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tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/socrates-8115/articles Socrates – The Conversation 2019-09-20T03:23:52Z tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123854 2019-09-20T03:23:52Z 2019-09-20T03:23:52Z Be excellent: how ancient virtues can guide our responses to the climate crisis

What would Socrates say about coal mining? Or recycling?  www.shutterstock.com

As world chiefs and youth leaders gather in New York at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, many of us as individuals are feeling powerless and overwhelmed. Making big personal changes can appear costly in terms of happiness. And anyway, why should I bother when any difference I can make will be negligible?

As we contemplate our future, we can seek insight from the great philosophers of the ancient world to guide our choices.

Virtue

Socrates wrote nothing, but many of his ideas found their way into the dialogues of his star pupil, Plato. The main character in these dialogues is indeed Socrates himself. In Plato's most famous work, the Republic, Socrates suggests that he and those around him discuss the most important question there is: how one should live?

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293146/original/file-20190919-53528-1vqett1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293146/original/file-20190919-53528-1vqett1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293146/original/file-20190919-53528-1vqett1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293146/original/file-20190919-53528-1vqett1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293146/original/file-20190919-53528-1vqett1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293146/original/file-20190919-53528-1vqett1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293146/original/file-20190919-53528-1vqett1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Individual action can be guided by ancient wisdom. Picture: Markus Spiske/Unsplash

One of his interlocutors rather aggressively suggests that the answer is obvious: you should do anything that gives you money, power, and pleasure, and ignore all the constraints of so-called morality, which is just a con dreamed up by the powerful to keep us in our place.

The conflict between the personal goods that Thrasymachus (a sophist and character in The Republic) lists and virtue – or doing what's right – is at the heart of the climate crisis. Should I take this highly paid job with an international oil company, or work for a local environmental charity? Shall I buy a new SUV, or donate the money and put up with the inconvenience of public transportation?

A harmonious soul

Socrates has some snappy responses for Thrasymachus, but they don't really work, so he starts to develop a more sustained argument based on the idea of "the soul" – that set of qualities that make us the kind of living beings we are.

There are three main aspects to the soul: reason, desire, and spirit (or emotion). Socrates suggests that the best souls will have reason in charge, shaping and directing the desires with the help of the emotions. So though I may want to be sitting right up there in that SUV, feeling powerful and loving the admiring looks I get from passers-by, what I should ask is whether this is what I have strongest reason to do.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293147/original/file-20190919-53507-1tl7xdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293147/original/file-20190919-53507-1tl7xdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293147/original/file-20190919-53507-1tl7xdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293147/original/file-20190919-53507-1tl7xdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293147/original/file-20190919-53507-1tl7xdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293147/original/file-20190919-53507-1tl7xdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293147/original/file-20190919-53507-1tl7xdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Sure, driving the big car might be fun but is it right? Shahzin Shajid/Unsplash, CC BY

Thrasymachus will of course say: "Obviously, yes!" But Socrates compares souls to cities, and he compares the souls of people like Thrasymachus, who follow their desires wherever they lead, to tyrannies.

While it might seem great to be a tyrant, Socrates predicts that tyrants will slide into a frenzied search for ever greater power and pleasure, never tasting true freedom or friendship. His idea is that you are essentially a rational being, and if you are led by your desires then you are not actively living a life at all. Politicians, take note.

The apparent conflict between personal goods and virtue, then, is only apparent, since you will be not truly happy without virtue. And there does seem to be some modern support for the Socratic view from modern "positive psychology". This relatively new field suggests many people who care about others and commit themselves to moral goals, report higher well-being and a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Having this sense of life's purpose has even been associated with a lower risk of death.

   Read more: Explainer: what is positive psychology and how can you use it for yourself?

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293154/original/file-20190919-53503-acm759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293154/original/file-20190919-53503-acm759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293154/original/file-20190919-53503-acm759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293154/original/file-20190919-53503-acm759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293154/original/file-20190919-53503-acm759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293154/original/file-20190919-53503-acm759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293154/original/file-20190919-53503-acm759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Plato. www.shutterstock.com

The doctrine of the mean

But at a time when change is needed, how do I decide exactly what the virtuous thing to do is? Here we can learn from Plato's most famous pupil, Aristotle.

Aristotle sees that human life consists in various spheres, and that each sphere can often be characterised in terms of a feeling or an action. Take anger. To live virtuously, you have to feel anger in the right way – at the right time, for the right reasons, towards the right people and so on. And there are two ways you can go wrong, by feeling anger in the wrong way, or by failing to feel anger in the right way. The moral life, then, consists in our attempt to hit the sweet angry spot between the two ways that anger can go wrong.

The analysis works in the same way with actions. Generosity is to do with giving away money, and that should be done in the right way. If you don't do it in the right way, then you are stingy; if you do it in the wrong way, then you are wasteful.

In terms of our climate, this relates to the releasing of CO2. So the central environmental virtue is eco-sensitivity. Someone who releases carbon in the wrong way (leaving their engine running while they visit the shops, for example) is eco-insensitive, and there might also be cases of eco-oversensitivity (refusing to call an ambulance, say, for someone who needs urgent help).

Aristotle notes that we are often more attracted to one particular vice, and here that is of course eco-insensitivity. What we should do, then, is reflect on our own practice. If we think we are tending towards that vice, we should try to come closer to the mean. We don't have to aim at perfection. We can take one step at a time in the right direction. And – if Socrates is right – we will find that you have not sacrificed much, if anything, of your happiness as you do so.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293156/original/file-20190919-53534-ikpr6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293156/original/file-20190919-53534-ikpr6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293156/original/file-20190919-53534-ikpr6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293156/original/file-20190919-53534-ikpr6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293156/original/file-20190919-53534-ikpr6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293156/original/file-20190919-53534-ikpr6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293156/original/file-20190919-53534-ikpr6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Choices. So many choices. www.shutterstock.com

Modern virtues

Since ancient times, other virtues have been added to the list, and hope is another important virtue in facing the environmental crisis.

The ancients did not really consider cases in which a group of people are doing something terrible, though each individual's contribution makes no perceptible difference. One of the central environmental virtues here is collaborativeness, which leads us in the direction of political as well as personal action.

We are also more aware than the ancients were of the moral significance of allowing things to happen, as opposed to actually doing something about them. We need to take "negative responsibility", not just stand by and watch as our planet is damaged.

Virtuous action is needed, from the individual up. But by looking to the ideas of the ancient philosophers we can recognise that, at least as far as the climate is concerned, morality requires only small shifts in each moment rather than the seismic shifts that many might fear.

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

Roger Crisp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 The challenges of climate can seem overwhelming. But individual choices can be guided by ancient wisdom. Roger Crisp, Professorial Fellow, Dianoia Institute of Philosophy, Australian Catholic University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/113209 2019-04-23T11:41:39Z 2019-04-23T11:41:39Z Why philosophy must be dragged out of the ivory tower and into the street

Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher.  yoemi/Shutterstock

According to one founding myth, philosophy begins with a grumpy old man named Socrates being put to death for pestering his fellow citizens about the nature of justice, courage, and other such virtues. This is hardly an auspicious way to start a new academic discipline. But Socrates' attempt to engage Athenians in dialogue exemplifies both the nature of human inquiry and the public role philosophy ought to play today.

The critical exchanges Socrates initiated with his peers were designed to lead everyone to a deeper understanding of the world around them. In fact, the Socratic method of asking hard questions to encourage reflection, draw out the unwarranted assumptions of an accepted view, and then posit something new characterises the movement of our intellectual history from Plato to Steven Pinker.

Of course, a great deal has changed since Socrates started accosting his fellow citizens in the street. Philosophy is now a highly specialised academic discipline in which scholars employ a technical vocabulary to address everything from art and ethics to the nature of reality and our knowledge of it. As a result, following the latest trends in philosophy requires an advanced degree, if not a PhD. And this means the essays published today in The Journal of Philosophy are inaccessible to the vast majority of people.

There has, however, been a recent push to drag philosophy out of the ivory tower and return it to the street. Radio programmes, podcasts, and online magazines such as In Our Time, Philosophy Bites, and Aeon have done much to render philosophical ideas intelligible to a general audience. And the new popular philosophy column I am running in the New Statesman aims to take this one step further by inviting publicly minded thinkers to address contemporary social, cultural, and political issues from a philosophical point of view.

In this, I'm following Socrates' lead: challenging the general reader's position on a particular issue with the hope that they then critically reflect on the values of their community and ultimately learn something new.

Lessons from Socrates

Socrates' death explains why learning something new is an activity all of us can do.

As mortal beings, we can't see everything and death speaks to a certain limit on our apprehension of reality. In fact, most of reality stands apart from us as a thought provoking mystery. And given the finite nature of our understanding, our knowledge of the world is always tied to a particular perspective on things.

Take a rose, for example. A physicist may say it consists of a specific set of particles and the forces that act between them. A chemist can explain its basic compounds. A biologist might describe the ecosystem required for a rose to grow. An economist can identify its exchange value. An artist may depict its beauty, and a lover ought to appreciate its romantic significance.

Each of these perspectives teach us something about a rose. But none on their own explains all there is to know. So, to expand our appreciation of the world, we need to accept the incomplete nature of our knowledge, question our own perspective, and adopt alternative points of view.

For his part, Socrates embraced the finite character of human understanding. "Real wisdom is the property of the gods," he said when on trial for his life. And he famously claimed his distinctive insight consisted solely of this: "I do not think I know what I do not know."

Socrates' rejection of any pretence to divine understanding and his doubt over the extent of his own knowledge drove him to question his city's customs and traditions. He had no qualms about interrupting the daily activities of everyone from doctors and lawyers to poets and priests, pressing them on their deeply held beliefs.

More often than not, Socrates used his superior skill in the art of argumentation to highlight the limitations, inadequacies, and contradictions in a particular person's perspective. And in the end, Socrates' irreverence for Athenian practices, his persistent inquiry into the essence of things, and his uncanny ability to annoy his fellow citizens led to his undoing.

Reasonable debate

While most Athenians were uncomfortable putting their traditions to the test, Socrates did develop a following among a motley crew of open-minded students, merchants, aristocrats, and dramatists. These disciples took Socrates' challenge seriously. They not only cast doubt on their cultural inheritance, but also began to formulate new answers to tough questions about the ethical basis of our actions and the essence of human flourishing.

They also challenged their mentors. Aristotle, for instance, found fault in Plato's account of the good life in which reason dominates our unruly passions. And Aristotle's criticisms paved the way for the Epicurean claim that our passions have a positive role to play in our well-being.

Critical exchanges over ethics and the good life continue to this day. This is a good thing: we need more sites for reasonable debate over contentious issues, with the goal of fostering dialogue between engaged citizens across the ideological spectrum. Let's hope, though, that we are all spared Socrates' fate…

This is an edited and revised version of an article that initially appeared in the New Statesman.

Aaron James Wendland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 We need to accept the incomplete nature of our knowledge, question and adopt alternative views. Aaron James Wendland, Professor of Philosophy, Russian National Research University The Higher School of Economics Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114260 2019-03-28T10:40:32Z 2019-03-28T10:40:32Z Do you have a moral duty to pay taxes?

What can philosophers tell you about paying taxes?  RomanR/Shutterstock.com

It's tax season. Americans will pay an average of US$10,489 in personal taxes – about 14 percent of the average household's total income.

Most will do so because they think it is their civic duty. Many believe they are morally obliged to obey the law and pay their share. But as tax day approaches, many Americans will bemoan their tax bill and complain that it is unfair.

So, how are we to know if paying taxes is the right thing to do? Perhaps philosophy has some clues?

Reasons to obey the law

Many philosophers agree that we should obey the law. In his book, "The Crito," Plato, for example, describes Socrates' choice after the Athenian jury sentenced him to death for impiety. Crito, a wealthy friend of Socrates, arranges for him to escape from the prison a night before his execution. Socrates refuses saying he ought to obey the law.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Socrates chose to die rather than disobey the Athenian jury. vangelis aragiannis/Shutterstock.com

In explaining his decision, Socrates hinted at roughly three reasons why it would be wrong for him to break the law: First, he had chosen to stay in the city for many years despite being at liberty to leave if he did not like the laws. Second, he might hurt other people – by damaging the state if he disobeyed. Finally, he had benefited from the laws in the past.

More recent scholars endorse many of these claims. Eighteenth-century philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that citizens agreed to the law of the state by continuing to live in the place. Locke, for example, held that "if a man owns or enjoys some part of the land under a given government, while that enjoyment lasts he gives his tacit consent to the laws of that government and is obliged to obey them."

Twentieth-century British philosopher R.M. Hare suggests that citizens should obey the law to promote good social outcomes.

Another British philosopher of the same era, H.L.A. Hart argued that citizens should comply out of fairness to others who obey. He held that it is unfair, and therefore wrong to benefit from their actions, without doing the same for them in turn.

Is there a moral duty to pay taxes?

Yet it is hard to see why these arguments would give the average citizen a moral responsibility to pay their taxes.

Most of us never consented to the law. We were simply born here. Leaving would be costly, and even the chance to emigrate is dependent on another country's willingness to accept us.

Given the amount of government waste and its total budget individual citizens could think that their tax bill is unlikely to make a difference to the services the government can provide. Even if they agree with how the government spends money, they might therefore conclude they have no reason to contribute. After all, one person's ten thousand dollars is not going to determine whether the military can secure national borders.

The most commonly defended argument from scholars for why one should pay taxes is a duty of fair play. Fair play is the notion of reciprocity, the idea that you should not take advantage of others.

As philosophers like George Klosko argue, people benefit from their fellow citizens paying their taxes.

They enjoy the roads that everyone helps pay for, the fire departments they fund. They ought to pay back fellow citizens who benefited them, just like you ought to do something for a friend who gives you a ride to the airport.

The case against paying taxes

As a philosopher who studies civic ethics, I have argued in a recent paper that this kind of responsibility still does not explain why one should pay taxes.

The idea that we have to pay your taxes because other people have benefited by paying theirs rests, from my perspective, on a wrongly narrow view of what it means to satisfy one's duties of reciprocity. All that reciprocity requires is that one should compensate people for the work they have done that benefits us.

Just like we can repay a friend who gives us a ride to the airport by doing something else that benefits them – say, making them dinner or helping them move – so too can we repay our fellow citizens by doing something other than paying our taxes.

Lots of actions benefit your fellow citizens that you might pay for – taking a pay cut to do legally discretionary work to help the environment, volunteering to do policy research, choosing a career in public service over a more financially rewarding line of work, and more.

If you do enough such acts, it could be argued, you would have no duty of reciprocity to pay your taxes. You would already have done enough to compensate your fellow citizens.

Why pay taxes

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Here's why you should pay your taxes. adriaticfoto/Shutterstock.com

Given this, the best argument for paying our taxes, as I argue in my paper, is "intellectual humility." And here is what it means.

