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The ENTIRE Philosophy of Alexander the Great — Transcript

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0:00There is a moment recorded by the
0:02ancient historian Plutarch that tells
0:04you everything you need to know about
0:05Alexander the Great.
0:07>> [music]
0:07>> He was the most powerful man on Earth.
0:09He had just conquered Greece, unified
0:11[music] its warring city-states, and was
0:14days away from launching the greatest
0:15military campaign in human history.
0:18Every king, every general, every
0:19nobleman in the known world had come to
0:21[music] Corinth to pay their respects,
0:23and Alexander went to find a philosopher
0:26living in a clay pot.
0:27>> [music]
0:27>> His name was Diogenes, a man who owned
0:30nothing, who rejected money, status,
0:32comfort, [music] and power as illusions,
0:34as chains that most people mistake for
0:37freedom. [music]
0:37Diogenes was sunbathing when Alexander
0:40arrived surrounded by his generals and
0:42advisers, the full weight [music] of
0:44Macedonian royalty standing over him.
0:46Alexander asked, "Is there anything I
0:48can do for you?"
0:50>> [music]
0:50>> Diogenes squinted up at the most
0:52powerful man alive and said, "Yes,
0:55move.
0:56>> [music]
0:56>> You are blocking my sun."
0:59Alexander's companions laughed, but
1:01Alexander did not laugh.
1:04He stood there for a long moment,
1:06[music] silent.
1:07Then he said to the men beside him, "If
1:10I were not Alexander, I would wish to be
1:12Diogenes."
1:13>> [music]
1:13>> That line is not just a great quote. It
1:16is a window into the mind of a man torn
1:18between [music] two philosophies, two
1:20ways of being alive, and who spent his
1:22entire life caught between them. That
1:25[music] tension between conquest and
1:27contemplation, between limitless
1:29ambition and the desire to strip [music]
1:31everything down to what is real is the
1:33true philosophy of Alexander the Great.
1:36>> [music]
1:36>> And that is what we are going to explore
1:38today.
1:40Let us begin where Alexander began, not
1:42on a battlefield, [music]
1:44but in a classroom.
1:45In 343 BC, when Alexander was 13 years
1:50old, his father, Philip [music] II of
1:52Macedon, hired the greatest philosopher
1:55in the ancient world to be his son's
1:57[music] private tutor.
1:59That man was Aristotle.
2:01Not [music] Aristotle's student.
2:03Not a follower of Aristotle's school.
2:06Aristotle [music] himself.
2:08The man who had studied under Plato, who
2:10had gone on to reshape every field of
2:13human knowledge
2:14>> [music]
2:14>> from biology to ethics to political
2:16theory to logic.
2:19The place was called Mieza,
2:21>> [music]
2:21>> a quiet sanctuary outside the Macedonian
2:24capital with gardens and [music] shaded
2:26walkways. And there, for 3 years, the
2:30future conqueror of the known world sat
2:32[music] and listened. He studied
2:34philosophy and ethics. He studied
2:36rhetoric, literature,
2:38>> [music]
2:38>> medicine, and science. He read Homer
2:42obsessively, deeply, in a way that was
2:45not casual appreciation
2:47>> [music]
2:47>> but almost religious devotion. Aristotle
2:50gave Alexander two things that would
2:52define him forever.
2:54>> [music]
2:54>> The first was a framework for
2:56understanding the world.
2:58Aristotle believed in logos, in reason,
3:01in evidence, in the disciplined
3:03examination of reality.
3:05>> [music]
3:05>> He believed that a man's highest calling
3:07was the life of the mind, that virtue
3:10was not merely feeling [music] good but
3:12acting rightly through the sustained
3:14exercise of reason and will. He taught
3:17Alexander that excellence, what [music]
3:19the Greeks called arete, was not a gift
3:22but a practice, a daily choice, a habit
3:25worn into the bones. [music]
3:27The second thing Aristotle gave
3:29Alexander was more complicated and
3:31darker, [music]
3:32and Alexander would eventually reject
3:34it. Aristotle believed that Greeks were
3:36naturally superior to all other peoples,
3:39>> [music]
3:39>> that non-Greeks, Persians, Egyptians,
3:42Indians, were, in his words, barbarians
3:45[music] who existed closer to the level
3:47of animals than of civilized men.
3:50He urged [music] Alexander to treat
3:51Greeks as friends and relatives and to
3:54treat conquered [music] peoples as
3:55plants or beasts to be managed.
