Welcome to intro to AP computer science for new AP teachers. This video is about arrays So let's go ahead and take a look at what we're gonna learn here today The topics what is an array again? Hopefully I assume you know this, but it's always good to review We'll look at how to create an array in Java, especially for those of you coming from other languages You might not be familiar with the way Java does things talk about accessing and modifying array elements And it's done by index Next topic is a rage reversal. This is to me. This is one of the key core fundamental concepts in Java in at least in the AP it comes up in multiple choice questions It comes up in the free response questions So it's a really important topic I talk about it throughout the course If you've seen the other videos talked about it in the loops section talked about strings This is our first kind of real collection String is kind of a pseudo collection in a way, but this case. It's an actual collection of values a collection of objects Look a little bit at enhanced for loops, but we won't talk about those until Probably until later. I think Actually, we did talk about it here And then algorithms some just different types of algorithms as soon as should probably be familiar with certain things They should be able to do using a raise and a rage reversal and a little bit of an introductory exercise to help you visualize this Process so what is an array? An array is an ordered data structure. The key here is ordered Arrays in Java hold one type of data. They can be primitive types or they could be reference type meaning objects and You know if you're coming from Python, for example, you know lists are kind of similar to a raise You can put an integer you can put You can put a string but you could mix you can put a raise You can do anything you want with a Java list or see a Python list, but job is a little bit stricter about that sort of thing Arrays are fixed in size. So once you've created the size of an array So this array has 10 elements. It always has 10 elements. You can't add elements You can't remove elements now you can set if it's a reference type You can set it to null, but there's still 10 places in memory reserved for that array But what is nice is it is randomly accessible through an index So you if you want to access element one or element 10 million it doesn't matter you can access it just as quickly It's one of the strengths of arrays So creating an array. So you'll see this pattern type Square brackets name equals new type and then the number of elements also in square brackets So for example int square brackets scores equals new int 7 so that this tells you this that there are seven elements In this case each element is an integer and the default value would be zero so As a reminder just like with strings the first element has an index of zero and the last element is index Six so it's zero one two three four five and six which gives us seven elements in total As I mentioned the default value for an array of integers is zero So if you try to print out this this the values you would see all zeros at this point Now we can also create arrays that are pre populated with values So for example string brackets weekdays equals We have Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday. So you can see here. There are five elements The indexes are zero one two three and four So in this case, you know, we know up front what the values were going to be and we set now We could change as if we wanted to you know, let's say you want to change the language or whatever But this is a way of pre-populating if we know the values in advance So accessing and modifying array elements So to access and modify an array element, you need the index as I mentioned zero through It's gonna be length minus one. So you would if you're accessing you see say the value equals name Square brackets index if you're modifying its name index equals whatever that new value is that you want it to have Now I use value here, but it could also be an object I just chose value because typically with arrays a lot of times you'll see, you know Intoders and doubles and that sort of thing. But yeah, you also can use reference types Array traversal now, this is super-duper important. This is what I talked about earlier in the strings unit and with the loops Especially is this is that pattern I talk about with my students all the time it comes up in the free response questions It comes up basically everywhere So we've created an array and same thing seven elements So for int I equals zero, so I in this case represents the index That is the I didn't come from that it comes from an older programming language where I was an integer and So you might see you'll see IJK used a lot of times So we're starting at zero because indices start at zero While I is less than scores dot length now notice It's the array name dot length. There are no parentheses here. Okay with strings. It was length parentheses But with arrays, it's length. Wait, wait, wait to a rail list because they do their own thing and then we Increment I plus plus So here's that pattern. So here's our for loop. Then we pull out each individual score So the first score equals scores I Then we do something with that score Okay, so this is that standard pattern that I I've talked about before in these videos And I really emphasize with the students because they have a lot of trouble with this and keeping consistent is important Another thing I really emphasize with the students is this is an array So I asked them to make sure the name of their arrays are plural Because it's a group and then when we pull one item out, it's singular. So score scores name names A person you can do persons or people So student students it just keeps a certain level of consistency It helps especially for ESL students who I have quite a few because I teach it in international school This is this is a really helpful thing to keep that consistency We can do the exact same thing with a while loop. Although typically we use for loops You can use a while loop But I really just kind of go with for loops. I'm just more comfortable with them And I think they suit this this pattern a bit more Naturally, so same thing our Our counter here our index is I equals zero The condition is I is less than scores that length. No parentheses And in here, it's the same pattern We pull out one score at a time and we do something with it and then we increment you forget that you get stuck in infinite loop Go back a little bit. We can also do what's called an enhanced for loop I talked about this earlier in the one of the earlier units But this is the first case where you can really use it without Having to do something special, you know the previous case. We had to use the two car array Method so the four the enhanced for loop was pretty cool So what it does is it skips that step where you have indices and pulling out the individual item It just does it for you so for If you think about this it's sometimes called a for each loop So for each score in the arrays score Then we do something with it. So we print it now We would use this when we're definitely starting at the first element and going all the way to the end If we wanted to go from the end to the beginning, we couldn't do that We'd have to use a radar for loop or a while loop But those are different ways we can traverse your race with a for loop a while loop or for each loop or enhanced for loop as they're called in Java there are a number of standard algorithms. The students should be familiar with so these are things that might come up on the AP exam either in a mobile choice type question or in a free response question The students should be comfortable finding maximum and minimum values From an array. So how do we find that value? It should be comfortable computing sums and computing averages So this goes back to the loops basically the loop unit has a little bit of this as well Determining if at least one element meets a certain criteria So you have a group of students is is there at least one senior in that group? How could how would you determine that? Determining if all elements meet a certain criteria. So you have a group of students Are they all seniors or are they not all seniors? How do we do that? Also Counting this is a big one. We did this earlier with counting vowels in one of the earlier videos or at least in my book We do that Determine the number of elements that meet a criteria So, you know, how many students are seniors how many students are juniors how many students are sophomores, etc, etc Shifting array elements left or right. That's an interesting exercise And if the students can understand that and they have a really solid grasp for the most part on looping and iterating and all that sort of thing That requires use of a temporary value because otherwise you lose one of the values And then reversing the order of the elements definitely make sure the students know how to do that in place And also be careful with reference types because that can have some issues with that So and this does I have seen this on the AP exam at least AP Previous AP exams have had this so make sure to just know how to You know work through that and make sure that they can trace the code for that particular one Interaction exercise again arrays are not a hard concept especially after doing Strings is basically analogous to a string except instead of just each character of the string We have an object or value primitive So what I do is usually just write a set of boxes on the board and then just ask the students to for some values Just random numbers and then I give the students two slips of paper and I ask them write down one access So system out print LN and whatever, you know, those values are you know, it could be a RR AR 5 AR 3 and then one modifier AR 6 or you know equals You know, whatever value and then we take those just randomly pull them out And then right either right on the board or put them on to the screen somehow if you have a projector and then just work through it Okay, so what you know, how do we change the values of that array based on these particular? Commands and I'll throw a couple in there, too Where I'll do like array 3 equals array 4 just kind of see if they can get the idea Okay, well we can copy values from one box to another box. It's pretty cool So yeah, you'll find that that way they get an idea of how that system works and it's a little bit visual a bit more active Yeah, I like getting the students up and writing stuff on the board and that sort of thing So yeah, so we looked at what is an array how to create an array. There's two different ways And it created basically an array with default values or pre-populated array Saw how to access and modify the array elements Array traversal with for loops and while loops array traversal with enhanced for loops Some of the standard algorithms that students should be comfortable with and hopefully a little introductory exercise to get you started So good luck with that See you soon


Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Aaron Powell and I'm joined today by my colleagues Jason Kuznicki and Grant Babcock. Today we're recording the first of a series on Murray Rothbard's 1982 book, The Ethics of Liberty. This is the book where he attempts to set out his full moral theory of the state, his ethics of what liberty requires and what it prohibits government from doing. This is his big statement of libertarian ethics. Part one of the book is this short little part about natural law before he gets into all the questions about the state. What is Rothbard doing here? This is an interesting book to me. I guess I should start by saying because I've long been calling myself a Rothbardian, but I've never actually read Ethics of Liberty. I'm mostly more familiar with his economic works and some of his journal articles and that sort of thing. So like you said, this is Rothbard's attempt to sort of formally lay down his ethical system. And chapter one is he's situating that project in this sort of broader natural law tradition. So he identifies certain historical strains of natural law thinking. He's especially interested in this classics. He says, I'm not going to attempt to lay down a full proof that natural law thinking is the right way to think about ethics, but I'll at least give you some context. This is one of the interesting things in this book is that I think a lot of our criticisms, especially at this part one, a lot of things we're going to say are he didn't do a very good job of defending this or he didn't even work out this argument very much. And so he's telling us up front, that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm going to basically assume that these arguments have already been made or made well enough by others and just see where they go. Well, the fact is a lot of these arguments had been made in other books that his audience was likely to have read already. I think that for a lot of this entire first part, the sort of elephant in the room is Ein Rand, who also claimed to advance a natural law theory that was secular or not necessarily religious at least, and that would be a foundation for a classical liberal understanding of property rights and market process and the like. And I think Rothbard knew very well that just about everyone would have read Ein Rand and he seems to take that as a sort of background knowledge and I don't believe even mentions are once in the text, but that has to be what he's relying on, I would say. What is natural law? We should probably get that out right up front before we go into the specifics of Rothbard's theories. What is natural law? How is it different from, say, other moral theories like utilitarianism? Well, first I guess you have to distinguish natural law and natural rights, which are slightly different. So I think a lot of libertarians are familiar with natural rights thinking because we say, okay, well, these are the rights that we have as human beings that are either God-given or discoverable by reason. But natural law is sort of a broader concept. Rothbard here talks about it in terms of these are, to the social sciences, but the laws of physics are to the natural sciences almost. That's a really, really strong claim. I mean, that's something that seems like it's not necessarily so easy to justify because I can readily agree that reason is a part of man's nature, but it doesn't seem quite so clear without doing a lot more explanation why reason is the part that should always control or why reason is the essential. And that's something I felt like was kind of deficient in the text. I could easily see someone coming up with a very different social theory and also claiming that it was based on man's nature and saying that survival of the fittest is man's nature and the natural end toward which we all incline is, in fact, a violent competition. And reason might be useful in that, but it's not to the end at which we aim. It's a means to the end of passing down our genes, for example. He does make the argument, and this is similar to something Rand says, that reason is effectively infallible, that reason is a legitimate means if we apply our reason, then we get at truths about the universe, that this is how we do it. Right, this is big R rationalism. So what reason do we have to think that that's true? Well, I don't know if we're going to solve the rationalism and periscism debate in an hour-long podcast, but I mean, it seems reasonable, right? Well, I mean, I would say that if we consider the alternative to reason, I think we find ourselves in a preferable place operating by reason. What I see as his real target here, though, is not necessarily rationalism and imperialism, not necessarily rationalism and empiricism, excuse me, but rather what he takes as proper role of reason. He criticizes David Hume in particular for Hume's famous line that reason is the slave of the passions, and Rothbard wants to elevate reason to something much more than that. Now, he may be right about Hume saying this. He certainly is right about Hume saying this, but he is not right that all philosophy after Hume is in the same vein. It just is not true. The entire tradition of Kantian philosophy, for example, says that no, in fact, reason has certain objective laws to it and that these have a foundation on which morality is built, that it's not necessarily in human nature, but it is in reason and we can conform ourselves to reason if we choose. And if we want to be reasonable, then there are things that we are obliged to do. So then he moves on in the second chapter to argue that natural law is in effect a kind of science. It's facts about who we are, what we are, what we ought to do, that we can discover through reason. And he contrasts this with other methods, faith-based methods of discovering truths. So what do we think of that? I mean, he's certainly making more controversial claims in this chapter than he was in the first chapter, which was mostly just expositive. I guess on the very first page of this, I wrote in my margin. So Rothbard writes, if A, B, and C, et cetera, have different attributes, it follows immediately that they have different natures. And I wanted to know the worry here seems to be not so much, you know, do people have natures, right? You know, is there something we can posit of all humans that's, you know, but it's essentialism about human nature, right? That, you know, like I could say that, I don't know, what's the thing we say is essential about human nature? Classical liberals often talk about humans, they truck and barter, right? Well, that seems kind of silly and reductive to me.  And I can readily supply reasons to truck and barter that have nothing particular to do with nature. And I can, in fact, say that I don't think that humans are, by nature, disposed to truck and barter because if we were, then you would see humans doing that even at an encouraged disutility. You would see them doing it even when it made no sense to do it, when it was economically disadvantageous to truck and barter, but we don't. We trade when we think we can get an advantage by trading. So that's not human nature that may be reasonable, but that's not something that we do just because it's who we are. Well, this is where he... I mean, when he's pointing to some of the basics of human nature, he begins with things like we need to eat, right? And that these are just physical characteristics. If we don't get enough sustenance, we die. But that seems slightly different from behavioral traits. And then it brings up this... When he wants to make this natural law of science, he has this line where he says that... Where does he say it? He says that natural law, a criticism of natural law is who is to establish the alleged truths about man, which is going to be important because he drives everything from these unbreakable truths about man's nature. So who's going to establish those? Because one of the problems we run into is most people disagree with Murray Rothbard about the varieties of ethics and tales about the state. So there's lots of disagreements. So who's to do this? And he says, this is where he gets back to. He says it's man's reason. I mean, he says man's reason is objective. I.e. it can be employed by all men to yield truths about the world to ask what is man's nature is to invite the answer. But that doesn't seem... I mean, to analogize this to science so we can run these experiments and see what happens, we don't really have a method. We can test what temperature the water boils at, right? And we can test physical properties or do experiments with them. But if you and I disagree about the characteristics of ethics, how are we to know who's reason? Let me interrupt you here because Rothbard isn't using science in this sense of experimental lab coats and beakers, right? Because he thinks praxeology is the science of human action, right? It just means systematic, justified knowing, right? So it's not that we need to look out in the world and see that this is true or false, right, and that's science. Well, I mean, that's a kind of science if we can use the word that sits rather badly with the philosophy of science, as it is more often described elsewhere, where what scientists do is that they set up hypotheses and try to knock them down. And if you look at science as that sort of discipline where it proceeds by falsification, then praxeology isn't a science. Praxeology is a set of deductive arguments from axioms. And that's a very different thing, a completely different thing. Yeah, right. So what I'm trying to point out is that, you know, this is a, I don't know if you want to call it a nonstandard usage of the word science when Rothbard says. Yeah, I would say certainly it is. And this isn't the only time he does that. And we'll get into that a little later. I guess the most obvious one is that when Rothbard says someone is a libertarian or that an outcome is libertarian, he means that, you know, libertarian is an adjective, meaning agrees with Murray Rothbard. Yeah, and I would say also, just as a pure aside, for claiming to advance a non-religious argument, he certainly relies on a lot of religious authorities. There's William Keneally, there's Henry Veach, there is Alvin Plantina, there's a professor Sadowski who's a Jesuit. I mean, there's a lot of religion in his footnotes for advancing a non-religious argument. Well, is this just because, call it the accident of Thomas Aquinas? It could be. You know, I mean that this particular natural law, it's not dependent upon religion, but the main guy who articulated it happened to be Catholic? Well, the main guy, if you don't count, I'm Rand, yes. So on page 11, Rothbard says, the natural law ethic decrees that for all living things, goodness is the fulfillment of what is best for that type of creature. Goodness is therefore relative to the nature of the creature concerned. And then a little farther down, he says, in the case of man, the natural law ethics states that goodness or badness can be determined by what fulfills or thwarts what is best for man's nature. Do any of you buy this? Well, this is so later on, he clarifies because it's not it's not exactly clear what that would even mean because we now we've just taken a step backwards and said, whatever is good is whatever is good is whatever is good. I mean, this is circular. So if I were if I were to play David Hume here, I would I would be rolling around on the ground laughing at him. He's defined goodness by that, which is good. I think it's actually worse than that because I think he's equivocating about good, right? Because so if if we're talking, this is sort of who's the, you know, the good the goodness of a hammer is is how well it hits a nail, right? Who's that? Well, this is I mean, I'll tell you Aristotle Aristotle, right, right. So, you know, so Aristotle says like, you know, the virtue of a knife is cutting, right? But I don't say that a dull knife is an evil knife. I say it's a poor knife, right? Well, this is okay. So this is to, I mean, that's something that's that's to misunderstand because so for ethics for Aristotle and for the ancients was how to live well. Right. So we weren't you didn't necessarily need to bring in like moral condemnation, like a knife that doesn't cut is a bad knife. Yeah. It's not it's not a good knife. We wouldn't call it an evil knife. I'm not a person who doesn't live the way that a person ought to is a bad person. Right. I must say I'm not saying Aristotle is making that equivocation.  