okay so today we we will finish the Greeks um by discussing Aristotle and a lot of what I will say today um will be controversial okay so um feel free to challenge me feel free to ask for clarification feel free to um ask any questions okay so um here's my argument Aristotle is a paradox he is one of the mysterious figures in world history he's one of the most famous but he's one of the most most mysterious he's a paradox for three reasons okay the first reason is he is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers in human history he's next to Plato he's certainly um as influential as Plato but what is unique about him is we do not have anything originally written by him okay we have no text that we believe was personally written by him and that's unique in human history okay we say Shakespeare was a great writer and we can prove it or show it by reading his text We Believe Aristotle is a great thinker a great writer but we have no evidence no text to show us this is the case we but we believe so okay so this is the first paradox of Aristotle second Paradox of Aristotle is he was a very prolific writer and thinker in fact we believe he um there's about 200 Works attributed to Aristotle what is unique about his work is the range of his thinking and his research so he's written uh a book on politics right what is the best political system he's written a book on uh Poetics theater basically what makes for a good tragedy he's written uh a book on ethics what is a good life what makes a good person he's written a book on rhetoric how do you convince the audience that you are correct he's also written books on physics he's written books on metaphysics he's written books on on biology okay it's the range is just incredible we have no analog in human history like him okay he's completely unique in the range of his uh curiosity okay second Paradox the third Paradox is most problematic okay we know that Aristotle studied under Plato for 20 years and so we also believe that AR AO was Plato's uh most famous student the Paradox is Aristotle Aristotle's understanding of the universe is radically opposed to Plato's understanding of the universe okay and that's again is unique in human history you would think the best student would carry on the Master's work or at least build on it right but Aristotle his understanding of the universe is in conflict with Plato's work in fact you could also argue that Aristotle is negating Plato's worldview okay so let me explain how so we know Plato we know that for Plato there is a God and it's called the form of the good and the form of the good is what is Eternal perfect and immutable okay now the form of good emanates um other Perfections okay what he calls the form of the ideal okay so these are Concepts like justice and beauty and reason and then these Concepts manifest themselves in um forms like horse right or a woman okay and these are like the ideal perfect immutable Eternal um manifestations okay so there's only one horse it's up in heaven everything else is a copy of this horse or imitation of this horse okay so we live in the shadow realm okay the shadow realm where everything is imitation okay this is our reality it's a shadow reality and that's why art and poetry and theater are so bad because they are really an imitation of an imitation okay so this is um Plato's hierarchy so from this hierarchy and this worldview we can make certain extrapolations okay the first extrapolation is for Plato what is good is if you approach or return to the form of the good what is evil what is bad is if you move away from the form of the good okay right so poetry is evil um mathematics is good okay now why is mathematics good because mathematics is what allows you to approach the form of the good all right so let me give you an example of this okay let's see there's a circle right now what PL argues is no matter how hard you try you could never ever draw a circle in this world okay because a circle has an edge so it's like literally impossible for you to create something without an edge right you're like well I can draw on the computer but if you go at a microscopic level you will always find an edge okay so how do you create a circle well you create a circle by imagine it in your head okay so by what you're really doing is you're Imagining the circle because you're accessing the realm of the forms you're approaching from the good okay so it's only pure it is only through a process of pure thought pure philosophy pure mathematics that you can actually um start to understand this world all right that's Plato's understanding of the world ER arle has a completely different understanding okay so arle starts with this the God is a prime mover so the prime mover just imagine a big bag right something explodes boom it moves and it forces other things to move as well so what Aristotle is saying is everything is really in motion okay everything is change because it was all caused by the prime mover and in Plato and sorry in Aristotle's world what is good is if the thing that changes moves towards its purpose okay or the word he uses is called TS TS okay if you're moving towards your purpose you are doing good in this world if you're moving away from your purpose you're doing bad in this world okay so the example is a soldier the purpose of a soldier is to fight and win Wars so