile and if even exile isn't bad how would travel be bad exile is forced travel so I think we can pretty much infer it's not a bad thing per se but what he's saying here is that it's not the cure for anxiety that people think it is so you think if I was just if I just went on vacation and I was just at that spot in Hawaii that they're showing on the TV commercial or something then I would be feeling tranquil and the problem is that wherever you go you're still there he says you can't you can't as it were travel away from your own soul so if you have an anxious soul then what you do is end up sitting on the beach kind of anxious in Waikiki or you have to and and so travel does not immediately relieve anxiety even vacation so we're all I'm sure thinking oh it's just a couple of weeks and then I will be tranquil right school will be out and it'll be summer break that's nice to think now and what you'll find is you're equally anxious then once it helps maybe it'll be because of social anxiety maybe it'll be because of anxiety about how you look when you go to the beach anxiety about the fact that you can't go to the beach and actually have to take summer classes or even worse than that you can't take summer classes that you need to take because you have to work and you have to drive to work and all of that's very stressful and so forth so the changing our location does not change the cause of a lack of tranquility okay yes why are you slow to action if you don't seize the date slips away when you seize it it will slip still slip away answering must compete with times quickness and the speed which you use it you must get from a fascinating point that will not always blow essentially for me this means that people perceive life as moving slowly in the present but as you like look back you see it like moving that like rapidly for example it's weird for me very slowly but like look yeah seems very quick now yeah it seems very quick now so essentially like trying to like understand that it doesn't rapidly just look at it just like trying to perceive it slowly does not like make you more efficient so I try to take things day by day and doing things in the moment rather than may have me a pass by as most clothing even taking it day by day it still flows by quickly though you're saying or the only take it day by day then it won't go by as quickly yes actually when I'm trying to say is I try to like put lit up in the moment so like you can complete as much as you can rather than like thinking about what could have been okay so that's a nice thought we hear a lot about that mindfulness and everything the strange thing is here he seems to be saying even even trying to do that doesn't work that's what you quoted even though you've seized it it will still run away and so in speed of using it you must master match the switch swiftness of time and drink quickly as though from a whirling torrent that is not always going to flow yes so he's saying the opposite of what you're saying I think like what I was trying to say is like trying to like the doubt to what I'm trying to like contradict that you're not adapting it you're contradicting it you're saying no if we if we have a mindful live in the moment then time will appear to slow down and go more slowly okay so that's about the contradicts with the bit that you read I mean which is fine you might think that that might be true but it's all to say that and then quote a text that says the opposite of it but it's an interesting point and I really like what you said about think about it think about the flow of the time over the school year so when it started in the beginning seemed like it was going very slow in the days were long and filled with lots of different activities and meeting new people and now at the end of the year it seems to be rushing by so quickly there's that you don't have time to do anything about it you can also do that with the calendar year at the beginning in January everything seemed seemed fine and there's lots of time and everything's before you by the time it gets to December everything you've been planning to do that hasn't happened and you're running late for your Christmas shopping and you haven't seen the relatives that you want to do and everything and you run out of time in fact you take any arbitrary length of time and do that and you will see that from the beginning of it time appears psychologically to be moving more slowly and towards the end to be moving more quickly and so of course that applies to life life in the beginning seemed like everything being before you it's going very slow and there's lots you can do in fact you can do anything you put your mind to and so forth and then you reach this elderly decrepit state and it looks like it's moving so fast that it's rushing by and you can't do anything with it it's going too quick to be able to act so one thing he says is that recognize that that structure that it has that that you will always feel like that for any arbitrary length of time for the entirety of life and face that take that into account it means you have to actually try to do more if you're going to be having the same amount of time not less okay so that's that's a tough one that's that's that's a difficult one and the exact advice one should take from that it's not clear because he then goes on to say and whatever you do don't become too busy like do more do lots of stuff but if you're busy you're dead life super busy men is very short he says okay so it's not it's not clear how to make use of that but as a psychological fact about time perception that is absolutely true yeah if death is just an indifferent does it really matter if your life seems short if you're busy if you're busy maybe you have a better chance of actually acquiring virtue then it would seem irrelevant that it's short well that's the question about what this is is it is it supposed to be a virtue if life seems long yes isn't since life itself isn't indifferent which is another way of putting the point that death isn't is an indifferent then length of life can't possibly be a good but yet perception of life being short he thinks is bad and produces emotional anxiety so what is it that causes the perception that life is short and let's figure what out what is what's doing that and then attack that problem okay and so I won't just answer that question I think I know what he says that is but