Table of contents for August - September 2022 in Philosophy Now

Two and a half thousand years ago, the shores of the Aegean were home to dozens of Greek city states, statelets, and colonies, trading, squabbling, fiercely competing, making and breaking alliances. The intellectual competition was just as fierce. In places like the port of Miletus on the Ionian Coast, some of the first philosophers were speculating about what the universe was made of, or about the nature of change, constantly disputing, always trying to pick holes in one anothers’ theories and develop better ones. In Athens, starting just a little later, were philosophers making the most sophisticated arguments about ethics and justice and piety, and what we owe to the gods and to each other. A.N. Whitehead once wrote that “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is…

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads, about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; a track like Van Morrison’s 1976 hit Cleaning Windows is the odd one out. 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 Coffee Coffee brings clarity, and perhaps that is why Immanuel…

Of greatness and glory let us speakFor all things rich and nobleIn proud ships tall let us seekAgain where only men are able Tired we grown of glitter and goldThe constant curse of the market placeLet us dream of Delphic days of oldThat Poseidon’s rage could not erase Come, arise, my men, ariseFor tomorrow we shall sailAgain under bluer Aegean skiesThere to find newer walls to assail. Circe’s song had made us weakFor we have slept too long and lateNow for greater joys let us seekKnowing we are the masters of our fate. This woeful world is much too remissBut only in such a world as thisOne without comfort, joy, or blissDare we dare climb the steps of Olympus. Come my men let us ventureInto the depths of the setting…

When we naively believed we could spy the pandemic’s demise stumbling over the horizon of 2021, we took to entertaining some spectacularly premature questions – for example, should we keep these wretched masks on our faces, though the disease itself might recede? Did we gain anything beyond a first line of defense against COVID – anything good and otherwise unobtainable – by finding ourselves forced to don these hot, moist, suffocating… things? If so, what is this rare, and otherwise unobtainable, upside? Perhaps concealment from the probing gaze of the other; distance in that concealment; safety in that distance; and finally, relief in that safety – relief from the psychological discomfort that can arise when we look upon other people, and especially when they look upon us. The British newspaper…

Did you watch the dystopian TV series Black Mirror? The episode Nosedive paints a picture of a future society where people rate each other’s behaviour according to a credit system. ‘Good’ behavior is rewarded with points; ‘bad’ behavior reduces your score. This form of social control is flanked by all kinds of state surveillance: facial recognition technologies are used to track peoples’ every move, for example. When the episode first aired in 2016 it was already an allusion to and criticism of the emerging Social Credit System in China. But we don’t have to look that far. In recent years the Western world has also become familiar with similar trends. ‘Lacie Pound’, the main protagonist of the episode, plummets in this society. Her behavior results in a dropping score, and…

According to Christmas Humphreys, the founder in 1924 of the Buddhist Society in London, Zen Buddhism is the ‘apotheosis’ – the divine culmination – of Buddhism. Humphreys on to describe Zen as a practical, non-intellectual method of directly experiencing ‘ultimate reality’. If so, then Zen should be of interest to phenomenologists, Kantians and all the other Western philosophers who have argued about our ability to apprehend reality. But was he right? Humphreys derived most of his ideas about Zen from his friend, the Japanese scholar Daisetsu T. Suzuki (1870-1966), who has been well described as the man who brought Zen to the West. Perhaps the best-known Japanese philosopher of the twentieth century, Suzuki was born into a Samurai family in Northern Japan in 1870. After a brief period studying at…

THE ART of philosophising, Bertrand Russell tells us, is the art of rational conjecture. By this he meant the rational skill of articulating the most likely truth about something where it is impossible to know with certainty what the truth is. But what makes most people comfortable, Russell further observes, is their own opinions, where truth is a secondary consideration. Prisoners are no exception is this respect. The Life Inside is essentially about Andy West’s experience of teaching philosophy in prisons over a period of four years. It tells the story of his efforts inside the prison walls to bring to life the Socratic tradition of overcoming mere opinion through active critical thinking, while at the same time confronting his own feelings about his father, brother, and uncle, who all…

