Ep. 379: Egyptian Philosophy with Chike Jeffers (Part Two)

You're listening to the Partially Examined Life. This is episode 379 part two. We've got guest, Chike Jeffers, co author of the Africana section of the History Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast, who is here. We're talking about the instructional literature now, kings instructing their sons, viziers instructing the king, instructing their sons, something like that. And we're talking about the older of the two that we considered here the instruction of Tahotep. Ptahotep. You just you just told me You just instructed me in how to say it, and now look. Yes. We were commenting how it sort of starts in a more modest way than you would think. You you should look for knowledge. It might be hidden among the the the poorest people, the most the thing the people that you would find most foolish. Wisdom could be hiding anywhere, so don't be so, snooty about it and thinking maybe this pointed toward some sort of not egalitarianism, but at least a reaction to probably what was a very intense class division. Well, so the section right after that, he is does does sort of lay that this down. Look. Okay. If if you meet a disputant into action, a powerful man superior to you, how do you deal with that? Well, maybe just let his own words condemn him. Whereas if you meet somebody who's on your level Same thing. Well, it does yeah. If you meet someone who's not on who's lower than you, kind of the same. I mean, there are nuance distinctions. Silence is the virtue. Yeah. Yeah. The Nuance distinctions between these different sections. But, yes, the virtue of silence, which is a strange thing to say if you're giving advice on how to be a powerful rhetorician. It's like, better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it. Mhmm. But I think in this context, the gist of it is particularly if you're a king or a magistrate, right, is that silence here You're not a king or a magistrate. You're being judged by a magistrate. Right? You're one of the disputants whose dispute is being judged. Interesting. Okay. I think I didn't catch that. I didn't understand that. But I think the point is still the same that Mhmm. Basically, speech can be your undoing if you are not wholly and completely in control of your faculties and the facts and all that sort of thing. So if you're in a dispute with somebody, just be quiet and they'll fuck it up eventually. Just let them make the mistake, essentially. But there's a sense in which that's also a good leadership principle. There's a wonderful scene in one of Kurosawa's movies, which is the one where he Is it Ron? Is that the one where he The double, the old king is sick and they bring in the guy who looks like him to just pretend to be him? The King Lear …