we can let's go on to get some more texts on on board here so my this has seven on the short list of life around section 7 page 146 where he talks about how nothing can be done properly reductively can be done properly when someone is busy with many things and he has that not liberal arts especially yes it seems like that's what liberal arts education is it's like you cover a lot of things most of education is covering a lot of subjects and so I think it's interesting that if you were to apply that to like what we do today I'll be specialized school but kind of a warm rod that he seems you would have been critical of it and it's just later in the passage that most people spend an entire lifetime learning how to live and the entire time learning how to die and it seems that for the most part until now they don't really have given that or especially like allocated time just to that learning how to do those activities right okay so first of all yes I love the point about one liberal arts are not possible without leisure and in fact no activity is possible without having time to do it and the people that are good at things are the people that had time and spent the time to become good at it period nobody's born good at anything but especially liberal arts that just is a matter of putting time into it and it's really poignant what he said it's right no activity can be properly undertaken by a man who's busy with many things not eloquence and not the liberal arts since the mind stretched in different directions takes nothing takes in nothing at depth that spits out everything that has been so to speak crammed into it perfect perfect motto for finals right cram all this information and spit it out on a final exam and then it's just gone it's worthless it hasn't um one hasn't learned anything by approaching it that way that's why we have final exam in here why do I everything's built onto long ranging research you've been doing over 10 weeks you need time in order to do liberal arts now and much darker is the second thing second why you called attention to and you didn't quote exactly what he says yes one must spend an entire lifetime in learning how to live and which may surprise you more yet to spend an entire lifetime in learning how to die so you're quite right that people don't actually spend a lifetime learning how to live most people don't give any don't spend any time thinking about it I just too busy trying to survive basically so if they're not even figuring out how they're gonna live then what they really aren't doing is figuring out how to die which is why everybody has all these problems of death things it's a bad thing things that's the worst thing cries at funerals you know in Seneca's mind we should be having parties at funerals that's that's great that suffering is over that person is going to deal with the anxiety and misery of this crazy stupid world anymore and we should and we admire those people who know how to die and do it do it the right way you know don't go kicking and screaming from it but also there's some people that even turn dying into this kind of art form where they actually make something of their death like soccer these days but it's a dark it's a dark dark saying I think but another good one so let's let's move on to another one now so the part I'm interested in is section 15 and it says that what philosophy has made sense I'm so glad you said that I actually wrote false with three exclamation marks in my book for that reason that is true time can lay waste to philosophy and has to 99 percent of ancient philosophy the works that were written by Greeks have not survived and as you point out even Seneca's okay we could interpret it to mean oh well the great points of philosophy you know Hegel has this crazy dog and it says any philosophy that disappeared it had to because it was it must have been worth all the good stuff actually makes it it actually keeps getting better and better until it leads to hateful but and so that's false that's wrong the loss of the works of democrat is a little mental loss of most of the confusion this works loss of all this early Buddhist up time does do great damage so thanks for you guys are you guys are choosing some of the some of the best ones here so what about you coincidentally I picked the next section after here which is section 16 on the shortness of life and I like the quote but those who forget the past ignore the present and fear for the future have a life that's very brief and filled with anxiety when they come to face death the wretches understand too late that for such a long time they visit themselves and do nothing and I think that that's it you know kind of going off like people said earlier what he said about the shortness of life is that many people are just trying to survive and they may not look they may not think about the past or the present or even what's going to happen but they're just trying to survive and then they come so unexpectedly to death because they've taken no time to think back right and this relates to his claim that life divides into three parts the part you've already lived the part right now and the part in the future the part you're living right now is so short and vanishing that some people think it doesn't even exist at all and it's constantly going into the past the bit that's in the past cannot be changed and is already immune to fortune and so forth and the part this future we don't is totally not in our control and we shouldn't have any expectation about and yet it's possible to basically ignore all these parts forget the past ignore what's happening in the present and then just dwell on the future with anxiety and fear and those people never actually live according to his concept of life it reminds me of a quote my dad always says about like our dogs a great great a cowardly dog dies many times a brave dog but once so that almost sounds like a cynic and your father should you know start writing these thoughts down very philosophical because he doesn't say that vicious people live short lives and virtuous people are like immortal and never died basically and in fact that's the answer to the question of what is it that makes life seem short it's vice it's the fact that when we look back on what we've done in the past we're not proud of it but we think it's not been very good and we look at the present and we realize we're not