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Roberta Fischli Roberta Fischli is a political scientist, journalist, and writer, pursuing a PhD at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. Roberta is currently a visiting researcher at Georgetown University and the Center for the Study of Law and Society (CSLS) at UC Berkeley, where she conducts research on freedom and new forms of power in the digital economy. Lawrence Evans Lawrence Evans is a PhD student at University College London. He balances his studies with teaching undergraduates and doing one-toone tuition in maths and physics for school pupils. He is interested in the history of philosophy, particularly the Ancient Greeks (the area of his PhD), though he also enjoys Descartes and Hume. Dylan Skruka Dylan Skurka is a philosophy PhD student at York University in Canada, and currently edits…

Socrats, my old nemesis!” Thrasymachus exclaimed. Socrates looked up and shielded his eyes against the sun. “Thrasymachus, my old “Socrates, friend,” he replied. “It’s been a while. Come, come, sit with me.” Socrates put on his face mask as Thrasymachus sat down next to him. “You know,” Thrasymachus said, “It is a strange thing that you call me your friend.” “Is it?” Socrates said. “Why?” “Because of our disagreements, of course.” “We do have our disagreements. Still, I learn so much from you.” Thrasymachus looked hard at Socrates. “Do not scorn me, Socrates. For if you do, I shall leave at once.” “Please stay, Thrasymachus. I have no intention of scorning you.” “You have done so in the past!” “And in the past you have scorned me. But that was…

Xanthippe, one day, urged her Socratesalmost falling to her knees, to “Pleasediscontinue, quit, stop and ceasethat constant ‘I know nothing’ tease.” “But I know something and I always will– that I know nothing, absolutely nil!”“Yes, and that’s exactly what gives me fits.How can you not know to pick up groceries for the kids?” “Oh Xanthippe why is it that you just can’t seethat I’m important and key in philosophy?”“I’m so impressed and struck with awe,”she said mockingly: “But I’m also at my last straw!You don’t know how to pick up milk, meat, and dates,but you sure know how to drink wine with your mates!” © WOLFGANG NIESIELSKI 2022 Wolfgang Niesielski is an author, humorist, poet, and cartoonist. Originally from Germany, he lives in California.…

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), lens-grinder and part-time philosophical genius, lived a deeply tumultuous life. He was afflicted not only by grinding poverty (sorry) but also by spiritual alienation. In 1656 he was expelled by his synagogue and the Sephardic community of Amsterdam shunned him for his heretical views, including his denial of the immortality of the soul and of the divine provenance of Scripture. Despite this, Spinoza is best remembered today as a tolerant pantheist, deeply devoted to his God. However, in his celebrated 1930 book Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, the Chicago political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) – himself Jewish – posed a question to interpreters of Spinoza which continues to incite vigorous debate today. Despite his veneer of reverence for God, could Spinoza have actually been an atheist? At a…

One morning in the marketplace, as the townspeople are enjoying what they think is the beginning of a day like any other, a dishevelled man holding a lantern appears out of nowhere. “I seek God! I seek God!” he begins to scream indiscriminately at both no one and everyone. Soon enough, a crowd forms around this spectacle of a person, and once they understand what’s happening, the townspeople can’t help but burst into laughter at the ridiculous sight of someone crazy enough to be out looking for God with a lantern. The madman, getting more and more impatient about not being taken seriously, finally snaps back at his audience: “Where is God? I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I!” Dumbstruck, the townspeople aren’t laughing anymore,…

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Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) The Philosopher Merges with divine wisdom Truth contra gentiles. The greatest of mediaeval European sages, the Dominican friar St Thomas Aquinas was known by a variety of titles, such as ‘the Angelic Doctor’, ‘Doctor Communis’ and ‘Doctor Universalis’. Curiously, he was also known as the ‘Dumb Ox’ – perhaps some sort of in-joke amongst his fellow friars, possibly owing to his being, in G.K. Chesterton’s words, ‘a huge bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet’. Thomas’s paramount achievement was to reconcile the philosophy of Aristotle (or simply ‘The Philosopher’, as he was known) with the teachings of the Catholic Church. In his classic work, the multivolume and unfinished Summa Theologiae, he took Aristotle’s metaphysics, philosophy of mind and moral philosophy, and neatly fitted them together…

