Table of contents for December 2022 - January 2023 in Philosophy Now

David Bowie was the Picasso of pop. Bowie deliberately completely changed his artistic direction every few years, pushing the style and content of his creativity off at a brand new tangent every time. In this he copied Picasso’s habit of radically, deliberately, frequently reshaping his artistic interests and identity. Bowie was also like Picasso in having the exceptional talent and creativity needed to pull this ambition off. You might even argue that Bowie was one of the few geniuses of art produced in Britain (or even the world) in the second half of the twentieth century. Think of your own list of other geniuses here if you like. I define a genius as someone who communicates or creates new possibilities for experiencing the world or living in it. More precisely,…

How can you be more creative? What is the connection between creativity and inspiration? Where do inspirations come from? The novelist Terry Pratchett, who knew a thing or two about imagination, had an amusing theory about this, as follows: “Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time travelling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.” In a more earnest vein, Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) about the relationship between the mechanic’s mind, hand and eye, as one of constantly assessing a problem and making the changes that seems to be called for, and then reassessing and making further changes, in a continually unfolding creative process. This…

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy, some say;If it’s true my future’s looking great. Oh Man, with all this free time on my hands most every day,Surely I’ll become another Plato. Doing nothing all day long is quite a lot of work–Praying that my genie in her bottleComes out quick and with a fairly firm-but-gentle jerkTurns me to a modern Aristotle. Fully rested, heavy thoughts all worked out in my head,Then my metaphysics might endure. UsHumans need a teacher; when at last I leave my bed,I’ll be right up there with Epicurus. Note: My muse won’t visit if I cannot hear her voice,So I beg you please to be discreet. SheTakes an all-or-nothing stance and leaves me little choiceYet I yield, that I may be like Nietzsche. Leisure is the…

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature… Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Would you consent? Bentham’s utilitarianism justifies the morality of an action on the principle of ‘maximising the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ of people. Kant insists that one’s actions possess moral worth only when one does one’s duty for its own sake, and in this sense consequences are morally irrelevant. What matters, according to Kant, is what we ought to do,…

Christine Battersby Christine Battersby (FRSA) is Reader Emerita in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Her Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (1989, 1994) is included in the Bloomsbury Philosophy Library: Contemporary Aesthetics Collection. Other books include The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity (1998) and The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference (2007). Massimo Pigliucci Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His books include How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books) and The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders (Basic Books). Harry Drummond Harry Drummond is a PhD researcher and graduate teacher at the University of…

The word ‘creativity’ is derived from the Latin word creare; literally, ‘to cause, to create, to make’. But this definition itself suggests problems. Humans can certainly make things by putting other things together; but do we have the capacity to create something new, as it were, from nothing? Well, like many others, I will take refuge in the phrase “it all depends what you mean by…” The idea that creation was only in God’s realm seems to have been ditched in the seventeenth century. The word creativity seems to have acquired its present meaning around that time, with its implication that humans too can be creative. One thing we need to clear up first, is that creativity and discovery are not the same thing. Discovery is unearthing something new: that…

What is the meaning of life? Does God exist? How ought I treat another person? What are the conditions of knowledge acquisition? Engaging, fundamental, and worthy – these sorts of questions are the typical buildings blocks of conversation when a philosopher is asked ‘What do you do?’. What is the nature of building? How can a building influence my life? In what style should we build? These are not the sort of questions it is worth placing money on hearing in the same situation. Yet the philosophy of architecture has attracted some high-profile philosophers. Martin Heidegger, for example, delivered a lecture entitled ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, which proposed the ability of buildings to disclose new worlds to a person (or to Dasein, to use his term). Likewise, the conservative philosopher Roger…

John Dewey, the father of American Pragmatism, spearhead in the field of education and psychology, acclaimed author and prominent twentieth century scholar, also had a deep appreciation for the arts. More specifically, he had a love for poetry. He even wrote some poems of his own, which were eventually discovered among his papers and published in a volume many years after his death. Dewey (1859-1952) found himself alive during a time of incredible turmoil, industrialization, economic growth, and scientific advancement. With so many aspects of modern life changing from day to day, perhaps it’s not surprising if he sought solace in poetry. It seems that for Dewey writing verse may have been more than a cathartic creative outlet or an artsy hobby. In fact, Dewey thought that poetry could be…

With the return of geopolitics, and with the international institutions built after 1945 to prevent or contain war now being perilously weak, the world again faces growing risks of conflict between industrialized nations - such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There have been polarized responses to this conflict. One response has been to denounce Western military support for Ukraine as ‘militarism’. Often such denunciations cloak a hypocrisy which faults Western imperialism while giving a free pass to the imperialism of non-Western powers, such as Russia or China. Yet both hypocritical anti-imperialists and more impartial pacifists frequently conflate militarism – the policy of building armed forces and using them aggressively to advance national interests against other states – with deterrence and just war theories created to counter militarism. There are…