if you go fight and you do your best you're doing good but if you run away from a war you're doing bad okay so um this is Aristotle's worldview and as as you can understand as you can see these two worldviews cannot harmonize they are in conflict with each other you're have either one or the other okay so let me highlight the three major differences between these two worldviews okay and again um I I need to emphasize this I am not an expert on Aristotle I'm not an expert on Plato okay so I am committing oversimplifications Scholars who are experts will hear this and be outraged okay but for the purpose of this class I feel these oversimplifications uh provide Clarity okay all right so the first over simpli ification is PL is what we call irrationalist um is what we call an emperis all right so these are two big words um but the rationalist is just someone who believes that you can access the truth through pure thought okay mathematics and empiricist is someone who believes you can only access the truth for observation and what we call induction okay inductive logic all right so if I see a woman wearing a dress and I see another woman wearing a dress and a third I'm like okay well from this I can um logically deduce or induce that all women wear dresses and that's what separates women from men okay so um for Aristotle to seek the truth you have to observe and you have to uh induce okay so that's the first major difference second major difference is Plato is what we called dualist and Aros is what called materialist a dualist is someone who believes that there's a body and a soul okay and if you believe there's a body and a soul you also believe the soul is more important because the soul is eternal whereas the body will Decay and die um Aristotle he's materialist so for him the focus is on the body and what happens to the body okay there may be a soul uh there may not be a soul he doesn't really care for him it doesn't really matter what matters is what happens to the body Okay the third major difference is Plato believes in the idea of immutability okay or what we call eternity um for Aristotle um almost nothing is immutable most things are mutable okay the only that's really IM mutable is really God but everything else is mutable it will change over time and so for Aristotle the concept is infinity okay things will always change things will always move there's no stopping movement okay but for Plato things are Eternal there's there's a grand design and nothing that changes really matters it doesn't really affect the Grand Design so for him it's eternity okay so these are the three major differences between Plato and Aristotle now what's really interesting for us is this conflict between PL and Aristotle is what will inform the philosophical debate for all Western Civilization okay so there are two major camps in Western philosophy there is the rationalist camp all right so people like decart and then there are the emperis okay so people like David Hume all right and for most of Western history um philosophers will go back and for between these two uh extremes okay either plat platonic ideal or theal reality okay does that make sense all right is this clear any questions sure go ahead y IM yeah so that's a great question and for Plato okay all what we like our lives the reality we live in is not real it's Emeral whereas the form the good that's what's concrete that's what's Eternal okay so I mean like I I understand that's counterintuitive to us but the reason why it's counterintuitive to to to us is because we're mainly influenced by Aristotle right we live we we are materialists right science is materialistic uh but back then and and I I would say um back then in Plato's time and for most of human history it was assumed um that our world was transitory or transient or ephemeral okay and it was a spirit world okay that was real and that was eternal okay does that make sense okay okay again this is oversimplification okay like if you go to a scol who understands itself I will probably he'll probably criticize me okay but I I'm saying that for the purpose of this class and for our understanding of Western Civilization this will do okay just understand there's a major conflict between C and Aristotle this will go on for thousands of years this will inform uh the debate in western civilization okay this is the fundamental debate in Western philosophy right so let's go back to Let's summarize where we are um Aristotle is a paradox right we have nothing that he wrote originally uh the range of his work is just incredible it's Unique in human history and then lastly even though we know Aristotle under Plato for like 20 years at least um arot came up with a very different conceptualization of the universe in fact it is in direct conflict with Plato's understanding okay so how is this possible how are these Paradox how can we resolve these paradoxes okay so um I'm going to make an argument and I will slowly make this argument but it is a controversial argument okay my argument is that Aristotle was not a philosopher he was not a thinker he was not a writer what he was ultimately is is what I refer to as a sensor sensor you can also use words like sympathizer okay or editor or systemizer okay but basically um nothing that he thought was original to him but he decided what would be political convenient