I mean, I think one potential problem with making that kind of argument is when you point to say, so on the one hand, we point to the knife and the knife is a tool that was created by something, someone for a purpose. And so therefore we baked into the very concept of knife as the purpose of a knife. And so a knife that doesn't cut is one that fails the purpose of a knife unless say it's decorative. Maybe it was created to be decorative and it's not supposed to cut well, in which case, then it's not a bad knife of that sort. For for animals, we might say, well, their purpose is simply to reproduce. That's what their genes are pushing them to do. So one that doesn't successfully reproduce is not a good example of its species. But neither one of those things seem to apply well to man, right? Like we don't man was unless we import a divine creator man was not created by something for a purpose. Right. And and then we also, I mean, we're unconscious saying, well, the only purpose that you have in life is to reproduce. Well, because then of course people who don't reproduce are just bad. But it's trivially easy to look through history and find examples of good people who were childless.  He was a great person. You know, the same could be said of Jesus. He didn't have any kids that we know about. He may have, but we don't know about them. And if he didn't, would that make him a less good person? That's a that's a definition that clearly does not seem to accord with what we usually mean by someone being a good person. Could you potentially solve it by saying a that there's a capacity level. So so a knife that isn't used for cutting. I have a knife that's in the back of my drawer that I've never used to cut anything. But if I did, it would be really good at it is a good knife. And a person who potentially could reproduce is a good person, even if they don't. I mean, Washington was married and he never had any kids. And I don't know. Does that's beside the point, though. I mean, the the idea here, the distinctive move that a Thomas would make is that we have the ability to reason, not the ability to reproduce and that that reasoning capacity is the distinctive thing that we have that that is our purpose, like the the sharpness or not of a knife and the knife can be closer to its telos toward its its destined end by by being sharper and by holding the edge for longer. Humans, similarly, could be more in accord with their telos if they were more reasoning or if they were more logical or more more devoted to reason or practice reason better. All right. I guess that that sums it up. Before we head on, let's talk a little bit about how Rothbard thinks we get from these I guess value free statements about what man is to to motivating normative statements about what man ought to be. So he says Wilde asks a question crucial to all non theological ethics. Why are such principles felt to be binding on me? And then he says, well, it's because quoting Wilde, if I made no mistake in my tendential analysis of human nature, and if I understand myself, I must exemplify the tendency and must feel it subjectively as an imperative urge to action. And then he goes on to talk about Hume's is ought thing, right. And in the footnote, he says, human fact failed to prove that values cannot be derived from facts. It is frequently alleged that nothing can be in the conclusion of an argument, which was not in one of the premises, and that therefore an ought conclusion cannot follow from descriptive premises, but a conclusion follows from both premises taken together, the ought need not be present in either one of the premises so long as it has been validly deduced to say that it cannot be so to do simply begs the question. See, Philippa foot virtues and vices, and then he gives a page number. So I mean, have we has Rothbard escaped Hume? I have my own preferred ways of escaping from Hume's difficulties. I don't find this necessarily so satisfying. It does not seem clear to me that we can derive an ought from a set of iss. It seems like seems like that as well is somehow importing the ought in inappropriately. Right. I mean, so how I like to put this when I'm when I'm talking to people who maybe aren't as familiar with philosophy is when we're when you're trying to go from a nature to a normative system right about well, you know, people are this way, you know, in fact, and therefore, the way you ought to be is this right is so in the movie The Matrix, there's the scene where where Agent Smith are antagonist confronts Neo played by Keanu Reeves and he has this this speech called the I don't know what it's actually called, but I call it the humanities of virus speech. Oh yeah, right. And basically the point is that, you know, Agent Smith is trying to make is that, you know, hey, Neo, you think that humans are good and worthwhile and worth saving, but actually no, actually humanity is a virus that spreads and destroys and we'd be better off without them. So if agent Smith is right about about, you know, humanity, then what's good for humans isn't good, right? It's it. So you're sort of smuggling in this is this this assumption, you know, that you probably can't if you're trying to do sort of foundational ethics kind of move. Does that make sense? I think so. I mean, what's good for the malaria parasite is not good for humans. They're in fact opposed to each other. And of course, we're talking about humans. I mean, it would be it would be dropping the context entirely to say that that we're trying to find a universal good among among different species. The question is, is what does the good consist of for us? Now, if I had been told by someone that my reasoning was defective on some point, I might if I were a good person carefully, soberly, calmly reexamine it and consider that I might be mistaken and perhaps come to a higher understanding of the problem or a better understanding of the problem. And one in in this account of moral reasoning would say that I had had gotten better. I'd improved. I had become in a sense a little bit of a better person. It's not clear to me that that's the best account. I would say I would say that it is not clear to me at least that I have become more true to my nature. It might actually be my nature that I am unreasonable more often than I am reasonable and that all of my distinctive moves in life are toward unreason, in which case I might not really be of the same type as you. I might I might look human, but I'm not really. We decided this is the essential of human nature. Right. And my my my response to this would be to say that the the decision to make this the essential of your nature is is actually a voluntary one. We decide that we want to be reasonable and then say how does how does one derive conclusions from that, which is not what not what a Thomas would say.  That is that is the objection. But then if the imperative, the hypothetical imperative is we ought to be reasonable. Or if you want if when you want to do ethics, you ought to be reasonable. That is is if it counts as a hypothetical imperative, which is something it knows that actually suggested in philosophical explanations. If that counts as a hypothetical imperative, then it's a pretty broad one. I mean, that's that's a really big, very, very all encompassing hypothetical imperative. And it seems to exclude it seems to exclude almost nothing because because it's not if you if you stay outside of that hypothetical imperative, you can't have an argument. You can't even have a discussion. Chapter three. Yeah. On natural law versus positive law. So this is where he's attacking the positive law notion that law is basically whatever we decide it is that that we, you know, we create the law through our actions. And then there it is versus the natural law, which is a process of discovery that the law exists prior to us or exists outside of us. And we have to find out what it is. And he so he says, I highlighted this because this one of the things that Rothbard likes to do a lot is say, there's in any given question, there's only two or three possible answers, and then show that one or two of them leads to nonsense or is impossible in some way. And therefore, the last one which lines up with what Rothbard wants us to think is the correct answer. And he does that here. And oftentimes when he does this, he's leaving out a lot of possibilities. You're talking about where the three legal principles of society can follow our traditional custom of the tribe or community obeying arbitrary ad hoc will and the use of man's reason in discovering the natural law. So he says to me, he says in short by slavish conformity to custom by arbitrary win or by the use of man's reason. These are essentially the only possible ways for establishing positive law. So what one, I mean, my sense is in almost every instance where he does this, he's missing other possibilities. So what possibilities is he missing here? The one that I just don't find this a very good picture of the world. I don't think that it's so easy to divide societies up into these three types and say, this is a society that relies on reason. This is a society that relies on tradition. I don't think I don't think life works that way. I think even in the most traditionalist societies at times, someone has a new idea and even in societies that are run by the arbitrary will of one individual, you can often find people who disagree. They might do it quietly. They might be in prison. But I don't know that this is really a good way of categorizing things. Well, I think I didn't have as much of a problem with this because I think all he's saying is like, you know, look broadly, there's there's three ways of saying what the law is, right? And you could you could make reference to a lawgiver, which is B, which is the he calls it the you know, basically the arbitrary authority of some group of people. Okay. You know, you could have a traditional custom and he has common law in mind here, right? You know, or you could have natural law. And yet the common law is the product of lots and lots and lots of individual acts of reason. Right. It's really not that simple, right? This is my just, you know, you can't decompose in this way. This is my reaction to it because I think, Grant, you've given us a charitable reading of those three. And it's, I want to say not it's not compatible with his then paraphrasing of himself with his in short, because he says in short by slavish conformity to custom, which is not the same thing as just respecting custom by arbitrary whim and or by the use of man's reason. And it's clear just by the language, which ones he thinks is the best. I mean, it seems like this would be a lot of the times we have say a Berke and approach tradition or a Hayekian approach tradition, which is not to say like, we've got these traditions and we should slavishly follow them. But to instead say, if these traditions have persisted for as long as they have, it's because they probably contain some important truths, some knowledge and experience that's been built up over time. And so we should, we can certainly use our reason to critique them. But we shouldn't just toss them out willy-nilly. We shouldn't simply ignore them or just, you know, whatever first idea comes to our mind, institute that instead, because we would be ignoring the generations of wisdom baked into these things. See, I think that's that's what Hayek is explicitly denying though, that we