Table of contents for Issue 27 - No.1/2020 in New Philosopher

“None but a mule denies his family.” Moroccan proverb Tales of brothers feuding, often ending with one committing fratricide, are unsettlingly common in mythology. Set murdered Osiris, Romulus killed Remus, and Oedipus’s sons Eteocles and Polynices killed each other. More recently, and less imaginatively, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler (of Adidas and Puma fame respectively) and Sterling and Stephen Clark (heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune) turned their backs on one another, over money. For the most part, our own experience of family feuds is much less dramatic: inheritances and fratricide are replaced by bruised egos and petty squabbles. Original reasons for the feud are often forgotten; continued outrage trumps settlement. While there may be no knives or fortunes, no blood or court cases, nonetheless the hostility has a habit…

“No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn’t do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.”– Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid’s Tale It was the Great Depression, and photographer Dorothea Lange was working with a US agency, taking shots of rural families in poverty. “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet,” she said. 32-year-old Florence Owens Thompson and her seven children were stationed at Nipomo, California, just off Highway 101. “She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food,” noted Lange about the encounter many years later. But on that fateful day when Lange…

I never intended to have just one child. But when my daughter came along, we haphazardly adjusted to being a three and the newly-formed family felt so right that we couldn’t see our way to disrupting it by adding a fourth to our number. Three had a magic about it: as the Latin phrase omne trium perfectum affirms, everything that comes in threes is perfect. Three was indivisible, like the Trinity. It denoted the number of clauses that lend emphasis to a sentence, the number of dimensions of space we live inside and the number in a list that insists. Three felt complete, like triumvirates and triptychs. Seventeen years later, it still does. My regrets over never having had a second child have been real enough, if fleeting. When my…

In the four centuries since William Shakespeare shuffled off his mortal coil (to use one of his own phrases), no part of his literary remains have been left un-ransacked. Even something as dry as the bard’s last will and testament has worried generations of Shakespeare scholars, not least for one line added in as an apparent afterthought: “I give unto my wife my second-best bed with the furniture.” Second-best? Biographers have long sought some plausible way in which that line is not a calculated insult to Anne Shakespeare née Hathaway. Surely, they argued, the great man must have provided for her in some other way. Perhaps we’re missing context. Perhaps it’s one of those couples’ jokes outsiders simply can’t understand? Or perhaps Will really did just want to take a…

Homo neanderthalensis (250 to 30 tya) Homo erectus (1.8 to 0.3 mya) Australopithecus boisei (2.3 to 1.4 mya) Australopithecus aethiopicus (2.7 to 2.3 mya) Kenyanthropus platyops (3.5 to 3.3 mya) Australopithecus anamensis (4.2 to 3.9 mya) Orrorin tugenensis (6 mya) Homo sapiens (100 tya to present) Homo heidelbergensis (600 to 100 tya) Australopithecus robustus (1.8 to 1.5 mya) Homo habilis (2.3 to 1.6 mya) Australopithecus garhi (2.5 mya) Australopithecus africanus (3 to 2 mya) Australopithecus afarensis (3.6 to 2.9 mya) Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 mya)…

A decade ago, I held hands with a robot. Developed at MIT Media Lab as a prototype domestic servant, Domo was legless and fused to a table but could speak, track faces, and gently grasp objects such as cups and plates. On the day that I visited the Lab, I touched Domo to see how it would react and it promptly reached out its steely fingers and grasped my hand. I was enchanted. Now, our robots are no longer rare creatures caged in laboratories. In 2018, global sales of service robots rose nearly 60 per cent from the previous year to 16.6 million robots worth nearly $13 billion, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Bolstered by advances in AI and programmed to respond to us with ‘emotion’, they are…

noun: 1. A group consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit; 2. A group of people related by blood or marriage; 3. The children of a person or couple being discussed; 4. A local organisational unit of the Mafia or other large criminal group; 5. All the descendants of a common ancestor; 6. A group of peoples from a common stock; 7. A group of related things; 8. A principal taxonomic category that ranks above genus and below order, usually ending in-idae (in zoology) or-aceae(in botany); 9. All the languages ultimately derived from a particular early language, regarded as a group; 10. A group of curves or surfaces obtained by varying the value of a constant in the equation generating them. Origin: Late Middle English…

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tomeHas many sonnets: so here now shall beOne sonnet more, a love sonnet, from meTo her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,To my first Love, my Mother, on whose kneeI learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;Whose service is my special dignity,And she my loadstar while I go and comeAnd so because you love me, and becauseI love you, Mother, I have woven a wreathOf rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name:In you not fourscore years can dim the flameOf love, whose blessed glow transcends the lawsOf time and change and mortal life and death.…

Once, when Zhong Ni was unoccupied, and his disciple Zeng was sitting by in attendance on him, the Master said, “The ancient kings had a perfect virtue and all-embracing rule of conduct, through which they were in accord with all under heaven. By the practice of it the people were brought to live in peace and harmony, and there was no ill-will between superiors and inferiors. Do you know what it was?” Zeng rose from his mat and said, “How should I, Shen, who am so devoid of intelligence, be able to know this?” The Master said, “It was filial piety. Now filial piety is the root of all virtue, and the stem out of which grows all moral teaching. Sit down again, and I will explain the subject to…

