Tabla de contenidos para April - May 2024 en Philosophy Now

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce’s 1976 hit ‘Car Wash’ are the exception. Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes; about the things philosophers also write about. Philosophers on Baseball Pardon the pun, but occasionally you have to think outside…

We commonly associate the Victorian era with religious revivalism, yet many underwent a crisis of faith during this period. The poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822-88) realised that established religion could no longer counter the impact that rapid industrialisation and trade cycles were inflicting on the poor, nor could it resist the incessant drive for material gain amongst the powerful. Religion, for many, was failing to invest life with purpose: The sea of faithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d;But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. (From Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, c.1851.) Arnold championed literature as the new channel for moral…

Philosophy is in decline. You hear it all the time. The evidence is regularly trotted out: less graduates, no jobs, no prospects, a lack of interest from the culture, etc. It has become a tedious verity. But how can that be? Do we collectively not love wisdom anymore? In our modern world, have we cast off the mantle of being Homo sapiens (‘wise person’)? Have we somehow come to be above it all? Are we no longer enamored of our collective role amongst all creatures on the planet of being reasonable? That can’t be right. Knowledge and good choices – these things are timeless, inescapable. So what’s happened to us? What’s happened to our collective minds to permit philosophy’s decline? Philosophy must be sick. To be sure, there’s an illness…

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975) was a Russian philosopher, philologist, literary and cultural critic. He originated many new concepts, among which the most famous are ‘dialogism’, ‘carnival’, ‘chronotope’, and ‘the laughter of man’. But there is no consensus on whether he is a philosopher or a literary scholar, since he never wrote texts that dealt with ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, or other classical philosophical topics. During his lifetime, Bakhtin was known primarily as the author of two books, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929) and The Works of François Rabelais and the Popular Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1965). For these books he was later nominated for the Lenin Prize, the highest state prize of the USSR. He did not win the prize but these two books eventually brought Bakhtin…

A good case can be made that we talk (or write) too much, and listen (or read) too little. It comes naturally, these days, to blame social media, mainstream media, an epidemic of attention deficit disorder, and what not, for this problem. It turns out, however, that we may need to put at least some of the blame on human nature itself, since it’s an old problem. Just read the following: “I am of the opinion that listening ought to be a constant topic of discussion in one’s own mind and with other people. This is especially so because it is noticeable that most people go about the matter in the wrong way: they practice speaking before they have got used to listening, and they think that speaking takes study and…

Take a second to sincerely ask yourself: has literature improved my life? There’s often an immediate pinprick reaction to defend our most beloved stories, as if our safety blanket is being snatched away from us. But letting go of nostalgia and its associated emotions will help us to think critically. Are all these drawn-out evenings staring at paper really worth it, and if so, how? For the first seventeen years of my life I read only what school demanded of me, and felt sincerely that it would be more enjoyable to eat a book than to open one. Then, one day, a browned and dogeared copy of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love (1997) caught my eye, in the same way that something you pass every day can inexplicably gain new life…

As well as several striking novels, notably The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), the Czech-French author Milan Kundera (1929-2023) wrote extensively about the role of literature in philosophy. He saw fiction as a perfect vehicle for certain types of philosophy, particularly post-modernism and existentialism. “For me”, he said, “the founder of the Modern Era is not only Descartes but also Cervantes.” Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia, and died in Paris last July, aged 94. He was heavily influenced by his background, especially by the Prague Spring of 1968, when the Czech government revolted against Soviet rule. The Soviets sent the tanks in to crush the rebellion. That year Kundera’s books were banned in his own country and removed from public libraries. He was befriended by the French publisher Claude Gallimard,…

In his New York Times #1 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist (2019), Ibram X. Kendi defines a racist as anyone ‘supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea’ (p.13). He then explains that a racist policy ‘is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups’. Such inequity occurs ‘when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing’ (p.18). A racist idea, in turn, is ‘any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way’ (p.20). From these definitions, it follows that there are three types of racists: (a) Racists supporting policies that produce or sustain unequal footing between racial groups; (b) Racists expressing that a racial group is…

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a devoutly pious moralising ascetic vegetarian who just couldn’t keep his hands off the serving wenches. He believed in honesty at all times – so he honestly told his wife what he thought of her. Most marriage counsellors would advise against that. Born into great wealth, Tolstoy chose to live much of his life as a peasant. He was, in other words, your typical egotistic artist who believed that the usual rules of society did not apply to him. He was influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s anarchist philosophy, and in a spirit of anarchy even helped himself to the title of Proudhon’s book La Guerre et la Paix for his most famous novel. War and Peace (1869) is, undoubtedly, the greatest of all those books that…