can use our reason to make judgments about the goodness or badness of inherited traditions, right? Like Hayek says, you know, you can, you can tinker around the edges and you should do it carefully. But he thinks that, you know, if you want to understand, you know, why this rule is the way it is, that that's beyond the scope of human capability. And that's that's that position is what Rothbard's attacking here, right? I think that's what he's attacking. I'm not so confident that it's Hayek. I do think that Hayek leaves a significant space for individuals to act on what they believe to be true despite tradition or despite convention and that this process is exactly what improves convention over time. And in fact, if you look closely enough at all of tradition and all of convention, it all came from something like that. But that's that's different than making rational judgments about the goodness or badness of traditional law, right? That's that's more of a naturalistic evolutionary approach, right? We have random mutations, which is people just trying stuff, right? And then some of them are, you know, successful in that they replicate themselves and spread, right? Which is, you know, but if we're trying to and Hayek even says, you know, look, I you know, I wouldn't say that a cockroach is good just because it's survived, right? Well, it's not a random process, though. I mean, it's it's an attempt to redress flaws that over time emerge in traditional ways of doing things. So a good example of this would be the history of the equity courts, which were created first to try to redress problems that the common law seemed to validate or seemed to to sanction and that these courts were created to to undo conclusions that were otherwise inexorable. And how through a an articulation of a reason that could command common ascent. Rothbard also wants to rule out basically anyone but a natural law theorist doing C, which is using man's reason to discover the natural law. And so what he what he seems to be saying is that unless you're doing natural law, the only way that you can organize society is by either slavishly following customs or being subject to the arbitrary whim of representatives of the state. But it certainly isn't unique to natural law to say we can use our reason to critique the legal system of the society we find ourselves in. I mean, a utilitarian can say, I've got this system of utility and it creates a certain ethics and I can use my reason to look at that and see how it lines up. That laws that laws not utility maximizing, you know, therefore by this standard outside of the law, I can say the law is good or bad. Right. I think that's right. Yeah, somewhat later, he takes a very odd swipe at utilitarians. This is in chapter nine to skip head just a little bit. He takes this swipe where he says for the utilitarian who has no conception, let alone theory of justice, must fall back on the pragmatic ad hoc view that all titles to private property currently existing at any time must be treated as valid and accepted. So he would actually put the utilitarian into the category of a slavish follower of tradition, which is which is really odd to me because first of all, I don't see utilitarians doing that in practice. They seem very happy, maybe more happy than I would like to tinker with the traditional systems of land title. And second, that's not what they say that they're doing in terms of just theory. They don't they don't claim to be traditionalists in theory. Bentham and Mill were pretty radical. They are quite the opposite. They're quite the opposite of traditionalists. So it's I'm not sure that he really can account for utilitarianism in this system that he's developing. Yeah, I was confused by that too, but I actually figured it out. Oh, yeah, I solved the mystery explain. So in that section, there's a this is page 50 52 footnote two, he says, you know, for an example of a justification of property rights, blah, blah, blah, see Mises and socialism. Alright, so I got out Mises and socialism. And Mises makes almost exactly this argument that Rothbard is attributing to all all all utilitarians, right? So Mises starts out by dismissing the possibility of a social contract or of a of a natural law, he says, you know, nonsense on stilts. He says necessarily it's you're going to have to pick a moment in time and say, okay, now. And then at that point you you you have the existing property relations and we're no longer in a war of all against all and we're just going to proceed according to this process, right? And he says that's justified because, you know, having the law is better than not having the law.  He says that's that silly. You can't say that, you know, by what standard, right? It's not illegal because there wasn't law before, right? Well, I quite agree with Rothbard on that and either moral or technological progress can cause us to rethink property distinctions with good justification. So when people came to reject slavery as a moral evil, there was absolutely nothing wrong with rejecting the slave as property and saying, no, actually, they're human beings and we've committed a terrible mistake. We've perpetrated an evil here. And and we have to we have to redress that or or likewise with technology where once we realized the value of the electromagnetic spectrum, we came to regard that as something that is best administered as a form of property or best viewed as a form of property simply because otherwise it's not it's not going to contribute to to human well being at all. So I agree with that, but I don't see how a utilitarian would disagree. I don't see how a utilitarian would be forced to say, well, no, we have to stick with the existing system. Well, I mean, Mises just says it, right? He says, we who only see the effective law, which is to make peace, must realize that it could not have originated, except through a recognition of the existing state of affairs. However, that has arisen, attempts to do otherwise would have renewed and perpetuated the struggle. Peace can come about only when we secure a momentary state of affairs from violent disturbance and make every future change dependent upon the consent of the person involved. This is the real significance of the protection of existing rights, which constitutes the kernel of all law, right? So like Mises is just massively wrong about this, right? I would have to disagree with him there. Yeah, I would have to disagree. So I think Grant's point, though, is that when Rothbard is attacking utilitarians, he is simply attacking Mises and assuming that Mises speaks for all utilitarians. And this, as far as a teaching moment goes, in general, one of the things that you need to be really careful about when you're reading works like this, works of political, I mean, any sort of argumentative work. But if you're reading political philosophy, and especially if it's within your bubble, this is stuff that you're inclined to agree with, is when you come across an instance of the author saying, here is a long intellectual tradition with lots of people who believe it, and it can be dismissed really easily. Or they're simply mistaken here and it's totally silly and now we're done. I've refuted it. You should approach those claims with a huge amount of skepticism because if very smart, very educated people accept a theory, even if it's one you disagree with and hold to it and have for a long time, then it's probably not something that can be dismissed in a sentence or two. And so it would benefit you greatly to go to the advocates of those theories and read them and try to understand what they're saying, because you'll often find out always. I mean, there are a lot of thinkers who are good at characterizing the argument to the other side fairly, but we all have a, you know, it's easy to be unfair to our opponents. And so take a moment and just think like if it sounds like this long tradition is stupid, it's probably not being characterized correctly. And what's more, that particular passage, the one that Grant read, is very strange for Mises because Mises did support historical reforms. He did not say, well, you know, there was a traditional system and everything since then that changed was wrong and we are not allowed to change anything now. There were things that he did support in the way of changes to how property was administered. So I'm not sure that he, maybe he was just having a bad day when he wrote that. I don't know. Yeah, the whole thing's bizarre to me. And what Aaron said about, you know, maybe if you're trying to attack utilitarianism, don't substitute a few paragraphs from Mises for all of utilitarianism is a good rule. I'm curious as to why he makes this only footnote reference to Mises right when he's talking about the utilitarians, but he calls out explicitly Robert Lefebvre. Is that how you say that name later when he's when he's talking about, you know, self-defense? Like is this just a, does he have a bone to pick here? Because I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, Rothbard has lots of bones to pick, right? But, you know, and he didn't want to offend his teacher by, so he attacked utilitarianism instead or? One reason he might leave out mentioning Mises specifically here while going after specific thinkers elsewhere in the book is I feel like this early part of the book, he's talking about a clash between grand intellectual traditions. So he's trying to rehabilitate natural law, theory, bring it back from the exile that it's been under for so long. And so he wants to take out the whole sweep of its opponents rather than just Mises. And so maybe he's making this mistake where he thinks that Mises represents all utilitarians, but it would make sense to just attack utilitarianism as opposed to one particular thinker if that's his project here. It could be that he thinks Mises is the best utilitarian. That's a more charitable reading and it's a thing he might actually believe. And yet I know some Austrians who would say Mises was not a utilitarian at all in any sense. So I don't know. And interestingly, Mises is not among those Austrians who thinks that. But I think you might be onto something. So then we move into we've established natural law and how we get at those rules. And so there next he moves into what's really important for the project of the rest of the book, which is natural rights and how humans get at rights. And so he defines, he ends up defining rights later on. He says we shall be speaking throughout this work of rights, in particular the rights of individuals to property and their persons and material objects. But how do we define rights? And then he quotes as he often does another thinker to fill in the definition. So in this case it's a professor Sadowski who says, when we say that one has a right to do certain things, we mean this and only this, that it would be immoral for another, a loaner in combination to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof. We do not mean that any man, that any use a man makes of his property within the limits set forth is necessarily a moral one. And I think this is this is an important point right here that's worth mentioning because it comes up again and again. And as often, at least when I hear forms of what I'll call crude Rothbardianism, it gets forgotten, which is Rothbard is very clear that the arguments he makes in this book and when he places limits on what the state may do and what we have a right to do with our person and property that this is not what necessarily what morality dictates. So he's clear that there are instances where we have a right to do something and therefore the state cannot prohibit us from doing