“Parental feeling, as I have experienced it, is very complex. There is, first and foremost, sheer animal affection, and delight in watching what is charming in the ways of the young. Next, there is the sense of inescapable responsibility, providing a purpose for daily activities which scepticism does not easily question. Then there is an egoistic element, which is very dangerous: the hope that one’s children may succeed where one has failed, that they may carry on one’s work when death or senility puts an end to one’s own efforts, and, in any case, that they will supply a biological escape from death, making one’s own life part of the whole stream, and not a mere stagnant puddle without any overflow into the future. All this I experienced, and for…

Guila M. Dotti Sani and Judith Treas found that modern mothers from 11 wealthy, western countries spent close to an hour more taking care of their kids in 2012 than mothers did in 1965. Fathers now spend around 40 minutes more time per day with their children than fathers did in 1965 (just 14 minutes). Using data sets from Europe and America, numerous scholars have found some evidence that, on aggregate, parents often report statistically significantly lower levels of happiness, life satisfaction, marital satisfaction, and mental well-being, when compared to non-parents. Studying more than 270,000 people in nearly 100 countries, author William Chopik found that both family and friend relationships were associated with better health and happiness overall. But at advanced ages, the link remained only for people who reported…

It was the year 1015 and Theophylactus, a noble from the powerful Tusculum family of Rome, found himself in a fix. He had successfully seen off his last rival and ascended to the most powerful seat in the known world to become pontifex maximus. But this title came with a catch: as Pope Benedict VIII, he was also bound to celibacy. This meant that he couldn’t pass on his great wealth and power to a son, as was the custom among the nobility. So, he did the next best thing: he heaped favour upon his brother, Romanus, who served as consul and senator of Rome at the time. Upon Benedict VIII’s death in 1024, his brother was able to bribe enough officials to enjoy “accelerated” ordination to the rank of…

“Motherhood is the strangest thing; it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.” Dame Rebecca West “Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” Gabriel García Márquez “He that has no fools, knaves, nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.” Thomas Fuller “Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.” Aristotle “Blood may be thicker than water, but oil is thicker than both.” J.R., in Dallas “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina “When I was a boy of 14,…

A teacher once presented me with a dilemma: “You are the passenger in a car that at times goes over the speed limit, although the driver is mostly within the limit, is focused, and abides by all other road rules. A pedestrian steps out onto the road and the car hits them, killing them instantly. You know the driver was speeding at the time the car hit the pedestrian, and you think it was around 10km/h over the speed limit. If you mention that she was speeding, it’s likely that she will go to jail. Do you tell the police?” My teacher then made us change the driver from ‘the driver’ to ‘your best friend’, then ‘your sister’, then ‘your mother’ to get us to think about whether we would…

When someone dies, their secrets can become mysteries. Without the key of memory – even an unreliable and distorting memory – some doors will never be opened, and no one will know for sure what lies behind them. There is a secret in my family like this. A secret that has become a mystery. A sad mystery that still gnaws at me from time to time, but which will never be fully explained. This is different from the typical family secret, a secret known within the family – something potentially shameful – but never discussed with those on the outside. Most families have those – the secret affairs, questions of paternity, criminal records, closet homosexuality in times when it was illegal, abortions, psychiatric problems, suicides, and more. Those on the…

Grandstanding Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke Utterly obvious Grandstanders often talk as if their views are utterly obvious. Anyone competent at making moral judgements would surely come to the same conclusions. This sort of talk can be used to signal that one’s moral sensibilities are more finely tuned than those of others and thus that one is morally respectable. What is not obvious to others is painfully obvious to the grandstander. Moreover, grand-standers often bat away any suggestion of moral complexity, expression of doubt, or disagreement as revealing either an insensitivity to moral concerns or a lack of commitment to morality itself. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky Deep waters Right after the elopement, Adelaida realised that she felt nothing but scorn for her husband. It quickly became obvious what married…

New Philosopher discussions Hobart, Australia Monthly, 2019-2020 Launched in 2017, this monthly philosophy discussion series is held each month in various locations in Hobart’s CBD. The format is participatory rather than dictatorial and a topic is chosen ahead of time to allow attendees to prepare. Previous speakers include Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds, infectious diseases expert Dr Sam Maloney, and Tasmanian Australian of the Year and speech pathologist Rosie Martin. Hosted by New Philosopher’s editor Zan Boag and Womankind magazine’s editor Antonia Case, you’re sure to come away with plenty to think about. meetup.com/newphilosopher Sydney Writers’ Festival Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia 27 April–03 May 2020 Each year, Sydney Writers’ Festival presents more than 300 events, attracting audiences of up to 100,000 for a week-long conversation of books and ideas at the…