very good right now so we look at the future and we're afraid that we're not gonna get any better but if it would be possible to look back on your life and think think no I've done these things this has been excellent I've had these accomplishments and I've helped these people and you can reflect on virtues that you would be comfortable with who you are in the present and you would feel fine either about not having a future if you were gonna die or about whatever might happen to you and so it's actually that's how it relates to stoicism is that virtue and vice in his view is what makes life seem fast or short okay so you're next my favorite passage is in the beginning section one of on the short list of life at the end of section so it's been you do not receive a life that is short but rather than we make it so you're not beggars in it but spend it just as great and pricey wealth when it falls into the hands of a radical spawner in a moment well what wealth that is by no means great it becomes a property of a guardian grown but grows my youths so our span of life has ample measure for one who manages it properly I thought it was a beautiful transition from the tranquility of one which is the seeding chapter and it really embodies the stoic mindset of being flexible and accepting what it is and being able to make out of it what is virtuous or what people are what lets people be wise and so it can be it can be taken as a very positive thing or a very intentional way of living because it's up to us whether life is short or not that is whether it seems okay now what does it mean he says we do not receive a life that is short but rather we make it so we're not beggars in it but spend groups what is spend with me I think it is what I the sense that I get in it is that it's parallel to the moderation aspect of wealth that was introduced in the previous chapter where you don't want too much of because losing money is really a problem if you have money then you're gonna lose it and that creates problems for you versus also that if you're hearing poverty then that is also very difficult so you don't want to be on the other side in the same sense that's nice to relate it related to his views on wealth because he's comparing time and money but what does it mean to say we're not beggars in it but spend thrifts to spend life means to that you are able to choose who you put in it what you do with it okay anybody else have a different interpretation what he's saying here I feel like he's saying it's not that we don't have a lot of life and that we're begging for it and trying to get as much as we can but that we have it and we're just choosing to spend it very we're being really cheap with it and we're not taking advantage of it is that what you're doing from it yes or that or that we're wasting it yeah we're we're spending it without thinking about it we're like drunken sailors with our time we're not we're just we we're we're not bet we we think oh god life is so short that we're begging to have more we've got plenty of it and we're just wasting it all over the place beggars aren't people that have a bunch of life and a bunch of money and we're just spending it all over town but that's like what we are with our time and then we perceive ourselves to be not having much of it and it's exactly the opposite okay we're squandering it like somebody that inherited a bunch of money and just wasted it okay so that is it that's a good one too and it does connect with tranquility of the mind and this is the invention of this idea of time is money but like money time is therefore and indifferent and how much actual time we have is not what matters but our approach to and use and really the condition of our soul when when we have it when we live somebody raise their hand yeah so the shortness is just a like almost false judgment of what our life is in a sense we don't have a short life we just ways what we have yes so life quoting from the beginning of section 2 life is long if only you know how to use it okay so the point of on the shortness of life don't get confused by the title it's not on the fact that life is short it's on the confusion of thinking life is short thinking life is short is a view not fitting for a wise person to hold and he actually takes Aristotle to task for having and other people to task for saying that it's short it's not short we we wasted that same saying it's short is like a rich person having blown all of their money gambling saying there's not enough money in this world okay so what about you shine section 18 from all the shortness of life now you have now given sufficient proof of your virtue by laboring without respite for all to see that's what it can do in your leisure the greater part certainly the better part of your life has been given to your country take some time for yourself as well I do not call you to a repose that is idle or inactive or to drown all your personal energy asleep in pleasures that delight the crowd that is not rest you will discover the release of your retirement tasks to keep you busy that outweigh those that you pursue with such energy before now I think that this basically just means like keep an accounting of what you've contributed in your life obviously if you've been paying attention to what you've been doing in your life at all you would know like what you've done right what you haven't done right and obviously all of these struggles that you've overcome but once you reach your retirement age whatever that is you should just take some time to contribute to things that matter to you personally rather than to everyone else yes so a very concrete piece of advice and I'm sure you're not really looking forward to retirement yet since you don't even have a job right but okay do you know who he's saying that to yeah and what do you know anything about him not beyond what was in the text right he's he's he's a knight he's this kind of bureaucrat and he's in charge of grain distribution in Rome so in other words he's had a very very stressful job he decides who goes hungry who does it basically by distributing grain and so he's constantly dealing with people coming to him saying we need more and dealing with finite resources and trying to distribute them and he's saying yes you've had this stressful career doing all of this stuff and don't think you have to keep going on doing it retire and do something do