MARTHA NUSSBAUM’S THE Monarchy of Fear (2018) presents itself as a look at the United States’ political crisis and the nation’s future efforts toward ‘justice and flourishing’. Indeed, the book’s subtitle is A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis. However, Nussbaum doesn’t so much discuss U.S. politics as survey the psychological factors behind it. She chooses examples from classical Greece and Rome to make her points instead of examples from the Trump/Brexit era, since she sees classical anecdotes as a means of transcending ‘partisan defensiveness’. Nussbaum focuses on fear as a significant factor in the U.S. outlook both generally and in politics in particular: “Fear is monarchical, and democratic reciprocity a hard-won achievement” (p.60), she writes. She frequently invokes the Roman poet Lucretius as one of her favorite authors, hailing…

Back Issues in Print Issue 152 God: Ontological argument, theology vs philosophy, humility, unreliability, Deism, Kierkegaard / Mini-focus on time / Soviet Spinoza / Foucault / WandaVision Issue 151 Greek philosophy: motion, myths, Socratic dialogue, Aristotle’s happiness, Eratosthenes / Levinas / Be Really Good Digital Liberty focus / Morton interview We still have copies of these earlier back issues: 55-63, 65-80, 83-89, 91-98, 100-106, 108-116, 118-121, 125-139, 142-144,148-150 You can also buy PDFs of all past issues. For full details, please visit philosophynow.org/shop Back issues in print cost £4.75 each if you live in the UK (inc p&p) or US$10/9?/A$15/C$15/NZ$16/£8.50 elsewhere via airmail. For every three you buy, we’ll give you a fourth for free (please tell us which you would like). Binders: Our smart green Philosophy Now binders with…

• Effective Altruism billionaire goes bust• Animal welfare meets big game theory• Philosophers of physics reach critical mass? Seán Moran, RIP It is with great sadness that Philosophy Now announces the death of Dr Seán Moran, a regular contributor to the magazine whose Street Philosopher column has appeared since 2016. Seán was a Lecturer in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland, which was quite fitting, as he was the exemplar of a lifelong learner. His love for life, breadth of knowledge, and puckish humor were contagious, and he was seldom without his flute, always ready to lead a group in song and merriment. Seán was a world traveler and, in addition to his accomplishments as a philosopher, was an outstanding photographer.…

Wittgenstein designed a house, then had the builders reconstruct it to make one of the ceilings 3cm higher. How to become the architectOf your own myth: gesture towards the spaceThat is missing, the space that isn’t there,The three centimetres needed to repairProportion in a perfectly thought-out place Then stand back and say nothing, be silent.Let others place a table and dine,Or a bed to sleep in a room of their choosing;Living will be their way of approvingYour wonderful way of squandering time. © HERB TATE 2022 Herb Tate is a poet and RE & Philosophy teacher in the UK.…

From Descartes and Voltaire, to Sartre and Foucault, French thought has long occupied a privileged seat in the world’s agora. René Descartes (1596-1650), for instance, is often referred to as ‘the Father of Modern Philosophy’ – which admittedly denotes a Eurocentric field of view that looks at history with blinkers. But twentieth century French thinkers such as Foucault, de Beauvoir, Barthes, and Derrida are also among the most influential voices of modern philosophy. In the West they are unavoidable cultural references for a vast array of academic disciplines, ranging from philosophy to history and sociolinguistics. Foucault viewed his project as a ‘Critical History of Thought’, and Derrida’s most famous work, Of Grammatology (1967) criticised some of the principles put forward by the founder of linguistics, Ferdinand De Saussure. A few…

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast has reached its 400th episode, after almost twelve years of steady publication. Written and presented by Peter Adamson, the podcast has made its way philosopher by philosopher, movement by movement, from Thales of Miletus, considered the first Western philosopher, to (as I write) Marguerite of Navarre, a sponsor of French humanism. It has gone through twenty centuries of metaphysical, political, scientific, ethical, and aesthetical debates in Europe and the Islamic world, and has sprouted two spin-offs, dedicated to philosophy in India and Africana philosophy. “My project”, Peter told me, “is inherently about expanding our sense of what the history of philosophy is about.” The first episode of The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps was uploaded in December 2010. In December 2022,…

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(13th November 1940 - 15th September 2022) As philosophers, we find again and again that ‘What is philosophy?’ is as difficult a question as any other philosophical problem. However, in the middle of the twentieth century, there seemed to be a simple answer to it: philosophers primarily analyze concepts. Accordingly, answering the question “What is knowledge?”, for example, was tantamount to answering the question “What is the meaning of the term ‘knowledge’?” The reason why philosophers thought that their craft consisted primarily in analyzing concepts was a certain theory of meaning – the so-called ‘description theory of meaning’. According to this, the meaning of a referring expression is given by a description uniquely picking out the referent of the term, i.e. the thing in the world to which the term…