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ISSUE 131 APRIL / MAY 2019

PhilosophyNow
a magazine of ideas

Question
Marx

ANARCHY, POWER & CULTURE:

Marx and his Philosophical
Friends and Foes

Two Views of Perception

On Talking to Extraterrestrials
 HAPPINESS
OUT
NOW

by ALAIN BADIOU
“All metaphysics is a philosophy
of happiness… or it’s not worth
an hour of trouble.”
So says Alain Badiou in a compelling case for
philosophy’s role in disseminating commodified
notions of happiness, reclaiming it from the purview
of popular self-help books and urging us to revolt
against the issues that limit society so that we may
live genuinely rewarding lives.

www.bloomsbury.com/happiness-9781474275538

UK £6.99 USA $12.99 CANADA $13.99 UK £6.99 USA $12.99 CANADA $13.99

The Ultimate Guide The Ultimate Guide The Ultimate Guide

Philosophy Now Philosophy Now

ISSUE ONE: ETHICS ISSUE TWO: METAPHYSICS

Did Time
Begin with
Animal rights: a Bang?
When apes have
their day in court
C.S. Lewis, God,
Virtue ethics and and the Problem
the New Testament of Evil

Find out: What kind Why

PHILOSOPHY
of ethicist are you? Buridan’s
Ass
Doesn’t
Starve

OF
METAPHYSICS
ETHICS
The Nature
of Reality
MIND

philosophynow.org/shop
Philosophy Now ISSUE 131 April/May 2019
Philosophy Now, EDITORIAL & NEWS
43a Jerningham Road, 4 Question Marx Grant Bartley
Telegraph Hill,
5 News
London SE14 5NQ
United Kingdom MARX & FRIENDS, & ENEMIES
Tel. 020 7639 7314
editors@philosophynow.org
6 Karl Marx: Man & Mind

RON SCHAPPER 2019

philosophynow.org Matt Qvortrup on what culturally determined Karl Marx
10 A New Twist on an Old Idea
Editor-in-Chief Rick Lewis
Lucian Lupescu finds unexpected links between Marx & Kant
Editors Grant Bartley, Anja Steinbauer
Digital Editor Bora Dogan 12 Marx & Nietzsche
Design Grant Bartley, Tim Beardmore- Jack Fox-Williams explores power, class and religion
BY

Gray, Anja Steinbauer, Rick Lewis

MARX

14 Popper on Marx on History

Book Reviews Editor Teresa Britton
Film Editor Thomas Wartenberg
Chris Christensen considers a clash of Karls
Editorial Assistant Tim Beardmore-Gray 17 Marx’s Leviathan
Marketing Sue Roberts, Katy Baker Patrick Cannon tells us why anarchists reject Marx’s revolution
Administration Ewa Stacey, Tim
18 How Can Anybody Change Culture?
Marx & Friends
Beardmore-Gray
Advertising Team Kevin Brinkmann’s ‘how to’ guide to cultural hegemony
Jay Sanders, Ellen Stevens
jay.sanders@philosophynow.org under critique, pages 6-20 GENERAL ARTICLES
UK Editorial Board 27 Socratic Wisdom & the Knowledge of Children
Rick Lewis, Anja Steinbauer, Maria daVenza Tillmanns considers intuitive knowledge
Bora Dogan, Grant Bartley
US Editorial Board
30 Award 2019: Against Stupidity in the Media
Prof. Timothy J. Madigan (St John Fisher Angela Phillips tells us what it is, and what to do about it
College), Prof. Teresa Britton (Eastern 33 What is Panspiritism?
Illinois Univ.), Prof. Charles Echelbarger,
Prof. Raymond Pfeiffer, Prof. Massimo
Steve Taylor on an alternative theory of consciousness and matter
Pigliucci (CUNY City College) 38 What is it Like to be a Dragonfly?
Contributing Editors More interesting than you might think, says Benedict O’Connell
Alexander Razin (Moscow State Univ.)
40 Locke’s Question To Berkeley
Laura Roberts (Univ. of Queensland)
David Boersema (Pacific University) Alessandro Colarossi imagines a perceptive conversation
UK Editorial Advisors
Piers Benn, Constantine Sandis, Gordon
REVIEWS
Giles, Paul Gregory, John Heawood 46 Book: Logos by Raymond Tallis
US Editorial Advisors reviewed logically by Stephen Anderson
Prof. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, Toni
47 Book: Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright
Vogel Carey, Prof. Harvey Siegel, Prof.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong reviewed revealingly by Lachlan Dale
Cover Design Karl Marx by Stephen
Lillie 2019. (After Goya’s The Sleep of
Perception 50 Film: Arrival
Various views, pages 21 and 38-41 Christopher Carroll on talking to aliens
Reason Produces Monsters)
REGULARS
Printed by The Manson Group Ltd
8 Porters Wood, Valley Road Industrial 11 Philosophical Haiku: R.G. Collingwood by Terence Green
Estate, St Albans AL3 6PZ 21 Brief Lives: Thomas Kuhn
Will Bouwman places Kuhn in his proper historical paradigm
Worldwide newstrade distribution:
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Tel. +44 1293 312001 Is Philosophy Still the Friend of Wisdom?
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Level 2, 9 Rodborough Road Peter Adamson wonders what can be learnt from classic metal
French’s Forest, NSW 2086
54 Tallis In Wonderland: On Failing To Be A Philosopher
The opinions expressed in this magazine Raymond Tallis philosophises about non-philosophising
do not necessarily reflect the views of
the editor or editorial board of POETRY & FICTION
Philosophy Now.
37 The Masterplan
Philosophy Now is published by Julie McNeill tells us the philosophical plot poetically
Anja Publications Ltd
ISSN 0961-5970
56 An Unwanted Visitation
Craig Potter’s story of a student and a suffragette
Subscriptions p.52 Buddhism
Shop p.53 Not another revolution! page 47
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 3
 © PAUL GREGORY 2016
GRANT AT TATE MODERN
Editorial Question Marx
W
e want Philosophy Now to be well read; but do we
want it to be, well, red? Indeed, why be interested
in Marx after ‘the end of history’ – as Francis
Fukuyama (taking from Hegel – all intellectual
property is theft!) styled the triumph of global capitalism and
liberal democracy? The continued interest in Marx is demon-
strated to us by the continual stream of submissions we receive
concerning his thinking, the ripe red fruits of which we present
here. But that doesn’t explain why people are still interested in
looking at his ideas, and why we should be, when most believe
that Marx’s ideas have been demonstrated to be false.
There is first the fact that he is historically a very significant
philosopher. Some might argue the most significant, having set
the course of twentieth century history and onwards through his
writings. This significance bears recognition from a philosophy
magazine like ours that tries to be as inclusive as possible. Marx
had a lot of interesting ideas, too – and some of them are good.
I still think ‘From each according to his ability, to each according
to his needs’ is a great social ideal, even if it sometimes seems
impractical in our corrupt cosmos. Being a professional
journalist, Marx was often a great writer, as Matt Qvortrup
points out in his article introducing the man and his thought. I
also think that having a theory about how human society and
history works is the sort of profound project that should be
encouraged in philosophy, even if you don’t agree with the
particular ideas that resulted from someone else’s chasing of that
ambition. As a deep thinker in central areas of human life where
professional philosophers usually fear to tread, including
economics, Marx is worth looking at as a stimulus. We can try to
figure out where he went wrong and what the truth is in those
areas, as well as to ask where he was right, and what to think
about that (and as Marx would add, what to do).
It’s also an opportunity to bounce Marx off some of the
philosophical luminaries in his orbit, both friends and enemies,
and so see them anew too. In this issue we’ll often encounter
Hegel alongside Marx. More surprisingly, perhaps, Jack Fox-
Williams shows how Marxism overlaps with Nietzsche’s
thought in some key areas, whilst Lucian Lupescu contrasts
Marx with Kant over freedom. Meanwhile, Patrick Cannon tells
us why anarchists frequently take issue with Marx, even though
you might think that they share the same goal of the emanci-
pation of The Masses from The Man. The enemy of my enemy
is not always my friend, evidently. (Splitters!)
Talking of the liberation of humanity, a big part of the
continuing interest in Marx stems from the imperfections of the
workings of capitalism becoming increasingly unignorable. For
the sake of mere profit, the free market compels the ever-
increasing production of goods, which threatens to collapse the
global ecosystem as well as the global economic system. As climate
4 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
change and environmental degradation increase, we may well
become desperate to find an alternative to industrialised
consumerism. According to Oxfam nearly half of the world’s
wealth is controlled by 1% of its population, and the richest twenty
six billionaires have more wealth than the poorest half of the world’s
population combined, so there’s an apparent social justice issue here
too, when so many are in absolute poverty. Under what system of
morality could that distribution be just? Maybe Marx can help
illuminate the issues, providing clues to a better way. Regardless,
with the help of three Marxist ‘brothers’ – not including
Groucho – Kevin Brinkmann explains how culture might be
changed once we’ve found good new ideas for humanity.
I say all this fully recognising that Marx’s theories have fatal
shortcomings, and that to the extent that his philosophy has
been applied, it has failed epically. It failed first because his
theory is incorrect in major ways: for instance, concerning the
inevitability of the communist revolution, and more generally,
about major historical changes being predetermined by
economics. History is more chaotic (in the mathematical sense)
and influenced by unforeseeable ideas. Chris Christensen
explains why Karl Popper thought Marx was wrong to believe in
inevitable historical development.
Equally importantly, Marx’s thinking was incomplete. Notably,
he did not take into account the potential in human nature for
self-aggrandisement and pure sociopathy, and from that the total-
itarianism that a centralisation of power can, and did, allow. This
oversight was disastrously displayed in Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot,
who between them caused the death of tens of millions of their
own people while claiming to apply Marxist theories.
For contrast we also consider a different type of revolution in
this issue’s Brief Life. This focuses on Thomas Kuhn, who
coined the term ‘paradigm shift’ whilst looking at scientific
revolutions. So here’s a fun question for readers to consider after
absorbing Kuhn’s and Marx’s theories of history: is the best
model for the explanation of history Marx’s, Kuhn’s, perhaps
Hegel’s, or someone else’s? In other words, could the historical
changes that Marx describes be better explained in terms of
paradigm shifts in economics? Alternatively, is Kuhn’s idea of
paradigm shifts in science better explained in terms of ‘class
warfare’ between competing schools of scientists? Personally, I
go for Kuhn over Marx every time; across every area of change.
As an escape from even more revolutions – of the wheel of life in
this case – in our reviews we look at a book on secular Buddhism.
We also feature a pair of articles on perception and reality,
another area of great philosophical significance. Indeed, as you
can see, there’s a wide range of historically significant ideas in
here. So comrades, (wo)man the barricades against the tides of
dumbed-down culture armed with the latest issue of Philosophy
Now, and join the fight for thought itself! Grant Bartley
• Word frequency reveals morality’s tides
• Marx’s tomb vandalised
• Black holes evade conceptual capture
News reports by Anja Steinbauer
Moral Talk and Moral Conflict
Researchers Nick Haslam, Melanie
McGrath, and Melissa Wheeler of the
University of Melbourne in Australia have
traced the development of moral language
over more than 100 years. Using a
program called Google NGram Viewer
they searched for 304 terms with moral
content in the English language Google
Books database. The search covered books
published between 1900 and 2007. While
they found an overall decline in the use of
words conveying general morality, such as
‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘moral’, and ‘evil’, there was
a sudden and remarkable turning point
around 1980: “The fifth period, from
around 1980 to the end of the study
period in 2007, involves a relatively
sudden shift in the salience of moral
concepts.” From then on, they write,
“moral content increasingly saturates the
database”. More precisely, “Both individ-
ualist and social order and cohesion-based
moralities rise in parallel, suggesting a
broader re-moralisation.” The authors
believe this may correlate to a hardening
of moral fronts, an “increasing moral
polarisation and conflict.”
Moral Thinking & Moral Argument
Is morality relative? Researchers at
Oxford’s Institute for Cognitive and
Evolutionary Anthropology analysed
ethnographic accounts of ethics from sixty
societies, drawing on over 600 sources, to
test the hypothesis that morality serves to
promote cooperation. If true, the fact that
there are many types of cooperation
means that there are many types of moral-
ity. They found seven cooperative
behaviours considered morally good in
99.9% of cases across the sixty cultures
they studied. They were: “Help your
family”, “help your group”, “return
favours”, “be brave”, “defer to superiors”,
“divide resources fairly” and “respect
others’ property.” Dr Oliver Scott Curry,
lead author and senior researcher,
comments: “The debate between moral
universalists and moral relativists has
News
raged for centuries, but now we have some comments: “We’re using the medium of
answers. People everywhere face a similar cartoon in the hope that more young
set of social problems and use a similar set people will find out about him. They
of moral rules to solve them. As predicted, don’t always really understand philosophy
these seven moral rules appear to be or have an interest in it. There are plenty
universal across cultures. Everyone every- of resources, many books about Marx, but
where shares a common moral code. All this is really intended to be for young
agree that cooperating, promoting the people.” The Leader gained an average star
common good, is the right thing to do.” rating of 2/5 from users of Chinese film
and literature website Douban.
What Are Black Holes? Meanwhile in London, Karl Marx’s
Black holes are astronomical objects tomb in Highgate Cemetery was
composed of a singularity and event hori- vandalised twice in February. Slogans
zon that consume everything around were daubed all over it in red paint. One
them. However, Dr Erik Curiel of the read: “Architect of Genocide terror +
Munich Centre for Mathematical Philoso- oppression mass murder.” One visitor,
phy at Ludwig-Maximilian University Max Blowfield of the British Museum,
shows in a recent paper in Nature Astron- expressed his sadness to the BBC: “I’m
omy that the definition of black holes is just surprised that somebody in 2019 feels
surprisingly tricky: “The properties of the need to do something like that.”
black holes are the subject of investiga-
tions in a range of subdisciplines of
physics – in optical physics, in quantum
physics and of course in astrophysics. But
each of these specialties approaches the
problem with its own specific set of theo-
retical concepts.” Curiel, who studied
philosophy and theoretical physics at
Harvard and the University of Chicago,
argues that the answer must be strongly
informed by philosophy: “Phenomena
such as black holes belong to a realm that
is inaccessible to observation and experi-
ment. Work based on the assumption that
black holes exist therefore involves a level
of speculation that is unusual even for the
field of theoretical physics.” He came
across many different definitions of black
holes, and he believes this to be a positive
sign, as they open up a variety of scientific
approaches.
Karl Marx as a Cartoon Hero
China’s Communist Party has thought of a
new way of communicating Marxist ideas:
a cartoon series called The Leader.
Commissioned on the occasion of his
200th birthday, it portrays Karl as a clean-
shaven, romantic young scholar who wants Karl Marx’s grave: a communist plot?
to save humanity. Script author Zhuo Sina
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 5
 Marx
Karl Marx: Man & Mind
Matt Qvortrup argues that Marx still inspires those longing for a better world.
I
n the beginning was the word, and Marx had a way with
them like no other. Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was
a supreme stylist with a turn of phrase that few could
match. Whatever one thinks of the political ideologies
associated with his name – Communism, Socialism and Marx-
ism – he was poetic, pithy, and, at the same time, able to write
in clear, succinct, and powerful German. Consider “The tradi-
tion of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the
brains of the living” from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bona-
parte (1852); or, in his Theses on Feuerbach from 1845, “The
philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways,
the point is to change it.” By contrast, G.W.F. Hegel (1770-
1831), who inspired him, wrote mostly in convoluted prose and
with an overreliance on jargon and forbidding terms. Marx sim-
plified the works of the master and exchanged Hegel’s lofty ide-
alism with a solid dose of earthy materialism, taken from French
radicals and British political economists.
Born to modestly prosperous parents of Jewish descent (both
his maternal and paternal grandfathers were rabbis), the family
converted to Christianity so that his father Heinrich could prac-
tice law. Young Karl was a hothead with strong views and a short
temper. He joined the radical fraternity the Trier Tavern Club,
and in 1836 even fought a duel (no one was hurt). But his pas-
sion was for books, poetry, philosophy, and for his fiancée Jenny
von Westphalen, whom he later married. He studied law at the
insistence of his father, but Karl’s love for jurisprudence was at
best non-existent and his talent was in philosophy. “Without phi-
losophy, nothing can be accomplished”, he wrote in the late 1830s
(see Karl Marx: A Biography, D. McLellan, 2006, p.21). Heinrich
Marx was not impressed by his son’s behaviour, and he wrote to
him, “Alas, your conduct has consisted merely in disorder, mean-
dering in all the fields of knowledge… by sombre lamplight…
with a beer glass” (Ibid, p. 26). It was only when his father died
in 1838 that Marx shifted from the Berlin Law School to study
philosophy at the more liberal Jena University. He edited Hegel’s
writings on the philosophy of religion, penned a novel (Scorpion
and Felix), wrote a short play Oulanem, and eventually obtained
a doctorate in 1841. The title of his thesis was The Difference
Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophies of Nature.
Marx’s interest in these two Greeks was a sign of things to
come. Both were materialists who believed that everything could
ultimately be reduced to atoms. Marx too was a materialist, but
he was no reductionist. While also inspired by contemporary
materialists, such as Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771) and
Paul-Henri d’Holbach (1723-1789), his major philosophical
schooling was Hegelian. Like Hegel, Marx too believed that
history was a ping-pong of opposing extremes that fuse together
into a new situation, which goes on to generate its own oppos-
ing extremes, and so on and on. (More formally, this process is
known as a dialectical movement of thesis, antithesis, and syn-
thesis, where the synthesis becomes the new thesis...) But Marx
differed from Hegel in two important respects. For starters, he
6 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
did not agree with Hegel that Prussian society was the end (that
is, culmination) of the development of history; and he also grad-
ually came to believe that material factors – especially the eco-
nomic relations between workers and capitalists – were more
important than ideas.
Marx the Man
Marx was a remarkable man, full of charisma. He also had an
exceptionally high opinion of himself. He always maintained
that his writings were not mere essays, but rather that his pre-
dictions were ‘scientific’ (Wissenschaftlich), in the way that New-
tonian physics was. Indeed, he believed that he had discovered
the ‘law of motion of modern society’ (Capital, 1867, p.10). It
seems hardly credible that Marx said in a meeting with French
radicals, ‘Je ne suis pas Marxiste’ – “I am not a Marxist” – as
Engels reported in a letter to Eduard Bernstein.
One gets a sense of his personality in a pen portrait written
by Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, a Russian exile with whom
Marx corresponded. It deserves to be quoted verbatim:
“Marx was a type of man formed all of energy, force of will and unshak-
able conviction, a type highly remarkable in outward appearance as
well. In spite of his thick, black mane of hair, his hairy hands, and his
coat buttoned up all awry, he had the appearance of a man who has
the right and the power to demand respect, although his looks and
his manners might appear peculiar sometimes. His movements were
angular, but bold and confident, his manners were contrary to all
social practice. But they were proud, with a touch of disdain, and his
sharp voice, which rang like metal, sounded remarkably in accor-
dance with the radical judgments on men and things which he let fall.
He spoke only in the imperative, brooking no contradiction, and this
was intensified by the tone, which to me was almost painfully jarring,
in which he spoke. This tone expressed the firm conviction of his
mission to reign over men’s minds and dictate their laws. Before my
eyes stood the personification of a democratic dictator such as might
appear before one in moments of fantasy.”
(Quoted in Karl Marx: Man and Fighter, Boris Nicolaievsky, trans.
Otto Mänchen-Helfen, 1936, p.118).
As Annenkov’s sketch suggests, Marx rarely dished out com-
plements. Yet he made an exception when it came to Hegel, and
“openly avowed” himself to be “a pupil of that mighty thinker”
(Capital, p.10). The first break with Hegel came in the early 1840s,
when Marx read Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity
(1841) – a book that was later translated into English by none
other than George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), the author of The
Mill on the Floss. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach claimed
that man had created God, and then subsequently obeyed the
commands of this man-made deity; or, in Feuerbach’s own pithy
Latin shorthand, Homo homini Deus est – ‘man is God for man’.
Marx transposed this idea onto society. People had become
enslaved by a system they had themselves created – just like
 Marx