for the moment okay that's what we mean by sensor and it's my argument that if we understand a as a sensor then these three paradoxes go away we can explain away these paradoxes all right so let me make my argument okay my first my first piece of evidence is um we need to compare contrast the life of phac Mason and Aristotle when you do that okay when you put their Liv side by side interesting parallels emerge okay so let's look at their lives very simple Aristotle he was born in year 384 Philip II was born year 383 that's about the same age right now Phil the second he's a prince of Mason his father is the King right Aristotle his father was the court physician to the king he was the king's personal doctor right so from these two pieces of information what can we guess about Philip and ariso they go up together right does that make sense aros's father was the personal doctor of the King Philip was the son of the king it would make sense they grew up together it would make sense they would be educated together all right second thing that's interesting is from 367 to 3 348 okay Aristotle went to Athens to study in Plato now around the same time okay in the year 369 to 365 Philip went to thieves to study military Innovation under the best jours in Greece all right and here I would extrapolate and say the their teenagers they're going to further their education right and learn the best scientific and Military innovation in order to bring back to Macedon and this happens all the time right in the 1980s China sent its best and brightest to America to study science okay so we can also surmise that even while they were away they were still in contact with each other all right now in 359 Philip became Regent or basically King and from then on he started this massive military campaign to conquer all of Greece now one thing that was interesting about Phil's conquest of Greece was the Athenians didn't really oppose him okay and this is one of the great Mysteries historians struggle with why is it that Philip II he's going around he's conquering all these um places that are um in conflict with Athens and Athens doesn't really resist all right and one possible theory is well Philip II just bribe all these Athenian Aristocrats in fact um the man who most opposed philli um this Athenian Statesman named deanes he actually said this in speeches he said listen uh um I'm telling you right now Philip tried to bribe me okay and I know Philip is bribing all my opponents but I'm telling you Athenians Philip is a menace to democracy and that's why we must oppose him all right so we can surmise that Philip was bribing these Athenians to support him and that's why there's so little Athenian resistance to Philip if that's the case then who's the middleman who's the person who's in contact with these Athenian Aristocrats Aristotle right why because remember Aristotle was at the Academy for 20 years the academy in Athens at that time is like Harvard Oxford today right it's where all the rich and Powerful go to study so for 20 years Aristotle was in contact and became friends with the most powerful individuals in Athens and that's why when Philip need to negotiate with Athenians it would make the most sense to say to send Aristotle okay does that make sense and then we know that um Philip United Greece in 338 and then 335 three years later um Aristotle started a new school in Athens in competition Academy called the the lysium okay so what is the purpose of the lysia okay so um that's what I will discuss next but but does does that make sense there are direct parallels between the lives of Aristotle and Philip and we can guess or extrap um or deduce that a St and Philip were very close through throughout their lives and helping and they were helping each other okay does that make sense okay so now the question then is why was Philip going around conquering all of Greece well Philip had a vision for the world and it's called something called we call the pan helenic project okay so panh helenic project okay so um at this time and throughout most of its history Greece was divided into city states all around the world okay mainly in Main in Greece but also across the asan in Asia Minor in Asia Minor Anatolia okay um across all these different islands and into North Africa and across um the Adriatic also into um Italy as well okay so you have this sprawling Greek world and there were many who believe that this Greek World should unite together because there's a common ancestry all right so it's a dream of many philosophers that a great man of History would arise and unite all of Greece by basically defeating Persia and Philip second said hey that's a great idea and it should be me okay but the problem is is the Panic project um assumes a common Greek identity and it didn't really exist at that time in fact Greeks probably had more common with their local cultures than with each other right so if you were a Greek living in Asia Minor you were probably more Persian than you were Greek okay so in other words Philip needed someone a sensor basically to create a Greek identity right and the way you do that is by taking all this vast Universe of knowledge that the Greeks created right and you create an encyclopedia or a series of textbooks that Define what it means to be Greek right you standardize and you systemize Greek knowledge does