3:58The world in Aristotle's vision was
4:00divided,
4:01>> [music]
4:01>> Greek here, barbarian there, philosophy
4:04on one side, savagery on the other.
4:07Alexander [music]
4:08took everything Aristotle gave him
4:10and then over the course of [music] a
4:12decade of war and wonder, he looked at
4:14what he saw.
4:16The Persian nobleman who died with
4:18honor,
4:18>> [music]
4:18>> the Egyptian priests who carried
4:20thousands of years of wisdom, the Indian
4:23philosophers who debated him with
4:24[music] a sharpness that stunned his
4:26generals.
4:27And he began to think that his teacher
4:29was wrong.
4:30>> [music]
4:30>> That moment of rejection is one of the
4:32most philosophically significant acts of
4:35[music] the ancient world.
4:37To understand what Alexander believed,
4:39you first [music] have to understand
4:40what drove him. And what drove him was
4:43something the Greeks had a specific word
4:44[music] for,
4:46pathos.
4:48Pathos does not translate cleanly into
4:50English. It is sometimes rendered as
4:53longing or yearning or desire,
4:55but it is more than ordinary want.
4:58[music]
4:59Pathos is an ache for something you
5:01cannot fully name,
5:02a pull toward the horizon, a
5:04restlessness that does not go away when
5:07you eat or sleep [music]
5:08or win.
5:09Arrian, one of Alexander's ancient
5:11biographers, uses the word repeatedly to
5:13describe Alexander's motivations.
5:16And it is [music] always pointed
5:18outward, always toward what has not yet
5:20been reached.
5:22Where did this pathos come from?
5:24Part of it came from his mother.
5:26>> [music]
5:27>> Olympias was a woman of fierce and
5:29consuming intensity, a devotee of
5:31Dionysian mystery cults, [music] deeply
5:34connected to the idea of divine power
5:36and destiny. She told her son, and he
5:38believed it, that he was not merely the
5:40son of Philip, that he was descended
5:42[music] from the gods, from Achilles
5:44through her line, perhaps from Zeus
5:46himself.
5:47>> [music]
5:48>> This was not unusual mythology for the
5:50time,
5:51but Olympias told it to Alexander
5:53[music] with a conviction that lodged in
5:54him permanently.
5:56He grew up believing that his life had a
5:58shape [music] beyond the ordinary,
6:00that he was meant for something vast.
6:03Part of the pathos also [music] came
6:05from Homer.
6:06From the age of 13, under Aristotle's
6:09guidance, [music] Alexander read the
6:10Iliad not as legend but as a handbook
6:13for living. And at the center of the
6:15Iliad stands Achilles, the warrior who
6:18chooses a short, glorious [music] life
6:19over a long, forgotten one.
6:22Achilles knows he will die young. He
6:24knows it from the beginning. And he
6:26chooses it
6:27>> [music]
6:27>> because for Achilles to live without
6:28glory is not to live at all. Life
6:31without the stamp of greatness upon it
6:33[music] is simply waiting to die.
6:35Alexander made the same calculation. He
6:37slept with a copy of the Iliad under his
6:39pillow, alongside a dagger, as [music]
6:42if he needed both at all times, the
6:44weapon and the dream.
6:47When he [music] crossed into Asia at 22
6:49years old, the first thing he did was
6:50visit Troy. He ran to the tomb of
6:52Achilles, laid a wreath on it,
6:55>> [music]
6:55>> and is reported to have said that
6:57Achilles was fortunate to have had Homer
6:59to sing of his greatness. [music]
7:01The grief in that moment is real.
7:03Alexander, even at his moment of
7:05triumph, [music] was already thinking
7:07about whether anyone would remember him
7:09properly.
7:10>> [music]
7:11>> This is the first pillar of Alexander's
7:12philosophy.
7:14Glory is not vanity.
7:16Glory is the only thing that survives
7:18death. It is [music] the only form of
7:20immortality available to a mortal man.
7:23And if that is true, then a life without
7:25the pursuit [music] of excellence,
7:27without the willingness to risk
7:29everything, to push past every boundary,
7:31[music]
7:31is a kind of slow death.
7:34He believed this completely. It is why
7:36he fought at the front of every battle,
7:38>> [music]
7:38>> why he refused to be safe when his men
7:40were not safe, why he crossed deserts
7:43that others said could not be crossed.