something else good but that's because he has already done a lot of good with it so that he can look back on that and reflect on this virtuous action not forget the past not ignore the future and not dread or fear but it does not ignore the present and not dread or fear the future all right what's next really section three kind of the whole thing but it's not how I serve parts it really like stuck out to me said no one is found no one is found to be willing to buy up his own money but when it comes to life each of us gives others a share in it and how many others and then he goes on to say think of how much your time was taken by a creditor or by vicious by client how much you're arguing and then he kind of contrasts that with how much time have you spent yourself when your face was kept a normal expression when your mind is to come to fear and the first part is really highlighting like our value systems and kind of stove idea of treating external things as good in themselves and he's highlighting why that's a problem and when you treat money as a good in itself or even others opinions or whatever you you allowed to take away from your own goodness in your own time and then comparing you know our day to when he says how much you spent arguing or punishing slaves versus how much have you spent with yourself like how much of our day is spent doing all these frivolous things that don't actually help us in any way and how much time we actually spend like benefiting ourselves and I kind of heard the first part to this thing I read a while ago he's like imagine this if you had eight eighty six thousand four hundred dollars in your account if someone stole ten dollars would give you upset throw away the remaining money it's like no you would keep the rest of your money it's like the same thing we have eighty six thousand four hundred seconds in each day but you know someone says one thing to us takes ten seconds or a day and we let the rest of our day be ruined by a lot of someone's but you know our time it's like it's completely a lot so this was some other writer or something you were reading about that was making this time money and now yeah interesting no no but but you see it comes from this that's interesting I mean I've been a magazine or something and that is directly a descendant of this work okay and this I and this comparison the problem with time is money comparison is that we don't is that yes it's very intuitive but we don't actually treat it like that because we care about our money and we check our accounts and exactly how much we have we take a we account by the scent of what it is but do we could do we account for the seconds of our life or even the minutes or even the hours and so he says when it comes to the matter of wasting time right men are tight fisted in keeping control of their finances but when it comes to the matter of wasting time they're positively extravagant in the one area where there's honor and being miserly right so it would make sense if you're like sorry I don't have time to devote to this or that and everybody should easily be able to understand that but we won't and so we'll just give away our time somebody asks us for a dime on the street we're like oh no I can't possibly afford to give you a quarter but somebody wants to stop you on the street and you know talk about you know banning abortion or something I got all day to waste in this conversation I also really said you fear everything is more desired to have everything is God's yeah where is that that's that's really it's closer to the end of section three yes so it's on the top of 143 you fear everything is mortals but desire to have everything is gone I feel like what he's kind of saying there's like our fears make us small so we try to forget about them and like not really pay attention and focus so much on our desires because we feel infinite in our desires like they grant so much power but forgetting your fear in that aspect allows you to forget your time and how important it is and how much you shouldn't be spending like he gives another example where he talks about people putting off what they want to do in life and so they retire he's like you should be doing that now like you don't even know right right right yes this is the problem with the look looking forward to retirement right whatever you don't do that because then you won't live in the present but then encourage anyone you can to retire as soon as possible okay so we've only got 11 minutes left so well I'm gonna have to shut my mouth and let's go let's go more quickly through calling our attention to some of these passages I like was on page 147 near the end of section 7 there is therefore no ground we're thinking that because of his white hair or wrinkles someone has lived too long he has not lived a long time but existed a long time I think kind of sizing with what you said about that life if it's long is a virtue in and of itself because it's on happy like the answer is no because you might be old and age but that doesn't necessarily mean your wife right and so had a long life in the sense of having a lot of making it work a while yes so once again a nice a nice rhetorical use of paradox there don't interpret my white hair and wrinkles as meaning I've lived a long time I may have wasted all of my all of my time okay good one thing that helped for me really understand the idea of facialism but it wants to show that's good comparison between two texts and they got to the good life by William Irvine which is an advocate I've been reading that speaks about in their advocacy for facialism no I want to text from on the shortlist I was going to go compared to on tranquility section 14 okay let's go to that first okay so on section 14 he says called obstinacy on which fortune I can steal something in the scary anxious and rich and inferiority is much more troublesome since never keeps itself under control both conditions are hostile to tranquility not being able to change anything and not being able to endure anything I would make that comparison to change anything reflecting kind of the view on fatalism which is explained in the guide to the good life as the past and endure anything as with regards to the present because here they say in the advocacy for fatalism then the states who advise us to be fatalistic not with respect to the future but with respects to the past and the present