that make sense and so that's probably what aristot was doing when he started the uh Lum he had lots of students okay yeah so throughout history all Congress did this okay because that was the only because by standardizing and systemizing knowledge was the um best way for you to Coop the leite the elite and to Showcase your your legitimacy okay otherwise intellectual Elite would think of you as a barbarian conqueror all right and the the way the best way that you uh coopt the intellectual Elite is by um showcasing uh uh a new systematic knowledge okay does that make sense all right so um the problem is that in 336 um Philip was assassinated and his son Alexander came came to a throne came to the throne and as we discussed last class Alexander had a very different vision from his father his father want want to unite the Greek World alexand wanted to conquer the entire world to show he was Superior to his father okay and unbelievably incredibly he was able to do so conquer most of the world in about 10 years time so now suddenly you have have this sprawling Empire all around the world okay so let's let's let's just sketch out how vast this new Empire was okay so you have you know Greece and massalon right okay so that's the Greek Homeland thank you that's the Greek Homeland right but hey over here you have Anatolia uh this is mess tenia over here is um Afghanistan oh sorry sorry it's it should be Iran sorry Iran Afghanistan and you also reach as far as Pakistan okay and down here you have the lvat and you have Egypt all right this was not supposed to happen philli and the Panic project in Imagine like their Conquest would extend up to up around here okay your United Greek World Alexander went too far and now you're you've conquered most of the Known World okay then Alexander died and then the empire was divided into three major fragments over here you have something called the ingate Empire okay the ingate dynasty okay so that's one piece of the Empire down here you have t okay Tomy was one of Alexander's generals and he took over Egypt and over here you have something call the cusd Empire founded of course by the general uh sucas okay and over here you have other smaller kingdoms as well so you have this vast Empire and this is something that was unplanned and unexpected now that you've conquered these places your concern or your problem is how do we govern okay so you need a new culture and so these different generals adopted different strategies so for example um here um the Persian culture is extremely well established and the soloed uh King and his hearers decided a process of localization okay or another word you can use is synchronization synchonization okay meaning two different religions or two different cultures come together and coales together okay so uh throughout the saluan Empire it was really a process of synchronization um the Greeks adapted themselves to local customs and to local culture okay at the same time the Greeks were conquerors so they still need to maintain a coherent identity okay so it made sense for them to adopt a lot of Aristotle's work because remember Aristotle was creating a the a panh helenic identity and so he he basically created a lot of textbooks he basically um created an encyclopedia so it made sense for them to import um Aristotle's works also it's important is remember aristot was Macedonian and for the longest time Greeks did not considered macedonians to be Greek okay this is why it's called the panh helenic project not not like the pan Greek project also Greeks um were very condescending towards macedonians because they saw macedonians as barbarians so it was in the best interest of these new ason conquerors to exaggerate or to highlight the intellectual contributions of Aristotle okay does that make sense right um colomy Egypt was very different okay Egyptian culture has been around for thousands of years and Egyptians are very proud of their culture and this is a problem because you're very proud of your local culture you don't like foreign rulers and this is something that the Persian Empire struggled with throughout the um centuries that it dominated Egypt okay um the Persians were famous for their openness and tolerance basically you were allowed to practice your own religion and they're very supportive of that okay um the most famous example are the Jews right who uh the Persians supported in rebuilding the second temple we we'll get to the Jews later on um but because the Persians were so supportive of local culture in Egypt the Egyptians rebelled against Persia many many times so Tommy and his hearers didn't want to make the same mistake okay they wanted to impose a new culture on the Egyptians in order to show that they were Superior and therefore more Divine than Egyptians okay so T me he did many things that start this process the first thing that he did was he stole aer's body from Babylon where he died and brought it back to Egypt okay because Egyptians saw exander as a God as a son of a God right so to establish legitimacy in Egypt Tomy went on a mil military Expedition and stole the body of Alexander which started something called um the war of the diai okay basically the successor Wars that's the first thing he did so thing that he did was he established a new capital in Alexandria called Alexandria okay so this was um mainly a