Karl Marx
by Ron Schepper
2019

April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 7

 Marx
religious believers who, in Marx’s view, following Feuerbach,
were subjugated by religious commands of their own making.
The workers created and sustained capitalist society by their
actions, but they did not enjoy the fruit of their endeavors. Marx
called this result ‘Entfremdung’, or alienation.
Then he was off. From that moment onward, he was a social
philosopher. His interests and focus turned from the philoso-
phy of religion to political economy, and eventually, to practi-
cal politics. Marx’s radical politics did not endear him to the
authorities, however. He had to flee Germany, and was later
kicked out of France and Belgium, before he settled in London
in 1849. There he earned a meagre living as a foreign corre-
spondent for the New York Tribune, while continually relying
on handouts from his lifelong collaborator Engels.
Communism Manifesting
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was the largely self-taught son of a
wealthy German owner of a textile factory in Lancashire. Despite
his pedigree as a ‘rich kid’, Engels was appalled by the conditions
of the working classes in England. He wrote an eloquent piece in
the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, which Marx read with enthusi-
asm. The two began to correspond, and soon developed a deep
and lasting friendship. In 1846 the two co-wrote the German Ide-
ology, a tome of 800 pages of mostly Marx’s handiwork which cri-
tiqued various now-forgotten German philosophers. This book
(which was published posthumously) contained the first sketches
of Marx’s vision of the communist society and his ideas on the
evolution of history. It was in this book that Marx mused,
“In communist society… nobody has one exclusive sphere of activ-
ity, but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes; soci-
Chairman Mao
by Stephen Lahey
8 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
ety regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for
me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise
after dinner” (p.54).
More importantly, it was when writing this book that Marx
believed he had discovered the engine of history.
Hegel had believed that the ideas and spirit of world culture
(Weltgeist) was the driving force of history. Marx, being a mate-
rialist, believed otherwise. Hegel’s general framework was cor-
rect, but it had to be tweaked. As Marx later summed it up, the
master’s dialectic was “standing on its head”, and “must be
turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational
kernel within the mystical shell” (Capital, p.10).
This rational kernel, thought Marx, was class warfare.
Although he elaborated on his theory in more complicated (if
not longwinded) studies, such as Grundrisse (1858) and above
all Capital, the basic outline of his argument was contained in
The Communist Manifesto, which he (with moderate input from
Engels) hastily penned in 1848 as revolution began to erupt in
several European countries. It was here that he famously pro-
posed that the “history of all hitherto existing society is the his-
tory of class struggles” (p.79). So for Marx, what drove history
forward was not rival philosophical ideas, but the antagonistic
positions between classes.
Throughout history, classes in society reflected what Marx
called ‘the mode of production’ – the systems of organizing the
production and distribution of goods and services – and these
relations, in turn, determine everything else in society. In the
phraseology of his short book A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy (1859), the economy was ‘the base’ and every-
thing else was ‘superstructure’ (p.6). Hence, the state was not a
neutral institution but a product of the economic relations
between, say, workers and capitalists, with the latter having the
upper hand. In short, “the executive of the modern state is but
a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie” (Communist Manifesto, p.82).
But this situation would not last, Marx predicted. Once the
proletariat gained political power, they would take over the state
and turn it into a vehicle for pursuing their own interests, and
gradually they would establish the communist society, which
to Marx was the real end of history.
Marx believed that social revolutions occur when there’s a dis-
crepancy between the underlying structures of society and the
political superstructure. As Marx considered it, in capitalist soci-
ety, as the way we consume, produce, and interact in the market-
place develops, “The changes in the economic foundation lead
sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense super-
structure… at a certain stage of development, the material pro-
ductive forces of society come into conflict with the existing rela-
tions of production” (Contribution to the Critique of Political Econ-
omy, p.6). In other words, the way we produce and consume will
eventually lead to social conflict irresolvable in terms of the cur-
rent social arrangements, and there will be revolution.
Some – most notably Vladimir Lenin and other Twentieth
Century Soviet Communists – believed this revolution would of
necessity be a violent uprising. Yet The Communist Manifesto itself
was clear that the first step in the revolution was “to win the

by Melissa Felder
SIMON & FINN © MELISSA FELDER 2019 PLEASE VISIT SIMONANDFINN.COM
battle of democracy” (p.104). Also, towards the end of his life,
Karl Marx wrote a short manifesto for the French Workers’
Party, in which he stated that, “universal suffrage would be trans-
formed from the instrument of deception that it has been until
now into an instrument of emancipation” – voting would become
a means to freedom rather than a way of upholding the status
quo. Admittedly, in some countries, democracy was “a snare, an
instrument of government trickery”, especially in countries
where the franchise was limited to the property-owning classes
( see Engels’ Introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France,
1895, p.518). In those countries where there was not the elec-
toral avenue to socialism, the need for extra-parliamentary means
would be warranted, and violence would be “lessening the birth-
Marx
pangs” of communist society (Capital, p.10 ). But Marx would
not have shared Lenin’s belief in so-called ‘democratic central-
ism’, or his view that only “the vanguard of the proletariat” was
“capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to
socialism” (State and Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, 1917, p.24).
Karl Marx: Present & Future
The revolution never came in the way Marx prophesied. His
prediction that capitalist society would collapse from the inside
as the profit rate fell simply didn’t materialise – not necessarily
because Marx was wrong that that would result if things had
kept developing in the same way, but because capitalism was
saved from itself through anti-trust legislation which prevented
companies from becoming monopolies. Nor was Marx right
that “society is more and more splitting into two great and hos-
tile camps” (Communist Manifesto, p.80).
But does it matter? The Hungarian Marxist literary critic
György Lukács famously wrote that even if “research had dis-
proved once and for all every one of Marx’s individual theses”,
one could still maintain the “conviction that dialectical materi-
alism [class warfare through history, Ed] is the road to truth
and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened
only along the lines laid down by its founders” (History and Class
Consciousness, 1923, p.1).
Perhaps so. Or perhaps Marx is worth reading for other rea-
sons. As an observer of political developments, Marx was sharp
and perceptive. His insights could even be used to explain the
relationship between the present US President and the House
of Representatives, in terms similar to those Marx used when
Napoleon III clashed with the French National Assembly and
appealed to the people. About this Marx wrote: “While the votes
of France are split up among the seven hundred and fifty mem-
bers of the National Assembly, they are here, on the contrary,
concentrated on a single individual… The elected National
Assembly stands in a metaphysical relation, but the elected Pres-
ident in a personal relation, to the nation” (The Eighteenth Bru-
maire of Louis Bonaparte, p.31).
Another reason for studying the man from Trier is that he
inspires hope and a belief in a better future. The German philoso-
pher Ernst Bloch believed that the essence of Marx’s philoso-
phy was that it awoke utopian yearnings and an almost religious
hope: “No dreaming may stand still, for this bodes no good. But
if it becomes a dreaming ahead, then its cause appears quite dif-
ferently and excitingly alive… and then yearning can show what
it really is able to accomplish” (On Karl Marx, 1968, p.31).
Paradoxically for a man who wrote dismissively about
‘utopian socialists’, Marx’s legacy is to be exactly that – a man
with a vague and attractive idea. It is expressed movingly and
yet pithily in his Critique of the Gotha Programme of 1875:
“After the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division
of labour… has vanished… only then can the narrow horizon of bour-
geois right be crossed... and society inscribe on its banners: From
each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
© DR MATT QVORTRUP 2019
Matt Qvortrup is Professor of Political Science at Coventry
University.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 9
 Marx
A New Twist on Old Ideas
Lucian Lupescu sees how far Kant’s and Marx’s ideals overlap.
I
n 1784 Immanuel Kant described humanity as being in a
state of immaturity, which to Kant is “the inability to use
one’s own understanding without the guidance of another”
(An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, trans
Mary C. Smith). The reasons for this immaturity are “laziness
and cowardice.” For progress to occur, we must “have courage
to use [our] own understanding.” And for Kant, historical
progress must yield some form of freedom: “For enlightenment
of this kind, all that is needed is freedom. And the freedom in
question is the most innocuous form of all – freedom to make
public use of one’s reason in all matters.” This freedom must
not however be understood as political or social freedom: “A
high degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a people’s
intellectual freedom, yet it also sets up insuperable barriers to
it. Conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom gives intellectual
freedom enough room to expand to its fullest extent.” Indeed,
for Kant, the ordinary people are free to think, but that must be
the limit of their freedom: “Argue as much as you like and about
whatever you like, but obey!” If people start more than just dis-
puting about society’s ideas, society would collapse in chaos.
10 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
Sixty years later Karl Marx told the common people that “the
emancipation of society from servitude is expressed in the polit-
ical form of the emancipation of the workers” (‘Estranged Labor’,
1844, trans Martin Mulligan, 1959). This was the beginning of
a new thinking which would give a new twist to Kant’s old ideas.
In contrast to Kant’s theory, Marx thought that the current con-
dition of the masses is not caused by their lack of courage to
reason, but by the fact that there have always been oppressed
classes living more or less at the mercy of higher classes. Marx’s
solution is however similar to Kant’s: man (that is, the worker)
must be emancipated in order to be free. Laborers must use
their reason to unite in a single party that would protect their
interests against the bourgeoisie – the Communist Party. Marx
explains that “the emancipation of the workers contains uni-
versal human emancipation – and it contains this because the
whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the
worker to production, and all relations of servitude are but mod-
ifications and consequences of this relation.” We can see the
worker as a symbol for humanity in general. In his situation,
the worker “only feels himself freely active in his animal func-
tions – eating, drinking, procreating... etc.;
and in his human functions he no longer
feels himself to be anything but an animal.
What is animal becomes human and what
is human becomes animal.” In other words,
men and women should realize that the only
way to become truly human is to become
empowered by knowledge: knowledge of
their condition, and knowledge of how it
can be made better. This might not have
been made explicit by Marx, but it is implied.
After all, how can the workers throw away
the shackles of oppression if they are not
aware of their condition? And how can they
be aware of their condition unless they start
thinking for themselves, just as Kant
wanted?
Both Kant and Marx envisaged historical
progress playing a role in freeing people. Both
also thought that this freedom can be achieved
by individuals through the use of
reason/knowledge. A big difference between
them is the way each understood why humans
are not currently free. For Kant, it’s each indi-
vidual’s own fault; whereas to Marx, exterior
societal conditions are to blame. Their meth-
ods also differ. Kant wants each person to dis-
cover thinking for themselves, arriving at
some sort of enlightenment of reason,
whereas Marx wants the workers to organize
in groups and take action against their oppres-
sors. If Kant envisaged a straight course for
philosophy through all the frenzy of politic events, Marx thought
quite the opposite, wanting philosophy to shake the world by
destroying the status quo. For him, the thesis and the antithesis
‘property owners’ and ‘propertyless workers’ must create a syn-
thesis, communism, whereby the workers own the property. This
requires a revolution, in thinking, and in politics. For Marx, Kant’s
phrase “Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like,
but obey!” is an insult. People are in this animalistic condition
because they obey. Kant’s ideas are obsolete. Thinking is no longer
enough. Action is needed. More than action, a complete change
must occur. This old order must be replaced by a new one. The
old type of human must make room for the new: the communist.
The communist would embody Kant’s basic ideals of Enlighten-
ment, thinking for himself free from the influence of others, but
he is more than that: “the Communists... are on the one hand,
practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the work-
ing-class parties of every country, that section which pushes for-
ward all others; on the other hand... they have over the great mass
of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line
of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the
proletarian movement” (Communist Manifesto, 1888 Edition,
edited by Friedrich Engels).
The progress of the individual and society is a constant pre-
occupation for both Kant and Marx. They both feel, as we should
too, that people need constantly to improve themselves and the
society in which they live. Kant and Marx both share a sense of
optimism, believing that this is possible. But whether an ideal,
perfect human can actually exist in reality, and perform political
deeds that would make the world a better place, is a whole dif-
ferent story.
© LUCIAN LUPESCU 2019
Lucian Lupescu is a freelance translator. He can be found at
LLTranslator.com, or at ASynonymForRambling.wordpress.com.
Philosophical Haiku
R.G. COLLINGWOOD
(1889–1943)
Imagine time past
Like an artist creating
Unfurling history.
R
obin George Collingwood was once described as ‘the best-
known neglected thinker of our time’. His father was an archae-
ologist and an artist, and these two spheres came to occupy
much of young Collingwood’s attention. His hobby was to spend
his summers digging around looking for artefacts, and he inadvertently
became an expert on Roman Britain. But it is principally as a philosopher
of history and of art for which he is remembered today.
History, for Collingwood, is the study of the human mind. If we think
about what really interests us when we look at history, it is people like
ourselves: (primarily) rational beings, making the best of the world in
which they find themselves. It’s true we can study people in terms of the
evolution of the species Homo sapiens; but that’s natural history, and
not the sort of history people mean when they speak of history. To study
history is to study the minds of those who have gone before us.
This study, Collingwood said, can be compared with what we do when
we experience art. If we wish to understand the past, or understand a
work of art, we must unleash our imagination. Through a process of imag-
inative reconstruction, we can then experience something like the
thoughts of people who lived centuries ago, or experience the vision of
the creative genius who expresses an idea in a way we can all share.
This imaginative leap requires us suspending our own beliefs and preju-
dices, and adopting those of the people we’re studying, even if they’re
false or repugnant to us. For instance, we may ourselves not believe in
miracles, but if we’re reading about people in the past who did believe
in them, then we will only understand them by adopting a view of the
world in which miracles can happen.
When he died, it appeared that Collingwood’s work was destined to
become history; but a resurgence of interest has ensured it will live long
in human imagination.
© TERENCE GREEN 2019
Terence is a writer, historian, and lecturer, and lives with his wife
and their dog in Paekakariki, NZ. hardlysurprised.blogspot.co.nz
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 11
 Marx
Marx & Nietzsche
Jack Fox-Williams explores power, class and religion.
PLEASE VISIT STEVELILLIE.BIZ
MARX © STEVE LILLIE 2019
A
lthough neither of them actually lived in it, Marx and
Nietzsche were among the most important thinkers
for the Twentieth Century. Their influence on its
minds and events was profound as they radically trans-
formed the way we think about the individual, society, and the
human condition. In The Will to Power (1901), Nietzsche asserts
that all human behavior and reasoning is a manifestation of the
‘will to power’. Marx, on the other hand, argued that social sys-
tems are fundamentally characterized by class conflict, in which
the ruling class control the means of production through the
exploitation of the other classes (for example, Das Kapital, 1867).
So let’s look at the views of Marx and Nietzsche in regard to
religion and the origins of Christian morality, and Western phi-
losophy, examining the similarities and differences in their
thinking in these areas.
The Will to Power, Class Conflict and Religion
In The Gay Science (1882), Nietzsche contemplates the diminish-
ing influence of Christianity across European society. He writes
with poetical hyperbole, “God is Dead. God remains dead. And
we have killed him.” Although God evidently remains alive in
today’s world, with billions of people still belonging to some form
of organized religion, what Nietzsche meant was that modern
rationalism had removed God from the contemporary Western
understanding of the universe, replacing religion with the ‘cult’
of science. But while Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of
God is often characterized as the beginning of nihilism, Niet-
zsche explicitly opposed nihilism on the grounds that it weakens
one’s passion for life. He writes, “What does nihilism mean? –
that the supreme values devalue themselves” (Sämtliche Werke:
Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 2, p.319). So Nietzsche recognized
the diminishing role of religion across European society, but also
the need for a non-Christian system of values by which mankind
12 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
can live meaningfully and embrace the drama of existence.
A key aspect of Nietzsche’s response here is the concept of the
will to power. Very broadly, this is the notion that every organ-
ism strives to achieve mastery in life, continually growing rather
than merely surviving. For Nietzsche, the will to power is the
impulse guiding all forms of human reasoning and behavior, too.
In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), he explains how even philosophers
are unconsciously guided by their ambitions, drives, personal
values, and environment. He writes with candid cynicism that
instead of seeking knowledge, “The scholar’s real ‘interests’ gen-
erally lie in quite another direction, perhaps in his family or in
making money or in politics.”
Nietzsche’s analysis can also provide us with a valuable insight
into the relationship between religion and power, as well as into
some of the psychological reasons for why people engage in
religious practice. Religion can provide us with a feeling of con-
trol in a chaotic life, reduce our sense of powerlessness in the
face of suffering by giving that suffering a meaning, and help
us exert power over others. One only need consider the finan-
cial status of super-wealthy Christian pastors or the power of
bishops in the Middle Ages to recognize how even religion can
work to maximize an individual’s prosperity.
Marx also saw religion as a manifestation of power. How-
ever, his conception of power is very different from Nietzsche’s.
In Das Kapital, Marx argues that in Western society organized
religion is an instrument of the capitalist elite to keep the masses
in economic subservience; or as he writes in A Contribution to
the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844): “Religion is the
sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world
and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opiate of the masses.”
While the market economy provides goods, products and ser-
vices it fails to provide any sense of transcendental purpose. The
implication is that the masses are so alienated by the conditions
of capitalism in which they live that they turn to religion in
order to fulfill their spiritual needs. But Marx also states, “the
abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is
the demand for their real happiness” (Ibid).
Marx rejects the metaphysical foundations of religion in a sim-
ilar way to Nietzsche, viewing it as a socially-constructed phe-
nomenon. He asserts, “Man makes religion, religion does not
make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-
esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself or
has lost himself again” (Ibid). For Marx, the concepts of ‘God’
and ‘soul’ have no basis in reality but are merely a comfort to
those who lack a sense of life’s meaning. This idea is similar to
Nietzsche’s idea that people use religion as a means by which to
empower themselves; however, Marx does not relate the empow-
erment of religion to the notion of a universal will to power.
Instead, he views the psychological need for religious faith as a
byproduct of the disempowerment caused by the oppressive con-
ditions of capitalism. So Marx analyses religion from a socioeco-
nomic perspective that’s absent from Nietzsche’s philosophy.
Neither thinker seems to address the philosophical arguments
for religious truth. Instead, they seek to understand religion as a
social, cultural and psychological phenomenon.
 Marx
Christian Morality as an Aspect of Power
Marx and Nietzsche’s theories of religion provide ideas concern-
ing the origins of Christian morality. That is, although Marx
never commented on this topic directly, his theory of class con-
flict can be applied to the development of Christian ethics. From
this perspective, Christian morality becomes a tool of the ruling