7:45This was not recklessness, [music]
7:46this was philosophy in action. But here
7:49is where it gets complicated and
7:51interesting. [music]
7:52Alexander did not simply want to
7:54conquer, he wanted to understand. He
7:57brought scientists, botanists, [music]
7:59zoologists, and philosophers with him on
8:01his campaigns. He sent specimens back to
8:04Aristotle. He held philosophical debates
8:07in his tent [music] at night across the
8:09fires of his camp with scholars he
8:11collected from every civilization he
8:12moved [music] through. He was reported
8:14by ancient sources to have wept at the
8:17death of a Persian queen with genuine
8:19grief and to have shown sincere respect
8:21for the religious traditions of peoples
8:23his [music] own teacher had called
8:25subhuman.
8:27When he entered Egypt, [music] he did
8:28not plunder the temples. He made
8:30sacrifices to Egyptian gods. He traveled
8:33across hundreds of miles of desert to
8:35reach [music] the Oracle of Siwa, an act
8:37that served no strategic military
8:39purpose whatsoever, because he needed to
8:41know something about who he was.
8:43>> [music]
8:43>> The Oracle at Siwa greeted him as the
8:45son of Ammon, the Egyptian god equated
8:48with Zeus. Alexander chose [music] to
8:50believe it, or more precisely, he chose
8:53to inhabit it. The belief that he was
8:55[music] son of a god was not delusion,
8:57it was a philosophical position that
8:59certain men, [music] by the scale of
9:01their deeds, by the force of their will,
9:03by the depth of their vision, rise to
9:06something [music] that ordinary
9:07categories cannot contain.
9:09When he pressed into Persia and
9:11shattered the empire of Darius,
9:13>> [music]
9:13>> he did something that stunned his
9:15Macedonian generals. He began adopting
9:17Persian court customs. He wore Persian
9:20[music] robes. He encouraged his
9:22officers to marry Persian women. He
9:24recruited Persian soldiers and officers
9:26into his army at the highest levels.
9:27[music]
9:28He executed his own general Philotas for
9:31conspiracy,
9:32but he also executed Macedonians who
9:34threatened the stability of his new
9:36mixed court. His Macedonian veterans
9:39were furious. [music]
9:40They had not marched from Europe to
9:41become Persians. They wanted to go home.
9:45Alexander's [music] reply, recorded at
9:47Opis in 324 BC, just 1 year before his
9:52death, is [music] one of the most
9:53remarkable speeches in ancient history.
9:56He reminded them that Philip had found
9:58them wearing animal skins,
9:59>> [music]
10:00>> that everything they had, their wealth,
10:02their power, their place in the world,
10:05came from following [music] him.
10:07And then he said something that cut
10:08through the room. He called all of them,
10:11Macedonians [music] and Persians alike,
10:13his kinsmen.
10:15This is the second pillar of Alexander's
10:17philosophy,
10:18>> [music]
10:19>> and it is the one that most directly
10:21broke with Aristotle.
10:23The world is [music] not divided between
10:25Greeks and barbarians. Every
10:27civilization carries something [music]
10:29worth knowing.
10:31Every people contains human beings who
10:33are capable of honor, wisdom, loyalty,
10:35[music]
10:35and courage.
10:37The idea of homonoia, of concord, of
10:40harmony between peoples, was not simply
10:43a political [music] strategy for
10:44Alexander.
10:46It was a genuine philosophical vision of
10:48what the world [music] could become. He
10:50did not succeed. He did not live long
10:53enough. And serious historians debate
10:55whether his motives were ever purely
10:57[music] as noble as the vision suggests.
11:00Power, pragmatism, and the need to
11:02administer an enormous empire all
11:04[music] shaped his decisions.
11:07But the impulse was real.
11:09The question he was asking was real.
11:11[music]
11:12What if the boundaries we inherit are
11:14not the truth of things?
11:15>> [music]
11:16>> Now we come to the hardest part of
11:17Alexander's philosophy, the part that
11:20cracks it open. He was not [music] a
11:22peaceful man. He was not a sage. He
11:24raised Thebes to the ground as an
11:26example to the Greeks.
11:28He burned Persepolis, [music] perhaps in
11:30a moment of drunken rage, perhaps as a
11:33calculated act of vengeance for the
11:35Persian [music] destruction of Athens,
11:37probably both.
11:39He killed his friend Cleitus in a rage
11:41[music] at a dinner party with a spear
11:44and then collapsed in grief so profound
11:46that his men had to forcibly [music]
11:47stop him from taking his own life.
