How much of what you've heard in life is still alive in you? Classes, sermons, entire conversations, hundreds of hours of podcasts, and most of it has evaporated. Not for lack of intelligence. Because no one taught how to listen.
The illusion of easy listening
We grow up thinking that listening is the easy part, you stay quiet and the rest comes by itself. Plutarch, the first-century Greek philosopher and biographer, warns that this is a trap. In the short treatise How to Listen (Peri tou akouein), one of the practical texts collected in the Moralia, he writes to the young Nícandro, recently arrived at adulthood, and the advice is disconcerting: before learning to speak, learn to listen.
Plutarch cites Theophrastus to support a thesis about the human body: of all the senses, hearing is the most linked to reason and the least linked to passions. The eyes, any shine seduces. Virtue only has one way to reach the soul, the ear. Hence the proverb he left behind: "nature gave everyone two ears and one tongue, so that we speak less and listen more."
The three internal enemies
If listening is so decisive, why is it so difficult? Because the silence of those who truly listen is not empty, it is work, and three enemies live within those who listen.
The first is the ego: you listen, waiting for the opening to refute, and you don't listen to the entire argument, just until you find where to fit the answer. The second is envy, which Plutarch shamelessly names, "whoever is offended by good speech is embittered by what would be good for himself". The third, disguised as virtue, is excessive admiration: it looks like humility, but it is seduced by the beautiful voice and swallows the emptiness with it.
The bee and the crown braider
To defend himself against the three, Plutarch proposes an image that has become classic. There are two ways to listen. The wreath braider gathers the most beautiful flowers and makes a pleasant, fragrant, sterile ornament. The bee even lands on the roughest thyme, and takes the honey from there. One listens for pleasure, the other for profit.
Three centuries later, Saint Basil the Great, Christian bishop, uses the same image to guide young people on how to read pagan authors, drink the nectar that serves the soul and leave the thorn behind. The Greek advice to listen became, in him, a Christian rule of discernment.
The vase and the wood
The final image of the treaty is the most radical. Most people treat their own heads like a vase, an empty container that the teacher comes to fill. Plutarch corrects: "intelligence need not be filled like a vessel, but inflamed like wood, producing an inventive impulse and an appetite for truth." The vessel receives and remains passive. The wood catches fire and starts to burn on its own.
That's why the treatise ends with this sentence: "the principle of living consists of listening well." Listening well is, in itself, the beginning of living, and perhaps, for today's reader, trained to react quickly and respond before understanding, it is the most countercultural thing one can do.
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See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What is Plutarch's treatise How to Listen about?
It is a short treatise on the Moralia (Greek title "Peri tou akouein"), written by Plutarch for the young Nicandro, on how to listen well to a speech or a lesson. He argues that listening is not receiving in silence, but the most active exercise of the mind, and describes the internal obstacles that hinder it.
What are the enemies of listening, according to Plutarch?
Three, all internal, the ego, which listens just waiting for the opportunity to respond, envy, which secretly hopes that the other person speaks badly, and excessive admiration, which allows itself to be seduced by the beautiful voice and swallows the empty content together.
What does Plutarch's parable of the bee mean?
Plutarch describes two types of listener, the crown braider, who gathers only the most beautiful flowers for a sterile ornament, and the bee, who lands on even the roughest flower and takes the honey from there. One listens for pleasure, the other for profit.
Continue: Who was Plutarch? · What is paideia, the Greek human formation? · Why is listening more difficult than speaking?
Source class (YouTube): Como Ouvir, de Plutarco (NousCast)