Tabla de contenidos para October/November 2018 en Philosophy Now

Two hundred years ago this very year, I was born from the imaginings of a teenage girl called Mary. Suggestive, no? My genesis was strange indeed. My mother, if I may call her that, and her married lover (a smalltime composer of doggerel called Percy Bysshe Shelley) had a baby daughter who, tragically, died after just a few days. One stormy evening not long thereafter, my mother took part in a storytelling contest with her friends. During the course of it, she conceived me. In the story she told, an ambitious, driven student of the life sciences called Victor Frankenstein created life from non-living matter - created a creature who, not to be immodest, would go on to bestride culture and imagination and even become a star of stage and…

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has remained in print ever since it was published two hundred years ago this year, and has been the basis for innumerable adaptations. While most novels from so long ago have been forgotten, Shelley’s lives on. Why has it remained so popular? Perhaps, at least in part, it’s due to the philosophical themes it addresses: tampering with nature, the dereliction of duties, and the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions. The tale of a being born without a mother, written by a young woman whose own mother died a few days after giving birth to her, it is perhaps most of all an examination of the need for love in order to survive in a harsh and unforgiving world. It is also a cautionary tale of…

Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and author. After completing her doctorate on her favourite chemicals, phosphines, she went on to further research before realising that talking, writing and demonstrating science was more appealing than hours of slaving over a hot fumehood. In her new book, she takes a look at the science of meddling in God’s domain. You begin your book with a quote from Frankenstein, Chapter III: “But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles.” Who were the ‘philosophers’ Victor Frankenstein had in mind here? Mary Shelley is referring to people such as Humphry Davy, Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier, all of whom had made enormous contributions to the…

Just what makes a philosopher? It’s ostensibly such a basic question, but the answer is more complex than it may at first seem. So what makes someone a philosopher? And how does one become a philosopher? Since the word ‘philosophy’ comes from the Greek for ‘love of wisdom’, we could just say that anyone who has a love of wisdom is a philosopher, and leave it at that. But if we look at those who have been granted the title of ‘philosopher’ down the ages, what distinguishes them from the ‘everyday’ lover of wisdom? The first Western philosopher of whom we have any record was Thales of Miletus (c.624-545 BC). The story goes that Thales was staring so intently at the stars as he was walking along that he fell…

The issue of abortion remains one of the most emotive, politicised, and socially divisive controversies of our time. Both the pro- and anti- sides are driven by strong and often dogmatic beliefs, making them appear irreconcilable. This impasse may be largely caused by the choice of criteria the debate is focussed through: religious belief, morality, and human rights. None of these criteria are firmly grounded in observable facts, but are more akin to terms of art: conceptual constructs that reflect specific ways of thinking that are not very amenable to critique in external terms. Religious beliefs are generally not open to revision by non-religious reasoning, and are therefore often irreconcilable with agnostic or atheistic points of view. Non-theistic morality, on the other hand, can be socially constructed (culture-dependent moral conventionalism);…

Much is made these days of the fact we live in a post-truth society, and that, despite our instant access to more information than ever before, we still seek out the stories that reinforce our existing beliefs and biases. What role should educators play in assisting digital natives to navigate this murky online realm? ‘Post-truth’ was the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year for 2016, defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. This phenomenon is not new: there have always been tricksters, scammers, and cheats. Yet social media have the tendency to amplify: both constructive and destructive voices have become more urgent and sensationalised than ever previously. Students require the skills that…

To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being Luce Irigaray LUCE IRIGARAY IS A HIGHLY influential French cultural theorist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst. Her latest offering, To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being (2017), is a dense but readable defence of individuality amidst a culture that fosters conformity. Irigaray’s ‘continental’ approach – that is, seeing philosophy as a way of life irreducible to mere formal study – is evident from the outset, in a cryptic prologue. Thankfully, once we get past the initial jargon-laden introduction, the main body reads well, and her conclusion follows from the premises she’s outlined. The writing is emblematic of Irigaray’s trademark, highly creative, ‘Hegelian-Nietzschean phenomenology’. In other words, she interrogates concepts from the point of view of human experience with an equal amount…