Satisfying these duties of reciprocity requires successfully compensating our fellow citizens for all the burdens they took on our behalf. As one can imagine, it is a hard calculation to make.

It is difficult to know if we have done enough. If we choose not to pay taxes because we think we have already repaid our fellow citizens in other ways, we run a strong risk of getting it wrong.

Paying the tax bill is one way of avoiding that risk and making sure we treat our fellow citizens fairly.

Editor's note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at email@example.com.

Brookes Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 Many Americans are fretting over paying their taxes. A philosopher says the moral question isn't as much about a duty toward the government, but being fair to fellow tax-paying citizens. Brookes Brown, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Law, Liberty, & Justice Program, Clemson University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109593 2019-03-06T13:53:46Z 2019-03-06T13:53:46Z Socrates in love: how the ideas of this woman are at the root of Western philosophy

  Aspasia. Wikimedia Commons

Where did Socrates, the foundational figure of Western philosophy, get the inspiration for his original ideas about truth, love, justice, courage and knowledge? New research I've conducted reveals that as a young man in 5th-century BC Athens, he came into contact with a fiercely intelligent woman, Aspasia of Miletus. I argue that her ideas about love and transcendence inspired him to formulate key aspects of his thought (as transmitted by Plato).

If the evidence for this thesis is accepted, the history of philosophy will have taken a momentous turn: a woman who has been all but erased from the story must be acknowledged as laying the foundations of our 2,500-year old philosophical tradition.

A neoclassical painting by the 19th-century artist Nicolas Monsiau depicts Socrates sitting across a table from a lusciously dressed, gesticulating Aspasia. The handsome young soldier Alcibiades looks on. The image captures the standard view of Socrates: as poor and ugly. The son of a stonemason, he was known from middle age for going unshod and wearing ragged clothes.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260543/original/file-20190224-195886-19ldpa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260543/original/file-20190224-195886-19ldpa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260543/original/file-20190224-195886-19ldpa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260543/original/file-20190224-195886-19ldpa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260543/original/file-20190224-195886-19ldpa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260543/original/file-20190224-195886-19ldpa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260543/original/file-20190224-195886-19ldpa4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 The Debate of Socrates and Aspasia, c. 1800. Wikimedia Commons

But Socrates is also said by Plato to have been instructed in eloquence by Aspasia, who for more than a decade was the partner of Athens's leading statesman Pericles. Supposedly a highly educated "courtesan", Aspasia is shown in the painting enumerating the points of a speech on her fingers. Her gaze is directed at the aristocratic youth Alcibiades, who was Pericles' ward and probably Aspasia's great-nephew. Socrates claimed to be enthralled by Alcibiades' good looks and charisma, and (as recounted in Plato's dialogue Symposium) he saved his life at the Battle of Potidaea in 432 BC.

Does the painting do Socrates justice? His main biographers, Plato and Xenophon, knew him only as an older man. But Socrates was once young, and was a direct contemporary of Aspasia's. And, from surviving images of the philosopher, occasional information given by his biographers, and ancient written texts which have been generally overlooked or misinterpreted, a different picture of Socrates emerges: that of a well-educated youth who grew up to be no less brave a soldier than Alcibiades, and a passionate lover of both sexes no less than a intense thinker and debater.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262373/original/file-20190306-48447-1eghqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262373/original/file-20190306-48447-1eghqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262373/original/file-20190306-48447-1eghqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262373/original/file-20190306-48447-1eghqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262373/original/file-20190306-48447-1eghqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262373/original/file-20190306-48447-1eghqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262373/original/file-20190306-48447-1eghqf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the house of Aspasia, Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1861. Wikimedia Commons

Diotima/Aspasia

Socrates was famous for saying: "The only thing I know is that I don't know." But Plato, in Symposium (199b), reports him as saying that he learned "the truth about love" from a clever woman. That woman is given the name "Diotima" – and in Symposium Socrates expounds her doctrine.

Scholars have almost universally dismissed Diotima as a fiction. She is described in the dialogue as a priestess or seer (mantis), and she is thought at best to be an allegorical figure – one of inspired or visionary wisdom who might have initiated a thinker such as Socrates into the mysteries of Love. But Plato leaves some curiously precise clues about the identity of Diotima which have never hitherto been elucidated. In my book I present the evidence to show that "Diotima" is in fact a thinly-veiled disguise for Aspasia.

Aspasia came from a high-born Athenian family, related to that of Pericles, which had settled in the Greek city of Miletus in Ionia (Asia Minor) some decades earlier. When she migrated to Athens around 450 BC she was around the age of 20. At that date Socrates too was around 20 years old.

A few years later, Aspasia became attached to Pericles, who was then a leading politician in Athens – and already twice her age. But a pupil of Aristotle, Clearchus, records that "before Aspasia became Pericles' companion, she was with Socrates". This fits with other evidence that Socrates was part of Pericles's circle as a young man. He would undoubtedly have become acquainted with Aspasia in that milieu.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262374/original/file-20190306-48420-g8tgnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262374/original/file-20190306-48420-g8tgnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262374/original/file-20190306-48420-g8tgnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262374/original/file-20190306-48420-g8tgnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262374/original/file-20190306-48420-g8tgnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=673&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262374/original/file-20190306-48420-g8tgnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=673&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262374/original/file-20190306-48420-g8tgnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=673&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Socrates, Pericles, Alcibiades, Aspasia in Discussion, unknown artist, 1810–25. Wikimedia Commons

Given that he was part of this privileged elite in his youth, what impelled Socrates to turn to the life of the mind, shun material success and reorient philosophical thinking for posterity? No one has ever sought to trace the trajectory of the younger Socrates, because the biographical sources are scattered and fragmentary, and appear to say little of interest regarding his thought. But since Socrates was well known in Athens as a philosopher by his thirties, the earlier period is where we should seek evidence of his change of direction to becoming the thinker he was to be. I argue that Socrates' acquaintance with Aspasia provides the missing link.

Aspasia was the cleverest and most influential woman of her day. The partner of Pericles for around 15 years, she was widely slandered and reviled by the comic playwrights - the tabloid journalists of their day - for her influence over him. Part of Pericles's circle of thinkers, artists and politicians, she is depicted by Plato, Xenophon and others as an admired instructor of eloquence, as well as a matchmaker and marriage counsellor.

In Plato's dialogue Menexenus she is described as teaching Socrates how to give a funeral speech – just as she had allegedly once taught Pericles. She was, in other words, known for her skill in speaking and, like "Diotima", in particular for speaking about love.

Socrates in love?

So. Could Socrates and Aspasia have fallen in love when they first met and conversed in their twenties? The fact that Plato accords Aspasia considerable intellectual authority over Socrates has alarmed generations of scholars, who have largely dismissed the scenario in Menexenus as a parody of oratorical techniques.

Meanwhile, they have been happy to consider Aspasia a "brothel-keeper and prostitute" on the strength of citations from comic poets of the day. At best, scholars have elevated Aspasia to the status of hetaira – a courtesan. But this appellation is not once given to her in ancient sources.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262375/original/file-20190306-48429-yv5zx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262375/original/file-20190306-48429-yv5zx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262375/original/file-20190306-48429-yv5zx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262375/original/file-20190306-48429-yv5zx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262375/original/file-20190306-48429-yv5zx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262375/original/file-20190306-48429-yv5zx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262375/original/file-20190306-48429-yv5zx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Socrates. Sting, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

If we accept the evidence that Aspasia was, like "Diotima", an authoritative instructor of eloquence and an expert on matters of love – rather than a common prostitute or even an influential courtesan – a striking possibility arises. The notions attributed in Symposium to "Diotima" are central to the philosophy as well as to the way of life that Socrates was to espouse.

The doctrine put in the mouth of "Diotima" teaches that the physical realm can and should be put aside in favour of higher ideals; that the education of the soul, not the gratification of the body, is love's paramount duty; and that the particular should be subordinated to the general, the transient to the permanent, and the worldly to the ideal.

These ideas may be acknowledged as lying at the very root of the Western philosophical tradition. If so, identifying the fictional "Diotima" as the real Aspasia makes for a historically sensational conclusion. In retrospect, the identification is so obvious that its failure to be seen clearly up to now must perhaps be attributed to conscious or unconscious prejudices about the status and intellectual capacities of women.

The time is ripe to restore the beautiful, dynamic and clever Aspasia to her true status as one of the founders of European philosophy.

Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher is published by Bloomsbury on March 7 2019.
 A new look at ancient texts allows for a pivotal perspective on the role of a certain Greek woman. Armand D'Angour, Associate Professor in Classics, University of Oxford Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/99061 2018-07-06T13:09:42Z 2018-07-06T13:09:42Z World Cup provides plenty of drama – but football must not forget its social responsibility

  Shutterstock

There's more to life than football.

That was the observation of the late Brazilian midfielder Socrates. A medical doctor as well as a great footballer, he was also a champion of social and political activism.

In the midst of Brazil's military dictatorship in the early 1980s, Socrates led a pioneering movement from his position as a star player at the Corinthians football club. "Democracia Corinthiana" held that everyone at the club – from president to kit man – should have equal voting rights on all club matters.

Walking onto the pitch for the league final in 1983, he and his teammates proudly carried a banner emblazoned with the message for an international audience: "Win or lose, but always with democracy."

Fast forward 35 years, and before a ball was kicked in Russia this summer, calls for democracy loomed large on the eve of a World Cup already beset by FIFA corruption fatigue, threats of racially intolerant fans, and a crippling overdose of the one thing football is supposed to be immune to: politics.

For now, the drama of the action on the pitch has taken centre stage. But look just a little closer and you will see ominous signs of a football fraternity which has forgotten that with great power (alongside staggering wealth and public adulation) comes great social responsibility.

Sporting heroism

It's enticing to compare the activism of Socrates with the apparent outlook of one of today's Brazilian stars. Neymar celebrated his 26th birthday with a celebrity filled black tie party for 200 guests at a plush Paris venue in February and had his name and image projected into the night sky by his club.

To some, Neymar and his £200m price tag might be paraded as evidence of a hollow, commercially driven individualism which has slowly devoured the collective ethos of sport. One could almost adapt Socrtates's earlier message to: "Win or lose, but always about me."

Yet playing such a blame game would be a mistake. To romanticise football's past is to gloss over decades of the game being synonymous with toxic racial intolerance, sexist boardrooms and booze-filled bigotry. Even if Neymar is a fitting caricature of capitalism's sporting excess, he is merely a product of an era when personalised emojis and private jets take priority over humanitarian crises, inequality and climate change.

Hope in individual role models is not lost however. Step forward Manchester United midfielder Juan Mata, who in August 2017 established the Common Goal initiative. Driven by salary donations from players, clubs, managers and supporters, it aims to redistribute 1% of football's astronomic wealth to charities across the world. It has already attracted support from high profile international footballers such as Mats Hummels and Giorgio Chiellini.

Acts of courage are evident too. Just ask US international Megan Rapinoe, who in 2016 took a stand – or rather a Colin Kaepernick inspired bended knee – during the national anthem against systemic racial injustice and police brutality.

Or there's SVB Vitesse and Georgia defender Guram Kashia, whose brave decision to wear a rainbow armband in support of LGBTQ rights shook Georgian society. And don't forget Robbie Rogers, who threw open the doors of the locker room closet when he proudly took to the field as Major League Soccer's first openly gay footballer.

Fighting for the future

Off the pitch, recent years have also seen progressive shifts beyond the dark days when the "old boys club" had a firm grip on the game. Earlier this year, the Norwegian Football Federation's dismantling of gender pay gaps for the men's and women's national teams established a new gold standard in the global game.

The ripple effects are already being felt amid gender equity debates in Australia, Brazil and the Middle East, where in 2016 the under-17 Women's World Cup in Jordan was the first time hijabs were permitted at a major FIFA tournament.

A global expansion of football foundations also bodes well, both as community facing arms of elite clubs – like the Barca Foundation in Spain – and as altruistic ventures on behalf of individual players – Neymar included.

Progressive social agendas have inspired the growth of left leaning clubs like FC St Pauli of Germany, where commercialism is frowned upon and the fanbase is wholly opposed to neo-Nazi uprisings. Timely too have been integrated initiatives such as Amnesty International's "Football Welcomes" programme in the UK, which has united 60 clubs in support of refugee focused activities including education, social inclusion and community building.

As football fans shift their attention to preparations for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, one thing is certain. The real battleground lies not on the pitch or in the terraces, but in the shared quest for more inclusive, sustainable and socially just societies the world over.

The time has come to embrace Socrates's simple game plan. In football, as in life, fight for a future in which winning isn't all that matters.

More evidence-based articles about football and the World Cup:

Why this football tournament should be called the men's World Cup

World Cup VAR: technology is transforming the beautiful game

China has more fans at this World Cup than England

Darragh McGee has received funding from the British Academy.

Stephen Ortega does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 The beautiful game still needs to perform on bigger social issues. Darragh McGee, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Bath Stephen Ortega, Visiting Scholar of History, Harvard University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/89040 2018-01-09T18:32:47Z 2018-01-09T18:32:47Z The Clash's 1981 punk rock take on the cycle of consumption and work

The Joe Strummer mural on East 7th Street and Avenue A in the East Village, New York. Jack Szwergold/flickr

The 1981 punk-rock song "The Magnificent Seven" isn't about Yul Brynner and the 1960 all-star Western of the same name, but something even more mundane and also more threatening: the endless cycle of work, consumption and work.

The Clash's song, 'The Magnificent Seven'.

On the cover of "The Magnificent Seven" (the record) is a clock showing seven. The song's title is about time, that unpaid labour time of getting up and getting to work day after day.

Ring, ring, it's 7:00am move yourself to go again.

Everyone has to reconstitute themselves everyday for work.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199740/original/file-20171218-27591-17bqaru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199740/original/file-20171218-27591-17bqaru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199740/original/file-20171218-27591-17bqaru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199740/original/file-20171218-27591-17bqaru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199740/original/file-20171218-27591-17bqaru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199740/original/file-20171218-27591-17bqaru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199740/original/file-20171218-27591-17bqaru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 The cover of the single, 'The Magnificent Seven'. theclash.com

"What have we got?" asks Joe Strummer, the songwriter and lead vocalist of the British punk rock band, The Clash, founded in 1976.

Not much, he answers.

Bombarded by ads, we work hard to buy more stuff. And the fetishism of commodities holds us in check:

Gimme Honda, gimme Sony

So cheap and real phoney

Hong Kong dollar, Indian cents

English pounds and Eskimo pence.

The song is a brilliant reflection on labour time and the endless reproduction of ourselves as a commodity, labour power. In other words, we have no alternative but to exchange our time for money, which is why the time away from work is a moment of liberation,

Wave bub-bub-bub-bye to the boss. It's our profit, it's his loss.