so it helped me make that connection between understanding that often thinking about the past and the present and how we are unable to change this is something that we prevent us from reaching the trample state of being like that's like the modern interpretation. Say that again. Say that last part again. Thinking about the past and the present drawing on the past and the present is something as something that we can't change often prevents us from beating that tranquil life as like stipulated by a more modern transcription of. Okay so that and that's the opposite of what Seneca says right? Yes. Because once again it feels like you're giving advice that goes opposite of what he says which is that we should dwell on the past because it is outside of the scope of fortune and it's already secured. But Seneca describes them as both conditions as hostile to tranquility not being able to change anything and not being able to enjoy anything. So if you dwell on them then you are, you are like. Where's the part that says if you dwell on them then you are. That's my interpretation. Right so your interpretation is there for the opposite you're contradicting what he's saying right? No I'm saying that quite. His view is that we ought to dwell on the past because it has escaped from fortune. We dwell on the past and reflect on the ancient philosophers and on our past virtuous activities and by doing that we escape the feeling that life is short. Oh I was saying by doing that we all we are unable to reach a state of being tranquil because if you think about things that you cannot change in the current moment which you cannot change which is the present we can't be in a state of being. Fine I just wanted to make sure you were aware that's not, you're not embodying his view you're contradicting it. Oh yeah okay okay, in that sense yes. Alright Michael. Mine's in section 13 and it's like so he goes on about all the ways to, it would be a lengthy business to mention all the different people who spent their lives engaged in all these times, or wasted time and stuff, but then he like fully goes in and or sorry he like talks about how to be foolish to acquire to the number of things like, or the number of warsmen he was used at, and like, you know, like he's talking about useless facts or something like that, but then he goes and like displays all of this information that he has acquired about things that he's kind of, I don't know if that was pretty good. Yes that one, that's in 13? Yes. Of the long short as well. Oh yes right. Sorry right okay, yes that's kind of a touchy subject because you know when you do ancient philosophy you can look into things like how many ores Ulysses have, so here he rails against scholarship, really detailed scholarship and here the kind of scholar and kind of philosopher Seneca is really comes out, he's not a detail, not like precipice kind of level of detail, he's more into providing all these details. I think that's funny because it gives us this view of scholarship then was very similar to what it is now, and we think it's a waste of time, so I agree with that. Okay, what about you? I made a connection between section 14 on the short list of life and the book I wrote for my scholar assignment which was Adonis, I said it helped, and Adonis' commentary of really some meditations, you know it's how really asked the question when he's talked about difference between is it promise or happens, and he goes on like which one is right, which one doesn't matter, but then Adonis' commentary that really isn't trying to improve one over the other. In the end he eventually said like oh what matters is that we're just trying to pursue wisdom and find out what is right. And so I think I like how it's a similar theme between Seneca and I realized that it doesn't matter in the end you know which philosophy is the best or the other, what matters is that we're pursuing a wisdom and I think that lines with still philosophy. Well I look forward to what you say about that when Marcus Aurelius and we'll read some of where he says that it's either God or just Adam or it's Providence or just material bits flying around. That might be a bit too hard and fast of a distinction and it seems to be saying it's one interpretation of it which it sounds like Ado and you reject is that he's saying it's Epicureanism or Stoicism. It's either atoms and material bits flying around at random or there's a God who's providentially organized the whole cosmos. That's one way to interpret what he's saying there and then we know which side he thinks we should choose, right? So we'll have to get clearer on that or I'll have to find you to hear about that interpretation. So what I thought was interesting is kind of going up with Michael said is putting chapter right after section 13 about going against all detail oriented studies and then going straight into talking about just study philosophy and history of philosophy in general. Because it sounds like a lot of the topics in philosophy especially if you want to get like true wisdom like he wants you to, you kind of have to go into some detail oriented work and maybe even reject some. Well here's a way that perhaps we're supposed to square that. Go into detail about ancient philosophy but don't go into detail about Homer and how many boards. So don't do, drop this literature major and pick up a philosophy major basically. But also there is no fact of the matter about how many boards Odysseus had. There's a fictional story about a fictional person. It's a ridiculous thing to do. But if you were to look into what Socrates thought about how you should think about virtue, that you should go into as much detail and you're right. That takes total absorption in doing it. So this might be one of these hard work, I mean there's a, it's not, and so I disagree actually with how Michael put it. It's not just he's attacking scholarship and then he's telling you to pursue scholarship. When he's talking about doing philosophy here, he isn't talking about doing scholarship. This isn't like academic philosophy like what professors here do, what you know Monty Johnson does. It's kind of like being a philosopher, right? Someone like Socrates. And it's not just confused about, just because a lot of people including my colleagues use the name, call themselves philosophers and say what they're doing is philosophy. He's not talking about that.