NIETZSCHE PORTRAIT © CLINTON INMAN 2019 FACEBOOK HIM AT CLINTON.INMAN

elite to maintain control over the means of production. Chris-
tian moral precepts, such as ‘Turn the other cheek’ or the ‘The
first shall be last and the last first’, benefit the elite by promoting
passive subservience among the working classes. If the proletariat
actively resisted capitalist exploitation, a socialist revolution would
be possible; however, Christian meekness enables the capitalist
system to continue its exploitation of the working classes. So it
could be argued that the notion of entering Heaven on the basis
of one’s moral character helps the ruling classes maintain con-
trol over the means of production, since Christianity discourages
the type of conduct typically associated with revolution, such as
aggressive assertiveness, violence, and a desire for revenge. From
a Marxist perspective, therefore, the bourgeoisie use religion as
an institutional mechanism by which to manipulate the working
classes and keep them in a state of non-resistance.
Nietzsche is similar to Marx insofar as he views Christian
morality as an aspect of power. However, in other ways his per-
spective is antithetical to Marx’s. For Nietzsche, Christianity is
the expression of ‘slave morality’ – the morality propagated by
those who lack the strength to fully embrace life. In The Geneal-
ogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche claims that the ancient Greeks
characterized the qualities of the strong and powerful as ‘good’
and the traits of the weak as ‘bad’. However, in their resentment
towards the aristocracy, the lower classes inverted the cultural
paradigm and created a moral system that glorified the traits of
the weak. This moral inversion was supposedly the beginnings
of Christianity. It glorified the qualities of the weak, such as pity
and selflessness, while vilifying those of the strong, such as
assertiveness and self-reliance. This demonstrates a fundamental
difference between the two thinkers: while Marx believed that
the ruling classes developed religion as a tool of the capitalist
elite, to prevent proletariat revolution, Nietzsche argues that
Christianity provided the lower classes with a means by which to
vilify the virtues of the aristocracy and achieve moral superiority.
Although Nietzsche never commented on Marx’s theories,
he would have undoubtedly opposed Marx’s vision of an equal
society. In Twilight of the Idols (1889), Nietzsche boldly pro-
claims, “The doctrine of equality!... But there is no more ven-
omous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by jus-
tice itself, when it is actually the end of justice.” Such a state-
ment alone demonstrates the contrast between Nietzsche’s and
Marx’s visions for humanity.
Deconstructing the Western Philosophical Tradition
In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche asserts that philosophy is never
truly objective in its pursuit of truth. He writes, “In the philoso-
pher, there is nothing whatever impersonal; and above all, his
morality bears decided and decisive testimony to who he is.” So
for Nietzsche it is impossible for philosophers to remain impar-
tial, since they are unconsciously influenced by their personal
values, beliefs, and experiences. Furthermore, in Twilight of the
Idols, Nietzsche fiercely attacks Immanuel Kant’s argument for
universal moral truth, on the grounds that it reinforces a form
of Christian morality. According to Nietzsche, Kant seeks to
impose his subjective idea of what is right onto the world and
gratify his will to power through the guise of objective moral
philosophy, labelling him as an “underhand Christian, at the end
of the day”. Nietzsche’s criticism of Kant and other modern
philosophers highlights his critique of Western philosophy more
broadly, which is that rather than being the result of objective
inquiry, all philosophical ideas are manifestations of the will to
power of those who create them. In this sense, it could be argued
that Nietzsche was the father of postmodernism, since he
denounced the existence of absolute truth and asserted that
philosophers can never remain objective in their reasoning.
Marx differs from Nietzsche in this regard since he expands
upon the ideas of modern philosophy. However, Marx’s critique
of bourgeois hegemony also served as a basis for a broad denun-
ciation of the Western philosophical tradition. Philosophy, said
Marx, had emerged under the conditions of capitalism, and had
failed to liberate the lower classes from economic oppression. As
he famously proclaims, “The philosophers have only interpreted
the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”
(Eleven Theses on Feuerbach, 1888).
As you can see, both Nietzsche and Marx critique modern phi-
losophy. However, Marx’s denunciation of it stems from his
denunciation of capitalist economics, while Nietzsche thinks that
all philosophical ideas are a manifestation of will to power rather
than the result of objective reasoning. Once again, the difference
between Nietzsche and Marx seems to lie in the fact that Marx
analyses the development of Western philosophy within the
socioeconomic context of class conflict, while Nietzsche views it
as an expression of the dynamic will to power that guides all
human behavior and reasoning.
© JACK FOX-WILLIAMS 2019
Jack Fox-Williams graduated from Goldsmiths University in 2014
with a BA Honours degree in Philosophy and History. He is
currently writing a book about the works of Nietzsche.

April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 13

 Marx
Popper on Marx on History
Chris Christensen considers a clash of two colossal Karls.
Popper by
Athamos
Stradis
SIR KARL POPPER © ATHAMOS STRADIS 2019
K
arl Popper (1902-1994) was an Austrian-born
philosopher of science who became a British citizen.
He is famous for his falsification principle – the idea
that the method of science is to try to show a scien-
tific theorem to be false, thereby allowing a better hypothesis
to be generated. A proposition can be shown to be false by even
a single contrary observation. The classic example: the propo-
sition ‘All swans are white’ was proven false when black swans
were observed in Australia. But Popper’s greatest contribution
to philosophy, in my opinion, is his attack on historicism – the
idea that history has a pattern, a purpose and an ending, and
that it moves inexorably toward that end according to certain
laws. Popper dissected historicism in his 1957 book The Poverty
of Historicism and went further into political philosophy and
society in his two-volume work, The Open Society and Its Ene-
mies (1962). This masterpiece of political philosophy, an exem-
plary case study in the art of polemics, is an ardent defense of
liberal democracy. The philosophical enemies of an open soci-
ety, thought Popper, included Plato, Hegel and Marx.
Volume 1 concerns Plato, who viewed history not as progress-
ing but cyclical, and currently regressing away from an ideal,
golden age. In his Republic Plato advocated a social system ruled
by philosopher-kings, protected by a military caste, and kept func-
tioning by a large class of workers. Certain odious features of his
14 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
political system, including infanticide, prompted Popper’s attack.
But we’re concerned here with Popper’s second volume, which
discusses Hegel and Marx – especially Marx, although when dis-
cussing Marx and history, you can’t avoid Hegel. Indeed, Marx
was deeply influenced by Hegel’s theory of historical develop-
ment. Both thought that history has a purpose and a destiny, and
that from the beginning, mankind has moved toward its destiny
propelled by conflict through a relentless series of stages, each
new stage brought into being through a conflict caused by a con-
tradiction or negation of the previous stage. As the historical pro-
cess moves forward, circumstances refine until the contradictions
are finally resolved and a kind of freedom is reached.
Yet behind this similarity the two theories are at odds. Hegel’s
theory of history, laid out in his Phenomenology of Spirit, is an
abstraction; it unfolds mostly in the mind. Different movements
of thought or belief conflict with each other, jointly giving rise
to new movements which go on to conflict with yet others in a
continuing process called the dialectic. World history is the
unfolding of what called the Absolute Mind or Spirit (Geist)
through this dialectic. In this sense the world is dependent on
the mind, on ideas, and hence Hegel’s theory is called dialectical
idealism. In its vague culmination, the individual experiences lib-
eration through his relationship with the state, which Hegel glo-
rified, writing that “The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on
Earth.” (Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, part 41).
Hegel’s idea of the historical process – the dialectic of con-
tradictions – undoubtedly influenced Marx and Engels. A ‘bril-
liant’ new logic, said Engels of Hegel’s dialectics. But it had a
problem. As Marx put it, “It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their existence, but their social existence that deter-
mines their consciousness” (Critique of Political Economy, 1859).
Marx’s theory, by contrast, is concrete; it unfolds in the world
of work, so he calls it dialectical materialism. Its conflict is between
economic classes, and its culmination arrives in the form of a
classless society where labor is shared, along with its bounties.
Eventually the state ‘withers away’.
Both men thought highly of Heraclitus, who flourished in
the fifth century BC. Heraclitus said that everything was in a
state of flux, forever changing through a law of nature he called
Logos (logic or reason), driven by strife, or clashes of opposites –
both of which aspects fit Hegel’s theory. But because Heracli-
tus was a materialist, Marx saw him as a harbinger of his own
historical materialism.
Popper on Marx on History
Throughout his scrutiny of Marx, Popper treads a thin line
between admiration and apprehension. He has respect for Marx:
he finds him genuine in his beliefs, perceptive in his analysis,
and sympathetic toward the downtrodden. Popper believed that
Marx himself “made an honest attempt to apply rational meth-
ods to the most urgent problems of social life… His sincerity in
his search for truth and his intellectual honesty distinguish him,