"But anyway the lunch bells ring," Strummer laments, and we're back to work and the seemingly endless cycle where "clocks go slow … minutes drag and the hours jerk."

All this activity and hard work get us nowhere. Everyday we are back to square one, which brings us back to "ring ring 7 am":

You're frettin', you're sweatin'

But did you notice, you ain't gettin'

You're frettin', you're sweatin'

But did you notice, not gettin' anywhere.

And so, "cold water in the face brings you back to this awful place".

What is this awful place? It is not the awful place of work but the reality of the alarming ring. Put the kettle on, turn on the radio and throw cold water on the face.

British working class

It feels like a song about the British working class of the late 1970s. Cold water because there is no hot water. The awful place, Britain 1980, the first year Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's neoliberal totalitarian attack on working people.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199925/original/file-20171219-4965-kfx6qc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199925/original/file-20171219-4965-kfx6qc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199925/original/file-20171219-4965-kfx6qc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199925/original/file-20171219-4965-kfx6qc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199925/original/file-20171219-4965-kfx6qc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199925/original/file-20171219-4965-kfx6qc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199925/original/file-20171219-4965-kfx6qc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 The cover of The Clash's album 'Sandanista!'. Charles Leonard

Rising unemployment especially among the youth, police harassment and the smell of fascism. These were the days of UB40s (aka the Unemployment Benefit Form 40), signing on at the dole office, and "career opportunities… that never knock" as children sang on The Clash triple album, "Sandinista!" (1980). It took its name from Nicaragua's left-wing rebel force, the Sandanistas.

'Career Opportunities' by The Clash.

But it was also the days of resistance, of a campaign like Rock against Racism and urban revolt against police repression, racism, "sus" laws and mass arrests against black youth. The uprising in Bristol's St Paul in April 1980 pre-figured the urban revolts in Brixton and later across the country in 1981. Imperial Britain on its deathbed. For some there seemed a connection to the struggle in the North of Ireland. The hunger strike by Irish guerrillas in the H-Blocks in Belfast started on March 1, 1981.

New York adventure

"The Magnificent Seven" was another slice of daily life, a class struggle song framed by the sound of funk and the emergent hip-hop in the New York, which Strummer later said "changed everything for us".

According to the author Antonino D'Ambrosio, the Clash recorded The Magnificent Seven "as a tribute to the path-breaking Sugar Hill Gang". By the late 1970s, the Bronx, a burned out eye-sore to the city's fathers, had become the centre of this music. As soon as The Clash got off the plane at JFK in 1979 they were immersed in the sounds of the street carried by boom-boxes (which The Clash guitarist Mick Jones took to carrying around) and incorporated these sounds into the mix that became the album, "Sandinista!".

Strummer wrote the words to "The Magnificent Seven" on the spot while listening to a Norman Joseph Watt-Roy bass riff. Englishman Watt-Roy of Ian Dury and the Blockheads was among the group of musicians working in the New York studio on "Sandinista!".

"The Magnificent Seven" was thus also part of The Clash's New York adventure. Written in 1980, it was, according to The Clash website, one of the first,

rap records made by a British band and one of the earliest rap records full stop.

It was included on "Sandinista!" and released as a single in 1981. While the song's hip-hop credentials are often remembered, the lyrics are equally important.

The hybrid character of the song is seen in references such as "cheeseboiger" while the last line brings it back to British tabloids. Finishing the mix in England, Strummer added "Vacuum cleaner sucks up Budgie", a News of the World headline at the time, while Marx and Engels show up at the 7/11, a staple American 24-hour convenience store.

Marx who has to borrow money from Engels turns on the rhyme of "Marx's sense" with the need for "British pence". The song concludes with name-checking historical figures, Socrates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Richard Nixon, as it wonders:

Who's more famous to the billion millions… Plato the Greek or Rin Tin Tin?

Released on April 10, 1981, the day the Brixton revolt began and a day after hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to the British parliament, "The Magnificent Seven" climbed to No 34 in the UK charts. It became one of the band's "best-known and most important singles", notes D'Ambrosio.

The instrumental version of 'The Magnificent Seven' - 'The Magnificent Dance'.

In the US, the B-side instrumental version was very popular. Strummer remembers, you couldn't go anywhere in New York in the summer of 1981 without hearing it as it was "played to death" on New York's major black radio station, WBLS:

And that was us, weirdo white guys.

Protest music has made a serious comeback over the past five years. This article is the third in a series featuring Songs of Protest from across the world, genres and generations.

Nigel Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 "The Magnificent Seven" was a slice of daily life, a class struggle song framed by the sound of funk and the emergent hip-hop in New York. Nigel Gibson, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86966 2017-11-07T12:43:48Z 2017-11-07T12:43:48Z Why we need a better philosophy of trees

  Souluminous/Shutterstock.com

On November 6 1217, Henry III's Charter of the Forest gave ordinary English people back their traditional rights to use royal hunting grounds for livestock grazing and collecting firewood. The freedoms that were restored in the use of ancient woodland reshaped the community's legal and political relationship with nature. But, today, this relationship has broken down. Only 2% of the UK's ancient woodland survives; over half has been destroyed since the 1930s. Only 13% of the UK is covered with trees, compared to the European average of 37%. And so exactly 800 years on, in Lincoln Castle, home of the original charter, a new Charter for Trees, Woods and People has been launched by the Woodland Trust.

The purpose of the new charter is to set out "the principles by which trees and people in the UK can stand together". In the face of problems such as low planting rates, inconsistent management, threats from housing and infrastructure developments, the desire is to "build a people-powered movement for trees" and to "demonstrate the important role that trees play in people's lives". The principles of the charter include the protection of irreplaceable trees and woods, the creation of transport networks for wildlife, the strengthening of habitats with trees and the development of an action plan to harness their health benefits. Its purpose is to serve as a unified "rallying cry" for disparate voices and organisations, and so to bring the plight of trees and woodlands to national consciousness, in a particularly cogent way.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193547/original/file-20171107-1027-4kjh33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193547/original/file-20171107-1027-4kjh33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193547/original/file-20171107-1027-4kjh33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193547/original/file-20171107-1027-4kjh33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193547/original/file-20171107-1027-4kjh33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193547/original/file-20171107-1027-4kjh33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193547/original/file-20171107-1027-4kjh33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 English woodland. Bellephoto/Shutterstock.com

So why is such a charter needed? Writing as a philosopher, and reflecting on the history of my subject, it does give pause for thought: trees, and plants generally, have simply not garnered attention in the way that humans, and more recently, non-human animals have. It's as if Socrates' remark that "the trees teach me nothing" is very much still the attitude today.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Exciting work in botany is revealing the extraordinary capacities of plants: for memory, for communication, for tracking environmental features and even – perhaps – for discrimination between self and non-self. Any philosopher interested in the intelligence or psychological capacities of animals, human or otherwise, needs to be able to situate their work in relation to these newly discovered capacities.

Take the complex, often vast, symbiotic relation between common fungi and the roots of forest trees, dubbed the "wood wide web". Here, organisms have formed a mutually beneficial connection for the purpose of exchanging nutrients or even, in the case of trees, distributing resources. If we want to know about the nature of intelligence, or what a species is, or whether an entity such as a forest is a super-organism, attending to the lives of trees can teach us a lot.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193540/original/file-20171107-1055-zxp945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193540/original/file-20171107-1055-zxp945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193540/original/file-20171107-1055-zxp945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193540/original/file-20171107-1055-zxp945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193540/original/file-20171107-1055-zxp945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193540/original/file-20171107-1055-zxp945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193540/original/file-20171107-1055-zxp945.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Log, mushrooms and mycelium. conchur/flickr, CC BY

Beheading wildflowers

To be fair to Socrates, when he says that "only the people in the city" can teach him, what he means is that it is only by speaking to and interacting with others, within the walls of the city-state, that we can learn how to be good. But, again, he's wrong. We live among trees and how we interact with them, as well as the degree of our sensitivity to them, has moral significance.

Imagine a person gleefully beheading wildflowers by the roadside or cutting down an oak in their garden for the sheer pleasure of it. Many of us would that say these actions are wrong. Why? It's not as if another person has been harmed because their property rights have been violated. If we assume that trees lack sentience, then it isn't right to say that the actions are cruel, because cruelty presupposes a being that can suffer.

Kant condemns the wilful destruction of nature because he thinks such actions inculcate bad habits. He argues that we have an indirect duty to treat animals well, for example, because a person who is cruel to animals will often end up being cruel to human beings, to whom we owe direct duties. Likewise, we have indirect duties to inanimate nature – Kant lumps together beautiful crystal formations with the beauty of plants – because respecting their intrinsic, aesthetic value helps instils in us the habit to treat each other well. So, although Kant does deal with humanity's relationship with nature, he only does so in terms of how this relationship benefits human beings and their social interactions.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193541/original/file-20171107-1068-1rn6c4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193541/original/file-20171107-1068-1rn6c4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193541/original/file-20171107-1068-1rn6c4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193541/original/file-20171107-1068-1rn6c4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193541/original/file-20171107-1068-1rn6c4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193541/original/file-20171107-1068-1rn6c4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193541/original/file-20171107-1068-1rn6c4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Killing wildflowers. Oko Laa/Shutterstock.com

Beyond natural capital

So what is the dominant philosophical conception of nature now?

The new charter appears largely to reflect this Kantian approach to nature, at least in broad terms. It draws our attention, rightly, to all the benefits of trees in our lives and in the lives of other sentient creatures: habitats resilient to climate change, opportunities for education, cultural enrichment, health benefits, the list goes on.

The danger is that this human-centric approach slides inexorably into an increasingly popular natural capital mode of valuation, in which trees and woodlands are conceived first and foremost as "assets" that provide vital "ecosystem services". It is this language, borrowed from economics, that, for example, frames the Independent Panel of Forestry report, published in 2011 to advise the government on the future direction of forestry and woodland policy in England.

The philosopher in me would like to point out that we ought to value trees for their own sake and not simply for the benefits or "services" they provide to human beings (or another forms of sentient life). However, in a time of environmental devastation, any reason to protect trees and woodlands is a good reason. In any case, the two are not mutually exclusive. We can, without contradiction, value nature for its own sake and also for the sake of its benefits.

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 Why do we value this tree? Fotoluminate LLC/Shutterstock.com

But there is, perhaps, a special role for philosophers in banging on about the former, even as we need the latter approach to get government to listen. It used to be thought that the only thing that mattered morally was a capacity to reason. Then, in the 19th century, the British utilitarians showed that an animal's capacity to suffer meant that we also owed the animals moral consideration. Now, it seems, the sheer fact that a thing is alive is of moral importance.

It may be that value attaches to an organism's ability to develop all of its natural, biological capacities, as biocentrists think. Or it may be that we attach value to entities that display certain kinds of animate, bodily movement, as I have argued. In any case, trees are special, wonderful organisms and the Charter for Trees, Woods and People does a great service in drawing their silent, mysterious lives to our attention.

Tristan Moyle no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
 It's as if Socrates' remark that 'the trees teach me nothing' is very much still the attitude today. Tristan Moyle, Senior Lecturer, Philosophy, Anglia Ruskin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83538 2017-09-12T15:16:32Z 2017-09-12T15:16:32Z How tolerance enhances democracy and the quest for human flourishing

For Socrates, tolerance is fundamentally about equality and the pursuit of truth.  Shutterstock

More and more, educational leaders and managers in schools and universities are being confronted with various expressions of hate speech.

In Cape Town, South Africa, a group of high school boys compiled a song which included the lyrics: "I feel pain unearthly because of my hatred of kaffirs". The word "kaffir" is an apartheid-era racial slur and possibly the most offensive word in the South African lexicon. At the University of Witwatersrand, also in South Africa, the phrase "Kill a Jew" was spray-painted on one of its main buildings.

Similarly, in the US, racist flyers were found posted on the campus of Weber State University in Utah. The flyers were recruiting students to the white supremacist Alt-Right movement and declared that "diversity is a code word for White genocide".

In May this year Stellenbosch University in South Africa became another example. Three students put up Nazi-inspired posters on campus advertising an "Anglo-Afrikaner student" event under the motto "Fight for Stellenbosch".

The incident caused a massive outcry and the university acted immediately and decisively to condemn the inflammatory hate speech. The students were found guilty of contravening the Student Disciplinary Code, which states that

A student shall not act in a manner that is racist, unfairly discriminatory, violent, grossly insulting, abusive or intimidating against any other person.

Incidents like these bring to the fore the question of how institutions of learning can and should be responding to such controversies, which lay bare our simmering intolerance of difference and "otherness".

In our latest book, Tolerance and Dissent within Education: On cultivating Debate and Understanding, we look at how the concept of tolerance might be understood, cultivated and enacted in and through education.

One of the arguments we make is that schools and universities should deliberately widen the exposure of students and learners to a diversity of people and views. This will develop their capacities as democratic citizens and enhance the human quest for flourishing in everyday social life.

What is tolerance?

Andrew Murphy, a scholar from Rutgers University, describes tolerance as

the self-restraint of not restricting or reducing the rights or autonomy of others, or other ways of being and acting.

But in a global context of heightened bigotry, some people see an appeal to tolerance as a defence of hate speech or racism. This is not what tolerance is. All views and actions should only be tolerated to the extent that they don't harm others – physically, psychologically or emotionally.

According to the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, tolerance is about the pursuit of truth. It is about being prepared to see the value of another person's perspective or truth. This necessarily means humbling oneself and acknowledging one's own limitations and fallibility. Tolerance, then, is fundamentally about equality; about recognising the capacity for both moral truth and error in ourselves and others.

Amy Gutmann from the University of Pennsylvania describes tolerance as

agreeing to disagree about beliefs and practices that are a matter of basic liberty.

This, she argues, is a way to ensure larger civic participation of people, who are recognised as equals by their fellow citizens.

Simply put, tolerance is the choice to "agree to disagree" because we respect each other as moral and civic equals.

Difference, democracy and human flourishing

Whenever diverse communities of people come together there is the potential for peaceful coexistence as well as for conflict. If we were to all agree on what to think or how to act the need for tolerance would disappear. But we don't. So exercising tolerance is an acknowledgement of difference and disagreement – and, at the same time, a decision to co-exist despite these differences, rather than destroy them or each other.

This is fundamental to democracy, which is about equality and the right of people to believe what they believe. Agreement or consensus may be a desired end –- if only to resolve conflict – but it is not a democratic imperative. Tolerance is the tool that helps us democratically manage the dynamics of any plural community or society.

But the value of tolerance goes beyond that. In protecting and cultivating diversity, tolerance also creates the conditions for human flourishing. Disagreement and dissent can be seen as processes of "mutual incitement". When people disagree, they are in fact inciting each other to think anew and differently about established ideas or beliefs. It is through disagreement that we dislodge ourselves from rigid ways of thinking and being – and refine our ideas and positions.