it. But it would say or anyone else by the violence. But it would be still morally impermissible for us to carry out that action. And I think that's that's an important qualifier throughout because I get a sense again from the crude Rothbardian notion that often there's this if I have a right to do it, it's fine. Like that that rights and moral permissibility mean the same thing. And Rothbard is clear that that's not the case. I would agree. I think that's that's a very important distinction to make. Another another sort of side point on this definition is that I sometimes hear from crude opponents of natural rights that you have this proposed these proposed things that it would be wrong if somebody were to interfere with. Well, there's a problem with that claim being natural because there's nothing in nature that would stop people from interfering. And so these these rights claims are not they're not self enforcing. Like, for example, the law of gravity, it's not it's it's fatuous to say, well, obey the obey gravity. It's the law. You don't talk that way. You don't talk that way because gravity just happens. And and that's what nature is. And if it's not doing just like gravity, then it's not nature. And this is this is to my mind kind of a it's a very poor argument because first of all humans are volitional creatures. And it's it's possible for a human who is who is conceivably quite similar to you, but differently disposed to behave very, very differently. And then we have to ask whether that whether that distinction is is is important. And clearly it is in terms of in terms of how we judge people. If I were if I were slightly otherwise inclined, I might have been late to this podcast. And that would have been a perhaps a minor moral failing on my part. Well, it's major moral failing. Oh, yeah. So this this this objection you bring up is it's it's one that annoys me too, because it just seems to strike me as just the mere gain saying of the idea that there are moral truths independent of any mind. Yes, right. And that's that's not an argument. That's just asserting the contrary and claiming you've refuted it. What do we make of Rothbard's claim in this chapter that the culmination of net liberal natural light theory, you know, he says it starts with lock, but then it reaches its culmination in the 19th century works of Herbert Spencer and Lysander Spooner. Are they the peak of, you know, natural rights, ethics, those guys?  I like both. Well, I do too. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to think that maybe there will be still better arguments in this tradition in the future. And it's it's one that I can't say I exactly belong to, but it is one that is often very productive and very interesting. So who knows? Okay, so then to move to the end of part one here, he has a short chapter about the task of political philosophy. And basically, this is a it's short, but it's it's mostly a, I guess, vociferous and forceful restatement of his annoyance with these people who think that, you know, we're not describing, you know, that we we should only describe human behavior rather than comparing it to an independent standard. And he has this sentence that I quite enjoyed. Let us then cast out to the hobgoblins of vertus fryhite of positivism of scientism, where vertus fryhite is value neutralness. Rather than an exorcism, I think a better way of sort of dealing with these might be just to note that these people always, always, always sneak back to normativity in one way or another. Inevitably they do. But what do you mean by that? Well, I mean, this is this is David Hume's famous claim that whenever whenever someone proposes simply to set forth a neutral description of and then of how ethics is and then there's a transition to ought. There's a mysterious transition to ought.  Well, that's a very difficult thing to do. It's a notoriously difficult thing to do. A lot of I don't want to endorse I don't want to endorse postmodern social theory, but a lot of postmodern social theory does aptly consist of pointing out that supposedly value neutral science is in fact laden with values. Yeah. And then this is Rothbard's big gripe with Coase, right? He says, you know, the Coasean conception of property rights is, you know, claims to be scientific, but actually it's it's it's a moral one and a incorrect moral one. And that, you know, my my own natural law conception of give us the thumbnail sketch of Coase. So Coase, he's famous for several things, but he's an economist and one of the things he's famous for is is this paper that says you if you assume away transaction costs, then it doesn't matter at all where you assign the initial allocation of property rights that you can just let people barter and they will arrive at some efficient outcome, right? So for example, maybe I have a toxic sludge producing factory and you have a lawn, right? And I'm dumping my my toxic sludge factory sludge onto your lawn and you don't want it there. But I do want it there because, you know, and they got to someplace to put it. Yeah, right.  Now, that's not an entirely accurate presentation of Coase. No, it's actually it's actually quite unfair to him what he was really noting was that this system would work great if there were no transaction costs, if there was no cost of bargaining. Yeah. And and this is an assumption that doesn't actually happen in the real world. And what he was trying to point out was that a lot of real world behavior can be explained by the fact of those of those costs. Right, right. Yeah, everything you said is correct. I will say, however, that I do think reading Coase you do get the sense that he thinks property rights are just these in arbitrary instrumental constructions, right. And yes, and that's the attitude that Rothbard is attacking. So that brings us to the end of part one of ethics of liberty, where Rothbard is sort of setting out, you know, what the natural law is its character and a bit of its contents. And then in part two, which we'll be continuing with in the future, he talks a little bit more about, you know, sort of first of all, filling in, you know, how we apply natural rights and natural law, you know, to ethical questions. And then what what this means for the state? I mean, this is the next part of the book is really the meat of it and the fun part where he tells us, you know, what this means is that the state can't do X, Y and Z. Yeah, I know you may have gotten the impression listening today that that I'm not a big fan of Rothbard. That's not true at all, actually. I'm a huge fan of Rothbard. I'm a I'm a deontological anarchist libertarian.  I think maybe not all, but, you know, a large number of his conclusions about about human liberty and about ethics are correct. That that said, I think especially for someone like me, who is sympathetic to Rothbard's conclusions, you have to be careful to then not, you know, miss any any sort of, I guess, jumps in logic, right? Because because it could be the case and that you agree, right, that, you know, all of all of Rothbard's conclusions, right, but the arguments he gives for them might leave something to be desired. And that's something I found reading Rothbard elsewhere is he's a really original thinker.  He sometimes is a little sloppy in the way he uses technical vocabulary, especially when he's going outside of his central area of expertise, which is economics. But that's not to say that his conclusions are necessarily false. One of the frequent frequently mentioned informal logical fallacies is sometimes called the fallacy fallacy. When you find a logically fallacious argument or even a factually fallacious argument leading up to a conclusion, we can't necessarily conclude from that that the conclusion is false. It's just not yet supported. There are ways of refuting, but finding a logical fallacy or a defective argument is not necessarily one of them. It doesn't necessarily lead to rejection of the conclusion. The short version of that being it's possible to make a bad argument for a good conclusion. Exactly. In our next episode in this series, we'll be looking at part two of the ethics of liberty, where Rothbard begins to apply these ideas to more concrete political problems, including the nature of private property and exchange, land monopoly, self-defense, punishment and all sorts of other fun topics. I hope you'll join us. Free Thoughts is produced by Evan Banks and Mark McDaniel. To learn more about libertarianism and the ideas that influence it, visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.


We hope that, in the future, we will have years of experience in the future. Okay good evening, good evening. to all of you, students, scholars, friends and distinguished guests. And welcome to the first Sharpogee Palangii Memorial Lecture. And we hope this will become something, become established as a flagship event for the Institute going forward. a cymdeithas, cyd-godd, gyda haes a gyllid cyrindig sy'n gystafod i Cyfrannu Cymru ac mae hyn ymd demonstrateb ydyn nhw yn ei wneud fod yn colliad i gael eich cyfrannu cyfrannu ei meidio. Byddwyd, y wych sy'n cyfrannu cyfnodol pan enw y meddwl i'r gyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu. Cymdau gyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cilydd, yma rydych chi'n mynd i gael yn fynd iddyn nhw sefydlu a gyflwyno ff130 yr ysgolwysgol ffordd yma rhywg ddigon ffordd i gydlanddo i gael gwyfyrddol i gyd ymddiadol, i gŷrd yn oed. Yn gyflwyno'r gwheiddiadau â ei ffordd yn i'w ffwylol, oedd efallai y ffordd i gael ymddangos am ddysgu a ni'n gwyfydol, Rhyw Yn Nairaimann. Yn oed Nairaimann yw elun yn gweld ei hwn oedd yn dweud o'r ysgolwyr yn ymddangos. Mae cyfwyn iddyn nhw i ddwy i'r bethaua gyda Feirwyr yn Yn Ynol. from which he retired less than two years ago. Before that, he was solicitor-general of India, and before that at the age of just 37 was appointed senior council to the Supreme Court in India. And I should say here that the rules of the Supreme Court had to be amended to allow this appointment a bod hynny'n gwybod i'r awddiad o'r cyfnodol yn 45. Ond yn 2017, Dustus Narriman was recognised as one of the five world heroes by Access Now, a human rights organisation, for his concurring judgment in a case named the KS Puttoswami versus Union of India, and it was about recognising the right to privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. But the law isn't the only area of expertise and interest in Justice Narriman's portfolio for life, as I like to call it, as I saw when I looked through the many and varied topics he's lectured and published on over the years. And I mentioned them, I mentioned just a few of them here.  An ardent lover of music and a reader of history, he's lectured on the life of Beethoven, musings on music, World War II, the Victor rights history, and keynote lectures on great women in history and Mahatma Gandhi and mediation. Justice Narriman is an authority on the Zoroastrian religion to which he belongs. He became an ordained priest and did his nava at the Bandra Agiari in Mumbai. Subject to his knowledge, sorry, testament to his knowledge, are two out of the three of his books, The Inner Fire, Faith, Choice and Modern Day Living in Zoroastrianism, and another one, Zoroastrianism in Other Faiths. And his third book, though it could refer to Zoroastrianism, is in fact about the law, The Voice of Descent in the Court of the Last Resort. So tonight, Justice Narriman will delve into Imperial Iran and treat us to a lecture entitled, The Sasanian Empire, A Fire That Was Extinguished. So please join me in welcoming. Thank you, Sarah. Mr and Mrs Shapur mystery, a mystery family. Lord Billy Moria and my dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to go through 425 years of Persian history in a flash. 