Maggie Jackson Maggie Jackson is an award-winning social critic and author. Her articles have appeared in publications worldwide,including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and Business Week. Jackson won the Media Award from the Work-Life Council of the Conference Board and is a graduate of Yale University and the London School of Economics. She is the author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Nigel Warburton Nigel Warburton is a freelance philosopher, podcaster, writer, and the Editor-at-large of New Philosopher. Described as “one of the most-read popular philosophers of our time”, his books include A Little History of Philosophy, Thinking from A to Z, and Philosophy: The Classics. The interviewer for the Philosophy Bites podcast, which has been…

Prior to the mid-1800s, most legal systems implicitly accepted wife beating as a valid exercise of a husband’s authority over his wife. In 1920, wife beating was made illegal in the United States. Today, between 960,000 and 3,000,000 incidents of domestic violence are reported each year, while many other incidents go unreported. It is estimated that more than ten million people experience domestic violence in the US each year. UNTIL DEATH DO US PART 4.5 million: Number of women alive today in the US who have been threatened by intimate partners with firearms. 1 million: Number of women in the US who have been shot or shot at by their abusers. 928: Number of women in the US who were killed by their male intimate partner in 2015. 11: Women…

When Italian handbag and luggage maker Guccio Gucci retired, handing over to his sons a fortune and the reins of the flourishing business he had created over his lifetime, he didn’t intend to set in motion a chain of events that would see one son sent to prison, one grandson dying penniless, and another grandson, Maurizio, mercilessly shot in the head at work. Businesses forged by passion, and sealed together with familial blood, were supposed to be stalwart investments – impenetrable, private, nimble-footed. And the Gucci label, a multimillion-dollar juggernaut, had been all of this; until, that is, the family started warring. “What makes war break out in a family?” writes Grant Gordon and Nigel Nicholson in the book, Family Wars: The Real Stories behind the Most Famous Family Business…

1,095: A survey of 3,000 families by family database Uinvue revealed that Mum, Dad, and the kids have at least three disagreements a day, each lasting up to five minutes. That totals a staggering 1,095 arguments over the course of one year, lasting for 91.25 hours, or 3 days and 19 hours. 1920: In 1920 in the US, the number of children who lost a parent from divorce began to approach the number who lost a parent through death. $38b: The most expensive divorce in history is between e-commerce giant Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, at the time the world’s richest person with a net worth of $137b, and his former wife, MacKenzie Bezos. After a marriage of 25 years and four children, the couple split up in 2019. Under the…

A few years ago, when I was living in Hanoi, I made the short but bumpy trip to visit my que hon – the ancestral village on my father’s side – which turned out to be a little hamlet of concrete houses in the middle of swampy rice paddies. Local villagers came out to greet the unknown car and I was soon directed to the Dao family temple – a grand name for the little shrine appended to the roof of one of the homes. Daos began appearing, seemingly summoned out of the ether. Cups of tea materialised too, and then a jerry can of moonshine. A duck was slaughtered and roasted over coals. I handed over the thick wad of cash my Hanoian friends had told me to prepare,…

The story of Theseus’s ship was first set down two thousand years ago by the Greek historian Plutarch, and is a thought experiment drawing on western philosophy’s earliest concerns. Plutarch invites his reader to imagine that a ship once sailed by the hero Theseus is now being preserved for posterity. Over time, different parts of the ship decay and are replaced – until, eventually, nothing of the original remains. Does the ship of Theseus still exist? Most people don’t find this too difficult a question, intuitively speaking. The new version of the ship may not be the same as the original, in terms of its materials, but its existence and form are continuous over time. This means that Theseus’s ship has retained a consistent identity throughout its repairs. Thus, it…

The Physician John Locke 1632 – 1704 Gain two things “A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in. For it is easy to observe, that many young men continue longer in thought and conversation of school-boys than otherwise…

Joseph Millum is an ethicist at The Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in the US. Millum received his undergraduate degree from Edinburgh University and his PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto. His current research focuses on the rights and responsibilities of parents, global justice and bioethics, and international research ethics. He is the author of The Moral Foundations of Parenthood and co-editor of Global Justice and Bioethics. Zan Boag: In your book The Moral Foundations of Parenthood, you run through parental rights and responsibilities and put forward a theory of moral parenthood. In the book’s blurb it says that parental “rights and responsibilities undergird the nuclear family and are essential to the flourishing of its members”. Could you give a brief overview of your…

Men write books because they can’t have babies, speculated the 25-year-old Rosario Castellanos in her philosophy master’s thesis from the Universidad Nacionál Autónoma de México. Mexican cultural production in 1950 was almost strictly the domain of men, to which Castellanos responded early on with her philosophy of “feminine culture”, and later with poetry and novels. She contended that men replicate themselves in philosophy and art because they aren’t godly enough to do so in the flesh. This jab could have been delivered by Castellanos’ intellectual forerunner, the 16th century Mexican Hieronymite and poet philosopher Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, who protested her temporary sentence to life-with-no-books by insisting that you can find philosophy outside of books. She conjectured that Aristotle would have learned more if he’d spent time cooking…