The responsibilities of schools and universities

Schools and universities must make sure that students and learners are exposed to multiple perspectives and ways of doing things. They have to encounter different viewpoints and arguments, and especially those that disrupt their own ways of thinking and their ideas of the world.

It is important that the teacher's worldview isn't the only one propagated in the classroom. This means teaching in a way such that pupils or students are invited to bring their own identities and equal intelligence into the conversation. They must be encouraged to engage in deliberation and debate, with mutual respect.

Critical to any educative endeavour is an understanding that there is always the possibility of another perspective and, hence, disagreement. If educational institutions can protect learners from hate speech, whilst also successfully teaching them this this, they will prepare them to become both better democratic citizens and richer people.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 Schools and universities have a responsibility to protect students from hate speech while also exposing them to views that disrupt their ways of thinking and ideas of the world. Nuraan Davids, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education, Stellenbosch University Yusef Waghid, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy of Education, Stellenbosch University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81220 2017-07-20T01:47:26Z 2017-07-20T01:47:26Z Why the US doesn't understand Chinese thought – and must

Plato, Confucius and Aristotle. Ancient Greek philosophy is widely taught in American universities, but classes in Chinese philosophy are few and far between. Public domain

The need for the U.S. to understand China is obvious. The Chinese economy is on track to become the largest in the world by 2030, Chinese leadership may be the key to resolving the nuclear crisis with North Korea and China has military and economic ambitions in the South China Sea and India.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has shown (repeatedly) that it's not even clear on the difference between the People's Republic of China (the authoritarian state that occupies the mainland and that recently blacklisted Winnie the Pooh) and the Republic of China (the democratic state that occupies the island of Taiwan and that numerous U.S. presidents have defended against mainland Chinese shows of force).

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178700/original/file-20170718-20386-ed77ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178700/original/file-20170718-20386-ed77ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178700/original/file-20170718-20386-ed77ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178700/original/file-20170718-20386-ed77ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178700/original/file-20170718-20386-ed77ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178700/original/file-20170718-20386-ed77ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178700/original/file-20170718-20386-ed77ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 conference in Hamburg, Germany. Saul Loeb/Pool Photo via AP, File

Part of what U.S. diplomats and informed citizens need to know is the basic historical background to contemporary China. However, as a scholar of Chinese philosophy, I believe it's at least as important to understand how China thinks.

Unfortunately, very few universities in the United States teach traditional Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism or Daoism. Why not? And why should we care?

Why study Chinese philosophy?

There are at least three reasons that the lack of Chinese philosophy instruction in U.S. universities is problematic.

First, China is an increasingly important world power, both economically and geopolitically – and traditional philosophy is of continuing relevance in China. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly praised Confucius, the influential Chinese philosopher who lived around 500 B.C.

Like the Buddha, Jesus and Socrates, Confucius has been variously interpreted – sometimes idolized and other times demonized. At the beginning of the 20th century, some Chinese modernizers claimed that Confucianism was authoritarian and dogmatic at its core. Other thinkers have suggested that Confucianism provides a meritocratic alternative that is arguably superior to Western liberal democracy.

Second, Chinese philosophy has much to offer simply as philosophy. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia expressed a common misconception about Chinese philosophy, dismissing it as the "mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie." In reality, Chinese philosophy is rich in persuasive argumentation and careful analysis.

For example, Georgetown professor Erin Cline has shown how Confucian ethics can provide a deeper understanding of ethical issues regarding the family and can even inform policy recommendations. Confucians emphasize both the role of parents in nurturing children and the responsibility of government to create environments in which families can flourish. Cline demonstrates that practical initiatives like the Nurse-Family Partnership help to realize both goals.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178698/original/file-20170718-10320-1ib05v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178698/original/file-20170718-10320-1ib05v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178698/original/file-20170718-10320-1ib05v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178698/original/file-20170718-10320-1ib05v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178698/original/file-20170718-10320-1ib05v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178698/original/file-20170718-10320-1ib05v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178698/original/file-20170718-10320-1ib05v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Chinese philosophers like Confucius have much to teach us. So why are they being ignored in many American universities? Bridget Coila, CC BY-SA

The third reason that it's important to add Chinese philosophy to the curriculum has to do with the need for cultural diversity. As two philosophers pointed out in a Los Angeles Times op-ed:

…academic philosophy in the United States has a diversity problem. …Among U.S. citizens and permanent residents receiving philosophy Ph.D.'s in this country, 86 percent are non-Hispanic white.

Both my own experience and that of many of my colleagues suggest that part of the reason for this is that students of color are confronted with a curriculum that appears to be a temple to the achievements of white men. We need to expand the philosophical curriculum to include not only Chinese philosophy, but also the other less commonly taught philosophies, including Africana, feminist, indigenous American, Islamic, Latin American and South Asian philosophies.

Just how bad is the situation?

Most philosophy departments seem unwilling to admit there's philosophy outside of the European tradition that's worth studying.

Among the top 50 philosophy departments in the U.S. that grant a Ph.D., only six (by my reckoning) have a member of their regular faculty who teaches Chinese philosophy: CUNY Graduate Center, Duke University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Riverside, University of Connecticut and University of Michigan.

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 Parmenides (center) and Heraclitus (right) are relatively obscure Greek philosophers, but their disagreement on the changing nature of the universe is still widely taught in the U.S. Raphael via Steven Zuker, CC BY-NC-SA

In contrast, every one of the top 50 schools has at least one regular member of the philosophy department who can lecture competently on Parmenides, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. His only surviving work is a poem filled with cryptic utterances like: "for not to be said and not to be thought / is it that it is not." Is this really more profound than the sum total of Chinese philosophy?

I was recently part of a panel at a major academic conference that was specifically advertised as an opportunity for nonspecialists to learn about Chinese philosophy. While other sessions at the conference had packed rooms, we lectured to an audience of fewer than a dozen people.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Empty room at the start of an American Philosophical Association panel on Chinese philosophy on Jan. 6, 2016. Bryan W. Van Norden, CC BY-SA

In contrast, at Chinese universities, both Western and traditional Chinese philosophy are routinely taught. China is also heavily investing in higher education, while the Trump administration hopes to slash funding for education. I expect that China understands the U.S. better than we understand it.

What does the future hold?

At the beginning of this article, I cited some reasons that China is increasingly important on the world stage. Here's one more: China is currently starting upon one of the most ambitious building projects in all of human history, the One Belt, One Road initiative. A modern version of the ancient Silk Road, it will expand and solidify Chinese economic and political power across all of Eurasia.

Can the U.S. really afford not to understand this country? As Confucius said,

"Do not worry that others fail to understand you; worry that you fail to understand others."

This draws on material previously published in this article from May 18, 2016.

Bryan W. Van Norden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 It's more important than ever that the U.S. understand China. So why don't our universities teach Chinese thought? Bryan W. Van Norden, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor, Yale-NUS College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78783 2017-06-05T16:38:51Z 2017-06-05T16:38:51Z What is wisdom, and is it unwise to pursue it?

Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is famous for having been called wise in part because he wouldn't label himself wise. Shutterstock

What is wisdom?

Some would say that I am unwise for seeking to answer such a big question here. That is a useful point – to know what something is, it can help to get clear on what it's not. Let's start with that intuitive suggestion: it is unwise to try to answer the question of what wisdom is in the space of an article of 1000 words.

Another example of a lack of wisdom: proclaiming oneself to be wise. The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is famous for having been called wise in part because he would not label himself wise. Conversely, had he called himself wise, he probably would not have deserved the label.

More examples of a lack of wisdom: spending too much time playing DoodleJump on one's phone instead of writing an essay that's due soon; making mistakes without learning from them (and thereby being akin to a dog that returns to its vomit, as per Proverbs 26:11 in the Bible); believing that skin colour is strongly correlated with intellectual and moral traits; saying in a tweet to a South African audience that colonialism had some good consequences.

Conversely, let us consider some good examples of wisdom. I think the suggestion that people's questions are often implicitly statements is wise, as is the further suggestion that people's statements are often implicitly requests. There was wisdom in the way that Paris climate change talks in 2015 were conducted, namely, by having drawn on indigenous southern African conflict resolution techniques to good effect. I, and I presume readers familiar with their work, appreciate the wisdom of scholar-writer-activists such as George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Diane Ackerman, Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka.

What do the examples of wisdom have that the others are missing? What is present in wisdom that is absent in folly?

The nub of the matter

A common answer these days from English-speaking philosophers is that wisdom is a matter of knowing what is fundamental and then living well in the light of that. As philosopher Robert Nozick <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=R-8SvHlNMXAC&pg=PA267&lpg=PA267&dq=Robert+Nozick++Wisdom+is+an+understanding+of+what+is+important,+where+this+understanding+informs+a+(wise)+person%27s+thought+and+action&source=bl&ots=pmoR9aZQwk&sig=3QyR_pXlYsQdzjcLB6XbQNFs6C4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihucvWpabUAhVFOMAKHZcyAQYQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=Robert%20Nozick%20%20Wisdom%20is%20an%20understanding%20of%20what%20is%20important%2C%20where%20this%20understanding%20informs%20a%20(wise)%20person's%20thought%20and%20action&f=false">suggests,

Wisdom is an understanding of what is important, where this understanding informs a (wise) person's thought and action.

One might add that the actions are undertaken with a strategic awareness of limits and potential obstacles.

This account of wisdom is part of the story, but is incomplete. A wise person has certain beliefs and she makes certain sorts of decisions because of them, but I submit that a person can also be wise or unwise insofar as she exhibits particular feelings.

Contemporary academic philosophers who have written about wisdom have focused nearly exclusively on what is rational, either theoretically and practically, and have failed to acknowledge our emotional side. (If I am right that philosophers haven't understood wisdom well, then there is some irony in this, for the word "philosophy" comes from the Greek for love of wisdom.)

Ignorant mindset, wrongful choice, inapt attitude

Consider that racism, xenophobia and the like are unwise partly insofar as they involve hating people because they belong to a certain group whose members share merely skin deep features. The lack of wisdom consists not merely of the false beliefs that have led to the hatred or the poor choices that xenophobes might make because of their hatred. The hatred itself is unwise, and would be even if it were never expressed or acted upon.

Racism and xenophobia aren't merely a matter of ignorant mindset and wrongful choice. They can also consist of having a shameful, pathetic attitude towards other people. One is lacking in wisdom to some degree insofar as one feels disgust at interracial romantic relationships.

Hating or being repulsed by other people can be unwise, as can exhibiting such emotions towards oneself. Being humble à la Socrates is one thing, but deeming oneself unworthy and feeling bad about oneself at the core is something else. Of course, it can be appropriate to feel measured guilt for having done particular wrongs one should not have – that, in fact, would be wise! But one would be missing some wisdom if one's general attitude towards oneself were that one is unimportant or does not merit respect and affection.

Self-hatred often does lead to bad decisions, such as failing to take responsibility for one's mistakes, being overly sensitive to slights, and lashing out at others (particularly on email, it has seemed to me lately). However, I submit that self-hatred would not merely lead to unwise choices, but also evince a lack of wisdom in itself.

Hatred, disgust and guilt are negative emotions. It can also be intuitively wise or unwise to have certain positive emotions, such as love, pride and gratitude. It would be unwise for you to love a manipulative abuser who will never really love you back. True, it would be unwise in large part because you'd be likely to get hurt, but another part of the foolishness is that the lowlife does not deserve your love. Wouldn't a wise person love what is truly worth loving?

Should one seek wisdom?

It is a tall order to try to become wise. And the bad news of this article is that it appears harder than at least many philosophers have thought. Becoming wise appears to mean not just acquiring knowledge of what is important and choosing well in the light of it, but also exhibiting certain emotions. That's an extra condition, and, furthermore, it's unfortunately harder for most of us to control our feelings than it is our decisions.

It's starting to appear to be unwise to try to become wise, given how difficult it would be to achieve. Does that make any sense? Is wisdom such that it can be unwise to pursue it?

I cannot say here. After all, we knew it would be foolish to try to answer the question of what wisdom is in the space of an article.

Thaddeus Metz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 It is a tall order to try to become wise. And the bad news is that it appears harder than many philosophers have thought. Thaddeus Metz, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65099 2016-09-08T03:05:56Z 2016-09-08T03:05:56Z Indulge me this: how not to read Daniel Dennett's comments on philosophy and self-indulgence

Daniel Dennett, philosopher

Callicles, Ray Hadley and Daniel Dennett?

"A great deal of philosophy doesn't really deserve much of a place in the world," leading philosopher Daniel Dennett has recently suggested in an interview at his year's Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness conference in Buenos Aires.

"Philosophy in some quarters has become self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum that's not dealing of problems of any intrinsic interest."

People in many other quarters of the world roll their eyes, or blink.

For this kind of accusation against philosophy is hardly new. The character Callicles in one of Plato's stories suggests that philosophy is, more or less, child's play: fit to entertain youths, but hardly a decent pursuit for serious adults.

Radio 2GB stalwart Ray Hadley has more recently taken up something like Callicles' strains, in what has become a periodic refrain in the tabloids lamenting continuing government funding for humanities research, including in philosophy.

What is new about Dennett's claims, which is making people within the discipline take notice, is that he is neither a Callicles, nor a Ray Hadley. Daniel Dennett is a decorated Professor of Philosophy of some decades' experience, and near-universal respect amongst professional scholars.

Dennett also hails from the angloamerican or "analytic" stream of philosophy. This stream has been, until recently, the side of the "analytic-continental divide" a lot less open to weighing philosophy's history, place and role in society, let alone delivering such strident self-criticisms.

Nevertheless, the Callicles' of this world should draw breath and read again before too quickly taking Dennett's criticism as a wholesale dismissal of philosophy, or the reflective humanities.

We can even take Dennett's provocative remarks as the spur they seem intended by him to have been: a spur to undertake some philosophical reflection about philosophy's relations to the wider world, as against its insulation from it.

He who doesn't philosophise…

The first thing to note is that Dennett is not saying that all forms of philosophy are "idle—just games" or a "luxury". Dennett praises forms of philosophy, like his own contributions to debates on religion and reason (and this Cogito column, gentle reader) that "engage with the world."

He notes that it takes years for younger generations to "develop the combination of scholarly mastery and technical acumen to work on big, important issues with a long history of philosophical attention."

But such issues, as he sees things, clearly do exist. And developing the wherewithal to deal philosophically with them is something Dennett evidently values.

When Dennett takes aim at "self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum", he has more particular quarry in his sights.

It is just as well. The Greeks had a saying that "he who does not philosophise, philosophises", and philosophy—as the cradle of all the academic disciplines—has a long history of engaging with and changing the Western world, since about 600 BCE.