Greek city it was a new Greek city founded by Alexander and that this is where they house Alexander's body the third thing that he did was he started to to sponsor something call we call the uh today the musion okay the Mion um is the root of the of the English word m Museum but the museon was really the world's first research University so Tommy and his heers brought together the greatest Greek scholars in the world to basically continue the work of Aristotle to standardize and systemize Greek culture so that they can impose it on the local Egyptian culture okay doesn't make sense right and uh the most famous um aspect of the Mion is the Library of Alexandria and the Tony spent a lot of money on the Library of Alexandria mainly by going around and collecting original manuscripts all right so um a representative went to Athens and said we at the library of exandria would like the original copies the original manuscripts for Isis sopes and yides the three great playwrights and the Athenians are like we can't do that because they're like Gods here okay we're not going to give you original manuscripts and the Egyptians said um what we're going to do is we're going to take these manuscripts back to the Library of Alexandria where our scribes will copy them out okay oh that's all we're going to do and then we'll give it back to you and as as a guarantee we're going to give you like 15 talents of silver okay and that's like that's like a billion dollars back then the athans have never seen so so much money so Athenians will say well okay well if it's just to spread great culture we can actually deal with that okay so we'll take the deposit 15 talents we'll give you the manuscripts the Egyptians took the manuscripts placed it in in the Library of Alexandria and said hey Athenians keep the money okay because the Egyptians under Tommy were focused on turning the Library of Alexandria and Alexandria into the intellectual capital of the Greek world all right and so what happened was that after alander died and his generals took over the Panic project really became what we call the panh helenistic project okay it went from uniting the Greek world into spreading Greek culture all around the world and that's why we have Greek culture still with us today okay because of this process so let's go back to the original Paradox all right why there are three paradoxes right the first Paradox is why do we have nothing original from from Aristotle the answer is because Aristotle didn't write anything original he stole everything from other thinkers and students um copied out in manuscript form okay does that make sense second is why is his uh why are his works so diverse why is the range so great the answer is because he was trying to capture the essence of Greek knowledge okay you're trying to unify Greek knowledge into an an encyclopedia for discimination around the world Okay the third thing is okay most interesting thing is why is Aristotle's philosophy so different from Plato's worldview okay that's that's that's a really interesting question why why are they so different so let's switch our perspective and ask ourselves if you were a king of mascon if you're Philip Alexander what's your problem with Plato's philosophy you have a problem what is it any guesses your exander your phow you really hate ploh why why well the problem with Plato is you go to Plato you're exam you go play says I want to conquer the world right Plato would say what's the point it's all not real Alexander you're just wasting your time you can conquer the world but all you're doing is conquer a shadow what whe is the form of the good right ask Ender study mathematics man okay do more math stop going around and killing people do more math right and we know what Alexander would do here right Alexander would probably cut off Plato's head so a Phil hate this thing right this thing is idiotic I want to talk the world but this philosophy is telling me it's pointless what matters is mathematics what matters is philosophy all right now let's now compare um this with Aristotle's moover Theory right what is saying is everything is motion and what is good is if you fulfill your purpose right now if you're Alexander Phillip this makes more sense I'm Phillip my purpose is to unite the Greek world and the more I unite the more good I'm doing for this world right also if you're a king you want your citizens your soldiers your workers to work hard right well for Plato working hard is just useless you're imitating an imitation right when you when you create art but here working hard is what gives you purpose what it's what gives you happiness okay so Aristotle also um promoted two major Concepts the first is er second is udonia okay irate is just Excellence okay your Xander has ER he is an excellent General when you have ER and you are achieving your purpose then you achieve udonia okay which is just flourishing or happiness and that's the purpose of life to have ER and to achieve yonia so work hard okay fight for alander support him as he conquers the world because he's making the world better does that make sense I'm a soldier purp to am I not okay that's a great question yeah thanks Doug okay all right so um the question then is if I'm a soldier and I'm and I'm you know working hard and winning battles am I not approaching from the good and the answer is