I believe, from many of his followers...” It was Marxism that dis-
turbed Popper, who called it “the purest, the most developed,
and the most dangerous form of historicism.”
To Popper, the fundamental difference between Marx and
the majority of historians (Hegel included), is that the others
saw history and ‘the fate of man’ as determined by conflict
between nations. Marx saw history as determined by conflict
between classes. As Marx writes, “The history of all hitherto
existing society is a history of class struggles” (Communist Man-
ifesto). As Popper explains, “In [Marx’s] causal explanation of
historical developments, including national wars, class interest
must take the place of that allegedly national interest which, in
reality, is only the interest of a nation’s ruling class.”
One’s class is determined by one’s position in the system of
a society’s production of goods and services. In capitalism, the
bourgeoisie own the means of production, and as such make up
the ruling class. Those who actually do the work to produce the
goods or services make up the working class, the proletariat.
The owners are forced to increase productivity in order to com-
pete, and so are compelled to force their workers to produce
more, and more cheaply, which means at lower wages. They
are also acutely aware that their own freedom depends on their
emancipation from the productive process. They can “buy a
greater degree of freedom only at the cost of enslaving other
men,” writes Popper. “Only by making others do the dirty work
can the rulers be free.” Yet as the workers are exploited, they
develop class consciousness: recall that Marx thought that man’s
social existence determines his consciousness. And so the work-
ers become increasingly aware that their lack of freedom has
been determined by their position in the means of production.
Marx
The rulers are bound to enslave the ruled; and the ruled are
bound to fight against the rulers. “Thus all, rulers as well as
ruled, are caught in the net, and forced to fight one another,”
Popper explains. “It is this bondage,” he adds, “this determina-
tion, which brings their struggle within the reach of… scien-
tific historical prophecy.” Popper sums up Marx’s determinism
by saying that the class relations that characterize the social
system are independent of the individual man’s will.
All this seems terribly impersonal – removed from the brutal
reality of everyday life. But Marx saw first-hand the flesh and
blood cruelty of unfettered capitalism in England in the middle
of the nineteenth century. Marx gives these examples in Capital:
“William Wood was 7 years old... when he began to work... he came
to work every day in the week at 6 a.m., and left off about 9 p.m…
‘Fifteen hours of labor for a child 7 years old!’ exclaims an official
report of the Children’s Employment Commission of 1863. Mary
Anne Walkley had worked without pause 26-and one-half hours,
together with sixty other girls, thirty of them in one room... A doc-
tor, called in too late, testified before the coroner: Anne Walkley
had died from long hours of work in an overcrowded workroom.”
Prophecy & The Paradox of Freedom
Popper connects the extreme conditions of Victorian capital-
ism to the prevailing view of economic freedom: “This shame-
less exploitation was cynically defended by hypocritical apolo-
gists who appealed to the principle of human freedom, to the
rights of man to determine his own fate, and to enter freely into
any contract he considers favorable to his interests.”
The paradox of freedom is a concept dating from Plato which
says (bluntly) that ‘unlimited freedom leads to no freedom’. Popper
applied this paradox to two types of freedom – physical and eco-
nomic. “Freedom in either realm defeats itself if it is unlimited,”
he wrote. Unconstrained physical freedom is the freedom of the
bully to harm the weak. But eventually, that bully will come up
against a stronger bully, and that bully too will encounter another,
and so on. So it is necessary for the state to limit personal free-
dom in certain legal ways in order to protect everyone’s freedom.
Unrestrained economic power can bring the same result, in the
economic sphere. “In such a state, the economically strong is free
to bully one who is economically weak, and to rob him of his free-
dom,” writes Popper. For example, “Those who possess a surplus
of food can force those who are starving into a ‘freely’ accepted
servitude.” So it is also necessary for the government to protect
the economically weak. Popper argued that the state could build
institutions to provide this protection through legal means. He
called this ‘piecemeal social engineering’.
Marx however considered politics and the legal system to be
the handmaidens of the ruling class. He held that bourgeois polit-
ical systems denied substantial freedom to workers and the poor.
Although they were couched in the language of justice and free-
dom, this was mere window dressing. Popper, in expressing Marx’s
belief about this, wrote, “This shows that exploitation is not merely
robbery. It cannot be eliminated by merely legal means.” For
Marx, the only alternative was revolution.
According to Marx’s economic historicism, the social system
of one historical period must obliterate itself to produce the next
historical period. This is how feudalism gave birth to capitalism.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 15
 Marx
Capitalism, in turn, contains the seeds of
its own destruction. Those seeds are
found in the conditions of production. In
Capital, Marx claimed there would be an
increasing concentration of wealth in ever
fewer hands, and a corresponding increase
in misery among the growing working
class. This is the first step of three in
Marx’s prophecy of revolution. This trend
would then bring about the second step,
containing two results. As Popper puts it,
explaining Marx’s theory: “all classes
except a small ruling bourgeoisie and a
large exploited working class are bound
to disappear or to become insignificant”;
and also “The tension between these two
classes must lead to a social revolution”
through conflict between the owners and
the workers. Finally, in a third step, the
workers would emerge as victors over the
owners, and establish what Marx called
the dictatorship of the proletariat. For Marx
this dictatorship is necessary to defend
against a counter-revolution and to bring
about the classless society.
Marx thought this historical process
inevitable. This is the historicism that
Popper found dangerous, and this is
where he separates himself from Marx.
Popper bluntly invokes the paradox of
freedom to counter the conditions nec-
essary for Marx’s ‘inevitable’ revolution:
“We must construct social institutions,
enforced by the power of the state, for the
protection of the economically weak from
the economically strong... We must
demand that unrestrained capitalism give
way to an economic interventionism. And this
is precisely what has happened. The eco-
nomic system described and criticized by
PLEASE VISIT WOODTOON.CO.UK
© PAUL WOOD 2019
“The proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie is fine... but how do these fit in?”
16 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
Marx has everywhere ceased to exist.”
Popper gives examples of what has hap-
pened in limiting the absolute freedom of
the market as it was in Marx’s day: the lim-
iting of work-hours; protections against
sickness and disability; unemployment
insurance; progressive taxation; the rise of
labor unions, and the like. Popper writes
that Marx “never grasped the paradox of
freedom, and that he never understood the
function in which state power could and
should perform in the service of freedom
and humanity.” I should stress that Popper
was not naïve concerning state power and
the possibility of tyranny. “State interven-
tion,” he wrote, “should be limited to what
is really necessary for the protection of
freedom.” Acutely aware of human psy-
chology, Popper stressed the importance
of controlling the controllers, be they state
functionaries or economic moguls. In fact,
most Western countries have established
checks and balances of legal frameworks
to limit the power of the state as well as
the absolute freedom of the market.
The End of Historicism
The reason Marx failed as a prophet “lies
entirely in the poverty of historicism”
writes Popper: “in the simple fact that
even if we observe today what appears to
be a historical tendency or trend, we
cannot know it will have the same appear-
ance tomorrow.” Popper further
declaims, that when people talk about the
history of mankind, “what they mean, and
what they have learned about in school, is
the history of political power. There is no
history of mankind; there is only an indef-
inite number of histories... And one of
these is the history of political power. This
is elevated into the history of the world.
But this I hold is an offence against every
decent conception of mankind... For the
history of power politics is nothing but the his-
tory of international crime and mass murder.”
To illustrate this Popper cites the Russian
revolution and its building of an indus-
trial state by the use of forced labor and
the brutal suppression of dissent.
In the conclusion of The Open Society
and Its Enemies, Popper once again displays
his ambiguity towards Marx. “Marx misled
scores of intelligent people into believing
that historical prophecy is the scientific
way of approaching social problems.”
Nonetheless, he calls Marx’s work “a
grandiose philosophic system, compara-
ble or even superior to the holistic systems
of Plato and Hegel. Marx was the last of
the great holistic system builders. We
should take care to leave it at that, and not
to replace his with another great system.”
I would like to make two comments in
closing. First, I think Popper, who died
in 1994, would be alarmed by the recent
rise of extreme nationalism in Europe and
the United States, and would also lament
the widening gap between the rich and
the poor. Both could prompt a resurgence
of Marxism or other authoritarianisms –
an emergence that Popper would counter
with more piecemeal social engineering.
Finally, an observation regarding
Hegel and Marx. Modern philosophers
sometimes seek support from the early
Greeks to give their theories the sheen of
ancient wisdom. Hegel and Marx both
found their sage in Heraclitus. Hegel was
ecstatic about him: “Here we see land!”
he exclaimed. “There is no proposition
of Heraclitus which I have not adopted
in my logic... All things come to pass
according to conflict”; while Marx saw
him as a precursor of his own dialectical
materialism. But Heraclitus differed from
these two historicists on one absolutely
crucial point: he offered no prophecy, no
exalted culmination of history. As the
philosopher William Sahakian put it in
his History of Philosophy (1968): “Heracli-
tus regarded the world as a ceaselessly
changing system, never complete or final
in the sense of reaching its goal or coming
to a stop in a state of perfection.”
© CHRIS CHRISTENSEN 2019
Chris Christensen is a delivery driver in Port-
land, Oregon, where he studies philosophy and
takes lessons in algebra from his wife, Bobbie.
 Marx’s Leviathan
Patrick Cannon on anarchy and state.
O
ne way Marx distinguished his type of communism
from all the other socialist theories and party plat-
forms around during his lifetime was by advocating
a specific and prominent role for the state. He imag-
ined government playing a key part in the transformation of soci-
ety from capitalism to socialism, and then lastly into pure commu-
nism, which was to be a stateless, classless society. Here I seek to
explain a criticism of Marx’s state theory that was best made by the
anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876).
In their 1848 booklet The Manifesto of the Communist Party
Marx and Engels sketched the initial consolidation of a proletar-
ian government which would take back wealth and land for the
public, institute severely progressive taxation, centralize credit by
means of a national bank, establish a plan for nationwide eco-
nomic development, integrate industrial manufacturing and agri-
culture, provide free education to all children, and carry out a
number of other programs. This consolidation of power would
create a powerful centralized government wielded by and for the
benefit of the working class, supplanting the current bourgeois,
capitalist government. Later, in the Critique of the Gotha Program
(1877), Marx writes that this worker’s state would oversee the
transmutation of society from capitalism into communism:
“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the
revolutionary transformation of one into the other. There corre-
sponds to this also a political transition period in which the state
can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The phrasing here is crucial, as ‘dictatorship’ connotes authoritar-
ian rule. As Marx wrote in the Manifesto, political power is but the
oppression of one group by another. In this case, then, this new
dictatorship of the proletariat would oppress the bourgeois – thus
reversing the current situation of bourgeois oppression of the pro-
letariat. It should be noted that at the end of this ‘revolutionary
transformation’ Marx saw the state as becoming superfluous, hav-
ing served its purpose. Indeed, Engels clarifies in his book Anti-
Dühring (1878) that “The state is not ‘abolished,’ [rather] it with-
ers away.” Since true communism has no political or economic
classes oppressing each other, there would be no need for a gov-
ernmental apparatus or political power structures at all.
Marx’s contemporaries were often skeptical or downright
critical of the means by which he proposed to reach this utopian
end. Mikhail Bakunin, a one-time colleague of Marx, panned
both Marx and his political enterprise as authoritarian. Worse
yet, Bakunin, a staunch libertarian, thought of the whole idea of
the dictatorship of the proletariat as counterproductive and
insidious. He was all too prescient in this diagnosis, by which he
seemingly prophesied the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union
under Lenin and Stalin. In a letter written in 1866 he predicted
the ‘Red Bureaucracy’ would be “the vilest and most dangerous
lie of our century… Take the most radical of revolutionaries and
place him on the throne of all the Russias or give him dictatorial
powers… and before the year is out he will be worse than the
Czar himself.” Anarchists such as Bakunin contended that the
state ought to be done away with first, and free association and
spontaneous economic activity would thereafter organize a class-
less society. But Engels was sharply critical of this idea, writing in
an 1883 letter that “The anarchists put the thing upside down.
They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing
away with the political organization of the state... But to destroy
it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by
means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-
conquered power” – thus ruining any chance for a successful rev-
olution against the bourgeoisie.
Later, Marxist theorists such as Lenin arguably over-empha-
sized Marx’s insistence on dictatorial control. In Russia, Lenin
created a single-party regime led by ‘professional revolutionaries’
– an elite clique of educated individuals committed to the prole-
tarian cause. It is debatable whether Lenin’s power grab could be
fully justified by orthodox Marxist thought, which does, nonethe-
less, provide some degree of support for it. During an 1872 social-
ist conference in The Hague, philosophical tensions between
Marx and his followers and Bakunin and his anarchist contingent
erupted. Bakunin and the other anarchists, finding themselves in
the minority, were summarily expelled, and declared the confer-
ence null and void. This move by Marx was perceived as Machi-
avellian, and marked the division between Marxism and anar-
chism which exists to this day. The next summer, Bakunin wrote
in his book Statism and Anarchy that Marxism proclaimed itself as
democratic but “This is a lie, behind which lurks the despotism of
the ruling minority, a lie all the more dangerous in that it appears
to express the so-called will of the people.” Shortly after his expul-
sion Bakunin also wrote that this, as he saw it, elitist, authoritarian
tendency in Marxism contradicted its goal of worker emancipa-
tion. Moreover, he posits that the “flower of the proletariat… the
uncultivated, the disinherited, the miserable, and the illiterates,
whom Engels and Marx would subject to their paternal rule by a
strong government… [this] alone is powerful enough today to
inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution.”
Marxism and anarchism have in mind the identical end goal of
a stateless society, yet differ sharply on how to implement it. Marx
and Engels thought that the most effective strategy would be the
consolidation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. Bakunin and other
anarchists responded that the Marxists were just elitists masquerad-
ing as proletarian revolutionaries. Marx’s vision for the state, in the
opinion of anarchists like Bakunin, would simply substitute one rul-
ing class (the bourgeoisie) for another (the proletariat), thereby
defeating the purpose of the revolution entirely. Instead, and
largely in response to their criticism of the Marxian dictatorship of
the proletariat, anarchism saw the best strategy as the simultaneous
withering away of both government and capitalism.
© PATRICK CANNON 2019
Patrick Cannon studied philosophy at Oxford and lives in Santa
Barbara, where he works in regulatory compliance and ethics.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 17
 Marx
How Can Anybody Change Culture?
Kevin Brinkmann tells us, with the help of Althusser, Gramsci and Mannheim.
LINE DRAWINGS © JAY JOHNSON 2019
T
hese days it seems almost everybody is upset about
‘where the culture is going’. One faction is celebrat-
ing the rise of LGBT rights, while another is fight-
ing for the survival of ‘the family’. One side is fight-
ing to keep pro-choice funding, the other is fighting for stricter
pro-life laws. One group hails technology as a panacea, while
another bemoans the loss of traditional values. And that’s before
we even get onto politics proper. It seems everyone has strong
views in one way or another about the nature of society. But
can anybody do anything about it?
Three dead philosophers say yes, and even tell us how. They
talk in terms of ‘cultural hegemony’, which means a set of ideas
or a worldview having a predominant influence in a culture. In
simple terms, the cultural hegemony is what the majority of
people in a given culture assume is right, good, and true – usu-
ally without even questioning it. The challenge is taking theo-
retical insights about cultural hegemony and making them prac-
tical. So let’s start by taking a brief look at the ideas of these
three twentieth century philosophers – Louis Althusser, Anto-
nio Gramsci, and Karl Mannheim.
The French philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990) led a
renewal in Marxist scholarship in the 1960s-70s by rereading
Marx’s works in opposition to its Stalinist misinterpretations.
Althusser is best known for developing the concept of ‘ideol-
ogy’, which he understood as “the imaginary relationship of
individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Lenin and Phi-
losophy and Other Essays, 1971, p.162).
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) led the Italian Communist
Party in the 1920s before Mussolini’s government sent him to
prison for speaking against fascism. There he wrote the Prison
Notebooks (1929-1935), in which he developed the idea of cul-
tural hegemony. He died still in prison after eleven years, at the
age of forty-six.
Born in Hungary, Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) pioneered
the sociology of knowledge in the 1920s-30s. Mannheim
argued that no knowledge can be context-free. Rather, each
person “confronts the world and in striving for truth con-
18 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
structs a worldview out of the data of his experience”, leading
to distorted or at least limited thinking (Ideology and Utopia,
1936, p.26).
These three big ideas – ideology, cultural hegemony, and the
sociology of knowledge – when joined together will help us
answer two big questions: Why is our culture the way it is? And
what can we do about it?
The Big Picture
Gramsci described hegemony as the way in which the ruling class,
the elite, in any society maintains its position of power and privi-
lege by promoting its values and beliefs through the institutions
it controls, so suppressing any popular desire for change.
Consequently, for many ‘hegemony’ is a dirty word, carry-
ing connotations of the abuse of power. But it is also possible
to view it more neutrally, as simply the process by which we,
the members of a certain culture, form our assumptions about
reality, which, once formed, exert influence on behaviour, policy,
and laws. Despite its powerful influence, hegemony is never final
in the same way that culture is never final. Culture is always
interacting with various influences that keep it in a state of flux.
One hegemony can be challenged, and eventually replaced, by
another, and it can happen in a perfectly peaceful way.
Suppose one point of view exercises virtually uncontested influ-
ence over a culture, and of course is reflected by and perpetuated
by society’s various institutions. At some point in time, a small
reform movement develops and challenges the dominant culture.
In the end, if successful, the small reform movement has itself
become the dominant culture. Let’s take the example of educa-
tion to illustrate this process. Once the preserve of tutors and
monks, today most developed countries prefer a mass school-
ing model for education. Children travel to large buildings to
be taught in classes with other children of the same age by pro-
fessional teachers. This is now the dominant culture, although
it was also only a small reform movement two hundred years
ago. However, within this dominant culture, many families have
now grown dissatisfied with what they see as a ‘production line’
approach to education. They want a more organic, individual-
oriented approach. So they start a home-based model, based on
the teachings of John Holt or Charlotte Mason. The movement
is small, but it’s growing. It starts networking with other fami-
lies that want the same thing. As this home-school movement
grows, this creates a phase of struggle between the two sets of
cultural values. If they’re successful, then after a period of strug-
gle, the home-schooling model will become an accepted, or even
mainstream, alternative to mass schooling – and with it estab-
lish a new set of cultural values.
This model of the evolution of cultural hegemony does not
come from Althusser, Gramsci, or Mannheim individually.
Rather, it synthesises their insights about how culture forms and
reforms to argue for the possibility of a non-deterministic type of
 Marx
social change: change that doesn’t just happen, but is chosen and Gramsci describes two types of intellectuals: ruling intellec-
deliberately promoted. In other words, this model says how small tuals, who maintain the status quo for those in power, and organic
groups of dedicated individuals can change economic, political, intellectuals, who challenge the status quo. According to Gram-
and cultural norms in a way that is flexible and amenable to var- sci, ruling intellectuals are the ‘deputies’ of the dominant cul-
ious types of influences. This is in contrast to the economic deter- ture (Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1971, p.12). For exam-
minism often associated with Karl Marx, the political determin- ple, if those in power are pro-capitalist, the ruling intellectuals
ism often associated with Carl von Clausewitz, or the cultural will write textbooks that highlight the achievements of open
determinism often associated with Max Weber. In all these cases, markets and deconstruct the failures of socialism – or vice versa
the named dimension holds decisive influence over the other for a pro-socialist context. Althusser goes so far as to say that
two, such that the other two dimensions of human life cannot “no class can hold State power over a long period without at
in the end affect what will happen in the determining dimen- the same time exercising its hegemony over and in State Ideo-
sion. In reality no single dimension of human life is determinis- logical Apparatuses” (Lenin, p.146).
tic. This is good news for those without power – those not occu- According to our philosophers, the last stage of establishing
pying seats of economic, political, or cultural leadership – because a hegemony – spreading a culture – is the easiest to achieve. Win-
it means the path of development of society is not set in advance. ning power requires fighting. Winning institutions requires
It implies that a small group of concerned and committed indi- negotiation. Winning individuals requires only their consent to
viduals can begin the cultural change process, which moves out the values of the institutions. Most of the values of most indi-
to the economic dimension by its ability to multiply and sustain viduals are unconsciously absorbed. We do not often question
itself, exerts influence on the political dimension, before thor- the values of our culture (for example, human rights, individu-
oughly influencing the cultural dimension. I might summarise alism, materialism) because, in the words of Gramsci, they have
the advice of this article in the words of the anthropologist Mar- become ‘common sense’ (Selections, p.134). For example, we are
garet Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, com- pro-choice or pro-life usually because that is the stance of our
mitted citizens can change the world” (Earth at Omega: Passage family or religion.
to Planetization by Donald Keys, 1982, p.79). Althusser describes the process of accepting the culturally
hegemonic institutional line as moving from being ‘free subjects’
How Did Our Culture Get This Way? to willingly accepting subjection ‘all by [one’s] self’ (Lenin, p.182).
On this model, a cultural hegemony forms through three stages:
its supporters acquire some power; they get institutions on board;
and then let the institutions spread the culture.
Power is a natural and inevitable part of human society.
Although philosophers such as Marx wanted society to ultimately
move beyond power dynamics, someone, or some group, is always
more powerful than another. Like everyone else, those in power
hold a set of cultural values, whether they’re aware of them or
not. Without decisive intervention, those cultural values will
eventually become the dominant cultural values. Naturally, those
in power want to extend their vision of a better world – that is,
their culture. To do this, they must get key institutions on board:
families, religion, education, media, and social leaders. Althusser
called these institutions ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’ because
they’re the instruments that shape people’s thinking (Lenin and
Philosophy and Other Essays, 1968, pp.127-188).
But how does one get families, religion, education, media,
and social leaders on board? Give them something they want,
in order to get something in return. All institutions want some
kind of power, even if it’s only for their own survival. For exam-
ple, families want the power to make a living. Religions want
the power to practice freely. Leaders want the power to make a
difference. So they are all to some extent incentivised to comply
with those already in power. As much as is possible, they agree
to the culture prescribed by those in power. Both sides gain.
It goes deeper. Incentives can buy votes for politicians and
approval for a businesses; but what about when the incentives
run out? The long-term plan for power is not built on provid-
ing incentives but on establishing cultural values. Values are the
decision-making criteria of our lives. If I can change your values, ‘The USSR is the Shock Brigade of the World Proletariat’
I no longer have to buy your vote. So how do we change values? by Gustav Klutsis, 1931.
Through ruling intellectuals. Klutsis was killed in one of Stalin’s purges soon afterwards.

April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 19

 Marx
How Can Cultural Values Be Reformed?
If this is how we got our culture, how can we change it?
Anybody can change culture; but only if they can spread their
ideas to other ‘organic intellectuals’ – thinkers also holding cul-
turally unpopular opinions.
Who could qualify as an agent of cultural change? Anybody
with a Facebook account, podcast, or YouTube channel. It’s
easier today than it has ever been for anybody to change culture.
Cultural values are reformed in three stages: get people think-
ing, get people together, and get institutional change.
To begin, some type of critical incident is usually necessary
to create awareness of and then to question ‘the philosophy of
common sense’. Mannheim describes this as an unveiling of our
‘false consciousess’ – that is, the uncritically-accepted assump-
tions of the dominant culture – through self-reflection (Ideology
and Utopia, pp.62-84). When Rosa Parks refused to give up her
seat on a bus in 1955, her action became a critical incident incit-
ing the reflection of an entire culture. Or in 1787, the British
abolitionist Thomas Clarkson met the Member of Parliament
William Wilberforce and showed him the handcuffs, shackles,
and branding irons used in the slave trade. This, along with
Clarkson’s essay on slavery, was enough to get William Wilber-
force thinking, and redirect his efforts for the next thirty-five
years to work to make the slave trade illegal.
In stage two, awareness must spread to a sizeable minority
through the activity of the organic intellectuals. Gramsci says that
when enough organic individuals network together, they form a
new voice, loud enough to challenge the ‘philosophy of common
sense’. For Mannheim their collective voice presents a possibility
of what could be – a ‘utopia’. Martin Luther King Jr. called it
having a dream. Many activists are doing this today through social
media – selling a dream. (This may also explain the recent popu-
larity of books on how to make ideas spread: for example Made to
Stick (2006), Influencers (2007), Start with Why (2009), All Mar-
keters are Liars (2009), Contagious (2013), The Small Big (2014).)
In cultural reform stage three, ideas must change institutions
– or create influential new ones. It’s not enough to have ten tril-
lion likes on Facebook; your ideas must change people’s
behaviour. It’s not enough to get a hundred organic intellectu-
als talking about them, either: your ideas must create policy
20 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
change. Unfortunately, this stage often drags on for decades.
For example, in 1929, the German doctor Fritz Lickint pub-
lished a formal study that linked smoking with lung cancer. But
it was not until 1964, after seven thousand more studies had been
published, that the US Surgeon General’s office made its first
public announcement on the dangers of smoking.
Let’s return to the civil rights movements in the US and the
UK I cited, to consider the step from gaining popularity (stage
two) to policy change (stage three). Martin Luther King, Jr. was a
success not because he and his followers persuaded 250,000 people
to march on Washington in 1963, but because he and they con-
vinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act
in 1964. William Wilberforce was not a success in 1792 because
he and his followers had collected 390,000 signatures demanding
the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. He was a
success in 1807, when the slave trade was abolished; and further
in 1833, when slavery itself was abolished. An idea must re-align
the behaviour, policy, and laws of institutions in order to have a
widespread and lasting effect on culture. Once embodied in insti-
tutions, the institutions themselves start doing the work of social-
ising individuals. Or in Althusser’s terms, institutions are the ‘mate-
rial existence’ of culture which ‘recruits’ individuals and ‘trans-
forms’ them into their idealised culture (Lenin, pp.165, 170).
The process of cultural reform is never finished. Power is
always being negotiated. Someone is always fighting to main-
tain the status quo – just as a politician in power must still be
thinking about maintaining popularity for the next election.
Culture is not something static – people are always changing
culture. So the real challenge, after all, may not be how to change
culture. Our three philosophers have given us a roadmap for
how to do that. The real challenge may be changing culture
with humility and civility, knowing that everyone is upset about
something in the culture, and that many people are doing their
best to make this a better world.
© KEVIN BRINKMANN 2019
Kevin Brinkmann is the author of The Global Leader™, a leadership
development programme used by Fortune 500 companies and the
United Nations. He can be reached at kevinbrinkmann.com.

Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)
Will Bouwman considers the development of a paradigmatic revolutionary.
I
n 1962 Thomas Kuhn published a book from which the
philosophy of science has not yet recovered, and probably
never will. Before this book it was generally assumed that
the only history that was relevant to science was recent. Sci-
ence was believed to be a relentless march towards the truth,
every innovation an advance. Scientists may have been standing
on the shoulders of giants (to quote Isaac Newton), but every
change was assumed to be taking us higher. Ironically, Kuhn the
philosopher did what a good scientist does, and actually looked at
the evidence. What he saw was that far from being the steady,
uniform accumulation of objective truth about the way the world
functions, the history of science is punctuated by moments when
the prevailing consensus is completely shattered. His first book,
The Copernican Revolution (1957), detailed the events and causes
of one of the most graphic examples of this. Kuhn expanded on
this picture to provide his general model of the nature of scien-
tific progress in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Normal, and Revolutionary, Life
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18 1922 in Cincinnati,
Ohio. His father, Samuel, a veteran of World War I, was an indus-
trial engineer and investment consultant whose wife, Minette (née
Strook), was a graduate of Vassar College who wrote for and edited
progressive publications. Both parents were active in left-wing
politics, and in keeping with their radical outlook, Thomas was
educated at various progressive schools which nurtured indepen-
dent thinking rather than adhering to a traditional curriculum.
Perhaps because of this, at the age of seven Thomas was still barely
able to read and write; so his father took it into his own hands to
bring him up to speed.
The unsettled school career and frequent moves may later have
made it difficult for Thomas to establish long term relationships,
particularly with women. His mother prescribed a course in psy-
choanalysis. Hating his counsellor, who frequently fell asleep dur-
ing sessions, Kuhn cured himself of his difficulties in establishing
relationships by marrying Kathryn Muhs in 1948. Like his
mother, Kathryn was a graduate of Vassar College. They had
three children, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Nathaniel, before divorcing
in 1978. Three years later Kuhn married Jehane Barton Burns.
His early literacy problems apart, Kuhn was an outstanding
student with a particular interest in maths and physics. He was
admitted to Harvard in 1940. America entered World War II
during Kuhn’s second year as an undergraduate, and after gain-
ing a BSc in physics in 1943 with the highest honours, Kuhn
joined the Radio Research Laboratory, which had been set up to
develop countermeasures to enemy radar systems. This took him
initially to Britain and later into liberated France and Germany
itself, to examine captured equipment first hand.
On his return to Harvard, Kuhn continued studying physics as
the most convenient route to gaining a doctorate, which he
achieved in 1949, although his commitment to physics was dwin-
dling as his interest in philosophy was growing. While working
Brief Lives
on his PhD, he was invited to teach a course in the History of Sci-
ence to undergraduates, and it was while preparing for this that he
had the insight that was to inspire his most influential work.
One of the key moments in the development of his ideas was his
study of Aristotle. The view of science at the time was that it is
accumulative; so Kuhn went looking into Aristotle’s ancestral
physics, expecting to find the foundations on which Galileo, New-
ton et al had later built. Instead, Kuhn was baffled to discover that
Aristotle’s understanding of physics was, from a modern point of
view, complete nonsense. Struggling to comprehend how some-
one so wrong could be so revered, Kuhn realised that in order to
appreciate Aristotle he had to understand the context in which
Aristotle had been working. In doing so, he drew a picture of sci-
ence that was completely different to most contemporary analyses.
The Scientific Method, Historically Speaking
In the middle of the twentieth century the philosophy of science was
almost exclusively focussed on defining the scientific method. The
assumption was that science is an objective ideal method indepen-
dent of human foibles, and if we could just describe its characteristics
then everyone would have a template for doing proper science.
The debate was largely between the logical positivists and Karl
Popper. Both sides took the view that science was a rational
endeavour, and that scientists obediently followed where the evi-
dence led them. Broadly speaking, the logical positivists stuck to
the traditional view that science was the accumulation of facts and
the refinement of mathematical models that accounted for those
facts with ever-increasing accuracy. Their distinctive feature was
they insisted that science should stick strictly to observable facts
and avoid building theories not directly supported by those facts.
Logical positivism advocated the ‘verification principle’ promoted
by A.J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic. This demanded that
anything that could not be supported by empirical evidence or
strict logic was metaphysics and had no place in science (or indeed,
anywhere else). One major problem – which in fairness the logical
positivists were well aware of – is that no amount of empirical evi-
dence (or logic) can prove a scientific claim. The classic example is
that a million white swans do not prove that every swan is white.
Popper’s innovation was to point out that it only takes one black
swan to prove that the proposition ‘all swans are white’ is false. So
the evidence could show you either what was only likely to be true,
or what was definitely false. Therefore, as an endeavour seeking
certainty, science should commit itself to trying to prove its own
theories wrong. This is Popper’s principle of falsification.
The Structure of Kuhn’s Revolution
By looking at the historical evidence concerning science itself,
Kuhn believed that he could see a pattern in the data (this is after
all part of what physicists are trained to do). According to Kuhn,
history showed that most scientific research, in whatever field of
science, is guided by a set of principles and core beliefs about which
there is a general consensus. The word Kuhn used for this guiding
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 21
Brief Lives

Thomas Kuhn
Portrait by Davi.Trip 2018

22 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019


intellectual framework was ‘paradigm’. For instance, before
Copernicus turned it upside down, Aristotle’s model of the uni-
verse, which put the Earth at its centre, was accepted for two thou-
sand years. Some of the data was puzzling, and couldn’t easily be
reconciled with this model, but scientists and mathematicians,
most notably Ptolemy, worked within the paradigm to solve those
puzzles. During that time, astronomers were able to plot and pre-
dict the positions of the heavenly bodies with an accuracy that is
remarkable, especially given that later technological advances
(not least the telescope) have shown the model to be demonstrably
false; but for the scientific purposes of the time, Aristotle’s model
worked. Working within the bounds of a paradigm is what Kuhn
called ‘normal science’, and this is what these Aristotelian cosmol-
ogists were doing. In this way, the practise of medieval
astronomers resembles the practice of the scientific method that
most philosophers of science were trying to model. It is only in the
rare occasions of scientific revolutions, when the data can absolutely
not be made to fit the existing paradigm, that the paradigm itself
changes. This is called ‘revolutionary science’ by Kuhn.
One of Kuhn’s early essays was called ‘The Essential Tension’
(1959). In it he discusses the conflicting pulls of the desire to inno-
vate and the conservatism needed to do normal science. For every
revolutionary Einstein, there are thousands of normal scientists
who do the routine calculations that keep the scientific world tick-
ing along. Most normal scientists are content to use a paradigm
which for all current purposes works extremely well. Contrary to
Popper’s recommendation, they don’t abandon a paradigm
because they can’t fit a set of data into it: they may instead seek to
modify the paradigm until the data fits it. A modern case is creat-
ing the ideas of dark matter and energy to fit galactic movement
within the paradigm of Einstein’s General Relativity. Of course,
there are also revolutionary scientists trying to develop new
paradigms which aim to explain the same evidence in innovative
ways. There are, for instance, many novel quantum theories
which seek to incorporate gravity, of which String Theory and
Loop Quantum Gravity are just two examples.
Among the most controversial aspects of Kuhn’s model of sci-
ence, is his claim that different paradigms are ‘incommensu-
rable’. That is to say, in extreme cases, there can be no meaningful
dialogue between scientists who hold the different perspectives.
That the same evidence can inspire different worldviews is often
illustrated by the duck/rabbit illusion. The point Kuhn was mak-
ing is that if you’re talking about a duck, you are going to make
no sense to someone seeing a rabbit. String Theorists look at the
universe and see eleven dimensions, whereas according to Loop
Quantum Gravity, there are only four.
This raises another issue for which Kuhn’s paradigm model is
criticised. How do you decide whether you are looking at a duck
or a rabbit? The ‘theory-dependence of observation’ is this idea
that exactly the same information can be interpreted in different
ways. Kuhn argued that just as your worldview is influenced by
your experience, so your scientific paradigm is determined in part
by the education you’ve had. This led to accusations of relativism,
which Kuhn tried to counter by saying that there are objective
criteria for deciding between paradigmatic theories:
1. How accurately a theory agrees with the evidence.
2. It’s consistent within itself and with other accepted theories.
Brief Lives
3. It should explain more than just the phenomenon it was
designed to explain.
4. The simplest explanation is the best. (In other words, apply
Occam’s Razor.)
5. It should make predictions that come true.
However, Kuhn had to concede that there is no objective way
to establish which of those criteria is the most important, and so
scientists would make their own mind up for subjective reasons.
In choosing between competing theories, two scientists “fully
committed to the same list of criteria for choice may nevertheless
reach different conclusions.” Eventually though, according to
Kuhn, a new, revolutionary model is found that most people set-
tle down to developing, by using the new model to solve puzzles
in the way of normal science.
The Reception of the Revolution
Many philosophers and physical scientists were initially sceptical,
hostile even, to the depiction of scientists as normal people who
held opinions and made decisions for idiosyncratic reasons.
Social scientists, on the other hand, were inspired by The Struc-
ture of Scientific Revolutions to develop their discipline. Prior to
publication, the most influential sociologist of science was
Robert Merton, whose main focus had been on why scientific
theories are rejected. After the Revolutions, sociologists largely
turned to why scientific theories are believed.
In a way, Kuhn’s masterpiece was a product of exactly the sort
of process it was describing. While ‘normal’ philosophers of sci-
ence – the logical positivists and Popper – were working within a
certain paradigm of what science was about, there was an accu-
mulation of troubling anomalies. For instance, scientists such as
Ludwik Fleck and Michael Polyani were pointing out that in
their experience science didn’t actually work in the way that those
philosophers assumed. Kuhn acknowledged his debt to both
men. He also quoted the physicist Max Planck: “a new scientific
truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making
them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it” (Sci-
entific Autobiography and Other Papers, 1949).
For better or worse, Kuhn’s book changed the way science is
viewed. Science is no longer straightforwardly an ideal method of
gaining knowledge to which people should aspire; rather it is
something shaped by ordinary, and a few extraordinary, people.
Kuhn spent much of his subsequent career elucidating and
dealing with the fallout. It’s a major part of his legacy that now so
does almost everyone else in the philosophy of science. “When
reading the works of an important thinker,” he said, “look first for
the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensi-
ble person could have written them” (‘The Essential Tension’).
This is now what many sociologists and most philosophers of sci-
ence are compelled to do.
Thomas Kuhn retired in 1991, age 69. In 1994 he was diag-
nosed with cancer of the throat and lungs. He died two years
later, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 73.
© WILL BOUWMAN 2019
Will Bouwman is the author of Einstein on the Train and Other
Stories: How to Make Sense of the Big Bang, Quantum
Mechanics and Relativity.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 23

Q uestion of the Month
Is Philosophy Still The Friend Of Wisdom?
Each answer below receives a book. Apologies to the many entrants not included.
Thanks to Finn Janning for suggesting this month’s question.
I f becoming wise involves making effective choices that lead
to a morally improved life, it should then follow that philos-
ophy – that rational search for wisdom – becomes its chief means
of acquisition. By studying to be wise, perhaps by reflecting
upon the experiences of others or reading philosophy books, we
can improve our understanding of the world around us. This
could make it easier to handle life’s many challenges; for instance
when it comes to distinguishing between our individual rights
and our moral obligations. Wisdom offers an objectivity that is
more helpful than our own narrow, selfish interests. There
should be no mistaking wisdom for mere opinion, prejudice,
bias, or whim because true wisdom is consistently right and not
subject to contradiction or change. Seeking to make wise choices
is the closest we mortals can get to attaining the ideal order for
living a trouble-free life that allows us to do the right thing. Yet,
as the very wise King Solomon lamented at the end of his life,
desiring wisdom, as opposed to accepting folly, can make us
strangely vulnerable to the wily powers of our own conceit in
thinking that it is readily available for the taking. Desiring to
make consistently wise choices does not always mean we will.
Sadly, many of us only discover the critical pearls of wisdom
after we have royally screwed up. As Kierkegaard wrote, “life
must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood back-
wards.” This recognition, in itself, may be the best opportunity
for wisdom available to us.
Socrates’ method of critically examining our ideas could make
our pursuit of wisdom easier by helping us recognize and resolve
ethical issues as they occur. Asking ourselves difficult questions
about motives and means equips us to become more aware as to
where flaws may lie in our often too-easily-formed assumptions.
By careful self-examination, we hopefully acquire a more com-
plete awareness of what is required to act wisely. Where this bogs
down, too often, is in an inability to attain more than a mere
checklist of what’s subjective or moral in our lives. Maybe the
time has come to return to the basics of the Socratic method to
recognise how unwise we really are in our striving to be wise!
IAN MALCOMSON
VICTORIA, BC, CANADA
T he word ‘philosophy’ means ‘the love of wisdom’. Wisdom
is the possession of knowledge, experience, and good judge-
ment. Yet knowledge itself is only information: wisdom is the
use of knowledge to pursue the good life. Philosophy developed
historically as a response to life in its broadest sense, and so is a
friend of wisdom only when it relates to and affects how we live.
24 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
?
?
?
When I look at contemporary philosophy, I am struck by a
number of features. Firstly, philosophy is now not merely an
activity; it is a discipline. It exists primarily within universities and
there only texts which take a disciplinary approach will be
deemed worthy of evaluation.
Central to disciplinary philosophy is that it does not respond
primarily to any natural or social phenomena. Instead it sees
everything through the lens of previous, canonical works, and
seeks to move the thinking in these canonical works forward in
some way. Instead of the mind and the senses ranging freely over
all phenomena in search of wisdom, a very narrow concentration
on the texts is demanded. These texts are for the most part very
sophisticated. Developing their ideas is usually accomplished by
elaborating on their arguments. After a certain point, increases
in sophistication come at the cost of a ruthless narrowing of
vision. It is impossible for any activity so constrained to retain a
supple, open-minded approach to wisdom.
Professional philosophy has now attained such byzantine
complexity as to become a sluggish and immobile behemoth that
waddles clumsily through contemporary life and only with the
greatest difficulty catches a glimpse of any novelty out of its small,
bleary eyes. To return to the possibility of a comprehensive view
of our circumstances and our world, we need to jettison the aca-
demic ideal of theoretical sophistication. Sophistication is not
wisdom. On the contrary, the harsh truth is that the advances in
theoretical sophistication in philosophy (and other humanities)
have rendered them less fit for their purpose of exploring, artic-
ulating and promoting the good life. In order to be truly philo-
sophical, that is, to truly love wisdom, one needs openness to
experience and to the specificities of each new situation more
than one needs any theory whatsoever.
DR MARK WALLACE
RENVYLE, CO. GALWAY, IRELAND
W isdom is understanding the fundamental nature of reality,
life, and humanity, and using that understanding to guide
our lives. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, and so should be its
friend. In the time of Socrates, it was. Now it is at best a friendly
acquaintance. To be a friend of someone is to think often of him
or her; but you can read book after book on philosophy and find
no mention of wisdom. A friend is helpful, but philosophy today
contributes little to wisdom. Even educated persons rarely turn
to philosophy for wisdom. How did this happen?
First, the scientific revolution resulted in many disciplines of
philosophy splitting off from it, beginning with the natural sci-
Is Philosophy Still Wise?
 ? ? ?
ences, then the social ones. Psychology is among the most recent lines exist, philosophical debate will continue, and philosophy
to do so, and today many more people go to popular psychology will still be one of the friends of wisdom, at least.
for wisdom than to philosophy. The natural and social sciences JONATHAN TIPTON
do not provide wisdom, for they look external to our selves, and PRESTON, LANCASHIRE
our fundamental being can only be understood from within our-
selves. Most importantly, the sciences deal with fact but not When wisdom be the goal of man
value. Thus, even with the split-off of the sciences, there is still Cometh the hammer of philosophy
a role for philosophy, and the role is to provide the understanding To crack, destroy, deconstruct
we call wisdom. The dark deceptions of reality.
Second, philosophy divided into the analytic philosophy of Be it truth, suffering, life or death,
the English-speaking world and the varieties of Continental phi- Let the analytic mallet fall,
losophy. Analytic philosophy is fractured even within itself. It Lest self-deceit or mad despair
concerns itself with specific small problems. Its virtues are clarity Cause man’s flourishing to stall.
and rigor; its vice is the lack of a comprehensive view, and hence For faith and nihilism came undone
any hope of wisdom. Continental philosophy has the virtue of With Nietzsche’s mighty will-to-power
seeing that the goal of wisdom, and hence of philosophy, is (to Out of the abyss of meaninglessness
paraphrase Marx) not just to understand but to act. It has a com- Rose self-affirmation’s flower.
prehensive view and the hope of wisdom. Unfortunately, it has Just look how sweet the garden grows
the vices of obscurity and esotericness. Perhaps one day the ana- Atop the lawn of wisdom’s dawn
lytic and continental philosophies will merge, and philosophy When from on high the great minds cry
will again be the friend of wisdom. Within the existential thunderstorm!
JOHN TALLEY If not the brave ones armed with reason
RUTHERFORDTON, NORTH CAROLINA Who else can lead us through the dark,
On that lonely road of living

S ince the word ‘philosopher’ can be roughly translated as

‘friend of wisdom’, we could easily assume that because
philosophers were clearly once considered such, philosophy still
Upon which all of us embark?
They alone battle gods and monsters,
Exorcise false diversions,
has the friendship of wisdom. And if not philosophy, what else? Elevate true enlightenment,
Some might claim that science has now replaced it. Just as Defile man’s perversions.
mathematics has seemingly been shown to understand the uni- Artists merely decorate,
verse better than theology, so science, it is alleged, understands Scientists blindly gaze,
the everyday world, and even our political and ethical lives, better Poets radiantly elucidate
than philosophy. Stephen Hawking went to so far as to declare In elegant turn of phrase;
‘the death of philosophy’. But wisdom needs philosophy’s axe
However, ‘the death of philosophy’, although welcomed by To spear and steer the being-here;
certain scientists, is not necessarily to their advantage. Despite A compass, weapon, learned master
the impact of science on the modern world, religious extremism To teach us well how not to fear
and other excessive and irrational modes of thought, such as Only through a love of fate can we create
racism, appear to be on the rise globally, influencing much cur- A life of meaning, value, beauty
rent opinion. By promoting uncritical belief and intolerance over Helping us embrace the night
critical reasoning, these modes of thought are both ‘anti-philos- In gallant authenticity.
ophy’ and ‘anti-science’. Therefore, applauding the demise of In caverns deep the answers sleep;
philosophy might be mistaken, even for scientists. In misty mountain, lonely star;
It is easy to consider philosophy as presently stuck somewhere And so we try to truth untie
between scientific understanding and the irrationality of current Approaching knowledge near and far.
social and political dogmatism. But this is not necessarily a bad Yes, the greatest minds to set us free
place for it. By providing a buffer between these different modes Are the ones who question why.
of thinking, engendering debate between the different camps If wisdom be no friend of philosophy
and testing and evaluating the false certainties, ambiguities, and What else will light the dreary sky
dogmas of every side, philosophy can still have a place in con- And vanquish life’s futility?
temporary thought. BIANCA LALEH
Bertrand Russell referred to philosophy as a constantly- TOTNES, DEVON
assailed ‘no-man’s land’ between science and religion. However,
a more accurate metaphor would be to think of philosophy as
the faultline between the ‘continental plates’ of knowledge, and
of philosophical debate as the ‘tectonic activity’ (the earthquakes,
P hilosophy is more than just a friend of wisdom: philosophy
and wisdom are inextricably bound to each other.
Wisdom was understood by Cowley in ‘Moral philosophy and
volcanoes...) created as these plates collide. As long as the fault- the ‘real world’’ (2011) as coming to understand one’s own life,