11:50He drank too much. He demanded [music]
11:52divine honors from the Greeks, a step
11:54too far philosophically [music] for men
11:57steeped in the tradition that humility
11:59before the gods was among the highest
12:01virtues.
12:02In his final years as Hephaestion, the
12:05man who may have been his closest friend
12:07[music] died from illness. Alexander's
12:09grief became something alarming. He
12:11spent [music] days lying on the body. He
12:13ordered entire provinces to observe
12:15mourning. He executed the doctor who had
12:18failed to save him. This is not the
12:20[music] behavior of a philosopher king
12:21at peace with his philosophy. This is a
12:24man in whom the philosophical vision and
12:26the human being were at constant war
12:28with each other. And here is what I
12:30think is most true about Alexander
12:31[music] and most worth saying. He was
12:34not a finished philosophy. He was a
12:36philosophy in motion. The greatness,
12:38[music] the violence, the vision, the
12:39grief, the longing, the pride,
12:42these were not contradictions [music] to
12:43be resolved. They were the texture of a
12:46man trying at extraordinary scale to
12:48work out what it means [music] to be a
12:49human being. He wanted glory. He also
12:52wanted knowledge. He wanted unity
12:54between peoples. He also wielded the
12:56most brutal military machine of his age
12:58[music] to force it. He admired
13:00Diogenes, the man who wanted nothing and
13:03yet he could not stop wanting. He
13:05admired Achilles, the man who chose
13:07[music] death over obscurity. And yet
13:09when Hephaestion died, he seemed to
13:11discover that nothing he had won could
13:13protect him from the grief of ordinary
13:15human love.
13:17Perhaps that is the most honest summary
13:19of his philosophy. [music]
13:20Alexander believed that a human being
13:22has a duty to press against [music]
13:24every limit, the limit of geography, of
13:27knowledge, of cultural [music]
13:29prejudice, of physical courage, of what
13:32others say is possible. [music]
13:34He believed that the highest form of
13:36life was one lived at full extension,
13:39with nothing [music] held back and
13:40nothing unconquered. He believed this so
13:43completely that he pursued it to the
13:45absolute end and died at 32 years old in
13:48Babylon, having never once stopped
13:49moving.
13:50>> [music]
13:51>> When he was asked on his deathbed who
13:52should inherit his empire, he is said to
13:55have answered "The strongest." Or
13:56perhaps the worthiest. The manuscripts
13:59disagree, and maybe that is fitting,
14:01>> [music]
14:01>> because Alexander never fully resolved
14:03the question of what worthiness means.
14:06Is [music] it strength? Is it wisdom?
14:09Is it the willingness to conquer?
14:11Or the willingness [music] to release?
14:13Is it the man with the army, or the man
14:15sitting in the sun? If I were not
14:17Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.
14:20>> [music]
14:20>> He never stopped being Alexander, and I
14:23suspect he knew, even as he said it,
14:25that [music] he never could.
14:28What remains?
14:29The world after Alexander was not the
14:31world before him.
14:33The Greek language became the common
14:34tongue [music] of the entire
14:35Mediterranean and Near East.
14:38Alexandria in Egypt became the
14:40intellectual center of the ancient
14:42world, its library, its school of
14:44philosophy, its [music] fusion of Greek,
14:46Egyptian, Jewish, and Persian thought.
14:50The Hellenistic age that followed
14:51Alexander's death [music] was messy,
14:53violent, fragmented.
14:56But it was also the era in which
14:57Stoicism emerged,
14:59>> [music]
14:59>> in which Epicureanism took shape, in
15:02which the great synthesis of Eastern and
15:04Western thought [music] began to form.
15:07That synthesis eventually fed into Roman
15:09philosophy, [music]
15:10early Christian theology, and the
15:12foundations of the modern world.
15:15None of it would have happened without
15:17Alexander's pathos,
15:19without his refusal to stop at the
15:20[music] edge of what was known.
15:23Without his belief, flawed, impure,
15:25sometimes brutal, but genuine,
15:28that human civilization was not a fixed
15:30thing, but something that could be
15:31stretched toward [music] a shape that no
15:33one had yet imagined.
15:35He did not achieve homonoia. He did not
15:38become a god. [music]
15:39He did not build an empire that lasted.
15:42But he asked [music] the questions. He
15:44pushed the boundaries. He stood at the
15:46edge of the known world and looked
15:48outward [music] and kept going.
15:50And 2 and 1/2 thousand years later, we
15:52are still talking about him. That is its
15:54own kind of immortality.
15:56That, perhaps, is what he was after all
15:58along.

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