for Plato it's not the reason why is what do you do in this material world is pointless okay because this material world it's not not real so whatever you do is not real does that make sense okay so what you need to do is return to the form of the good but your body can't do that your soul can do that so your use of the body is pointless you have to use your soul you have to use your mind all right therefore you have to be a good person therefore you have to engage in philosophy and Mathematics and that's how you return to the form of the good you're Ed to the body um it it's just you're just in a you're just deluding yourself okay right and if you engage in art then you are deluding others and that's more evil if you're exander you're conquering others and forcing them to believe your fake philosophy then you're committing the most evil in the world does that make sense all right all right so um yeah all right so this this is what I this is my theory of how to best resolve the three paradoxes of paradoxes of aristot okay does that make sense he was basically a censor who is working for Philip and and Alexander and he was trying to develop a panh helenistic identity in order to unite the world they conquered okay so that's my argument any any questions about this overall argument does it make sense to you guys okay got a few questions go ahead yeah thank you right go ahead that's a great question yeah okay all right so um how do we know he didn't write any of his works okay the answer is this um when you write something you actually um manifesting your thought right your thought comes from your personality so if you look at any work of Genius it's original and unique okay does that make sense in other words if you read Shakespeare guess what there's no other Shakespeare in the world if you're trying to imitate shakespare you look like an idiot okay Homer is unique Plato is unique this there there's no point in trying to imitate them you can't do it because you are not themb okay now when you look at Aristotle there's a unique about Aristotle so um you know when you read Plato the Republic there are certain ideas that stand out like um Al go the cave okay there's certain phrases that capture your imagination that doesn't exist with Aristotle's text okay they're really like textbooks so the argument for the longest time was um Aristotle did write his own books but they were lost to us and his students had to reassemble his thinking from their own memory okay um so so so yeah that's how we know but but this is generally agreed upon we have nothing that Aristotle wrote originally okay that's right is that yeah okay so thank you uh Doug okay yeah so um there are many different possibilities of how air AO can become so influential okay the first possibility is as as I as I argue he was actually a partner of Phillips that they were both uh trying to promote the pan helenic project okay that's the first possibility but another possibility is as Doug says um he was just a philosopher he was a student of of of Plato he was very smart um and he was a very good teacher and after Alexander and his General conquered the world they needed like a symbol of Macedonian cultural superiority and they just decid upon Aristotle because it was most convenient right so that's another possibility okay that's right right y yep exactly so so yeah so it is entirely possible that Aristotle um was a materialist because that was just his personality right the influence from his father who was a physician okay but but that creates another problem which is if you are so opposed to Plato's understanding the world right because you're a materialist and he's a dualist why were you studying under Plato for 20 years does that does that make sense I so so so so so that creates another problem all right so another thing I I want I want to point out is okay H how we have aerosus works today there are three different possibilities okay the first POS possibility is that Aristotle in his lifetime he organized his students and created this encyclopedia okay it's no different from philos from professors at University toate right professors um who are scientists they actually do very little of the original research they have the students do it but they ones who supervise the entire process okay so it's possible uh that's a first possibility Aristotle was supervising uh the work of creating a Greek identity the second possibility is after aoto died his students started to um remember recall his lectures and that's why so much of his work is fragmentary okay we don't have complete manuscripts and the third possibility okay and it's entirely possible is Aristotle is a fiction created by Scholars at the library of of exandria okay so it's really the scholars at the Library of Alexandria who created Aristotle and they did so by synthesizing all this work and then they they gave it to they accredited it to attributed to Aristotle in order to create the legend of this philosopher okay does that make sense okay so so so so so so let's have an argument about confus let's have discuss about confuses okay but I want to very quickly talk about the Greek Legacy because even though uh we can argue back and forth about Aristotle and his Providence what is not debatable is the profound influence that Aristotle had on the world okay we can argue if Aristotle's