Is Philosophy Still Wise? April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 25

 ? ?
the lives of others, and the relationships amongst us; and by Gayle
in ‘Befriending Wisdom’ (1989) more simply as ‘the power to
choose well’. In the Greek, phronesis or practical wisdom, impels
us to act in the right, good, or just way; or as Comte-Sponville
puts it in A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues (2001) as “good sense,
but in the service of goodwill.” Phronesis may also be thought of as
prudence – looking forwards and backwards before making a deci-
sion about whether and how to act. For Meeks and Jeste in ‘Neu-
robiology of Wisdom’ (2009), wisdom involves the domains of
rational decision-making; social behaviours involving empathy,
compassion, and altruism; self-reflection; decisiveness in the face
of uncertainty; and tolerance of divergent value systems. So wis-
dom, in its fullest sense of ‘encapsulating knowledge, meaning and
truth’, is necessary for a value system to be conceptualised.
Philosophy, meanwhile, arguably is the summation of our
value systems as human beings, and concerns all that which is
significant or which matters. The aim of philosophy has been
given by R.M. Hare in Essays in Ethical Theory (1989) as to find a
way of thinking better; by Peter Singer in Ethics (1994) as the
study of reasoning about how we ought to act; and by Bishop
Berkeley in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowl-
edge (1710) as “nothing else but the study of wisdom and truth”
– in turn leading to calm and a serenity of mind, a greater clarity.
Philosophy has also been characterised by Wittgenstein in Trac-
tatus Logico-Philosophicus (1933) not as a body of doctrine but as
an activity; and by phenomenology as an optic: a way of seeing
things. Plato in his Republic described philosophers as ‘lovers of
the vision of truth’. As UNESCO noted in ‘Philosophy: A School
of Freedom’ (2007) philosophy “is a matter not just of knowing,
but of understanding the meaning and the principles of knowing
… rigorously putting concepts and ideas into perspective.”
So we can see that philosophy and wisdom are necessarily
intertwined: they complete each other’s existence.
PAUL WALKER
NEWCASTLE, AUSTRALIA
I n Athens during the early fourth century BC, Diogenes the
Cynic was disappointed by what people had become: ignorant,
struggling for power, seeking nothing but pleasure. He used to
stroll about Athens carrying a lamp in full daylight, crying out:
“I am looking for a human!” (not just an ‘honest man’, as modern
sources have it). Unlike Nietzsche’s madman, who also carried a
lamp in daylight, searching for God, and declaring God dead,
Diogenes remained hopeful and did not declare humanity dead
– maybe because he knew that humans were unique in their ability
to do philosophy: to search for truth in order to obtain wisdom.
However, paradoxically, without lies, there is no truth. When we
stop speaking about ‘lies’, instead talking of ‘alternative facts’, or ‘alter-
native truths’, we kill truth, and get a glimpse of post-truth – the belief
in what we feel to be true; the quality of preferring concepts or facts
one wishes to be true to those known to be true. In a post-modern
world, each has his/her own truth, and truth becomes just a matter
of taste. We trust our guts instead of the facts. In fact, though, post-
truth does not mask lies as truth; it is about renouncing both truth
and lie. The triumph of post-truth is our collective defeat of wisdom.
I believe that philosophy is still the friend of wisdom, but the
forgotten one. And like an old friend waiting to be remembered,
26 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
?
philosophy awaits us to continue the search for truth so that ‘lie’
does not lose its meaning. It is up to us not only in the media,
academia and in art, but also in the streets, to keep searching for
truth and thus to keep truth alive. Truth is held captive by envy,
hypocrisy and stupidity, but it can be rescued by Time (as depicted
in Theodor Van Thulden’s painting Time Reveals the Truth). So,
maybe it’s time for us to remember about philosophy, the forgot-
ten friend of wisdom, as the hope remains that the search for truth
can bring us together not simply as ‘men’, but as humans.
NELLA LEONTIEVA
RANDWICK, NEW SOUTH WALES
W isdom tipped her head beneath the lintel and twisted her
shoulders through the doorway, somehow managing to
squeeze into the coffee house. She was tall and her shoulders were
broad. It was hard to see how it was possible, but she was dwarfed
by the bag that she carried over her shoulder. She sat at a table,
with knees that peaked over the table-top, and ordered her
espresso. The long and terribly out-of-place sword that hung
from her belt scraped across the floor in harmony with the chair
legs as she settled herself into a more comfortable position. She
had been out on the plains of Science stuffing her bag with facts
to feed the hydra. One of the hydra’s severed heads was tied to
her belt and was both shrunken and emaciated, croaking “Noth-
ing,” in a parched whisper.
“Fancy seeing you here!” I cried as I strolled across the ter-
razzo floor with a warm smile of welcome.
“Imagine you, Pilgrim, in a coffee shop!” she replied, her gray
eyes twinkling. She patted her bag and said, “I’ve spent too long
out with Research and Discovery, and the hydra will be hungry.”
“I don’t understand why you continue to lop off the heads of
that poor beast. Look at poor Nihil here croaking at your belt.”
“You know very well that Truth calls to me when I walk into
the hydra’s Cave” – as though it knew of the mention of its name,
her sword seemed to glow and exude warmth – “and any of the
heads making silly arguments fall to the floor.”
“While two more appear, instantly arguing opposite sides of
the same basic position.”
“Nothing,” croaked Nihil.
“Yes,” Wisdom smiled, looking at the head at her belt: “Except
for Nihil here, who just never stops talking. But pretty soon the
whole hydra is distracted from the shadows in the Cave.”
“You are a good friend to Philosophy,” I said, naming the
hydra. “You keep it well fed and prune it with Truth.”
I gave her a hug before I headed out into the dusty street.
WILLIAM FISHBURNE
GREENBELT, MARYLAND
Capitalist environmental destruction? No! Communist
oppression? No! The next question is: What Is The Third Way?
Please give and explain your answer in less than 400 words.
The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain.
Subject lines should be marked ‘Question of the Month’, and
must be received by 10th June 2019. If you want a chance of
getting a book, please include your physical address.
Submission is permission to reproduce your answer.
Is Philosophy Still Wise?
 Socratic Wisdom &
The Knowledge of Children
Maria daVenza Tillmanns uncovers the natural philosopher in us all.
R
eading Plato’s dialogues always left me thinking that in
the end one could never fully know or describe the
nature of the concepts their star Socrates and his friends
were discussing, for instance, what it means to be coura-
geous in Laches, or the nature of friendship in Lysis. Nonetheless,
one could still have some grasp of their meanings and how to apply
them; a grasp that can be improved by debate and criticism. In
this way, my reading of the dialogues usually showed me the limits
of our rational knowledge of the world while leaving me with a
deeper understanding of something, be it bravery, friendship, or
love. For example, this deeper understanding would not only help
us to recognize an act of courage, but confirm what we intuitively
understood it to be in the first place.
Several strands of Eastern philosophy try to give us a deeper
sense of reality through showing the limits of rational thought.
Ultimately speaking, the yin and the yang, the opposite princi-
ples, do not contradict each other, but rather complement each
other. The aim of Zen koans (the most famous one being ‘What
is the sound of one hand clapping?’), is to guide students to
enlightenment by way of giving the rational mind no way through.
Where the rational mind hits a wall, enlightenment can emerge.
Socrates brings his interlocutors to a place of not-knowing simi-
lar to that of masters of Zen Buddhism, which is the place of
enlightenment or wisdom. Many of Plato’s dialogues leave us
with a sense of aporia (απορια), meaning ‘at an impasse’ (of puz-
zlement). We are ‘at a loss’, perplexed. What we thought we
knew, we have to admit we do not know. On the other hand, we
may also have developed a deeper sense of what, say, love or
courage means. This shows that where purely rational knowl-
edge fails us, we may still develop a deep sense of understanding.
‘Philosophy’ – philo-sophia – means ‘love of wisdom’, and not
‘love of knowledge’ (which would be philognosis). Reading Plato’s
dialogues clued me into what mattered in life. The dialogues
clearly show that a lot of what we think we know we cannot give
words to and explain rationally. But the process of finding this
out gives us wisdom. Perhaps this is why the Delphic Oracle
told Socrates that he was the wisest Athenian: he knew that what
he knew he could not impart to others through gnosis, but rather
through sophia.
Wisdom reaches our grasp deeper into the world. It some-
times seems as though we have tried to replace thinking with
knowledge. The more I know, the less I have to think. I have
the answers, so I do not have to live in a world of uncertainty,
ambiguity, feeling perplexed or ‘at a loss’, even though this uncer-
tainty is exactly the place where true thinking begins as we sud-
denly have to ask ourselves, “now what?”. It is the place where
understanding develops through a deeper sense of connected-
ness. It’s as though our ability to explain the world resembles
the tip of the iceberg, and what we understand but don’t have
words for exists below the surface. What’s below the surface is
certainly as real as what exists above it, but we cannot explain it
in the same way, so we need metaphors, analogies, poetry, music;
or sometimes scientific ideas, such as spacetime, or gravity, or
the Higgs boson. But we know gravity when we drop a shoe to
the ground; we know love when we read the Song of Songs; we
know courage when we read in the Iliad about Hector’s bravery.
Philosophy as a Moral Compass
Just as we might read fairy tales to young children with the hope
of imparting to them some moral understanding of the world, I
thought Plato’s dialogues could accomplish that too, if re-writ-
ten for children. They too would appeal to the child’s intuitive
grasp. Plato’s dialogues certainly give us plenty to think about,
just as myths, legends, and fairy tales do. What they don’t give
is a rational, cognitive account of bravery, friendship, or love,
for these don’t exist. They set up a kind of compass, guided by
the sense of understanding they induce, by which I can learn to
recognize the value of something, the potential danger of some-
thing, and to navigate the world. To sail a ship we need a range
of technical skills, of course; but without navigational skills to
orient our ship, we are lost at sea.
The compass we use to navigate life needs to be educated
from an early age. The arts, including Plato’s dialogues, help to
educate our navigational sense. They don’t tell us what is good
or bad. Things aren’t that simple. Instead, we need to develop
a sense for judging what may be right or not in any particular
situation. Or we may have a general sense, but need to learn
how to apply this general sense to specific, unique, situations.
In every new situation we have to figure out what the right thing
to do is. And it will be different for different people as well. Too
often we look for a one-size-fits-all solution, including for our
sense of right and wrong. And this is where we so often end up
resorting to a violent ‘solution’.
As a philosophy undergraduate I attended a Plato seminar, and
told the professor running it I would like to rewrite some of Plato’s
dialogues so children could understand them. He suggested I
write my final paper on a topic in philosophy that could be under-
stood by children. That’s how Stella (twelve years old at the time),
my landlady’s niece, ended up writing a story with me in dialogue
form, How Come the Opposite of What I think is True is Usually Really
True? This paper focused on how fear often interferes with our
thinking and makes us do things we might not do otherwise, and
often regret. We explored our understanding of how fear influ-
ences our thinking – often not in a good way. Instead of being
open-minded and fair about some issue that affects us, we may
become closed-minded and unfair, for instance. We take sides,
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 27
© AMY BAKER 2019 PLEASE VISIT INSTAGRAM.COM/AMY_LOUISEBAKER
we want to retaliate, or we cannot see any reason to trust or believe
what the other person thinks or has to say. We dismiss their argu-
ments, we belittle them, we see no merit to them. Fear is another
good example of what cannot be explained rationally, but how it
works in real life does need to be understood intuitively. For
example, how do I know when my thinking is motivated by fear
rather than fairness? It’s easy to justify my hitting back as being
‘fair’ – but is it?
Children Are Natural Philosophers
That was the beginning of my interest in philosophy for chil-
dre. In the years since, I’ve often been struck by how insightful
they are. I believe children come into the world with a moral
compass built-in. Children see connections between things intu-
itively, and this is what I want to build on in my philosophical dis-
cussions with them.
Because young children have not yet developed standard cog-
nitive skills to express themselves, they use their imagination,
and they rely on it to convey their understanding of the world.
Imagination is the language of intuitive knowledge, springing
from our inborn relationship with the world. Imagination is also
the language of fairy tales, legends and myths. It reaches far into
the world beyond the evidence of our senses, and is therefore
philosophical in scope. Intuition and imagination are why chil-
dren are natural philosophers par excellence.
As a philosopher, I like to explore the nature of things, such
as the nature of friendship, the nature of fairness, the nature of
fear... and what better way to explore the nature of something
than by seeing how it relates to other things? How does fear
affect thinking, or how does it sometimes force us to be brave?
28 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
Let me give some examples I’ve recorded of children’s intuition
working in relation to these questions.
“I think you’re afraid when you’re angry.”
“If you’re bad to people, you can’t be very smart.”
“You’re brave when you can trust yourself.”
“You need to be a little afraid in order to be brave, so you know the
danger you’re in.”
“I didn’t want my baby brother to get punished for accidently break-
ing his favorite toy, so I took the blame.”
These comments are from elementary school children. They
reveal an intuitive grasp of the connection between fear and
anger, or courage and trust, or intelligence and kindness. I believe
it takes philosophical acuity to pick up on such connections. To
me, doing philosophy with children is about exploring such con-
nections, asking the children how they see the relationship
between fear and anger or intelligence and kindness. I invite
them to give reasons and explanations as to how these ideas may
fit together, and if they in fact do.
I find a lot of excitement and joy among children when dis-
cussing these ideas. Children are excited to learn about these
puzzling concepts. They build on each other’s ideas, agreeing
or disagreeing with what others have said. They can be quick
to change their minds. It is as if they’re painting with ideas.
And it flows. They are learning how to express themselves,
how to be clear in expressing their thoughts and feelings, and
explain why they may agree or disagree with someone.
Whereas fear may be a good thing in some instances, it may
not be in others. Lying may be necessary in some instances,
and in other cases it may be harmful and hurtful. So how do
you decide? This is where our navigational skills come into
play. What may work in some instances may be the entirely
wrong thing to do in other cases. So how can you tell? This
is where you need to learn how to respond to complex situa-
tions, and not reduce all situations to a one-size-fits-all solu-
tion. It is, and remains, complex.
It also amazes me how the children remember what we’ve
talked about regarding stories we’ve read, and how they find
fascinating connections here too. For example, we read The
Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and Tico and the Golden Wings
by Leo Leonni. One of the main themes in both stories is the
nature of giving. Very quickly, the children felt that while Tico
gave one of his golden feathers to those who needed help
because they were poor, the giving tree gave her whole tree
away, until nothing was left but her trunk. And, the kids noted,
the boy to whom the giving tree was giving all was never really
happy. He just wanted more and more and she kept on giving.
The people Tico gave his feathers to were grateful. Eventu-
ally, Tico gave all his feathers away too, but with every feather
he gave away, a new feather, a black one, came in its place, so
Tico was able to still fly. Although the children do not come
away with a full explanation of the nature of giving, they do
get a better understanding of what it means to give. They are
building their compass to navigate the world. The compass
has not only North, South, East and West, but also all the
degrees in between, and every degree can make a difference
in how to steer your ship.
Intuition versus Cognition
So where does children’s intuitive knowledge originate?
In his classic 1923 book I and Thou, the existentialist philoso-
pher Martin Buber wrote, “It is simply not the case that the
child first perceives an object, then, as it were, puts himself in
relation to it. But the effort to establish relation comes first…
In the beginning is relation – as category of being, readiness,
grasping form, mould for the soul; it is the a priori of relation,
the inborn Thou. The inborn Thou is realized in the lived relations
with that which meets it” (p.27, my emphasis). Intuitive thought
then emerges from one’s total engagement, one’s ‘lived rela-
tions’ with the world. In other words, we are born ready to begin
developing our compass.
Children aren’t the only ones who have a total engagement
with the world. Many artists, for example, rely on the knowl-
edge that originates from a total engagement and openness,
to which they give expression through their art. And it is
through their art that they convey their deeper understand-
ing of the world. But for many people, their intuitive knowl-
edge is gradually replaced by structures of thinking they are
taught. While we can always retain some intuitive understand-
ing, too often this is replaced by the cognitive skills we develop
in school. Our cognitive skills are often developed in a vacuum,
disassociated from our being. This disassociation creates a
dependency on authority, or on status, or on following trends
and fads. If we cannot self-regulate our thinking using our
own moral compass, we depend on others. This robs us of an
ability to enter into interdependent relationships. As Chad
Miller wrote in his article ‘The Impact of Philosophy for Chil-
dren in a High School English Class’ (available on inter-dis-
ciplinary.net), “The continued irrelevance and disregard of
the students’ experiences, questions and ideas by schools, has
too often left them with the inability to think responsibly for
themselves; the school has told them what to think and why
to think it.” Philosophy for children on the contrary honors
the inborn relationship children have with the world. It helps
them to cultivate their compass, their inner authority, to be
self-critical, to self-regulate, and indeed to truly be in charge
of their own thinking.
If we rob children of their intuitive knowledge and imagi-
nation simply in order to develop their cognitive skills as
rapidly as possible, we essentially rob them of this inborn rela-
tionship with the world. We try to re-establish their relation-
ship with the world and with themselves through developing
their cognitive skills at the expense of that very relationship!
They thus become disconnected from the world, from other
people, and from themselves. The loss has dangerous conse-
quences. Disassociated logic can allow us to do the most hor-
rible things to the environment, other life-forms, and other
people, and provide justifications for it. Integrity and charac-
ter may also become empty concepts, because, as Buber would
say, we have replaced the ‘inborn Thou’ with the ‘It’. The I-
It relationship is strictly instrumental in nature and serves the
individual’s needs at the expense of their relationship with the
world (I and Thou, p.23). And all the therapy in the world
cannot make up for loss of the inborn relationship we had at
the beginning of life.
Buber says there is a “constant swinging back and forth”
between the I-It and I-Thou relationships. Yet if we are dis-
connected from our I-Thou relationship, only the I–It rela-
tionship determines our relations with the world and other
people: we begin to see them as objects rather than fully people.
So we need to foster and nourish the ‘inborn Thou’ by
strengthening children’s relations to the world and other
people. We can restore the inborn Thou by allowing children
to develop their intuitive knowledge, by giving full reign to
their imaginations in the arts and sciences, and by doing phi-
losophy with them. What expertise do philosophers have and
what can they bring to a philosophical discussion with chil-
dren? Philosophers are experts in not knowing! In practicing
the art of philosophy, the art of not knowing, we engage each
other to think together in an exploration of concepts we only
vaguely understand.
Thinking together not only binds us, but also allows us to
explore unknown, perhaps unknowable, territory with joy,
curiosity and confidence. Through asking children what they
in some sense already know through their intuitive knowl-
edge and putting thinking itself into question, we can help
them become more aware of themselves as thinking beings.
And as thinking beings with a fine-tuned moral compass, chil-
dren can learn the skills they’re taught in school, but not at
the expense of their own thinking. With their thinking intact,
they can skilfully apply what they learn in school to the world
in which they live.
© DR MARIA DAVENZA TILLMANNS 2019
Maria daVenza Tillmanns is a former President of the American
Society for Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy (ASPCP),
and currently practices philosophy with school children in San Diego.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 29
 Against Stupidity in the Media
Angela Phillips is the winner of Philosophy Now’s 2019 Award for Contributions in
the Fight Against Stupidity. She gave this acceptance talk at Conway Hall in January.
S
tupidity is not about intelligence, or education. Rather,
a stupid action or statement usually follows an untested
assumption. It is stupid to leave your house without your
keys because you didn’t check that they were where you
thought they ought to be. And our assumptions too often come
from a broad understanding of the world that we have stopped
bothering to reconsider, because, ‘Hey, we’ve always thought
that, so it must be true’. Broadcasting a conclusion based on an
untested assumption simply compounds the error. It is stupid.
Test Assumptions
I think my own first struggles with the stupidity of entrenched
assumptions emerged from my encounters in the early 1970s
with men who genuinely believed that women were stupid. Not
just some women. All women. I found this assumption puzzling
to start with, but after a while I found it profoundly annoying,
and as time went on it made me angry. Not just because of their
arrogant dismissal of my personhood, but because it seemed
astonishing that they could make such a ludicrous assertion
without any evidence to back it up.
That early experience of intellectual laziness has been a useful
one, because it taught me that the very first step in the consid-
eration of any new piece of information should be to stop and
check your own preconceptions. Whatever one’s worldview, if
30 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
the evidence doesn’t tell you what you thought it would, then
you need to reconsider your own assumptions before rejecting
the evidence.
I tried to follow that rule in my own journalism, and now my
job as a professor of journalism is to teach other people:
• To be careful;
• To ask yourself, ‘Is this plausible?’;
• To respect the evidence;
• To check your own prejudices;
• To keep in mind the prejudices of those who employ you;
• To correct the record if you find that the evidence doesn’t
accord with your first impressions.
If all journalists always followed these rules, journalism truly
would be a weapon in the fight against stupidity.
Of course, in a fast-moving situation, it is easy for journalists
to jump to conclusions. Take the shooting of Brazilian electrician
Jean Charles de Menezes on a London tube train in 2005.
The shooting was just two weeks after four suicide bombs
had exploded on public transport in London, and one day after
four failed bombing attempts. People – the public, the services,
and journalists – were jumpy and anxious; a major hunt was
under way for the fugitive bombers, and the police interpreted
what they saw in the light of understandable assumptions. Wit-
nesses talked about a man running, about a bulky jacket with
wires protruding from it, about a man of ‘Asian’ appearance.
The journalists duly wrote down these ‘facts’ to assemble a story.
In the rush to be first with the news there was little time to check
them, and anyway the facts appeared to fit the police version of
events: a man under surveillance, possibly carrying a bomb, had
boarded a tube train and had been shot dead. Pretty soon it
became clear that the shot man was not Asian, he was not wear-
ing a bulky jacket, he had no equipment, and no bomb. The
police had shot the wrong man.
The witnesses described what they remembered seeing, but
misconstrued it on the basis of prior assumptions. Most jour-
nalists started very quickly to correct the record, producing new
stories that started to throw doubt not only on the witnesses’
accounts, but also on the police version of events. There was a
running man – in fact there were several running men: they
were the police, in plain clothes, in pursuit of their target, who
was not even aware that he was being pursued.
In a fast-changing situation we should expect a lot of what’s
reported to be incorrect. It’s the job of journalists to check and
correct as the story unfolds. This job has become a great deal
harder lately as people expect to get their news in real time and
journalists have to pick their way through huge quantities of
misinformation circulating online and in social media. The
golden rule is always to check and correct, because it is not nec-
essarily stupid to be wrong. It is stupid to keep going with a
story when you already know it is wrong.
In the case of de Menezes, most news organisations corrected
the record as soon as they realised that the wrong man had been
shot; but some decided to spin the story to fit preconceived prej-
udices and assumptions so that the victim would be judged to
be responsible for his own death. One newspaper took it upon
itself to investigate his immigration status, reported that he had
overstayed his visa, and made the assumption that he must there-
fore have been running away from the police. The eventual
enquiry found that he had not been running, because he was
not aware that he was being pursued. In the circumstances his
immigration status could only have been considered a factor if
the object was to make the victim appear suspicious.
However, deliberately assembling facts in a particular way
in order to mislead audiences, is not stupid. I would consider it
mendacious.
Angela Phillips
Unfortunately this is not a rare event. In 2008 I interviewed
a number of journalists about their work. One news editor on a
mid-market British newspaper explained how he was expected
to select stories: “[The paper] works on the presumption that
negative news sells – always go for the negative line even if it
isn’t typical. There is nothing untrue, but it isn’t a balanced rep-
resentation. It’s been twisted to conform to an idea. If you leave
ethics out it’s good professional journalism and it sells papers.”
While I can warn young journalists of the dangers of delib-
erately skewed editorial instructions aimed at satisfying partic-
ular appetites and prejudices by cherry-picking facts in order
to serve a preconceived worldview, I know they’ll have little
power to resist the pressure to conform. But powerlessness is
not stupidity, and we have no laws or regulations in Britain that
can protect a journalist from the demands of his or her employ-
ers – something that the National Union of Journalists high-
lighted during the Leveson enquiry into the ethics and prac-
tices of the Press in 2011.
What Is Stupid Journalism?
So what then is stupid journalism? I would see it as journalism in
which facts are assembled in order to fulfil unexamined assump-
tions about what is important, who is likely to be reliable, and, all
too often, which version of events is most likely to attract the atten-
tion of the public. Often this information has not been tested by
asking four simple questions: “Who stands to gain?”; “Who stand
to lose?”; “Where does the power lie?” and “Who is responsible?”
Take the news coverage of the fire at Grenfell Tower [a fire
in a residential block in London in 2017 in which seventy-two
people died, Ed]. Some journalists realised that the speed of the
fire was anomalous and quickly deduced that this must have had
something to do with the way in which the building had been
renovated. They spent that night trawling the internet to find
who was responsible for the building’s refurbishment and down-
loaded documents from the companies involved before they could
be taken offline. They then wrote excellent stories about the way
in which the tower had been constructed and refurbished and the
responsibility of the authorities. This informed the subsequent
debate, just as good journalism ought to do. Others set out to
find out the name of the resident in whose flat the fire started.
Journalists at the Daily Mail assembled a story in which they
named the man who called the fire brigade, and provided pho-
tographs of him taken from his Facebook account, publishing
suggestions that he had been tardy in alerting other residents.
He was not responsible for the tragedy, and this story was so
stupidly irresponsible that the editors took it down from their
website within days. A number of news organisations also pub-
lished stories of a child being thrown from a fourth, fifth or
eleventh floor window and being caught below. Except that it
never happened. The journalists who repeated the story had not
asked the most basic question: could a child survive being dropped
from the fourth, fifth, or eleventh floor? However, some BBC
journalists did ask the obvious question: is this plausible? They
investigated and found that it was most unlikely that such an event
could have happened without serious injury to both the child and
the person catching it. No such injuries were reported that night.
Sadly a lot of stupid journalism is still being churned out –
almost all of it for the sake of sensationalism. And we, the audi-
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 31
ence, encourage it because we do like a bit of shock and horror.
Here are a couple of examples:
• When one piece of evidence suggests that vaccinations might
cause autism, it would help to take a step back, take a look at
the other evidence, and ask, “Who stands to lose if we get this
wrong?” Of course it is possible that the experts might be wrong,
but it is stupid to reject the rest of the available evidence in
favour of a sensational story, because in doing so you are ignor-
ing the possible consequences of misrepresenting evidence, and
children might die as a result.
• When a civic authority makes an unpopular planning deci-
sion, it’s stupid to rely solely on the opinions of the people
making the decision, but it is equally stupid to rely only on the
protestors without first considering the possibility that the
protestors might have an agenda of their own, and secondly
asking yourself in whose interests the authorities are working.
Of course the planning officer might have a hand in the till; but
assuming ill-will without the necessary evidence is both stupid
and unfair. The sensible course is to ask yourself: in whose inter-
ests are these people working? Then lay out the evidence and
allow your audience to weigh it themselves.
Check Benign Assumptions Too
If people are to be properly served by journalists they need to be
given information, that has been properly considered and checked
for errors of fact, that they can then evaluate themselves. This is
not to suggest that news companies should never be partisan. The
British press is thoroughly politically partisan, but you do not
serve your audience well if you allow political preconceptions to
take precedence over critical analysis of events.
The coverage of the European Union in Britain recently
has demonstrated only too well how easy it is for news organi-
sations to exacerbate political divisions rather than trying to
bridge them. Our print press and its online extensions took
sides on this issue long before the decision by David Cameron
to call a referendum. It would have been very hard for anyone
with a favourite newspaper to find anything at all in its pages
suggesting that those on the other side of the debate might
have a case to make. The BBC produces the only news mate-
rial that’s consumed and trusted by the majority of British cit-
izens. It should have provided a counterpoint to this partisan-
ship. But the BBC’s political editors, focussing only on the need
to remain impartial, decided to ignore party affiliation in their
calculations of air-time. In making that decision they were
assuming that arguments for both sides of the debate could be
plausibly presented by people from just one political party. So
in practice they reported the referendum on whether Britain
should stay in or leave the European Union as though it was a
cricket match between two wings of the Conservative Party,
rather than a complex event in which every viewer or listener
was actually a participant, rather than an observer. Researchers
at Loughborough University found that the BBC fulfilled their
duty to give equal time to each side of the debate. But they also
found that of the thirty most interviewed people during the
referendum campaign, Conservative Party politicians were
given 73% of the exposure. So the BBC coverage was based on
the erroneous assumption that arguments within that party
32 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
were the only arguments worth making, and would be as com-
pelling for unemployed steel workers in the North East as for
stockbrokers around London.
BBC news was also criticised for being so anxious about
impartiality that it failed to correct even clearly erroneous state-
ments made by politicians – such as the suggestion that Turkey
was about to enter the European Union. In fact, Cardiff Uni-
versity researchers found that three out of four claims made
were not questioned by journalists. Their jobs had been reduced
to that of game show hosts, merely introducing the contestants.
So it is hardly surprising that, in the days before the vote over
whether to leave the EU, fewer than a third of voters felt well-
informed. But the BBC’s assistant political editor, Norman
Smith, reasoned that the BBC didn’t need to inform or educate
the audience on the issues (rather than simply report the debates
the politicians were having), because, “I don’t think it’s up to
us to, as it were, go AWOL and say well, fine, but we’re actu-
ally going to talk about this because we think that’s what voters
are interested in” (Feedback interview). Given the role of the
BBC as Britain’s most trusted news source, this was not just a
failure of policy, it was a stupid failure of journalism.
Journalism and the Internet
Having criticised the BBC for being stupid in this instance, we
are at least fortunate that Britain’s main news network can to
some extent be held to account for its stupidity. However, jour-
nalism is now increasingly dependent on platforms such as
Google and Facebook to find an audience and an income, and
these companies are entirely unaccountable. So my stupidity
award of the century so far would go to those oh so clever men
(it is mainly men) who design the algorithms which organise
knowledge online. Whoever thought it would be a good idea
to organise information along the lines of a supermarket has
done humanity no favours. Just as supermarkets are designed
to ensure that unhealthy sweets, fizzy drinks and ready meals
are always in view to tempt unwary shoppers, so the internet is
now controlled by companies whose primary goal is to tempt
us to keep coming back to their sites. They do this by deliver-
ing the emotional equivalent of a sugar high. Posts which major
on emotion and drama shoot up the page rankings, where they
are further boosted by likes and shares. The potatoes and greens
of solid analysis have trouble finding a way in.
The internet should have been a brilliant ally in the fight
against stupidity, but in the hands of people who merely want to
profit from our attention this amazing technology is in danger
of feeding stupidity with half-baked ideas, untested assumptions,
and uncorroborated facts. Information doesn’t need to be organ-
ised in this way. Search could be organised along public service
principles so that the internet serves knowledge rather than serv-
ing emotion. I think we would all feel a little less stupid if it did.
© PROFESSOR ANGELA PHILLIPS 2019
Angela Phillips has been a practising journalist for 40 years and has
taught journalism at Goldsmith’s, University of London, for more than
20 years. She has carried out extensive research into the ethics and prac-
tice of journalism in the social media age, and has written several books
on journalism including Journalism in Context (Routledge, 2014)
and Misunderstanding News Audiences (Routledge, 2018). She is
also the founder of the local news website EastLondonLines.
 What is Panspiritism?
Steve Taylor introduces an alternative way of conceiving consciousness.