Socrates—responding to that other charge the Hadleys' and Callicles' of the world will always make (that, far from a harmless indulgence, philosophy harmfully corrupts the youth)—insisted that its role was to assist people in taking care of their souls, and helping them live better lives.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136994/original/image-20160908-25279-ju46bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Socrates, who brought philosophy into social affairs.

Surely this sounds quaint for our wiser times. The connection between rationally questioning the norms and ideas we entertain and cultivating better lives can also seen opaque, even to Socrates' bigger fans.

But Socrates' fundamental idea is simple. Nearly all of the characteristics we admire in people and institutions require forms of knowledge.

The man who would show his courage, but doesn't know for what cause, is not courageous but foolhardy. He's unlikely to last long.

The government that would be just, without knowing who and what people and initiatives are worth supporting or censoring, will be unjust.

The person who would live happily but does not know what people truly need to be happy will end up disaffected; and so it goes.

Philosophy, on this original model, is the rational, questioning pursuit of the kinds of knowledge necessary to recognise and promote different forms of human flourishing and excellence. Far from indulgent, it has this much in common with the practical concerns of governors and managers, CEOs and parents: "leaders" of all kinds, as we might say today.

Philosophy, again, involves the attempt to think rationally about the goals of human endeavours, on the basis of the most clear and comprehensive understandings of what kinds of creatures we are, and how we fit into the larger ecology and economies of the world. Far from being indulgent, this kind of thinking seems more necessary than ever today.

For individuals and governments who do not understand the significance of their actions for this wider "whole" ("the truth is the whole", a famous philosopher said) are bound to pursue short-sighted policies, which produce longer-term problems and "externalities".

Philosophy, again, has long concerned itself with those difficult, ultimate questions that all people have been posed, whether we ask them or not: is there a God? Is there a soul, life after death, or transcendent meaning to life? How should we live? What is worth pursuing?

To call every person who ever asked these questions, at some point in their lives, indulgent would be to paint nearly everyone who has ever lived with the same, tarring brush.

Philosophy, finally, has since Aristotle been understood by some of its most eminent votaries as the "knowledge of knowledges".

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136997/original/image-20160908-25260-448hnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136997/original/image-20160908-25260-448hnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136997/original/image-20160908-25260-448hnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136997/original/image-20160908-25260-448hnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136997/original/image-20160908-25260-448hnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136997/original/image-20160908-25260-448hnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136997/original/image-20160908-25260-448hnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Aristotle teaching Alexander the Great.

Philosophy did not simply give birth to the other disciplines, as you might say. It was "interdisciplinary" from the start. Or at least, it has always been concerned to think through the relations between the different forms of intellectual inquiry and their place in the world. The concern is exactly to prevent particular "cottage industries" (Dennett's term) proliferating into a cacophony of competing knowledges, without any symphonic wisdom.

Far from being indulgent, universities and governments today still face this form of philosophical issue, as they deliberate about how to manage the academies without which our societies' historical memory and ability to reflect critically and democratically upon themselves will be sadly diminished:

For as water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and leese itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle where it may by union comfort and sustain itself […]; so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration, or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed […]

He who does philosophise …

Now, I don't know whether Daniel Dennett would support everything I've tried to say in his defence here. Recalling the different forms of apology for philosophy (another ancient genre), I hope, can help to halt the kind of misreading of his comments as a wholesale "anti-philosophical" tirade that will inevitably sound about.

What is clear is that Dennett is not a critic of philosophy per se, let alone of philosophy in the several (amongst many other) larger senses I've picked out here.

What Dennett is critical of is the way academic philosophy is being undertaken, in situations in which a good many of its traditional functions—including reflecting critically about its "utility" and relation to other pursuits and disciplines—are being decided externally to the discipline itself.

For if the different justifications of philosophy we've recalled are clear enough, the ways in which philosophy has been funded and institutionalised throughout history have been ceaselessly up for negotiation.

Dennett, very much in the Platonic vein, is especially worried about the next generations of philosophers. He sees the ever-more pressing imperatives they face in order to advance within the institutional settings in which academic studies are today undertaken.

As everyone in the tertiary sector knows, so in this one discipline, "young philosophers are under great pressure to publish". Nearly all of the material preconditions for ever being able to teach philosophy as a career depend upon meeting this pressure.

Little matter if the budding philosopher has only had the time to develop a limited, if highly cultivated area of specialisation. No matter if that specialisation's relations to other parts of philosophy, knowledge and society remain unquestioned by him (or, as is less likely, her). "[S]o they find toy topics that they can knock off a clever comment/rebuttal/revival of."

"These then build off each other and invade the journals, and philosophical discourse," Olivia Goldhill glosses Dennett, in the article that sparked the present discussions.

Now, this is a very different object of criticism than philosophy per se. It is a form of criticism which it can be imagined has relevance beyond philosophy.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136996/original/image-20160908-25260-1m7lv35.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Plato in the first academy.

To criticise a certain form of some activity is not to undermine that activity, after all. It may be a call for needed reforms. Cicero defended rhetoric by saying it got its bad name from a few bad men who misused it. Francis Bacon at the dawn of the modern period echoed this kind of defence.

The prejudices of political men against the life of scholarship per se, he argued, applied only to "deficient" forms of university learning, not liberal education itself, which must be renewed.

But let me end with Plato, since I think Dennett must have had him in the back of his mind as he made his comments, and especially the sixth book of the Republic.

For this founding text of our discipline is all about Plato's concern with how to recognise and educate good philosophers. The problem is that nearly everything speaks against the young attaining to something like that kind of "scholarly mastery and technical acumen" Dennett recognises amongst the larger goals of a humanistic education.

There are sophists, who promote name over wisdom. There is the appeal of popularity, which lures many of the best students away from their studies into political pursuits. Yet again, there is money-making, that lures many more again away from scholarly pursuits into more lucrative trades.

And, saddest of all for Plato as seemingly for Dennett too, some amongst the young who have been taught clever forms of dialectical argumentation too early fall prey to cynicism or "misologia": a scorn for the whole business of true philosophy like that of Callicles, who had a sophistic training himself.

Disclosure

Matthew Sharpe works for Deakin University. He is part of an ARC funded grant on the history of philosophy, its practice and practices, and relations to the world.
 No comfort in Dennett for detractors of philosophy and humanities research ... Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60302 2016-06-20T10:04:03Z 2016-06-20T10:04:03Z Should ethics professors observe higher standards of behavior?

Does teaching ethics come with obligations? lentina_x, CC BY-NC-SA

This is an enduring dilemma in the area of ethics and one that has recently come to light with charges of unethical behavior brought against a prominent philosopher, Professor Thomas Pogge of Yale University. Pogge has been accused of manipulating younger women in his field into sexual relationships, a charge he has strenuously denied.

Without making any judgment on the case itself, this situation raises larger questions about how the behavior of the experts in ethics is to be reviewed and evaluated.

As with most professions, there are no "ethics police" in the professions themselves. We who work in these professions are expected to police ourselves according to our codes of ethics, as is the case, for example, with physicians, lawyers and clergy members. Obviously, law enforcement comes into the picture with actions that are against the law.

Of course, we know that these professions also harbor people who do engage in unethical behavior, but in the case of experts in ethics, should we expect a higher standard of good behavior simply because they are experts in ethics?

Learning from Greek wisdom

This question would not have made much sense to ancient Western philosophers or to eastern teachers like Confucius, Lao-Tse or the Buddha. The Greek philosopher Plato put it this way – once one understood the good, one would perform good actions.

His teacher Socrates stated during his trial speech that it was morally better to pursue "truth, understanding and the improvement of the soul" than to give one's attention "to acquiring as much money as possible and to devote oneself to status and reputation" at the expense of moral concerns.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127163/original/image-20160617-11110-11atx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127163/original/image-20160617-11110-11atx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127163/original/image-20160617-11110-11atx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127163/original/image-20160617-11110-11atx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127163/original/image-20160617-11110-11atx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127163/original/image-20160617-11110-11atx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127163/original/image-20160617-11110-11atx7g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 There is a distinction between what we know we should do, and what we choose to do. PROJustin Baeder, CC BY

As much as we are indebted in Western philosophy to the wisdom of the Greeks, we think about these matters differently today. We now make distinctions between the "cognitive" and "volitional" aspects of ethics: that is, between what we know and what we choose to do.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt in her two volume work, "The Life of the Mind," showed the connections and differences between thinking and willing. She noted that these deeply human actions are not always in harmony as we navigate ethical dilemmas.

We may know the right thing to do and yet we choose to perform an unethical action.

Apostle Paul recognized these human conflicts when he wrote in the Epistle to the Romans, the sixth book in the New Testament:

I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I do.

Ethicists and ethical behavior

Apostle Paul and others who followed him found a spiritual solution to this deep inner conflict. We, however, tend to look to professional disciplines such as philosophy of mind, empirical psychology and moral psychology to illuminate and help resolve these ethical conflicts.

So, what is the relationship between philosophical ethics and actual ethical behavior?

Researcher Eric Schwitzgebel at the University of California at Riverside is one of the philosophers currently working on these issues by conducting empirical research into how ethicists actually behave. His work shows how flimsy this relationship can be between views held and real-life moral choices.

Schwitzgebel has done an empirical analysis of what ethicists actually do – not only what they teach in ethics courses. In his analysis, he does not find that ethicists are any more ethical than most other professionals.
 As a result of a survey he conducted in 2009, Schwitzbebel argues that even though ethicists in the survey showed strong ethical knowledge, their moral behavior was not significantly more stringent than academics in other disciplines – both within and beyond philosophy.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127162/original/image-20160617-11112-oggc19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127162/original/image-20160617-11112-oggc19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127162/original/image-20160617-11112-oggc19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127162/original/image-20160617-11112-oggc19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127162/original/image-20160617-11112-oggc19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127162/original/image-20160617-11112-oggc19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127162/original/image-20160617-11112-oggc19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Knowledge of ethics does not make people ethical. Joseph Gilbert, CC BY-NC-SA

In other words, he shows that knowing about ethics did not make them any more ethical in their choices. He chose 10 different ethical issues to investigate and even though his research relied on self-reporting, his methodology was constructed in ways to compare and correct for differences between measured and self-reported responses in the survey.

These findings raise significant questions. For example, if ethicists accept the arguments proposed by moral philosopher Peter Singer that show the ethical cogency of not eating meat, why are these ethicists not vegetarians?

Singer proposes a utilitarian argument for being a vegetarian and argues that utilitarianism's principle of minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure can be well applied to sentient animals. The injunction to be a vegetarian follows from this principle.

In fact, as Schwitzgebel's findings show, 60 percent of the ethicists surveyed rated consuming meat as unethical to some degree and yet in behavior their meat consumption did not differ significantly from nonethicists.

Still it seems legitimate to ask, why are they not vegetarians? Why are their choices not in accord with the arguments they support?

In sum, Schwitzgebel and fellow researcher Joshua Rust have discovered in their empirical study that ethicists do not show significantly improved moral behavior in comparison to professors in other fields.

We can ask, if one has knowledge and skill in a particular field and teaches that knowledge and skill, why would such a person not put that knowledge and skill into practice? Answers to some of these questions are connected to the ways we use to deal with ethical dilemmas.

Application of theories

Nonetheless, we can still ask the central normative ethical question: Ought that be the case?

Furthermore, what is the point of knowing the various ethical theories like utilitarianism that argues for choosing the action that brings about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people affected by the action, duty-based principles that argue for following moral principles, or virtue ethics that supports cultivating virtue as the way to move toward human fulfillment? Can this knowledge be valuable in and of itself?

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127164/original/image-20160617-11094-1i28qfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127164/original/image-20160617-11094-1i28qfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127164/original/image-20160617-11094-1i28qfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127164/original/image-20160617-11094-1i28qfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127164/original/image-20160617-11094-1i28qfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127164/original/image-20160617-11094-1i28qfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127164/original/image-20160617-11094-1i28qfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 What's the point of knowing ethical theories? Pamela Carls, CC BY

Philosopher Mary Midgley has argued that ethical theory should not be privileged over practice. In her view theory is incomplete without its application to real-life situations.

And how else is ethics "applied" except by engaging in informed ethical actions?

By analogy, one can study pure mathematics as well as use mathematics in engineering the new bridge. It matters to get the mathematical concepts right as well as their applications to engineering.

In ethics it matters in different, but deeply connected ways, to analyze the theories and to apply them well. During his time in ancient Athens, Socrates wondered how his fellow citizens might be persuaded to live for truth and moral improvement. He thought this could happen at least by examining these questions and living by the answers one discovers.

Such is what we can and should expect of ethicists. Is that too much to ask?

What is ethics for?

A final point on ethical behavior and its relation to knowledge: On the one hand, one can certainly be a person of outstanding moral character without delving deeply into ethical theories.

One has to know some things, at least in an intuitive sense, about being good along with the will to do the good in order to perform ethical actions. One need not be an expert in ethics to do so.

On the other hand, being an ethicist does entail some obligation not only to know the good, but to do all that is in one's power to perform ethical actions. If not, then what is ethics for?

Judith Stark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 A prominent ethicist was recently accused of manipulating younger women into sexual relationships. A philosopher argues that being an ethicist comes with obligations. Otherwise, what is ethics for? Judith Stark, Professor of Philosophy, Seton Hall University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/56550 2016-05-19T01:25:24Z 2016-05-19T01:25:24Z Chinese philosophy is missing from U.S. philosophy departments. Should we care?

Plato, Confucius, Aristote Oxag/Wikimedia, CC BY

Philosophy has been a favorite whipping boy in the culture wars since 399 B.C., when an Athenian jury sentenced Socrates to death. Nowadays, philosophers are no longer accused of "corrupting the youth." Instead, a surprisingly wide range of pundits, from celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson to former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, assert that philosophy is pointless or impractical.

In reality, philosophy majors do strikingly well on standardized tests for graduate school. In addition, many successful CEOs and entrepreneurs majored in philosophy.

Although the critics of academic philosophy may be mistaken about where the problem is, the truth is that departments are failing their students in some critical ways.

Departments of philosophy across the United States almost universally neglect the profound, fascinating and increasingly relevant philosophy that is outside the traditional Anglo-European canon. Africana, Indian and Islamic philosophy is all largely ignored. My own experience has led me to be particularly concerned about the failure of philosophy departments to engage with Chinese philosophy.

In 1985, I was a college senior who wanted to continue my education by earning a doctorate in Chinese philosophy. At that time, it was almost impossible to find top philosophy departments in the U.S. that taught Chinese thought. I had only two choices: University of Michigan and Stanford University. Today, neither of the two institutions has anyone in their philosophy departments teaching Chinese thought anymore.

So how bad is the problem? And why should we care?

What is missing from the philosophical curriculum?

Consider the current coverage of Chinese philosophy by U.S. universities.