if or Aristotle was um the original writer or the original thinker well what is not debatable is the tremendous influence he had on the entire world okay so there three aspects of the Greek Legacy I want to discuss the first aspect is um the Greeks created a new way of Being Human all right so let's look at the major thinkers you have Homer you have the playwrights Isis sopes and Ides and you have the philosophers like Plato and Aristotle all right so the Greeks created a new way of Being Human what do I mean by that Homer was an Oral B okay he would get up in front of audiences and he would for hours recite this beautiful poetry about the Tran War the ilad okay and in the process listen to Homer created empathy and Imagination right because the point of um listening to Homer was to enter Homer's world and become Achilles or adicus and through this process you became a different person and therefore you learn empathy but you also expanded your imagination okay so that's what that's what Homer did for the Greeks then you have ises sopes and yides and what they did that was different is rather than sing directly at the audience they had the characters face each other in a dialogue in a debate okay and by doing this what happens is you create the capacity for perspective and inner debate right because before you were part of the uh story now you have to step back and judge the story okay you there's a debate going on you have to switch perspectives in order to understand the characters and this creates the capacity for an in monologue okay an in debate in you and then you have Plato and Aristotle what Plato did that was unique was he took all the dialogue in the play and he transported onto the page but now you're read it by yourself and you have the benefit of time okay and so this creates a capacity for reason and reflection okay you can sort of reason out if the words make sense to you you're no longer influenced by the crowd or the emotions of the actor you can just look at the words themselves and judge them on their own Merit you also have the capacity now to reflect meaning you can go back to the words over and over the course of your lifetime to constantly reflect on their meaning and logic okay you understand so when you add these three things together Homer create the capacity for empathy and Imagination the playright create the capacity for inner debate and perspective the philosophers create the capacity for reason and reflection you now have a new human mind okay and when you study all all of them this is what we call ultimately a liberal arts education all right and guess what our greatest thinkers came to us through the liberal arts all right so in the future we'll study people like Kant Hume hego okay just the greatest thinkers of the past 20 years they all what was common about them is they all read the Greeks and now it's just their education all right so so this is the first Legacy of the Greeks a new way of being and seeing okay does that make sense second thing is now that you have this Greek World okay the Greeks need to establish a cohesive cultural identity and they had they they did that by promoting a Greek education okay but not only that but they had to bring in local people into this education so one major function of the Library of Alexandria was to standardize and systemize Greek knowledge and they did this by um standardizing the text okay so there are different different text of Homer the the the text of Homer that we have today was developed by the people at the library of exandria okay standardization they also uh did something called commentaries so commentaries are basically like teacher handbooks okay they they teach you how to teach this stuff and they created like footnotes and chapters and page numbers Cotes indexes okay so um the point was to make Greek education available and accessible to anyone all right and what this means is we in China now can actually read Homer uh issist and Plato for ourselves even though we are not culturally Greek and and that's the benefit of the panh helenistic project all right and the third major benefit is Greek knowledge meant a global revolution in Innovation okay what what I mean by that is remember Greek knowledge is being spread all around the world and then they're interacting with powerful local cultures and through the process of synchronization new forms of knowledge are being created okay so the Greeks uh spread the knowledge to India and now it's interacting with local Indian philosophy and religion including new ideas right so the most famous synchronization is um the Levant Greek knowledge was being spread to the Jews okay and so when you put the Greeks in the Jews together you have a new idea that would forever revolutionize human history and it's called Christianity right so Christianity would not have been possible if it were not for um the work of Aristotle okay right so those are the three major Legacies of the Greeks and so it is um I think it's perfectly fair to say the Greeks were the most influential and consequential civilization of all time they're certainly the most creative no no other civilization even comes close to their creativity right okay so that's it any questions okay so um okay so we are finished with the Greeks next class we start a new unit on Rome Roman history all right so um great