I
n case you haven’t noticed, a theory called panpsychism
is undergoing something of a resurgence in the philoso-
phy of mind. [See PN Issue 121. Ed.] As dissatisfaction with
physically-based explanations of consciousness increases
– and as the ‘hard problem’ of how the brain produces con-
sciousness continues to baffle – that alternative has become
more appealing. Panpsychism answers the question of how
mind could arise out of matter by claiming that mind was always
in matter. It didn’t need to arise because it was already there.
Panpsychism holds that even the tiniest particles of matter have
some form of experience, even if it’s so basic and primitive that
it’s impossible for us to conceive of it.
However, panpsychism certainly isn’t the only alternative to
the materialist’s dismissal of mind. In this article I’d like to
describe another non-materialist perspective, which I feel has
more elegance and explanatory potential than panpsychism. It
is an approach that in different variants has a long and rich
philosophical history, and also features strongly in indigenous
cultures and many of the world’s spiritual traditions. I call this
approach panspiritism.
Panpsychism literally means ‘mind is everywhere’; but usu-
ally this is taken to just mean that mind is in all material parti-
cles. However, panspiritism suggests that there is a fundamen-
tal quality inherent in all space as well as in all material things.
mental consciousness; and the second is between material things,
which are pervaded with fundamental consciousness without
having their own interior consciousness, and living things, which
are both pervaded with fundamental consciousness and also have
their own minds. According to panspiritism, the entire universe
is animate and conscious, since all things are animated with
spirit. But there is a difference between the way rocks and rivers
are alive and the way that people, insects, or even amoebas are
alive. Rocks and rivers do not have their own psyches, and are
therefore not individually conscious. So although consciousness
pervades them, they aren’t conscious themselves, whereas organ-
isms have their own individual consciousnesses, to different
degrees of complexity.
We can think of fundamental consciousness as a kind of
‘dynamic field’ which enfolds and immerses the whole universe

SNOWFLAKE © PAUL GREGORY 2019

This quality might be called ‘spirit’ or ‘fundamental conscious-
ness’. Panspiritism, as the name suggests, takes it to be all-per-
vading: it is everywhere and in everything. Moreover, it is the
most fundamental quality in the universe, because it is the qual-
ity from which the universe, and hence all things in it, arose.
Australian philosopher David Chalmers suggested in his 1995
book The Conscious Mind that consciousness is irreducible in a
way similar to forces such as gravity or electromagnetism,
which aren’t caused or produced by anything – they simply are.
But according to panspiritism, consciousness is even more fun-
damental than gravity or electromagnetism, because unlike
them it precedes the formation of the universe, and the uni-
verse, including all its physical forces, is an expression of it.
Also in contrast to panpsychism, panspiritism doesn’t hold
that all material particles have their own mind and therefore
their own experience. That is, panspiritism suggests that
although consciousness is in all things, all things do not have (and possibly other universes). Its creativity enables it to gener-
their own individuated consciousness. Although fundamental ate matter so that physical forms can arise and exist within it.
consciousness pervades everything, all things are not themselves An analogy here would be with waves on the surface of an ocean,
conscious. Only structures that have the necessary complexity which have an individual form as waves but are also united with
and organisational form to receive and channel fundamental con- the ocean as a whole and are of the same nature as the ocean.
sciousness into themselves are individually alive, and individu- (This analogy is slightly misleading, though, since fundamental
ally conscious. consciousness has no surface. Perhaps more accurately, we
In panspiritism there are two essential (and related) distinc- should think in terms of current or eddies that arise within the
tions. The first is between individual conscious beings and funda- depths – or main body – of the ocean.)