• Face-off at Microsoft• Museum argues over ethics of sponsorship• Philosophers meet by candlelight. Ethics of Facial Recognition AI Microsoft have decided that – for now – they will no longer offer facial recognition tools that can determine age, gender or emotional expression. In their announcement they acknowledged that “The potential of AI systems to exacerbate societal biases and inequities is one of the most widely recognized harms associated with these systems”, the tech giant promises to keep “people and their goals at the center of system design decisions and respecting enduring values like fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.” Academics and activists have long pointed to the moral challenges of facial recognition, which they perceive to threaten fundamental rights, especially where it is used…

Aristotle’s most famous work on ethics is the Nicomachean Ethics, which aims to describe the ultimate end and good for human beings. One of the most puzzling features of this classic is that Aristotle seems to waver between two views. These are firstly that happiness involves the activity of the moral as well as the intellectual virtues (this is sometimes called ‘inclusivism’ by Aristotle scholars) and secondly that happiness consists in nothing but the intellectual activity of contemplation (sometimes called ‘exclusivism’). In this article I will explore what he says about happiness, and ultimately conclude that for Aristotle perfect happiness indeed consists in philosophical contemplation. Ultimate Happiness At the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle first aims to show that there is an ultimate end (that is, goal) of life.…

is a professor at Rice University in Houston. They have written more than fifteen books, such as Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World; Dark Ecology; Being Ecological, and Ecology without Nature. Thiago Pinho interviews them about experience and reality. Object Oriented Ontology is a recent approach to philosophical questions about the nature of reality. It aims to overcome our anthropomorphism by considering the world not merely from a human viewpoint but also from the viewpoints of animals and even inanimate objects. Professor Morton, how do you define yourself in the philosophical universe? Can I call you an ‘object-oriented ontologist’? You may call me that. You may also call me a philosopher, although I’ve never called myself that. I think it would be a little arrogant of…

Metaphysical Animals by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman The Women Are Up to Something by Benjamin Lipscomb TWO BOOKS HAVE recently been published within months of each other exploring the lives of the same four female philosophers and making the same claim – that these four friends were the leaders in demolishing the logical positivism and moral relativism that dominated English-language philosophy in the mid-twentieth century. The four young philosophers, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch, met as undergraduates in Oxford during the Second World War and became close friends. Women had only recently been allowed to take degrees at Oxford. Suddenly, all the young men were away fighting, and the women could spread their wings. Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot both became philosophy tutors at…

Readers with long memories may recall that your columnist has a special affection for the human hand. Way back in 2001, he reflected on ‘Carpal Knowledge: The Natural Philosophy of the Caress’ in Issue 33. In 2008, he raised ‘Some Points About Pointing’ in Issue 70. And more recently (but how distant it now seems!), at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, he took the opportunity provided by reflections on handwashing to invite readers to use their hands to applaud those very same structures (Issue 138, ‘Philosophy in the Time of Plague, Pt.1’). My return to the hand has been prompted by my recent experience of talking at the triennial meeting of the International Federation of Societies of Hand Surgeons at the ExCel Centre in London. The Centre was populated…

It’s imperative to analyse the question before providing an answer, for the question has several possible implications. For instance, changing a person’s mind could indicate that you present sufficient evidence to alter a person’s actions, either before they are enacted or during their execution; to alter a person’s ideas which they believe to be factual; or to alter a person’s characteristics by comparing what the person thinks of themself to what society reflects of them. However, notice that each implication is rooted in humanity’s distinguishing faculty: rationality. Let me refer back to Plato (c.427-347 BCE) and his Allegory of the Cave, where prisoners are held captive since birth and subjected to shadow puppetry and disembodied voices while unable to move any portion of their bodies. What’s projected onto the walls…