According to Immanuel Kant, perpetual peace is the “highest political good”, while war is the source of the “greatest evils that oppress civilized nations.” Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has indeed created suffering for many. It also violated Kant’s principle that “No state shall forcibly interfere in the constitution and government of another state” (Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, 1795). The war has also affected some surprising areas – even the world of philosophy. In particular it has created some tough dilemmas for Kant societies around the world. The renowned philosopher was born three hundred years ago, on April 22, 1724, in Königsberg, a port city not far from the Baltic Sea, which was then a major city in East Prussia. Carved up by the canals of the Pregel River,…

A PHOTO IN DANIEL Dennett’s new memoir I’ve Been Thinking shows the four-year-old Dennett perched on a bench and bending forward, bottom in the air, to solemnly examine a toy. Now eighty-one and a world-famous philosopher, Dennett has always loved tools and tinkering: making a tree-house and model sailboats during his childhood in Massachusetts; designing ‘robust’ computer software for computer-phobic professors; restoring Blue Hill Farm where he, his wife, and children lived for forty-three years; ‘tillosophising’ on a tractor; acquiring mastery of his (real-life) sailboat Xanthippe; and, above all, creating a uniformly physical account of reality. Although some reviewers have accused Dennett of arrogance, in some ways he is disarmingly modest. He presents himself as an ever-inquisitive, adventurous amateur, whose ‘hobby’ consists of ‘‘reverse engineering a complex artefact to figure…

I would not like to be friends with the Harvard philosopher Christine Korsgaard. I don’t wish to pursue a friendship with her, not because she isn’t (presumably) a lovely person and a deep thinker, but because being a close friend of hers may entail a level of commitment I am not prepared to engage in. This is because Korsgaard holds that she ought to always and totally hold her friends morally responsible, regardless of any external considerations. And while this would certainly be a welcome status quo most of the time, I have good reason to believe her insistence on such a standard would end up straining our relationship as friends. For I believe it is not only permissible, but sometimes necessary, to withhold or suspend responsibility from others, even…

There are many ideas around love, and much has been said on the subject. What I wish us to briefly meditate upon here, is the idea of love as something inexplicable or unreasonable. I suggested to a friend a while back that he didn’t need to be somebody else in order to be loved by the girl whom he adored, because the reasons why he loves her, and the reasons why she may (or may not) love him, are equally inexplicable. Sure, one can list the things that one likes (or loves) about someone: her intelligent eyebrows, a lonesome grey tooth, a piercing intellect, a lightning-like voice… But, is this why I love my beloved; or am I simply describing things I love about my beloved, with the reason why…

When inspiration strikes, don’t bottle it up. Email me at rick.lewis@philosophynow.org Keep them short and keep them coming! New Irish Thinking DEAR EDITOR: I enjoyed Cathy Barry’s article charting historical Irish thought (Philosophy Now 160) so I briefly dropped into the Wiki page on Modern Irish Philosophers. Two especially caught my attention. Kieran Egan was a very innovative thinker associated with the development of imagination in young people. In terms of beliefs, Egan was an atheist. Interestingly there does appear to be a growing caucus of atheists in Ireland. But is a non-spiritual agenda a prerequisite for good critical skills? No! Another Irish philosopher, Philip McShane, was part of a large group of scientifically educated people who also have a faith. According to Barry, philosophy seems to be enjoying a…

Consciousness has always been a serious embarrassment for those who believe that everything is physical and that physics is the most authoritative account of the material world. There is, it seems, nothing in matter or energy as seen through the eyes of physics that explains how a part of the material world might become aware of itself and the world surrounding it, as is the case with conscious subjects, such as readers of Philosophy Now. Physicalism cannot account for the emergence of minds from a purely physical reality. Physicalist philosophers often try to tame the conscious mind by reducing it to the locus of functional connections between incoming sensory stimuli and outgoing bodily behaviour. Consciousness then becomes a tapestry of causal pathways passing through the nervous system of the organism.…

Phil and Sarah are in their small living room, slumped on their once-cream beige sofa, watching rolling news clips. Sarah glances around and thinks, ‘How can I feel so bored and let-down already? Talk about being ground down by disappointment through failed expectations. Except we don’t talk about it.’ She says, “So how can we remake our lives, Phil?” “I dunno. To start, maybe think up something nice to do.” He purses his lips. “No!” She hits his arm with a cushion. “I mean, how can we really make things better for ourselves, rather than pursue luxuries that we can’t afford anyway?” She gestures vaguely at the screen as a Jaguar advert flashes up. Phil mumbles his usual reply: “By turning this off, for a start. By looking at the…