45 minutes being a flash. To begin at the beginning, we have five Persian dynasties. Who of which are spoken of in the shana men. The Peshda Danian and the Cayanian and the Cayanian dynasty. Had a king called Kavi Vistast. Who was the king who Zarathustra actually converted to Zoroastrianism. It's after this dynasty that we have the famous Achaemenian dynasty. The first emperor being Cyrus the Great. Followed by his son, can be sees followed by the rest. The great all persons you have heard of followed by success, et cetera. After Alexander comes and takes over Persia. And the last Achaemenian empire is killed. That's the third. We then have a lull in Zoroastrian fortunes, so to speak. Because a general of Alexander called Seleucus then takes over. And you have what is called a Seleucid dynasty for a period of 130 years. It is after this dynasty that you then have starting from roughly 224 BC. And carrying on till 224 AD. A third Zoroastrian dynasty, so to speak. Who were the Parthians. Now the Parthians believed strongly in Mitra, which is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism. And one of the empires called Volgos is the first. Actually got the entire Avesta together again after Alexander destroyed it. And compiled what is called the 21 Nusks. Of which only one remains with us today. The Vandida, which is therefore treated as sacred by the priests. It is important to remember that the Parthians kept the Romans at bay. And so did the Sassanians who followed them. Because at almost no point in our history. But the Romans allowed to extend the eastern part of their empire beyond the Tigris River. And we have a famous battle of Karai, which is fought in 53 BC. Where one of the triumphs when called Crassus. Has an entire army destroyed by the Parthians. And as a result, the Romans appeared to have accepted Mitra then as their god. But then all this is the subject matter of other lectures. Coming to the Sassanian dynasty. We find that the founder is a man called Adesha the first. He happened to be a priest. And he was the son of a person called Papak. Who was the king of our province at that time, Fars. And he finally defeated the last Parthian emperor who was under one the fifth. And a battle called the Battle of Hormizdigan in 224 AD. Having defeated him, he promptly married his daughter. Now, in order to ensure dynastic succession. This is something that has happened in the past. Daraeus the great, if you remember. Married Cyrus the great's daughter. Atosa. And ultimately selected Xerxes was one of his youngest sons. Only because she was from Atosa. So that he would be legitimate in the sense of continuing the old dynasty as well. This happened here in England as well. Henry VII founded the Tudor dynasty. Had a weak link to the Lancastrian branch of Edward III. And his son John of Gaon, who was the Duke of Lancaster. And after the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. He in turn went and married Elizabeth of York, who was the last in the Yorkist line. So that ultimately he could cement his dynasty. So Aresha did exactly this. But then the ramification was. That the lady wished to poison him for having killed her father. She was pregnant with child. And. She attempted the poison, the attempt to poison. And ultimately was found out unfortunately. And ordered sentence sentence to order to be sentenced to death. The major, however, saved her because of a child. And they kept her and the child away from the emperor. The emperor then had this young boy, Shapur, as he was called. Attend court only at age seven. And when he attended court, it was obvious that he was fit to be the next emperor. And as a matter of fact. Aresha did something very smart because just before he died. He co-opted him as a co-ruler. Now doing that is a very smart thing because when you have many sons and daughters. You either have civil war in which everybody kills everybody. Or you do something like this. You co-opt somebody and say, this person will be co-emperor, which means. Henry II did it here in England, which is eldest son. But then the eldest son predestined. Anyway. Shapur also turned out to be great emperor, but more of him a little later. Aresha was very keen to establish the importance of the Zoroastrian religion. And this he did in a unique way. He asked one of the priests, a man called Arenda Viraf, to go into a trance. This priest actually took something, went into a trance. Supposed to have left his body for seven days and nights. And then visited heaven, hell, purgatory. And described each one of them in great detail. And then finally came back after seven days and nights. To announce that people can get into heaven only if they live. By the Zoroastrian triad of good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Interestingly, he described God as a being of light. And said that he heard the voice of God as well. Now Arenda Viraf started a new empire. He had Parthia. And he added to Parthia, a part of the Kushan empire. Which existed towards the northeast. Then a part of the Mongol empire, which existed towards the far northeast. And it went all the way to Bahrain. He also happened to annex Armenia. So it was a massive empire at the time. And all this was done in the space of about 16 years. Because he died in 248. Saying ascribed to him that you can't have power without an army. You can't have army without money. You can't have money without agriculture. And you cannot have agriculture without justice. Very interesting. Another great saying was that kingship is only one wheel of a chariot. The other wheel is equally important and is the wheel of the priest. So unless the king and the priest coalesce, the king is bound to fail. So Adeshal goes in 240. And in comes Shapur the Great. Shapur the Great is best known, if you people have been to Iran, by a huge rock carving where he sits on a charger. And he has three Roman emperors under him. He has Valerian in chains under him. He has Julius Philippus a little behind him. And behind Julius Philippus is Gaudian III. Three emperors that he defeated utterly. Of course he defeated them in the opposite to the direction in which they were. Gaudian III was defeated first. Julius Philippus next and Julian Philippus had to pay ransom. And after him was Valerian who was utterly defeated in about 258 AD. So here you had an emperor who was not only a bulwark against the Roman Empire, but like the later Parthians, a person who actually defeated Rome in battle repeatedly. He only met his match in a thing called Odonathias of Palmyra. He was the great husband of Zinobia, a very well-known queen of Palmyra. And that was the one defeat that he faced. Otherwise he was pretty much triumphant. Also at his time emerged a prophet called Mani. Now Mani was a person who thought that there is a synthesis between Buddhism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. And he turned around the light and darkness principle, the dualistic principle of Zoroastrianism to say that everything spiritual is light. Everything material is darkness. And it is a religion which shampooed at first encouraged. And thereafter did not so that he had to go out of the country in order to preach it. He preached it pretty successfully. Because we find that Saint Augustine, one of the great early Christian fathers, was actually a Manichaean before he saw the light. And this religion went on into the 13th century to influence people like the Cathars, the Albigensians, et cetera. And apparently became the state religion of the Uighurs at one point of time. Anyway, Mani was tolerated up to a point. And shampooed rain for a long period of 30 years and then died. Now after he died, three of his sons became emperors. Hormaz, a son became emperor for a year. And after him followed a son of a concubine called Beram I. Now apparently there was a precedent for this because in the Achavenian Empire, Darius Nothus, that is Darius II, was also a son of a concubine. It would be unthinkable in a country like England, for example, where you had James Duke of Monmouth, who was the illegitimate son of Charles II, who couldn't possibly aspire to the throne. James II, his brother came to the throne. And when he rebelled against James II, he was destroyed and killed. So what is important is that this gentleman had a long rail. He had a reign of about 18 years. And in that reign he was very lucky that Emperor Aurelian of Rome, who was a very powerful emperor, happened to die in 274 as a result of which the Achavenian Empire got saved for the first time. Under his son, an emperor called Caerys, equally powerful, also suddenly died. It was as if the stars were in favour of the Achavenian Empire continuing. But suddenly died in some thunderstorm. Otherwise again there had been trouble. And Beram II also had a long rail. But it was Beram I, who put money to death in a most horrible way. Because these arrested clergy at that point of time were very powerful. And then you had grandson Beram III, who ruled for a very short while, until great uncle Narsé now, who is the third brother who comes in. That is the third son of Shapur I. And he has a relatively short reign of eight years in which he has to battle a very formidable Roman emperor called Dioclation. And I don't know if all of you have heard of Dioclation because Dioclation devised a system by which Rome was then divided into four parts. You had the eastern part, you had the western part and you had an Augustus and a Caesar, so to speak, looking after these two parts, which were then further subdivided. Now, when he was Augustus, his Caesar was a man called Galerion. And this gentleman Narsé went to war with Galerion and was successful in the beginning, got beaten in the end, but then negotiated a truest wit lasted for a long time. He also decided to do a Henry VIII, if I may say so, because he took over the clergy and then said, I am the head of the church now. The chief mobbett was dismissed. And after a reign of about eight years, he finally abdicated. Strangely enough, so did Dioclation. And after he abdicated, he had a son called Hormuz II, who again ruled for a short period, about five years. And Hormuz II again happened to be a beneficent monarch. And justice at his time was at its zenith, because in the ordinary courts of law, a poor man could fight a rich man and succeed is how the chroniclers put it, which is a great thing. And after Hormuz II, you then had something which is unique only to Sasainian rulership. You had Shapur II, who had a long reign of 70 years, from 309 AD to 379 AD. He was actually crowned in his mother's stomach in Vitiro, so to speak. The imperial diadem was placed on the mother's stomach because the Meja at that point of time had pronounced that not only is this a boy, but the stars are such that he'll be one of our greatest rulers. So all his older brothers were over. And Shapur II had a regency, therefore, of 15 years, after which he did indeed become one of the most powerful and great monarchs of the Sasainian empire. Now, he in turn had many brushes with Rome. He had a brush with Constantius II and at a battle called the Battle of Sigara in 244 AD, the definitive. He had another brush with a great man called Julian the Apostate, who all of you must have heard of. And it was his fortune that Julian the Apostate, like the other Roman emperors, Cares, et cetera, also happened to die suddenly and unexpectedly. So that his entire battle with Rome was victorious like Shapur I. His period, again, boasted of a remarkable chief priest, a man called Adderbad Maraspan. Now, Adderbad Maraspan was somebody who, like Ardavira, was appointed by the king to take molten metal on his breast, so to speak, and prove that the Zorestian religion was a religion to belong to and is supposed to have done that in public and escaped unhurt. He not only compiled the Kasti prayer, which is the prayer that perceives prayer every single day.  