96 - Dominic O'Meara on Neoplatonism

Glad you are enjoying the series and this episode, which I in this case can agree was fantastic without sounding immodest! Obviously I can't speak for Prof O'Meara but in my own view, the distinction he made makes sense because at least in more-or-less liberal theories of justice/political philosophy, philosophers nowadays tend (I think) to operate with as thin as possible a conception of the human good. This is because they want to leave it open that different people will have different preferences, and should be allowed to make up their own minds about what would make them "happy". Indeed happiness in this newer tradition is often perceived as consisting in desire satisfaction, where desires may differ widely from person to person. The veil of ignorance/original position idea in Rawls is a good example: we should design a society without having any robust views about what our own values will be once we are in that society (e.g. we don't know whether we will turn out to be, say, religious, any more than we know whether we will turn out to be poor, a member of a minority, etc.). This is very much in contrast to the ancient tradition which begins with a very "thick" concept of the good and assumes that the right political arrangement would be one that leads everyone in the society towards that good.