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PHIL 181 - Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature

Lecture 05 - The Well-Ordered Soul: Happiness and Harmony. Professor Gendler begins with a poll of the class about whether students have elected to take a voluntary no-Internet pledge, and distributes stickers to help students who have made the pledge stick to their resolve. She then moves to the substantive part of the lecture, where she introduces Plato's analogy between the city-state and the soul and articulates Plato's response to Glaucon's challenge: justice is a kind of health - the well-ordered working of each of the parts of the individual - and thus is intrinsically valuable. This theme is explored further via psychological research on the 'progress principle' and 'hedonic treadmill,' as well as in an introduction to Aristotle's argument that reflection and reasoning are the function of humanity and thus the highest good. (from oyc.yale.edu)

Lecture 05 - The Well-Ordered Soul: Happiness and Harmony

Time Lecture Chapters
[00:00:00] 1. Internet Poll and Self-regulation
[00:05:57] 2. Plato's Response to Glaucon's Challenge
[00:28:57] 3. Jonathan Haidt's Two Principles of Happiness
[00:34:54] 4. Aristotle on Happiness and Teleology

References
Lecture 5 - The Well-Ordered Soul: Happiness and Harmony
Instructor: Professor Tamar Gendler. Resources: Reading Guide 5 [PDF]; Directed Exercise 2 [PDF]; Credit List [PDF]. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov].

Go to the Course Home or watch other lectures:

Lecture 01 - Introduction
Lecture 02 - The Ring of Gyges: Morality and Hypocrisy
Lecture 03 - Parts of the Soul I
Lecture 04 - Parts of the Soul II
Lecture 05 - The Well-Ordered Soul: Happiness and Harmony
Lecture 06 - The Disordered Soul: Themis and PTSD
Lecture 07 - Flourishing and Attachment
Lecture 08 - Flourishing and Detachment
Lecture 09 - Virtue and Habit I
Lecture 10 - Virtue and Habit II
Lecture 11 - Weakness of the Will and Procrastination
Lecture 12 - Utilitarianism and its Critiques
Lecture 13 - Deontology
Lecture 14 - The Trolley Problem
Lecture 15 - Empirically-informed Responses
Lecture 16 - Philosophical Puzzles
Lecture 17 - Punishment I
Lecture 18 - Punishment II
Lecture 19 - Contract & Commonwealth: Thomas Hobbes
Lecture 20 - The Prisoner's Dilemma
Lecture 21 - Equality
Lecture 22 - Equality II
Lecture 23 - Social Structures
Lecture 24 - Censorship
Lecture 25 - Tying up Loose Ends
Lecture 26 - Concluding Lecture