Among the top 50 philosophy departments in the U.S. that grant a Ph.D., only four have a member of their regular faculty who teaches Chinese philosophy: Duke University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Riverside and University of Connecticut.

At an additional two institutions (Georgetown University and Indiana University at Bloomington), the philosophy department has agreed to allow members of another department (Religious Studies and Theology, respectively) to list their courses as philosophy.

In contrast, every one of the top 50 schools has at least one regular member of the philosophy department who can lecture competently on Parmenides, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. His only surviving work is a poem filled with cryptic utterances like, "for not to be said and not to be thought / is it that it is not." Is this really more profound than everything in Chinese philosophy?

Why should we care?

Why is the lack of coverage of Chinese philosophy by U.S. universities problematic?

There are at least three reasons. First, China is an increasingly important world power, both economically and geopolitically – and traditional philosophy is of continuing relevance. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly praised Confucius, the influential Chinese philosopher who lived around 500 B.C.

Confucius is comparable in historical influence to the Buddha, Jesus and Socrates. Also like them, he has been variously interpreted, sometimes idolized and other times demonized. At the beginning of the 20th century, some Chinese modernizers claimed that Confucianism was authoritarian and dogmatic at its core. Others have suggested that Confucianism provides a meritocratic alternative to Western liberal democracy. "New Confucians" claim that Confucianism represents a distinct teaching that can both learn from and contribute to Western philosophy.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123085/original/image-20160518-5867-1phekvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123085/original/image-20160518-5867-1phekvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123085/original/image-20160518-5867-1phekvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123085/original/image-20160518-5867-1phekvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123085/original/image-20160518-5867-1phekvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123085/original/image-20160518-5867-1phekvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123085/original/image-20160518-5867-1phekvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Confucius temple. Bridget Coila, CC BY-SA

Thinking about these issues is important in understanding China's present and future. How will the next generation of diplomats, senators, representatives and presidents (not to mention informed citizens) learn about Confucius and his role in China as a political thinker?

Second, Chinese philosophy has much to offer simply as philosophy. Late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia expressed a common misconception about Chinese philosophy. He dismissed it as the "mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie." Scalia went on to denigrate Chinese philosophy as nothing but "poetry or inspirational pop-philosophy" that lacks "logic and precision." In reality, Chinese philosophy is rich in persuasive argumentation and careful analysis.

For example, an academic at Georgetown University, Erin Cline, has shown how Confucian views of "filial piety" are relevant to contemporary ethics. Cline demonstrates that Confucian ethics can provide a deeper understanding of ethical issues regarding the family and can even inform specific policy recommendations.

A more abstract, but equally valuable, aspect of Chinese thought is explored by Graham Priest, currently at City University of New York. Priest has demonstrated that Chinese Buddhism can challenge the common Western view of selves as radically independent individuals. Graham, a logician, uses advanced mathematical models to explain and defend the Buddhist claim that the self is transpersonal rather than individual.

The third reason that it is important to add Chinese philosophy to the curriculum has to do with the need for cultural diversity. As researchers Myisha Cherry and Eric Schwitzgebel pointed out recently,

…academic philosophy in the United States has a diversity problem. … Among U.S. citizens and permanent residents receiving philosophy PhDs in this country, 86 percent are non-Hispanic white.

Both my own experience and that of many of my colleagues suggest that part of the reason for this is that students of color are confronted with a curriculum that is almost monolithically European.

How significant is the 'pipeline problem'?

I recently discussed the neglect of Chinese philosophy with a leading expert on ancient Western philosophy. She worried: where would philosophy departments find people who both knew philosophy and could actually read Classical Chinese? In other words, she argued that the pipeline of competent specialists in Chinese philosophy is too narrow to effect anything more than incremental change.

Certainly, there are very few universities even capable of training professors to teach Chinese philosophy. This creates a vicious cycle. Few institutions teach Chinese philosophy, so there are few recent Ph.D.s in Chinese philosophy for institutions to hire. As a result, the number of institutions that teach Chinese philosophy does not increase.

I believe that, although the pipeline problem is real, the emphasis on it is mistaken.

There are enough strong scholars currently doing research that we could double the number of top institutions teaching Chinese philosophy overnight if there were the will to do so. Just one of the professional groups devoted to the study of Chinese philosophy, the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, has over 600 members.

What does the future hold?

Most mainstream philosophers show no interest in learning anything about Chinese philosophy. I was recently part of an invited panel at the American Philosophical Association that was specifically advertised as an opportunity for nonspecialists to learn about Chinese philosophy.

Here is a photo I took of what the room looked like at the start of the panel.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115673/original/image-20160319-4446-1et00s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Start of Eastern American Philosophical Association Panel on Chinese Political Philosophy on January 6, 2016. Bryan W. Van Norden, CC BY-SA

Most philosophy departments are unwilling to even admit that there is anything outside of the European philosophical tradition that is worth studying.

Ironically, philosophers who narrowly study the Western tradition are not being true to it. The ancient philosopher Diogenes was asked what his home was, and he replied, "I am a citizen of the world." Contemporary philosophers who refuse to engage with Chinese thought are betraying the cosmopolitan ideal at the heart of Western philosophy.

Bryan W. Van Norden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 Among the top 50 philosophy departments in the U.S., only four have a member of their regular faculty teaching Chinese philosophy. Why is this problematic? Bryan W. Van Norden, Professor of Chinese Thought and History, Vassar College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53550 2016-02-01T11:08:42Z 2016-02-01T11:08:42Z Martin Luther King Jr. in dialogue with the ancient Greeks
In "I've Been to the Mountaintop," the soaring and chilling speech he delivered the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. ponders the thought of life in other places and times.

Among other eras in history, he considers the prime of classical Athens, when he could have enjoyed the company of luminaries "around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality," along with "the great heyday of the Roman Empire."

These considerations of ancient Greece and Rome, in what would be King's final speech, speak to his close engagement with the Classics throughout his writings.

As one whose courses consider how classical ideas have contributed to public dialogue in the 20th and 21st centuries, I want to address here two particular points of contact with ancient Greece that loom large in King's thinking and teaching.

The first, King's advocacy of the Greek concept of agape, transcendent love for others, is critical to his message. The second, his embrace of Socrates as a model of civil disobedience, is revealing of his method.

More than 'love'

At the core of King's social teaching lies the necessity for human beings to embrace an all-encompassing love for one another.

But the English word "love," with its abundance of associations, was too imprecise for what he wanted to convey. In order to express more clearly the type of transcendent love for humanity he was advocating, King turned frequently in his speeches to the ancient Greek he had studied at Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University.

Building on the work of contemporary theologians – the American Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), the Swede Anders Nygren (1890-1978) and the German Paul Tillich (1886-1965) – King underscored the distinctions between the Greek words eros (romantic love), philia (the love of personal friendship) and agape (pronounced "a-gáh-pay").

In his 1957 speech "The Christian Way of Life in Human Relations," King defines agape as

understanding, creative, redeeming goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return… It is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is the love of God operating in the human heart.

This expansive, transcendent understanding of agape is not found in the literature of classical Athens but in the Christian scripture from 400-500 years later, most prominently in Paul's letters.

In Athenian authors such as Euripides and Plato, the related verb agapao commonly means "to have affection for." Paul and other early Christian authors elevate agape to something greater.

Its most elaborate and celebrated articulation comes in the first letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes that agape

does not seek things for itself … [it] sustains all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…[and] never falls. (1 Cor. 13.5, 7-8).

Just as Paul and others had expanded the understanding of agape to make it all-encompassing, King in his teaching builds upon Paul and brings out agape's creativity – its capacity to create togetherness and community.

The pestering but important gadfly

King's medium for enacting his teaching, civil disobedience, was also informed by the Greeks – or, rather, one Greek in particular.

Three times in his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," King evokes Socrates (469-399 B.C.), the philosopher who famously made the public streets and squares of Athens his classroom.

King's letter is addressed to fellow clergymen who had discouraged his practice of nonviolent resistance, on the grounds that it was "unwise and untimely" and could incite civil disturbances.

In making the case for the importance of civil disobedience, King introduces Socrates as one of its early practitioners:

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The image of a gadfly is drawn from the Apology, a speech attributed to Socrates and related by his student Plato, in which he responds to the charge that he is corrupting Athens' young citizens with his unconventional and provocative teaching.

Socrates compares the lazy, inert Athenian state to a tired old steed and his own interrogation and urging of Athenian citizens to the buzzing of a gadfly.

Like the fly, he may be annoying, but – Socrates argued – Athenian citizens needed such pestering in order to be stirred into action and improve their lives.

This was precisely King's point in his letter to opponents of his methods: progress towards social justice can only be achieved through peaceful actions that annoy the status quo, that is, through nonviolent gadflies and the productive tension they create.

Persistent and irritating activism requires courage and significant risk. Socrates and King alike lost their lives for their causes, but both saw peaceful agitation as essential to their identity and work.

Applying the Classics to the 20th century

And so, just as the term agape was able to capture King's concept of transcendent love in a way no English word could, his evocation of Socrates, the pestering yet productive gadfly, could inform our understanding of the aims of civil disobedience in a uniquely memorable way.

In the speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop," King passes on the fantasy of living in ancient Greece or Rome. Ultimately, he declares his preference for life in the "now" of 1968.

But his lived engagement with the Classics bridges these eras, showing his listeners and readers how classical ideas can speak to us today.

Timothy Joseph does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 To mark the start of Black History Month, a Classicist reflects on the inspiration King drew from ancient Greek culture. Timothy Joseph, Associate Professor of Classics, College of the Holy Cross Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42805 2015-07-14T10:10:37Z 2015-07-14T10:10:37Z Philosophical toolkit in tow, scholar travels to conflict zones

How can we incorporate philosophy in our daily lives? Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P., CC BY-NC-ND

Over the past few years, I've organized philosophy workshops around the world: with students at Palestinian and Indonesian universities, Hasidic Jews in New York, teenagers in Brazil and an Iroquois community in Canada.

I chose the locations deliberately along various lines of conflict: Israel and Palestine, Islam and the West, religious orthodoxy and urban modernity, social and racial divisions in Brazil, and the struggle of Native Americans with the legacy of colonialism.

These conflicts raise fundamental questions: does God exist? Is piety worth it? Can violence be justified? What is social justice and how can we get there? Who should rule? And what does political self-determination require?

One aim of these workshops was to show that philosophy is useful to articulate such questions more clearly and to explore and refine answers to them.

In the discussions, viewpoints often clashed. A second aim of the workshops was to show that such clashes are a good thing – as long as they don't turn into violence but fuel what I call a "culture of debate": an intellectual space for debating issues we deeply care about, but also deeply disagree on. The widely differing cultural and religious backgrounds of my interlocutors allowed me to test this idea on the ground.

Why do we choose to be just?

Here are two snapshots from the workshop discussions:

One workshop took place in 2006 with Palestinian students at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. Among others, we took up the question Plato raises at the beginning of the Republic: are we better off being just or unjust?

This is a radical question for a Muslim (or a Jew or Christian for that matter). You can discuss what a just person does, but not doubt whether walking on "the straight path" (as the Quran puts it) is a good thing.

My students took care not to stray from the straight path. During a break, Bisma, one of them, showed photos in class, some of which the male students and I weren't allowed to see because she appears in them without the veil. To be seen unveiled by men is considered illicit.

But when I asked the students if they cherished justice itself or just its rewards, they were confused. Are people pious because they want to secure a spot in heaven or because they're really convinced of what religion prescribes?

I then explained Plato's thought experiment: "What if you had a magical ring that makes you invisible, so you can commit whatever injustices you like without fear of punishment?" Bisma said that with such a ring, she'd be tempted by injustice. So Plato got us to probe a fundamental question: why do we choose to be just or pious?

Can we trust our convictions?

At another workshop I met with Hasidic students in Brooklyn in 2009. We read, among others, the account that the medieval Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī gave of his crisis of faith when he lost trust in the authority of "parents and teachers" – that is, the beliefs and values stemming from the contingent circumstances of our upbringing.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87979/original/image-20150709-10904-1nw4ike.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87979/original/image-20150709-10904-1nw4ike.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87979/original/image-20150709-10904-1nw4ike.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87979/original/image-20150709-10904-1nw4ike.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87979/original/image-20150709-10904-1nw4ike.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87979/original/image-20150709-10904-1nw4ike.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87979/original/image-20150709-10904-1nw4ike.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Socrates and his disciples. CC BY

That happened when he realized that he might have been just as fervent a Jew or Christian as he used to be a Muslim, had he been brought up in a Jewish or Christian community.

Jacob, one of the students, described a similar childhood experience: "I would get up very early to study Torah for a couple of hours before shacharis (the morning prayer). On the way to the synagogue, I noticed that Muslims were already praying in the mosque. So I asked myself: if we're both passionate enough about our religion to get up while it's still dark – how can I be sure that my religion is true and theirs is false?"

Experiences like al-Ghazālī's and Jacob's show that some of our deepest convictions may not be all that well-founded.

Between war and peace

Al-Ghazālī's crisis of faith also helps to explain the value of what I call a "culture of debate."

Consider the bewildering diversity of beliefs and values, all held with great conviction, across different times and cultures.

This should give us pause and make us wonder whether our beliefs and values are the correct ones even if we are convinced that they are. Don't they often just stem from the circumstances of our upbringing as al-Ghazālī stresses: parents, teachers, and whatever other influences we happened to be exposed to: from media, fashion, and marketing to political rhetoric and religious ideology? A culture of debate offers us opportunities to test how well founded our beliefs really are.

Let me illustrate this through an example.

A while back, I became friends with Egyptian students when I was studying Arabic in Cairo. The better we got to know each other, the more we became concerned about our very different ways of life.

They wanted to save my soul from eternally burning in hell by converting me to Islam. I wanted to save them from wasting their real life for an illusory afterlife by converting them to my secular worldview.

"Can one prove God's existence?" was one question we discussed.

I argued that one cannot; they offered a proof. I pointed out a flaw; they came up with an improved version. The discussion ended inconclusively.

I didn't convert to Islam, nor did my Egyptian friends become atheists. But I realized that I hadn't properly thought through some of my most basic convictions – from my atheism to my idea about how to live. In the academic and social circles I normally move in, these convictions were not challenged in the same way.

So debates across cultural boundaries can take on the role of the Socractic gadfly : if we engage someone who doesn't share our cultural narratives, we must argue for our views.

A culture of debate steers a middle way between war and peace: We shouldn't gun down people we disagree with, but we also shouldn't get mired in multicultural complacency – as if our differences were no reason for disagreement in the first place, but something beautiful – a multicultural "mosaic."

If we imagine the world engaged in a global conversation, there would be lots of issues we wouldn't see eye to eye on: from God and the origin of the universe to how one should live, from gender differences and education to the relationship between political and religious power.