Years after writing Frankenstein, Mary Shelley published her Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843. Early on in it she states her therapeutic intent: “Travelling will cure all: my busy, brooding thoughts will be scattered abroad; and, to use a figure of speech, my mind will, amidst novel and various scenes, renew the outworn and tattered garments in which it has long been clothed, and array itself in a vesture all gay in fresh and glossy hues, when we are beyond the Alps.” (Part I, Letter I, p.2) Even if the classic 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein deviates from Mary Shelley’s novel too much, it is spot-on regarding her larger project of how best to navigate in the pilgrimage of life. By pilgrimage here I…

For those of us who have no religious faith, death means death, even more surely than Brexit means disaster. We godless ones can no longer entertain the hope that, after we have left this world of transient things, we shall (if we have been good) awaken to an eternal life of unending bliss. The final tragedy, it appears to the atheist, is inescapable and universal. Or it was until recently. Promise of salvation has come from an unexpected source – from the very science that has had such an important role in discrediting religion and disenchanting the world. Certain clever boffins think they may have found a route to eternal life. Most of the ideas of how this may be achieved are, well, bonkers, as are some of the prophets…

Sartre wrote like a fiend. As a true existentialist, he tried to continually create himself – through incessant writing. Plays, reviews, essays and novels flew from his brain onto thousands of pages. Some of his journal jottings were lost. But among his unpublished papers I found this note from July 1957, titled ‘My Strange Dream’, in which his nocturnal imaginings are dogged by a great Dane. The original MS, marked by coffee rings and a cigarette burn and encrusted in places with an unknown white powder, has since vanished from the archive. Perhaps I dreamed the whole thing? DG I found myself in a park in Copenhagen. It was not the place I visited, but older, quieter. A hunched figure wearing a dark cape drew toward me with a knowing…

Everyone has heard of Frankenstein, but not everyone has read the original novel by Mary Shelley. It’s a rattling good read! Here is a brief plot summary. The book is narrated in the form of letters from explorer Robert Walton to his sister, as he pursues his life’s dream of reaching the North Pole. While his ship is trapped by pack ice, his crew see a dogsled being driven across the ice by a figure of gigantic stature. A little later they rescue another man; it transpires that he was chasing the first. He is close to death. They take him aboard and nurse him back to health. His name is Victor Frankenstein. He tells Walton his life story starting with his happy childhood near Geneva. At university, fascinated by…

Sir Walter Scott wrote one of the few favorable reviews of Frankenstein. He described the story as “philosophical and refined.” Following Scott, we can examine Mary Shelley’s novel for the ways it intersects with philosophical and refined positions dealing with good and evil. These fall into three categories: (1) Positions that are alluring and pervasive, but misguided.(2) Those that, although criticized, deserve rehabilitation.(3) Doctrines rooted in ancient thought, which, when properly understood, have contemporary relevance. Elaboration is possible by associating each with a major character in the novel: (1) The creature, created and brought to life by Frankenstein. He is made central in film adaptations.(2) Victor Frankenstein, brilliant scientist. He is the true central character, the ‘modern Prometheus’ after whom the book is named.(3) Captain Robert Walton, arctic explorer who…

Why is there a world? Even if this reality is mere appearance, dream, maya, it would still be something. There could have been nothing, as Leibniz famously observed. So, why this? And why one with conscious beings in it? We don’t have agreed-upon answers to this question. The responses that have been proposed range from questioning the question, to a scientific brute-fact answer (“It just is”), to religious and otherwise supernatural half-answers, or non-answers. Perhaps somethingness is the default natural state, hence not needing to be explained. However, how could we know that, since it seems to us that, on the face of things, nothingness is just as likely? Science cannot give us such ultimate answers. A Big Bang presupposes something already, albeit in a compact energy state. In other…

Anarchism has been making headlines lately. Anarchists recently supposedly disturbed the peace during protests at the University of California in Berkeley simply because, according to one witness, “they just want to fight.” Anarchists apparently prompted several cities around the world to cancel May Day demonstration permits after protests got out of hand. Google for pictures of ‘anarchists’ and you see images of police engulfed in the flames of a Molotov cocktail in Paris, police quelling activists with rubber bullets in Istanbul, police in Washington D.C. clashing with anti-Trump protestors on inauguration day. Such lurid publicity is hardly new for the anarchist movement. An entire century of poor press led David Miller to write that “the prevalent image of the anarchist in the popular mind is that of a destructive individual…