You have two verses which are picked up from what Zorester himself said. After these two, you have a full prayer in Pellavi, which was the spoken language of his day, which was composed by him, which is what we call the Ahura Mazda Khadai prayer, in which you have 11 forms of evil. And he freshes out these 11 forms. Who are very interesting? Those who are willfully deaf and willfully blind, forms of evil. And he repeats the word Darwand twice. Now a Darwand is a person who goes away from the Zorestian faith. So it was very important for him as head of the clergy to say this is the worst form of evil. Never go away from the faith. And finally, in the confession of the faith, what he preaches is very important, one nonviolence. Swaths must always be sheathed, never used. And self-ractifice, a part of, of course, from living by the path of Asha, which is the part of school. So you had this remarkable chief priest who spread the faith like nobody else. Of course, I must tell you that Zorestianism, though a proselytising religion, was never forced down anybody except at one point, which I'll come to in a short while. But it flourished as the empire flourished under this very great emperor, Shapur II. Now, after Shapur II, who, as I told you, ruled from 309 to 379, discount the first 15 years, in 379 appoints a brother, and this is also unique. He doesn't appoint him as guardian of his child, who was a minor child. He appoints him full-fledged king, but tells him that you must abdicate the throne the moment this boy becomes 15. And that boy happened to be Shapur III. So Aresha II comes in on this condition, which is, I think, a unique condition in world history. And he rules for about six years. And after the six-year rule, he's murdered. So he wasn't exactly tested as to whether he would have abdicated or wouldn't once he tested. Now, after this man comes a short rule of Shapur III, the only great thing that happened in his rule was Armenia got partitioned, apart from this very little that happened. And after Shapur III, you now come to another set of Sasenians who are, again, very, very interesting for different reasons. You have one son who is Bairam IV first. He has a relatively long rule, and he's perhaps the only Sasenian king who was so disliked by everybody that he was imprisoned and actually murdered by his own army. After him, you had a brother called Yazdegard I, the man who founded Yazd, the city of Yazd. Yazdegard I was a remarkable ruler. The first thing he did was to marry the Jewish patriarch's daughter. Now, that brings in King Xhaxiz in Esther. I'm sure all of you must have read the Old Testament and the book of Esther in it. Now, Esther happens to be a Persian name, even though it's in the Old Testament. And it's the name of Xhaxiz's queen. Xhaxiz gave her this name, which was a Persian name. She was a Jewish lady called Hadasah. And she was the niece of a Jew called Mordechai. Now, the Esther story is an interesting one because a traditional enemy of the Jews, the Amalekais, had in them a champion called Haman. And Haman went and poisoned Xhaxiz into issuing a decree saying that on the 13th of order of a particular year, all Jewish lives are forfeit because they are persons who do not bow to you as emperor. Esther comes in, explains to the king that this man is misled him, which leads to the famous biblical expression, the laws of the Medes and the Persians, because the laws of the Medes and the Persians can never be altered. So what he can do is, or the only thing they can do is, he can issue a counter decree, and that's what he did. So he armed the Jews better than the Persian soldiery so that they would get the upper hand in a conflict. And the result was the feast of Purim, which is celebrated till today and which is a very major feast in Israel, the second after Paso. So coming back to Yazdegard I, he's the second great emperor who marries the Jews. And he is also famous for two other amazing things. One, there is an emperor called Arcadius, Byzantine emperor. Now Arcadius trusts Yazdegard so much, despite the fact that they are traditional enemies, that he wants his son, Theodosius, trained by him. So he sends his son for training to this Persian emperor. Second, Yazdegard is called upon by the nascent Christian community in Persia to preside at an ecumenical council, the council being at a place called Seleucia, which is none other than Tezafan, which happened to be one of the ancient Iranian cities. And presiding at this council, he was to decide as to what exactly was the nature of Christ and whether the Nicene creed was to be followed. Now you'll remember, the Nicene creed belonged to the first ecumenical council of 325 AD where Constantine the Great presided and bishops came from all over. And there were various theories about Christ which were floating around. One was Christ was Logos, the equivalent of the word which has come down in the flesh. One was he's the son of God. One was that he's a prophet like the other great prophets. So Constantine had to choose and Constantine had to choose between two Greek words which are similar sounding. Homocius or Homocius which is of like substance or of the same substance as Almighty God. And the Nicene creed took the latter choice and said of the same substance, hence the divinity of Christ. And Yazdegard in 410 sat down among all the bishops and decided for them that they would be better off if they followed this Nicene creed. The post script of course was Nestorianism which we don't need to get into just now but which ultimately laid down that Christ has two natures, not one. And both are intermixed. One is divine, one is human. So you can see this emperor was a remarkable emperor in that he was a tutor to a Byzantine emperor's son and that he actually laid down for the Christians what they should worship. He's supposed to have come to his end in a very peculiar way and that end again is spoken of in Sildosi's Shavnamen where apparently some white horse comes out of a lake and the horse is wild and nobody can contain him. So the emperor tries to contain him and the horse kicks the emperor to death. So this is the way Yazdegard one is supposed to have. Disappear from the scene. Now he in turn is followed by one of the larger than life Sasanian emperors, a man called Bheram Ghor, Bheram the fifth.  So this was a man who went over to India who got gypsies from India who got an Indian queen back with him. He was very eclectic. He loved science, he loved agriculture. He promoted art and he was a great connoiser of food and wine as well. So he loved life because of the rest of India. And he was another man who apparently was fated in all these legends Baj sang about him, et cetera, long after he died. And after him came Yazdegard II. Now Yazdegard II is an emperor who is remembered for the forced conversions that I spoke about because he had a chief priest called Meir Narse and that chief priest believed in an offshoot of Zoroastianism which we know today as Zulwanitham. Now you have in our Zoroastias Gathars, God as the be all and end all of everything, the creator of everything. He creates in the beginning two spirits and gives them the power of choice. One becomes the good spirit, one becomes the bad spirit. This is now perverted into boundless time taking the place of God, Zulwan. And out of boundless time comes God and the devil, Ariman. And they are exact and opposite in every way except one. And that one is that God has omniscience whereas the devil doesn't. So you have this 12,000 year period within which ultimately God knows that with the help of man the devil will be destroyed. So this emperor followed this brand of Zoroastianism under the chief priest Meir Narse and then went into Armenia and had forced conversions made of Christians. The backlash of course was great as a result of which most of Armenia then chose Nestorian Christianity. Yazdegad III in turn had three sons who ruled. Now you remember Shapur I also had three sons who ruled. Of course with Behram I having son and grandson in between. Now here you had the first son to rule who was Hormaz III, nothing much happened in Israel. But you had a very long reign of an emperor called Piroch.  And at one stage they got so powerful that they were able to capture and keep as hostage. This man's son, an emperor who became known as covered the first. So his reign of 25 years was spent largely in conserving Persian territory from the heftalites, that is the white huns. And after him comes the third brother, man called Valkash, who's there for a very short period. And then comes covered one. Now covered one has at his time another prophet who emerges. A man called Mazdak. Mazdak happens to be the first communist known to mankind. Because Mazdak preaches, everything must be shared in common, including women. And that time of course women were treated as property, though not frankly with the internationalism as much as they were treated in other faiths. So Mazdak at once at the first part of his rule was able somehow to convert the king to his thinking. But his preaching became so abhorrent to the media that they overthrew covered. So covered first part of his reign was from 488 to 496 AD. And he was thrown out by his own brother, Jamazdruul for about two years. And came back only on the promise that Mazdak's teachings would not gain acceptance. After which he was able to rule for a very long time. And he is best known in history. As the greatest Sasenian king's father, that is Khushru Anoshiravan, Khushru the First. Now Khushru the First came to the throne. He was a younger son and a very long reign of 38 years. And he came to the throne somewhat like Ashoka the Great in India by finishing off his brothers so that ultimately he would be able to take over. It is said in Khushru's defense that he was forced to do so. But anyway he comes to the throne with blood on his hands. But he turns out to be a philosopher king. Now Plato, if you remember, it's spoken of the best possible rule being that of a philosopher king in Rome that had taken place between 98 to 180 AD. And you had these great emperors one after the other. You started with Nerva who was a senator. Nerva appointed Trajan, Trajan appointed Hadrian. Hadrian appointed Antoninus Pius. And Antoninus Pius in turn appointed Marcus Aurelius who all of you have heard of. This 98 to 180 period, which is called the Pax Romana in history, the peace of Rome, was considered by Will Durant a Great Historian to be the greatest ever period of governance in history, including modern history. It finished only because Marcus Aurelius' son, Commodus, took over from Marcus Aurelius. Now each one of these emperors, it so happens, did not have a son to succeed him. And therefore the best man in the realm was chosen. But the moment a particular son came in, out went the philosopher king. Coming back to our philosopher king, Khushru the first. Khushru the first proved that you could be a son and a philosopher king. After all, he was the son of King Kavad. And Ashoka's rock edicts, the 12th rock edict in particular, speaks of fraternity and says that if you praise somebody else's faith, you are not only raising your own faith and doing it a favor, but you are also uplifting the other man's faith.  