Making philosophy part of our life

Engaging people who disagree with us is a chance to examine the beliefs and values we normally take for granted. One way to equip citizens for productive discussions is to convey to them the practice of philosophy: philosophical techniques – logical and semantic tools that help us clarify our views and make and respond to arguments. And philosophical virtues – loving the truth more than winning an argument and trying our best to understand the viewpoint of the opponent.

The five workshops I organized and describe in my new book, Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World, aim to show that integrating this practice of philosophy into our personal and public lives is indeed something worthwhile.

Carlos Fraenkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 Does God exist? Is piety worth it? Can violence be justified? Philosophy can offer a way to engage with these questions on which there are often widely differing beliefs. Carlos Fraenkel, James McGill Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, McGill University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42922 2015-06-12T10:17:42Z 2015-06-12T10:17:42Z In the Science retraction, a learning moment for researchers and the public

How can researchers be their own guardian?  contemplativechristian, CC BY-SA

The recent case of the retraction of an article on the ability of openly gay canvassers to shift voters' views toward support for same-sex marriage serves in many ways as a cautionary tale both for researchers and the public.

It is not all that unusual to revise and even retract studies that have already been published. It can be seen as part of the review process. Nonetheless, this current retraction by editors of Science provokes many questions, many of which have been raised in the last two weeks.

However, here are two that have not received quite as much attention: first, what ethical dimensions are embedded in published studies, the review process and the drive to publish; and second, what are the potentially harmful effects of these retractions on public attitudes toward science and the presentation of new knowledge?

As a researcher in philosophy, I come from a discipline in which we pay careful attention to knowledge claims. This focus is not unique to philosophy, but this skill gives those of us trained in the field ways of thinking about knowledge and the nature of evidence, more explicitly.

Misrepresentation in study

There is a great deal that is still unknown about the back story of the retracted article. What we do know is that the researchers purported to study the effects that openly gay canvassers had on conservative voters as they discussed with them attitudes toward same-sex marriage.

The very least that can be said is that the data at the heart of the study were misrepresented.

The lead author, Donald Green, a professor at Columbia University, agreed to the retraction, while Michael LaCour, a graduate student at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), apologized for lying about certain aspects of his study (like the funding sources). Nonetheless, he still stands by the conclusions presented in the retracted paper.

After the publication of the article in December 2014, questions were raised by two other researchers, who attempted to replicate the methods of the study in their own project and found that their results diverged widely from the original study.

Ethics of research

The discovery and presentation of knowledge entail high standards of honesty and integrity both in the research and its dissemination. Much in this enterprise depends on the integrity of the researchers. In this process, researchers make choices all the time. These choices often entail ethical challenges.

In this story, these ethical challenges enter in at least two ways:

First is at the level of professional ethics and codes of intellectual honesty. Every profession promulgates these codes in order to maintain academic rigor and best practices.

And second are considerations of personal ethics. A great deal of the monitoring of professional and ethical standards is done, first and foremost, by the researcher himself. Especially so in an academic enterprise.

Methods of research are set out early on, along with the oversight and review processes. Students are warned about the dishonesty of plagiarism and deliberate misrepresentations. They are cautioned against the grave harm any dishonesty could cause to the profession and to the person who engages in them.

Where you get published is more important

So, what are some of the reasons that could contribute to such unethical actions?

For this, it is worth examining the landscape within which these studies are initiated and undertaken.

Graduate students and faculty members are under a great deal of pressure to execute groundbreaking research and to publish in top-tier journals that are then cited in the work of other researchers.

 <img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84603/original/image-20150610-6798-91r9s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84603/original/image-20150610-6798-91r9s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84603/original/image-20150610-6798-91r9s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84603/original/image-20150610-6798-91r9s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84603/original/image-20150610-6798-91r9s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84603/original/image-20150610-6798-91r9s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84603/original/image-20150610-6798-91r9s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
 Researchers are under tremendous pressure to publish in top journals. ehpien, CC BY-NC-ND

Not only are these citations counted, they are often weighted according to the ranking of the journals themselves. This kind of data becomes important when faculty and graduate students apply for grants from external agencies and for purposes of hiring, tenure and promotion (for example, the yearly rankings given in the Journal Citation Reports).

And this leads to a cult of celebrity publishing. While one can theorize and say that the drive for status and prestige should not overshadow the value of the work itself, the competitive nature of research publication makes this difficult to put aside.

Moreover, it is tempting for readers to gauge the significance of research solely on the rankings of a journal.

The fact is that all too often, faculty and students, under pressure, succumb to the prevailing notions about where their work should be published. And a culture that places more value on the messenger than on the knowledge being published comes to be accepted.

Value of scrutiny

How can the integrity of the intellectual enterprise be overseen and maintained in this increasingly complex and competitive world of research?

Science is an inductive and a largely self-correcting process. It relies on the honesty of the researchers themselves as well as a sound scrutiny of peers in their fields.

Serious harm results when these misdeeds are not discovered.

In the case at hand, a high-profile debate unfolded in the media, which then led to the perfect storm and a subsequent retraction by a leading journal in the field.

It is true that even with public scrutiny and due diligence, people can be led into accepting practices such as the use of brain games to bolster cognitive functioning, even if they have been shown to have narrow and limited effects. But, there is value in this scrutiny.

This lies in the fact that members of the profession can attempt to correct a flawed study and bring it to public notice, especially if fraud has been committed.

In this way, the integrity of the professional process can be maintained. It also sends out a critical message to the one committing fraud that he/she will face the consequences of his/ her actions (dismissal, public opprobrium, removal from funding opportunities, etc).

Someone making a genuine error can also learn from the honest mistakes.

Do 'guardians need a guard'?

Serious harm can also result from these misdeeds being discovered.

As valuable and necessary as corrections are in scientific research, an unfortunate fallout is the ammunition they may provide to the members of the public who denigrate science and devalue its role in helping form cogent public policies, such as on the value of vaccinations for children or on the importance of redressing the effects of climate change.

The fact is that currents of anti-intellectualism run deep in the history of this country. And often, when an event undermines the interest and abilities of our fellow citizens to evaluate claims and counterclaims in thoughtful and rigorous ways, they might be unable to manage its complexities.

We educators on all levels face a daunting challenge: to help our students cultivate an independence of mind and critical thinking skills for an informed analysis of claims made in public discourse.

What, then, are the responsibilities of researchers and the public in the advancement of knowledge in these complex times?

In the Republic, Socrates/Plato noted that it was absurd to think that the guardians needed a guard.

We are far indeed from the Republic, but we can still heed the advice that Socrates gives near the end of that book when he reminds his friends that we have within us the capacity for wisdom and "that wisdom and control should, if possible come from within; failing that, it must be imposed from without, in order that, being under the same guidance, we may all be friends and equals."

As researchers, we need to pay heed to all these components: we need honest researchers who monitor their own behavior; we need to have scrutiny by other researchers in the field; and we need an engaged public that values knowledge for its own sake as well as for the ways it enriches our personal and communal lives.

Researchers do extraordinarily valuable work. Our work is to be prepared to evaluate, critique and reject it when there are good reasons to do so.

We need to be our own guardians.

Judith Stark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
 What are the pressures on researchers that could lead to misrepresentation of facts? Do the "guardians need a guard"? Judith Stark, Professor of Philosophy, Seton Hall University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42405 2015-06-01T06:19:20Z 2015-06-01T06:19:20Z Corriging the incorrigible: why philosophy is good for you (but can also get you killed)

Socrates made people think, but he also made them rather irritated. Jacques-Louis David/Wikimedia

Earlier this year, the ethicist Walter-Sinnot Armstrong asked whether philosophers were out of touch with, even contemptuous, of ordinary people and everyday life. The picture he paints isn't flattering:

Philosophers love to complain about bad reasoning. How can those other people commit such silly fallacies? Don't they see how arbitrary and inconsistent their positions are? Aren't the counter examples obvious? After complaining, philosophers often turn to humor. Can you believe what they said! Ha, ha, ha. Let's make fun of those stupid people […] It puts us out of touch partly because they cannot touch us: we cannot learn from others if we see them as unworthy of careful attention and charitable interpretation. This tendency also puts us out of touch with society because we cannot touch them: they will not listen to us if we openly show contempt for them.

Those words left me tugging uncomfortably at my collar. A day before I'd taken a swing at commentors on the New York Times' The Stone blog, where Justin McBrayer had tried to answer the question: why don't our children think there are moral facts?

You can disagree with the specifics of McBrayer's causal claim that the way ethics is discussed in schools contributes to universal moral antirealism (roughly, the view that the universe contains no moral facts), but he's right that antirealism seems to be a great many people's default view, even if their choices and actions suggest otherwise.

As I've said before before, this is a bugbear of mine. Moral antirealism might turn out to be true, but it's not just obviously true. There are only so many essays and online comments where people don't even understand the suggestion that ethics might be more than subjective before it starts to get to you.

So page after page of comments on McBrayer's piece insisting that of course there are no moral facts and it's ridiculous that a so-called philosopher could think otherwise got me snarky. This, I sneered, is why we can't have nice things. Here's a professional moral philosopher trying to explain a matter within his expertise and being dismissed, even belittled, by people who clearly don't even understand what he's saying. Why would people simply ignore what he's saying like this? Would they do this to a scientist, or a surgeon, or a lawyer?

Well, yes, of course they would. We live in an age in which everyone, labouring under the delusion that they are always and everywhere entitled to their own opinion, feels fully equipped to tell experts they are flatly wrong about their area of expertise. So this is in many ways a problem of degree rather than kind.

But science denialists of various stripes – anti-vaccinationists, climate denialists, 9/11 Truthers, Wind Turbine Syndrome proponents – usually at least pay lip service to playing the game. They make (bad) arguments, cite (dodgy) sources, and generally at least try to give the impression they are doing better science than actual scientists.

Philosophy denial, it seems to me, is a somewhat different beast. Philosophy denialists – including a disheartening number of high-profile physicists – deny the value of philosophy itself rather than simply taking issue with specific philosophical claims.

And as Sinnot-Armstrong points out, a large part of that is philosophers' own fault. He notes that while scientists frequently make an effort to explain what they do to the general public, philosophers don't do so nearly as often:

As a result, the general public often sees philosophy as an obscure game that is no fun to play. If philosophers do not find some way to communicate the importance of philosophy, we should not be surprised when nobody else understands why philosophy is important.

Fortunately, more and more philosophers are taking up this challenge. This new group blog you're reading now hopes to be a contribution in that direction. It will feature writing from a team of Australian philosophers committed to the idea that philosophy can't solely be a purely abstract pursuit, but must also connect with how we live and what we care about.

I say 'must' quite deliberately. Put simply, philosophy is too good, and too important, to keep locked up in the academy. Philosophy may appear 'an obscure game,' but it's also uniquely powerful in its ability to illuminate, complicate, and break wide open things we consider settled and clear.

Just as importantly, at its best, philosophy's probing of the physical, conceptual, logical, aesthetic, and moral universes turns back upon the questioner themselves. It encourages the mental activity we might now call metacognition and the corresponding virtue of metarationality. To use an older language, it teaches us to know ourselves and to know our own limits, how to reason and how to map the limits of our ability to do so. At the core of philosophy lies the Delphic saying that motivates so many of Plato's dialogues, γνῶθι σεαυτόν: 'know yourself.'

But here be dragons.

Across twenty-five canonical dialogues (and another ten of dubious authorship) Plato depicts his mentor Socrates down in the market place, asking questions of passers-by. Socrates speaks from a position of professed ignorance. He knows nothing, but he at least knows he knows nothing, which already puts him ahead of his neighbours – who mistakenly think they know a great deal. And so Socrates asks his fellow Athenians about the most fundamental, seemingly obvious matters. Then through careful, incisive, and frequently prolonged questioning, he turns their preconceived understandings on their heads, sometimes reducing his interlocutors to bewildered, humiliated wrecks.

That ended about as well as you'd expect. Socrates saw himself as a "gadfly," fated "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth." Gadflies are rarely welcomed. In the Apology, Plato's account of the trial of 399 BCE in which Socrates was sentenced to death for impiety and corrupting the youth, Socrates describes the general reaction to his method:

… young men of the richer classes, who have not much to do, come about me of their own accord; they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they often imitate me, and examine others themselves; there are plenty of persons, as they soon enough discover, who think that they know something, but really know little or nothing: and then those who are examined by them instead of being angry with themselves are angry with me (Apology 23c-d)

Socrates, it must be said, does himself no favours in the Apology. Given the chance to plead for his life, he simply doubles-down on the things that made the Athenians want to kill him in the first place, and then literally demands a reward for doing so. I once polled a philosophy class at the start of a lecture on the Apology on whether or not the Athenians were right to execute Socrates. Then I polled them on the same question when the lecture finished. Slightly more voted in favour of death the second time around. Socrates, it's fair to conclude, was just really annoying.

But the deeper point here is that what makes philosophy so powerful is also precisely what makes it so uncomfortable: it dissolves obviousness. It takes things that seem so unimpeachably self-evident we don't even notice them and throws them into doubt. It shakes the unshakeable and corriges the incorrigible.

That is thrilling, liberating, even intoxicating; but it is also unsettling and even infuriating. Finding out you might have been wrong about things that seem obvious – such as that there are no moral facts, for instance – is rather inconvenient. The snide comments on McBrayer's article are of a piece with the impatience of Neil Degrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss' impatience with philosophical questions. Philosophy just spins its wheels, gets in the way and slows us down.

My philosophical first love, Søren Kierkegaard, writes his unwieldy masterwork Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments from the persona of a certain Johannes Climacus, a thirty year old idler and Socratic gadfly. In an age of increasing reflection, sophistication, and haste, Climacus is on a mission, as Paul Muench points out, to slow his reader down. Oh, so you think you've understood the basics, know what's what, and are impatient to move on to more challenging questions? Really? Linger a while, friend. Have you really understood what the good is, or how you should live, or what it means that you'll die? Really? You sure?

Welcome to the blog. We hope it gets in your way and slows you down.
 Earlier this year, the ethicist Walter-Sinnot Armstrong asked whether philosophers were out of touch with, even contemptuous, of ordinary people and everyday life. The picture he paints isn't flattering… Patrick Stokes, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives. tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/20360 2013-11-27T03:32:58Z 2013-11-27T03:32:58Z When Tony Abbott met Socrates

Any resemblance to actual people – living or dead – is coincidental. Troy/jacqueline poggi

The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was condemned and put to death for "corrupting the youth" of Athens. The same fate is unlikely to meet contemporary philosophers.

Indeed, it is much more likely for them be written off as socially irrelevant. For that reason, it might well be thought, it is a waste of public money to support philosophers and philosophical projects: the national interest would be better served by funding research that helps "drive growth and productivity," as Andrew Robb, the current Australian Minister for Trade and Investment, recently put it.

Socrates, no doubt, would not have been impressed.