Mary Wollstonecraft is more popular now than at possibly any other time after her death. A campaign has been waged to install a statue of her in Newington Green, London, where she lived and worked for some years; her portrait was even projected onto the British Houses of Parliament. Yet there is something a bit shallow and unsatisfying about how she is popularily being remembered: as the ‘mother of feminism’ – a title that gets bandied about whenever an early female author is rediscovered; as a scandalous single mother – the reason why readers avoided her books through the nineteenth century; or as the mother of the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley. There’s a lot more to Mary Wollstonecraft than motherhood. Over the last ten years her work as a…

Peeling Off The Labels DEAR EDITOR: At last! A brave soul prepared to throw snowballs at the bastions of politically correct philosophy! Anja Steinbauer, I applaud you (Editorial, Philosophy Now 127)! Philosophy is philosophy. It has no need of silly labels like ‘analytical’ and ‘continental’. CEDRIC RICHMOND NOTTINGHAM Barking Up The Wrong Dogma DEAR EDITOR: I’m not an academic, but my special interests (for want of a better term) are the philosophies of science and mathematics. Not surprisingly, I often cite authorities such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger and Richard Feynman, along with many other luminaries who are not quite so famous. As Dr Grant herself points out in her article on ‘Dogmas’ in Issue 127, if one is referring to such authorities in the context of presenting one’s own…

Jud ged Ziyad Marar I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood. The Animals, 1965 TO BE CALLED ‘JUDGMENTAL’ IS NOT A compliment. It connotes tones of superiority or self-righteousness. And we’re first asked to ‘suspend judgment’ before a friend or colleague confides a big secret such as an extra-marital affair or a crime committed. This request conveys that the other person wants us to first learn about and understand what is happening. The request also betrays some ambivalence, in that, while we ask others to withhold judgment in hearing our confessions, we often seek the approval and esteem of others for our accomplishments. We college teachers also assign grades, write letters of recommendation, and vote on a colleague’s promotion. Judgment is…

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Largest Ever Philosophy Event? In August, Beijing hosted one of the biggest gatherings of philosophers in living memory, the 24th World Congress of Philosophy. “Over 8,000 people registered, making it by far the largest philosophy event I’ve ever heard of,” said George Leaman of the Philosophy Documentation Center in Virginia. “The number of registrations surprised the organizers and forced them to relocate the event from the Peking University campus to the China National Convention Center, about five miles away. I’m not sure how many registered participants actually made it but the numbers were large. The organizers arranged for hotels around Beijing with buses to and from the convention center. Beijing has an excellent subway system and we used it many times to get to and from the congress.” It’s usual…

Just over a year ago an eager team of archaeologists scoured through the mud and groundwater of a slum in Cairo erected on the ruins of the pharaonic city of Heliopolis. There they uncovered a gigantic statue, which they believed represented the pharaoh Ramses the Great. Euphoria soon gave way to slight disappointment when it was discovered that the statue was not of Ramses but a lesser-known seventh century BCE ruler of Egypt, Psamtik I. While almost forgotten by the modern world, Psamtik was once revered as a decisive ruler who boosted trade and diplomatic relations with Greece. His policies allowed the Hellenes to establish colonies on Egyptian soil for the first time, opening the door to a trading and cultural relationship that would endure for more than three hundred…

Can you name a philosopher who gets us from the French Revolution to Frankenstein in one move? One valid answer would be Mary Wollstonecraft. She was born in 1759 and died in 1797, which means she had the chance to be inspired, and then crushingly disappointed, by the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft wrote about the French political experiment in one of a number of treatises she produced on political topics. In fact her masterpiece, the pioneering work of feminist philosophy called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a kind of sequel to her earlier Vindication of the Rights of Men. That was published in 1790, with the more famous work on the rights of woman following two years later. Wollstonecraft moved in exciting circles, meeting Samuel Johnson and Tom…

Philosophy For Non-Philosophers Louis Althusser “The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.” – Confucius I REQUESTED A PAPERBACK THROUGH MY local library, my curiosity triggered by its title, Philosophy for Non-Philosophers (2017), which suggested that an innovative author had somehow compressed renowned works into a text for newcomers. I expected sections within the book to discuss logic, language, ethics, and mind, before weaving the strongest threads of such topics into a robust conclusion – philosophy for today’s remarkably diverse public. Louis Althusser’s book in fact holds twenty-two frequently dense chapters: perhaps too many for the paperback’s two hundred pages and a prospective audience which includes ‘farmers and managers’. By way of illustration of the nature of the contents, his opening chapters…