And the general idea would be that if one were able to take from another's faith and also try and follow it, you would be much more complete for it. You would be much more complete for it. This is Ashoka. Khushru, in much the same way, had a famous proclamation which was that I have never rejected anything good from anything, from any other faith. I accept completely whatever is good from every faith, including my own. And I only reject that which does not accord with reason in all faiths, including my own. So he was, in fact, a philosopher king. He attracted philosophers, artists, et cetera, from all over the world, at that, the known world at that time. And he was therefore referred to as Anoshe Raman, which means immortal soul, or the greatest, a person who is way, way beyond every other ruler. He had some very beautiful sayings. One saying was that there's nothing better than to reward a generous man, me as a king, so that we beget more generous men. That's my gloss, of course. Another delightful saying is that whenever some harm befalls you, it seems to linger on and on in your mind. But all the good that has befallen you vanishes in a trace. How true. And one day, his chief priest sit with Indian philosophers, Greek philosophers, Roman philosophers, and the king asked this question. What is the worst possible thing that you can conceive of to befall men? And the Greek philosophers sat together and said, old age coupled with poverty. Indian philosophers came out with an even better answer. A diseased mind and body. Buzurg Meher, who was his chief priest, said, I disagree with these gentlemen. I would say that it is to be approaching your death without having practiced virtue. Beautiful. So in this man's reign, you had these lofty ideas floating around. You had persons from all over coming over.  Also, as a warrior king, he happened to be a very great one because he got back Armenia. He got Antioch. He went as far as Antioch in the West and he had the cities of Edesa and Dura paying tribute to him. So the empire was also at its maximum extent up to that point.  It marks the view of the palace. So the king said, ah, that was an old widow that I knew for a long time. And I don't have the heart to displace her. It shows you what kind of man he was. Now, after his golden age, if I may call it that, you then had his son coming and his son, Hormaz Fawr, unfortunately had a couple of brothers-in-law who ganged up against him and his own general, a man called Bairam Chobin. And they finally deposed him and blinded him. Now, having done that, his son, who was the next Khushru, Khushru Parvez, Parvez means victorious, happened to be on the run. Hormaz Fawr dies in 590. So technically Khushru Parvez's reign begins in 590 AD. And he's on the run fighting Bairam Chobin. Now, something again, something very remarkable again takes place. And this time, it's vice versa. He goes to Emperor Morris, Byzantine Emperor. And the Byzantine Emperor formally adopts him, helps him, gives him a Byzantine army with which to defeat his father's general. So, not only is he adopted by the Emperor, he also marries the Emperor's daughter. And the Emperor's daughter produces a boy who ultimately destroys the entire family because he puts to death everybody around him. So that finally when the Sasenian Empire has to be ruled by a king, there's nobody left to rule it. And a young 80-year-old grandson is pulled out of nowhere, who becomes Yazdegad III, who's the last Emperor. So anyway, Khushru Parvez is called Parvez, meaning victorious. Because he had a general called Sharbaras. And that general again was victorious right up to the Mediterranean sea on this side, to the Indus here, Caspian up and the Red Sea below. He's also supposed to have carried away part of Jesus' cross, which Emperor Constantine's mother had taken away and was housed in Jerusalem. So he carries away the cross as great booty. And a backlash then takes place. Heraclius, another general, becomes the Byzantine Emperor. And then ultimately manages to get back some of the territories. And by 628 AD, Khushru Parvez is old, tired and is murdered by Emperor Boris' grandson. That is his own son, a man called Shiroy, who becomes Kavad II. This Emperor is so cruel that he disappears in four years.  After some nine rulers have come and gone, including two of Khushru Parvez's daughters. And it is this last Emperor now who has to face a huge Arab onslaught. So the Arabs come in under Khalif Umar, with the great commander Khalid Ibn Walid. And there are two battles at which finally Sasenian Persia disappears. You have Qadisia in 636 and you have Nahawan in 642. And you have this poor boy on the run till 651, where he hides in some mill and is murdered for his jewelry. So this brings us to the end of today's voyage. And though most people speculate that the reason for the fall of the Sasenian dynasty was Shiroy's murdering everybody around him. So that ultimately there was no leader to stand up to the Arabs. I would add one more very important factor. And that very important factor is that by then they had completely lost sight of the great Khushru, Khushru I's ideas of fraternity. Because had Khushru I's ideas permeated, there have been many more from all the other religions to stand by the Persians in their hour of need, which unfortunately was not the case. Thank you all very much. Nariman, thank you for a fascinating and incredibly wide-ranging lecture. I think it must be your legal training that allows you to talk to us for an hour without a scrap of paper. And we've had a wonderful account of the Sasanian dynasty with reference to so much information from Tudor England to Rome to Tessifon and Mazdakism, Manichaeism first of course, Zurbannism. And so a fascinating talk. Now we have got just under 10 minutes for questions. And would you like to come to the microphone? If we're going to have the questions heard, I have to use the roving mic. So nice of you. And I'm very much delighted that as a lawyer, you have so much depth of knowledge about the religion, and especially the history. At the very initial stage of your lecture, you have referred to Mitra because Mitra is also referred to in the Vedas. And especially it is also believed that the Mithannis, who are also called Hurians, and they used to also worship Mitra and they migrated as an Aryans to India. So it was the same Mitra or some other Mitra because in the Egyptian library, there are certain artifacts which have been found where it is written, some of the expressions which are being used in the Vedas in the name of the Varna and the name of the Mitra. This treaty has been concluded between the Babylonians and the Egyptians, kings of the Assyrians or something like that. So it appears like this because the Aryans have come from the Syrian regions and they had a lot of fight there and therefore they migrated here to India. So it is the same Mitra which you are referring to. It is the same Mitra because we all come from the same source. You must know that Avesta is an exact sister of Rigvedic Satsgrith. See, apparently the Aryans came down from the steps. One theory is that they all came down from the steps. One lot came into Punjab, one went into the Iranian plateau and one went towards the German side, which is why and languages won't lie. The Indo-European group of languages was discovered by Sir William Jones who started life as a judge in Calcutta and started the Asiatic society. And he found that this cluster of languages which he called the Indo-European group of languages all must have had a common mother which scholars now reconstruct as proto-Indo-European. So yes, it is exactly the same Mitra. Thank you Sir for that enlightening talk. You mentioned Bozorg Neher and the quotation that if we reached that without practicing virtue, that is the worst. Could you please tell us about this link between succeeding in good governance and having good advisors or priests who know how to guide and kings who know how to listen. Thank you Sir. Very difficult question because you are in Utopia now. That would be my answer.


Ryan, get you to turn earlier next time. Action. I think I can go in between. Okay, go one more time. Okay, I am drunk. It's recording now. So should I put the hat on and go party size or should I put the glasses on and put party size? You can do both if you want. Party sized. Oh, I guess you shouldn't, you wouldn't have the jacket on yet though. Oh, whatever, whatever. It's too late now. Well, he takes her down to like the boiler room of the university. He takes her down to the boiler room of like the dormitory. The dormitory. Dormitory. Sorority house. He takes her to the, come on, come on, I wanna see what happens. Just cause they had a nightmare about a church doesn't mean I'm, ah fuck.     Okay, I'll grab a keg and head down over. Head down? Don't say that again. Head down over? Head on over. Okay, ah Captain Kirk. Hey, what you up to? Nothing. Have you, have you seen that? You wanna stop? No, no, no, no, no, no.  Like are they? Well no, they're going to Harlow to sell the property that they've bought. Yeah, okay. They're like auctioning it off. So this group of kids are like packed in this van and they're going off. No, a truck, a car. Cars, a car, yeah.  Starts off with cars for the group of, okay, I just wanted to rant about this one. Do a sp- ah, okay, I'm gonna do it again. Damn, I forgot to make a special batch for Canada Day, but I did get a couple of beers. Can you close the, because we can super hear him talking, but it's not, I can always overdub the breathing later. Oh yeah, that's true, yeah. It's just the footsteps you won't hear, but I can do some foley or something. Ah shit, sorry to do that again. I keep zooming the wrong way. I keep zooming out and not in. People are taking out problems on their own, where the people, no. And what psychoplasmics is, is that the people with problems, they, it manifests in certain ways, right? Where it's like physical, physical manifest.  It's tough to explain. Looks like we've got another request. Another what? Another Patreon request. Patreon, okay, let's do it again. Okay, so we're in frame here. It was hard to tell though because the door is gonna have to- Just like that, right there? Okay, how do you close this? This is not the same. It's the thing of beauty in it. In it? Ah, do that again. Do it again, Carl. We're all gonna wear out the motor on this thing. You know how many stoppers my mom will shoot so you can buy it for with that? I don't know. It's kind of like I just left out there. Do it again. Okay. Maybe at the end, you guys could be like, here's your payment. You're gonna have to be like, what are those arrows? Yeah, I like to thank Carl for all his hard work he put in. Is there a shade here or what? Who do you mean the blowfish? You can't get much worse than who do you mean the blowfish? Who do you mean the blowfish? Yeah, maybe get to some close-ups so you're all sweating. Gotta do it with the wig, take the wig off. And then like... We're gonna move it out. Yeah. Just line it up or keep it on or whatever, yeah. Okay, I'll do that one again. I think it did say something like, you guys can have like glass of water or something. Get pretty hot here. Or like, I get the beer and I'm like, I think you take it away. Yeah, that's good. Okay, I'll do that one again. I've always wanted blackout. You don't hear your laughter, do you, man?


There are eight key objectives. This series will help us build it to help build Bible-based families on the principles of wisdom Not Hollywood based families number two if you come every day This series will assist establish your family on the premises or the principle of impeccable understanding What is the third benefit when you come?