The Prime Minister

The characters in the following work are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people – living or dead – is completely coincidental.

It is a beautiful early morning in the park. Socrates (S) is out for a stroll. Tony Abbott (A) is having a bike ride before work. Socrates decides to sit on a park bench for a while. He is sitting rapt in thought, his legs stretched out. Abbott cycles past, and rides over his foot.

S: Ouch!

A: (Stopping). Sorry.

S: Are you?

A: Am I what?

S: Sorry.

A: Well, not exactly. You were in the way. It's just a form of words.

S: Like "Ouch"?

A: Well, yes … er, no … not exactly.

S: It means something.

A: Of course.

S: That you are sorry.

A: Obviously.

S: And you're not.

A: Look I've said I'm sorry. Get out of my way; I'm a busy man. I have to get to Parliament.

S: Yes, I know who you are. You're the prime minister – but perhaps a rather insincere one, it would seem.

A: (Bristling.) And who the hell are you?

S: Socrates.

A: Socrates? That's Greek, isn't it?

S: Yes.

A: So are you an immigrant?

S: Sort of.

A: (Suspiciously.) Well, Mr Socrates. What do you do?

S: I'm a philosopher.

A: Philosopher? What sort of job is that?

S: It isn't a job. It's a kind of person.

A: A kind of person? And what does a philosopher-person do?

S: They think, ask questions, discuss ideas.

A: Think!? Can't you find something more useful to do than that?

S: Useful to whom?

A: Well, all sorts of people. Maybe you could be a lawyer. We need lots of lawyers. Or an accountant. They're always useful. Or take me, for example. I'm a politician, and politicians help everyone.

S: Really? It seems to me they spend most of the time trying to get into power or keep themselves there.

A: Of course you want to get into power. But you do that because if you are in power you can do things in the public interest. You can't do that if you are not in power.

S: So, now you're in power, you're acting in the public interest?

A: Yes, of course. Haven't you been reading the papers?

S: Yes, I read them. I'm not exactly sure what the public interest is, though.

A: Then you should think a bit harder, Mr Socrates.

S: Yes, perhaps I should; but I take it, then, that you do know what the public interest is, Mr Abbott.

A: Of course I do. If someone doesn't know what the public interest is, they shouldn't be prime minister. Like Kevin Rudd.

S: The last prime minister?

A: After he lost the job, he was so fixated on getting it back, he didn't care about what he did, who he damaged, so long as it helped to make him prime minister again. He was concerned only with self interest. He didn't deserve the second chance.

S: I see. Well, in that case perhaps you could help me, and explain what the public interest is?

A: (Glaring at Socrates.) It's doing things like keeping illegal immigrants out of Australia.

S: That's not very helpful, I'm afraid.

A: It's helping the people who are here legally.

S: You miss my point.

A: Oh?

S: Well, suppose you say to me "what is an immigrant"? And I say "people like me". That wouldn't help much would it?

A: No, not really.

S: Because men are like me, philosophers are like me, people with a bruised foot are like me. But that doesn't make them immigrants.

A: Obviously.

S: So you can't answer my question by giving me an example. To understand what the public interest is, we need a definition.

A: Well, if that's what you want, it's easy enough.

S: Yes?

A: Something is in the public interest if it benefits everybody.

S: But these illegal immigrants you were speaking of …

A: What of them?

S: You said that it was in the public interest to keep them out. But it's not in their interest.

A: Well, obviously I didn't mean everybody. I meant Australians.

S: So it's in the public interest if it benefits all Australians.

A: Yes.

S: Well, I'm an Australian. So if it's in the public interest, it benefits me.

A: Yes, even you.

S: But suppose that one of the illegal immigrants is my wife. It doesn't benefit me if you keep her out.

A: Okay. It doesn't have to benefit all Australians – just most of them. And it doesn't help most Australians if we let your wife in.

S: So it's in the public interest if it benefits most Australians?

A: Yes.

S: I see. If you make education better, or give people parental leave, that's in the public interest.

A: Of course.

S: And what if you pass a law requiring wheelchair access to public buildings. Is that in the public interest?

A: Yes, of course. People in wheelchairs have as much right to get into these buildings as anyone else.

S: What percentage of the Australia population are in wheelchairs?

A: How should I know? Maybe one in 10,000?

S: And a law requiring access to public buildings for them is in the public interest?

A: Yes.

S: Then, Mr Abbott, things in the public interest cannot be things that help most Australians. It doesn't help the other 9,999 in 10,000.

A: Look, Mr Clever-Arse Socrates. You know perfectly well what I mean. It doesn't have to be most: just a significant group of Australians.

S: I see. (Pauses.) They tell me that you are against gay marriage.

A: Yes, a marriage is between a man an a woman. That's the way it always has been, and that's the way it should be.

S: What percentage of people are gay?

A: How the hell should I know?

S: Well, do you think it is more than one in 10,000?

A: Yes, I would think it's quite a lot more than that, given all the political noise they make.

S: So they are at least as significant a group of Australians as those who use wheelchairs.

A: Yes, I suppose.

S: And it would certainly be in their interests if they were allowed to declare their partnership publicly in the way that other people are?

A: Perhaps.

S: So it seems that it would be in the public interest to permit gay marriage.

A: Er … No. That case is quite different. If you asked Australians whether they approved of a law requiring wheelchair access to public places, they would say they did. Australians are reasonable people. But if you asked Australians whether they agreed with gay marriage, a large part of the population would be against this.

S: So something has to have to approval of most Australians to be in the public interest.

A: Yes, of course. How can something be in people's interests if they don't want it to happen?

S: I see. (Pauses.) Now, I seem to remember a few years ago you were part of a government that sent troops to invade Iraq.

A: Indeed I was.

S: And you supported this?

A: Yes, it was clearly in Australia's interest.

S: But I also seem to remember that a majority of Australians opposed this. It was no interest of theirs to send troops to fight and get killed in a war over whether some country had weapons which were in no way a threat to people living in Australia.

A: Ah, but you see, that was only part of the reason. The rest of it was to get rid of a brutal dictator, and bring democracy to the country.

S: And who benefitted from that?

A: Obviously the people of Iraq.

S: But, Mr Abbott, you said, did you not, that the public interest was what benefitted Australians? And the people of Iraq are no more Australians than illegal immigrants.

A: You are being simplistic, Mr Socrates. Governments can't close themselves off from the rest of the world. They have to have a big-picture of the role of Australia in the world. They have to act in the national interest.

S: And invading Iraq was in the national interest?

A: Yes.

S: And this "national interest" you speak of: is that the same as public interest or is it different from it?

A: I don't follow you, Mr Socrates. What on earth are you talking about?

S: Well, could something be in the national interest but not in the public interest? Could something be in the interest of the nation, but not its people?

A: No, that's silly. The nation is not something over and above its people. It's just the people acting collectively.

S: And could something be in the public interest but not the national interest? Could something make the people better off, and the nation worse off?

A: No, that's equally silly. I just told you: the nation just is the people acting collectively.

S: So the national interest and public interest are the same thing.

A: Exactly.

S: My dear Mr Abbott, I'm not a clever politician like you. I'm just a simple fellow. You'll have to help me here. Invading Iraq was in the national interest.

A: Yes.

S: And the people who benefitted were the Iraqis.

A: Yes.

S: Not the Australian public.

A: No.

S: So it was not in the public interest.

A: No, not exactly.

S: But the public interest is the national interest?

A: Yes.

S: By Jove, this is subtle reasoning. The public interest is indeed a strange thing.

A: Look, Mr Socrates, since you are obviously not the fastest car on the block, let me explain to you one more time.

S: I'm all ears.

A: The public interest is whatever it is that is for the well-being of the people as a whole, rather than just a person or small special-interest group.

S: Ah, I see, so if a doctor practises medicine, that is for the general good, even though only a few Australians are the doctor's patients?

A: Yes, because there are lots of doctors, and collectively they act in the interests of the general public.

S: But if I enjoy, say, cycling. Then going for rides is simply something that I enjoy, so that is in my private interest.

A: Yes, that's a purely personal matter.

S: I see. And if I go around doing philosophy, that's something that I enjoy, so it's simply in my private interest.

A: Quite so.

S: Whereas what you do is pass laws that benefit the population collectively. So that's in the public interest.

A: Exactly.

S: And the public interest and a private interest are quite distinct. To act for a private interest is quite different from acting for the public interest.

A: Yes.

S: In one case, I'm concerned with only my own interests; in the other, I'm concerned with the good of everyone collectively.

A: Well, I see that you have got it at last, Mr Socrates. I'm glad I've been able to help you. And now I really must go and do more important things.

S: Thank you very much.

(Abbott makes to leave.)

S: I'm sorry. Can I ask you just one more question? I think I have it now, but there's still one small thing that troubles me.

A: (Irritably.) Well?

S: Doing philosophy is a private interest, you say?

A: Yes, just like my riding a bike.

S: When you ride a bike, nobody else benefits, right?

A: Well, there's the person who sold me the bike, I suppose.

S: Yes, but wouldn't you say that that's a private interest too.

A: Yes.

S: But when I do philosophy, it's not just I who benefit. Others do.

A: (Sceptically.) Oh? And how can that be?

S: Well, I would say that people are often pretty confused about many things, especially complicated things like religion, ethical issues, and so on.

A: Really? These matters seem pretty straightforward to me.

S: No doubt. But you are an exceptionally clever person. After all, you have already cleared up the complex issue of the public interest for me.

A: Yes, indeed so.

S: But most people are not as smart as you. Take a political issue, for example. Say, the carbon tax. That's a pretty complex matter.

A: I don't think so. It just increases the cost of living.

S: Perhaps so. But so does health insurance.

A: Yes, but health insurance is important, since it affects unfortunate things that are liable to happen in the future.

S: And this carbon tax, it is also meant to affect unfortunate things that are liable to happen in the future?

A: Well, some people say that.

S: Yes, and most people find it hard to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of the tax, I would say. They are rather confused about matters.

A: Yes, I guess that's true. That's why they need clear leadership.

S: Absolutely.

A: And now that you mention it, people are rather confused about many things concerning the matter. They think that just because the majority of scientists tell us carbon emissions are causing global warming, they must be right. That's another confusion. Scientists can be wrong.

S: And this should be explained to people.

A: Yes, that's what I've been doing.

S: So it is important to help people to get unconfused on important matters.

A: Absolutely.

S: Well, when I try to clarify my own thoughts about things, I talk to other people – and it helps them to get clearer too. Talking is a wonderful way of finding confusions and helping to see one's way through them.

A: I see.

S: So philosophers are doing something in the public interest.

A: Well, not really, not as much as really useful and important people like lawyers, priests, newspaper editors.

S: How so, Mr Abbott? If you want to talk to someone on an issue, is it best to talk to someone with a vested interest in the outcome – or is it better to talk to someone who is disinterested?

A: Clearly, someone who has no vested interests. Otherwise what the say is likely to be biased.

S: Indeed so. But newspaper editors want to sell newspapers; priests want you to be a Christian; lawyers want you to pay them. So they are not disinterested parties.

A: I suppose not.

S: And philosophers, do they have vested interests in the same way? Do they want to sell you things, convert you to some religion or other, make money out of you?

A: No, they are pretty useless socially.

S: Well, Mr Abbott, you do seem to be confused about some things.

A: How so?

S: We agreed, did we not, that talking with philosophers is good because it can help to clarify complex issues, so that what to do becomes clearer?

A: (Nods.)

S: And we agreed that in talking with people about such issues, it's better to talk to people without vested interests?

A: (Nods again.)

S: And that philosophers have no such vested interests.

A: (Nods hesitantly.)

S: Then, Mr Abbott, it would seem philosophers are just the people you should be talking to about these things. They are much more important than lawyers or priests.

A: Well, yes, perhaps. But what they do is nothing compared with politicians, who spend their whole time working for the public good, though.

S: Politicians like Mr Rudd, for example.

A: Yes … No … not exactly. He had lost the plot entirely. He was clearly working for his private interest, not the public interest.

S: And working for a private interest and working for the public interest are quite different things, we said?

A: Yes. And Rudd was a clear exception. Most politicians spend their time working for the public interest – at least on my side of politics. Most work damn hard at it, too.

S: No doubt. But they get very well compensated.

A: Well, they get less than many CEOs.

S: Perhaps. But they have a salary much greater than most Australians. They get perks – such as travel and fine dining. They have a very generous pension scheme. They are in positions of power and recognition, so they have prestige. And when they cease to be politicians they can often use this to become consultants, company directors, ambassadors, and so on.

A: Yes, and they deserve it for what they do.

S: No doubt, no doubt. But obviously these things are private benefits, aren't they? Paying money into a politician's bank account is hardly the same as paying money to improve the education system in schools in the Western suburbs of Sydney, or to improve the life expectancy of Aboriginal Australians.

A: So?

S: So their work as a politician is for private benefits.

A: And so it should be. But their work is for the public benefit as well. I've told you that.

S: But you also told me that to work for the public benefit is one thing, and to work for a private benefit is something else. These are quite different things. If you are doing one, you are not doing the other.

A: (Pauses.) Yes, er, well … there is something wrong here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

S: Perhaps it is this?

A: What?

S: Although they get paid well for what they do, they are not working to get paid. That just happens as a result of what they do.

A: What on earth are you talking about? I don't follow you.

S: Well, suppose that you want to get rid of a dictator, and you send troops to invade the country. Some troops will die in the process. But you don't send the troops there in order that they get killed. You send them there in order to get rid of the dictator. The death of the troops is, so to say, an unintended consequence.

A: Well, Mr Socrates, you surprise me. I think that this philosophy – or whatever it is you do – is quite useful after all. That's exactly right. I hadn't understood this till now. The politician works in order to serve the public; they just happen to get paid for it.

S: So the payment is a sort of by-product. A sort of unintended consequence.

A: Indeed.

S: It would seem, my dear Mr Abbott, that whatever else you understand, you don't understand your own colleagues.

A: What on earth do you mean?

S: Well, do you really think that your colleagues do not intend that they should get paid?

A: Of course not. That's silly.

S: The silly idea you just told me was right?

A: (Is silent.)

S: Well, it would seem that you understand you colleagues well enough. It is just the notion of public interest that you don't understand.

A: And what of it, Mr Socrates? I'm a busy man. I don't have time to worry about these niceties.

S: But didn't you tell me that if someone does not understand the notion of public interest, they shouldn't be prime minister?

A: Look, I've got better things to do than argue with you. Get out of my way.

(Pushes Socrates aside, and cycles off, in the process riding over his foot.)

S: Ouch!

Graham Priest has received funding from the Australian Research Council.
 The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was condemned and put to death for "corrupting the youth" of Athens. The same fate is unlikely to meet contemporary philosophers. Indeed, it is much more likely for… Graham Priest, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.