April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 33

 Once the material universe had been generated, the dynamic
creative quality of fundamental consciousness continued to
operate in material structures, enabling greater organisation.
Eventually this led to the development of life. Here physical
forms became complex enough to channel fundamental con-
sciousness. And once life originated, the creativity of spirit was
an important factor in evolution, impelling life forms to develop
greater complexity, which in turn allowed life to channel con-
sciousness more intensely, and so to develop a more expansive
internal consciousness. Living beings became more sentient
and autonomous, whilst still immersed in and pervaded with
fundamental consciousness.
The analogy with waves is useful because it highlights the
flexible nature of the relationship – and the lack of a clear dis-
tinction – between matter and fundamental consciousness.
Material structures may appear to be separate from each other
and the space which surrounds them, but they are actually
always part of spirit. There is little distinction between their
form and the fundamental consciousness they emerge from
(and are still immersed in), just as there is little distinction
between a wave in the sea and the sea itself. This is particularly
the case with simple material forms. In more complex forms,
which have their own individuated consciousness, the distinc-
tion is stronger. Incidentally, this highlights a problem that
can arise with complex forms such as human beings – a sense
of alienation from ‘fundamental consciousness’. It’s like a wave
forgetting that it’s part of the ocean and thinking of itself as
an independent entity. It could be argued that the primary goal
of many of the world’s spiritual traditions is to overcome this
sense of alienation.
A Not-At-All-Brief History of Panspiritism
What I’m calling ‘panspiritism’ is by no means a new idea. In
fact, the idea that the essence of reality is non-material seems to
be one of the oldest and most common cross-cultural concepts
in history. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean it is correct,
but it at least shows that I’m not plucking it out of thin air.
In early Greek philosophy, Anaximander used the term ape-
iron, which literally means ‘boundless’ or ‘infinite’, for an all-
pervading spiritual principle. He described apeiron as the
source from which all forms arise, and to which they all return.
Later Greek philosophers believed that pneuma – literally ‘wind’
or ‘breath’, but also translated as ‘soul’, ‘spirit’ or ‘mind’ – was
the underlying principle of the universe, pervading everything.
The Stoics saw mind and matter not as two different things,
but as two aspects of the same underlying active principle,
inherent in all material things, which they called logos (word or
reason, sometimes translated as God). Other Greek philoso-
phers, such as Anaxagoras, used the term nous (intelligence),
conceiving of it as a single, unifying force that animated all
things. Plato expressed panspiritist views too, particularly in
his later dialogues such as Timaeus. He used the term anima
mundi – ‘world-soul’ – and suggested that the cosmos has a soul
in the same way as the body, and that everything in existence
shares this soul.
Six centuries after Plato’s death, a new wave of panspiritism
began with Plotinus (204-270 AD), who taught that the fun-
damental reality of the universe is a spiritual force he called
34 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
‘The One’. The One is a dynamic reservoir of spirit from which
all individual beings arise. It continually creates and sustains
our lives, like a fountain that pours out into our individual
beings. It is the central force of the universe, and as such we
feel a powerful attraction to it, a longing to regain contact with
it.
Panspiritist ideas were also prominent in a new wave of philo-
sophical speculation that began in sixteenth century Europe.
The Italian philosopher Patrizi suggested that there was a soul
SEEING PANSPIRITISM © VENANTIUS J PINTO 2019. TO SEE MORE ART, PLEASE VISIT FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/VENANTIUS/ALBUMS
of the universe that pervaded all things, including the human
soul, so that in a sense every soul contained the whole universe.
In his 1584 work Cause, Principle and Unity Giordano Bruno
wrote that, “in all things there is spirit, and there is not the least
corpuscle that does not contain within itself some portion that
may animate it”. In the seventeenth century Baruch Spinoza
suggested that there was an underlying single essence of all real-
ity, which he referred to as ‘God or Nature’ (Deus sive Natura).
As with the Stoics’ logos, Spinoza believed that God or Nature
manifested itself in both matter and mind, so that both were
expressions of the same ultimate substance.
After this, however, panspiritist ideas faded away from phi-
losophy. One exception was the celebrated German author and
philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), who used
the term Kraft (literally, force or energy) for the underlying
substance. He attempted to integrate the concept with the new
forces that had recently been discovered by scientists, such as
gravity, electricity, magnetism, and light, by suggesting that
they were all manifestations of the underlying Kraft.
These approaches have often been seen as forms of idealism,
the theory that reality is mind-dependent, but I would argue
that it is more accurate to view them as forms of panspiritism.
Similar perspectives are common in the world’s indigenous
cultures, such as the concepts of a ‘great spirit’ or ‘great mys-
tery’ in many Native American groups. This was not generally
conceived of as a personal God, but as a spiritual force that
existed before the world began, and is everywhere and in every-
thing. The Ainu of Japan referred to an all-pervading spiritual
force as ramut. Scottish anthropologist Neil Gordon Munro,
one of the first Westerners to live with the Ainu, described
ramut as a force that is ‘all-pervading and indestructible’, and
decided that the best possible English translation for it was
‘spirit-energy’. Other cultures have had similar concepts. In
New Guinea, imunu or ‘fundamental soul’. In Africa, the Nuer
called it kwoth and the Mbuti call it pepo.
Some of the world’s major spiritual traditions also feature
concepts of a fundamental spiritual force or energy that per-
vades all things and the spaces between all things, and under-
lies the world of appearances in such a way that all things arise
from it. An example is the Hindu concept of brahman as
described in the Upanishads. In some mystical traditions of
Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, God has been conceived as a
formless, impersonal spiritual energy or force that radiates
through all creation, bringing all things into oneness. It radi-
ates through the human soul too, so that essentially, human
beings are one with God. Christian mystics referred to this as
the ‘godhead’ or ‘divine darkness’. In the Jewish mysticism of
the Kabbalah, it was called en sof – literally, ‘without end’ (that
is, boundless or infinite).
Seeing Panspiritism
by Venantius J. Pinto
2019
Mind & Matter
In panspiritism, the human mind is in its essence a complex chan-
nelling of fundamental consciousness. So a distinction is made
between fundamental consciousness and the human mind, with
the latter arising from (and being dependent on) the interaction
of fundamental consciousness with the brain. In this sense, there
are three basic aspects to reality. Rather than just thinking in
terms of the spiritual and the material, or mind and matter, we
should think in terms of fundamental consciousness, mind, and
matter. Or we could say that fundamental consciousness mani-
fests itself in two ways: as matter and mind. We could also say
that matter is the external manifestation of fundamental con-
sciousness, while mind is its internal manifestation. Matter is
pervaded with fundamental consciousness, but it is not conscious
in itself. As I already mentioned, this is one of the main differ-
ences between panpsychism and panspiritism. This doesn’t mean
that mind and matter are distinct, as in dualism. They are instead
different expressions of fundamental consciousness. At the same
time, mind is a more subtle and fuller expression of spirit than
matter. It is, you might say, a higher-order expression of spirit.
You could look at this in terms of two different stages in the
evolution of life. The first stage was the emergence of matter
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 35
“
Anomalous Phenomena by Bofy 2019
Life began when physical
structures became conscious

”
enough to receive and transmit
consciousness.

out of fundamental consciousness at the beginning of the uni-

verse 13.7 billion years ago, and its subsequent complexifica-
tion. The second stage, which began to take place around four

PLEASE VISIT WORLDOFBOFY.COM

billion years ago with the first simple life forms, was the emer-
gence of mind within matter. (And for all we know, it may have
happened earlier on other planets.)

The Emergence of Mind

All of this begs for a fuller explanation of how mind, or indi-
viduated consciousness, arose. Since, unlike panpsychism, pan-

spiritism doesn’t hold that all material particles have mental
properties, how can it account for the emergence of mind?
I suggest a ‘transmission’ model of consciousness here,
whereby physical structures become internally conscious when
they develop sufficient complexity to receive and channel funda-
mental consciousness. When matter is arranged in certain intri-
cate ways – such as in cells and organisms – it allows a chan-
nelling of fundamental consciousness. A cell acts as a kind of
‘receiver’ of consciousness, so that even an amoeba has its own
very rudimentary kind of psyche, and is therefore individually
alive. So according to panspiritism, life began when physical
structures became complex enough to receive and transmit con-
sciousness. This threshold of complexity was reached with the
formation of the first simple cells that were protected from their
own environment and had self-contained biochemical activity.
Here fundamental consciousness was able to express itself
through individual structures, so that they attained a rudimen-
tary awareness, in terms of an autonomous responsiveness to
their environment. And as life forms evolved – as an organism’s
cells increased in number and became more intricately organ-
ised – they became capable of receiving and channelling more
consciousness, and so they became more alive, developing more
autonomy and a more intense awareness of reality. This even-
tually led to the evolution of mammals such as human beings,
who, with our incredibly intricate brains, each made up of
around ninety billion neurons, have a high level of sentience.
In human beings and other animals, the channelling of fun-
damental consciousness takes place primarily via the brain. (I say
‘primarily’ because the cells of the rest of the body also channel
fundamental consciousness to some degree. This implies that our
individual consciousness is to some extent spread throughout our
bodies, rather than just associated with the central nervous
system.) As fundamental consciousness is channelled through us,
the brain’s complex neural networks facilitate mental functions
such as memory, information processing, intention or will, con-
centration, and abstract and logical cognition – in other words,
everything that constitutes the individual mind. In this way the
brain is the facilitator but not the causal generator of mind. The
relationship of fundamental consciousness to mind is like the rela-
tionship between a raw ingredient and the meal which is pre-
© BOFY 2019
pared from it: fundamental consciousness constitutes the essence
of mind, but it is not equivalent to it. Mind is what happens when
spirit is filtered through the neural networks of the brain.
Is Panspiritism a Form of Idealism?
Despite some similarities, it would be wrong to view panspiritism
as a form of idealism. Idealism is the doctrine that all things,
even apparently material things, are really mental in nature. Most
forms of idealism also assume a non-material reality which is
transcendent to and independent of the world, from which the
(apparently) material things emanate. The latter is certainly also
true of my form of panspiritism, which suggests that spirit existed
prior to the universe and is more fundamental than matter. How-
ever, perhaps the essential feature of idealism is the view that
matter is of exactly the same nature as consciousness. This is not the
case with panspiritism. In panspiritism, even though they arise
from it, material things are not seen as merely the contents or
subjects of fundamental consciousness. That is, matter is not
viewed in mentalistic terms, as it is in idealism. Rather, funda-
mental consciousness generates and pervades matter, but there
is a basic distinction in nature between them.
Panspiritism also avoids the tendency of some forms of ideal-
ism to insist that material forms, and even the whole phenomenal
world, are illusory. An extreme version of this view is Advaita
Vedanta, according to which ultimately only brahman exists, and
the world of appearances generally has the status of a kind of mirage
projected by brahman (hence the lack of distinction between

36 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019

them). However, in panspiritism, the world is not a mirage. Mate-
rial things do exist, albeit as manifestations of fundamental con-
sciousness. Fundamental consciousness therefore exists both in
its unmanifest oneness and its manifest multiplicity.
Of all forms of Indian philosophy, panspiritism aligns most
closely with Bhedabheda Vedanta. Bhedabheda is similar to pan-
spiritism in that it sees brahman, or fundamental consciousness,
as the source and cause of the universe. Bhedabheda literally means
‘different and non-difference’, suggesting that material forms are
both the same as and distinct to brahman. Both the world and
brahman are completely real. In Bhedabheda, various metaphors
are used to illustrate the relationship between fundamental con-
sciousness and material forms, including the wave and ocean
metaphor I used earlier. Other metaphors are a fire and the sparks
that arise from it, the sun and its rays, and a father and son.
The Appeal of Panspiritism
So why should you take panspiritism seriously as a philosophy
of mind, and regard it more favourably than competing
approaches such as materialism, idealism and panpsychism?
To be viable, any metaphysical framework needs to be inclu-
sive and have explanatory power. It should provide an all-encom-
passing way of thinking or paradigm through which the major
facets of human experience and of the nature of reality can be
coherently interpreted, understood, and interrelated. I believe
that panspiritism can perform this role. It can contribute to under-
standing mind and matter and the relationships between them,
and provide insights into the origins of life and the processes of
evolution. In addition, panspiritism can help us make sense of a
wide range of seemingly anomalous phenomena, such as the
placebo effect and physiological influence under hypnosis, mysti-
cal experiences of oneness with the universe, near-death experi-
ences, as well as altruism and morality. (See my book Spiritual Sci-
ence for details of how panspiritism can explain these phenomena).
Of course, there are crucial areas which remain unexplained. I
have not explained, and perhaps it is not possible to explain, the
process by which matter arises out of fundamental consciousness,
or the process by which cells channel it. In this sense, you might
say that the hard problem of consciousness has simply been
reversed: that the mystery of how consciousness arises out of matter
is replaced by the mystery of how matter arises out of conscious-
ness! Nevertheless, I believe even simply as a broad approach that
synthesises what we do know about consciousness and matter,
panspiritism holds a good deal of promise. In comparison, despite
its elegant reframing of the hard problem of consciousness, the
range and explanatory power of panpsychism seems limited.
In addition, I believe the full attraction of panspiritism lies
in the value it places on all phenomena. Whereas materialism
denies the ultimate reality of mind, and idealism denies the ulti-
mate reality of matter, panspiritism sees both as equally real and
valuable. Whereas materialism sees the world as a machine, and
idealism sees it as a mirage, panspiritism sees the world as a
vibrant, interconnected whole.
© DR STEVE TAYLOR 2019
Steve Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett
University and chair of the Transpersonal Section of the British
Psychological Society. His new book is Spiritual Science.
www.stevenmtaylor.com.
Masterplan
Cogito Ergo Sum:
I think therefore I am.
But what if the only thought in my head,
is that I’d better keep thinking or I’ll wind up dead?
Don’t trust the things you see,
it’s all just the veil of perception.
How do you know that the green you see,
is the very same green that’s green for me?
I know that my thoughts are my own,
so I ask my imperfect senses
to know the things they hold,
to feel their weight, and know their worth.
Even if life’s a deception,
right from the point of conception.
Will I care that I’ve been deceived
When what matters are the things I believed?
When life flies past like a hurricane
which picks you up and eats you whole,
What are the things that you nail down;
The things you save before you go?
Stop.
Take a breath.
Ask your eyes to know the things they see,
and your hands to know the things they feel.
If this is all an illusion,
then I’ve come to this very conclusion:
that all we can see are the things we see,
and all we can feel are the things we feel.
And this is it.
I think therefore I am.
That’s the masterplan.
So when I’m dreaming, or believing,
or grasping that which is fleeting,
I’d better make the thoughts in my head,
bigger than ‘I’m glad I’m not dead’.
And keep dreaming, and believing,
because we can’t get it back again.
It’s all fleeting, we’re all leaving.
all that’s certain is that there’s an end.
© JULIE MCNEILL 2019
Julie lives in Glasgow with her husband and two young
children. She has an MA (hon) in Philosophy from Glasgow
University and is in her final year of a Masters in Creative
Writing with the Open University. She is a member of
Strathkelvin Writers’ Group, based in East Dunbartonshire.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 37
Perception
What is it Like to be a Dragonfly?
Benedict O’Connell explores puzzles of perception with Locke, Kant and Nagel.
D
o our senses give us an accurate idea of the way the
world is? Every day we’re confronted by masses of
data about the world: sounds, smells, shapes, hues,
textures. But does our sensory information amount
to a picture of reality – an idea of things as they really are?
Sensing the world around us accurately and with precision
must be advantageous in natural selection terms. We can see
why humans and other species would have developed refined
senses through the process of evolution. We might think of the
gazelle who can detect their predator miles away with an acute
sense of smell, and so potentially evade a sorry end; or the
human, who upon recognizing the blue mould on a putrid apple,
decides to eat something more pleasant and less poisonous.
Over 90% of animal species have visual processing of some
kind. The first simple image-forming eye evolved between half
a billion and 350 million years ago, on a sort of sea slug. Before
this, life was blind. But vision as a trait is a matter of degrees: it
is not a simple case of have or don’t have. Take humans, for
instance. Our vision is usually trichromatic, meaning that our
retinas tend to possess three kinds of colour-receptive cells, for
blue, green, and red wavelength light. Those with only two types
of these cells experience what we refer to as ‘colour blindness’,
meaning that they can’t distinguish between, say, blue and green.
Now consider dragonflies. As well as being able to detect
blue, green and red wavelength light, they can also perceive
light beyond human visual capabilities, including ultraviolet
light and polarised light reflecting off water. Some scientists
have described dragonflies as perceiving in ultra-HD due to
their possession of 30,000-plus ommatidia (the facets of an
insect’s eye, which are individual photoreceptor units). Their
perception of a mosaic of partially overlapping images also
allows them to see in multiple directions at the same time.
Perhaps humans have a better deal than the garden snail,
which cannot perceive colour at all or focus its vision; but at the
same time, are we missing something when it comes to our rel-
atively narrow perception of the light spectrum in comparison
to dragonflies? Given their superior light-detecting capabilities,
do dragonflies have a more realistic view of the world?
Locked In
John Locke (1632-1704) was sceptical of the view that colour
is out there in the world, inherent in physical objects themselves.
According to his philosophy of perception, what we perceive
directly in our experience are not the objects themselves, but
rather ‘copies’ of physical objects in our minds – what we would
nowadays call ‘sense data’. These so-called ‘secondary’ sensory
qualities we perceive are aspects of our perception and not of
the objects themselves independent of our perception. So, the
redness of the apple is not a property of the apple itself, but
rather a property of the image of the apple in our minds.
Locke rather problematically asserted that our sense data
‘resemble’ the physical objects from which they are derived.
38 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
This is problematic since, according to his account, we only ever
perceive sense data, not physical objects themselves. But how
can he claim that one thing resembles another if he has only
ever seen one of those things? It’s akin to claiming “Oh yes,
Steve really looks like his uncle” without ever having seen Steve’s
uncle. Claiming resemblance without familiarity with both of
the things being compared is nonsensical.
There’s a further problem with Locke’s theory, again regard-
ing his assertion that we only perceive qualities resembling
objects and not the external physical objects themselves. Scep-
ticism of not only the nature but also the very existence of the
external world looms if we cannot see beyond the veil of sense
data. If we only ever perceive representations, how can we know
if a mind-independent world of physical objects lies beyond it?
Locke’s answer is that the coherence between our senses indi-
cates an external world lying beyond them. For instance, when
making an initial judgement of an object as being ‘smooth’ after
a fleeting glimpse of that object, we can use our sense of touch
to corroborate the evidence provided by our eyes. Further sup-
port for the view that there is an external physical world could
be gained through the similarities in experience between one
human and another that can be communicated through lan-
guage and aligned behaviour.
Kant’s Copernican Revolution
But perhaps we’re thinking about the relationship between the
world and the mind in the wrong way, if we assume that we must
strive to simply conform our understanding to the world.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued instead that the world must
conform itself to the human mind. If this claim seems peculiar,
we must take a step back and identify where this line of reason-
ing comes from.
Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered that the solar system is
heliocentric or Sun-centred and not, as previously accepted,
geocentric or Earth-centred. Now of course this caused some
controversy for Sixteenth Century European minds, with their
Church-endorsed attachment to the focal point of the universe
being the Earth. The Copernican Revolution challenged ortho-
doxy not just in science, but in religion too.
Kant was to formulate his own ‘Copernican Revolution’, as he
himself called it; although his concern was the relationship between
the external world and the human mind rather than the relation-
ship between the Earth and the Sun. He drew a parallel with Coper-
nicus’s revolution because instead of the external world (cf the
Earth) being central in his philosophy of perception, for him the
perceiving mind (cf the Sun) was central. Kant argued against the
mind simply conforming itself to the external world, saying instead
that the world must also conform itself to the mind perceiving it.
In perceiving the world, people impose certain basic features on
the raw data of their sense organs because of the human mind’s
inbuilt structure. In other words, our perceptual experience is for-
matted by our cognitive arrangement, and anything external to us

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must conform to this arrangement to be
perceived at all. This unfortunately means
that what external objects are like in them-
selves can never be known.
Kant’s theorem entails that concepts
(he called them ‘categories’) such as time
are in-built aspects of the way our minds
organise information as opposed to objec-
tive features of the world. We might say,
time is inherent in the subject rather than
the object. Consider a human looking at a
dragonfly whizzing past. They perceive
the insect as moving at a certain speed; but
other species’ perception is different. For
a turtle, it would appear to be moving at
almost twice the speed; for many species
of fly, ten times slower than for a human.
This is due to animals’ brains processing
their visual experiences at different speeds.
For instance, brains receive images from
eyes a certain number of times per second:
a human brain will receive on average 24
images a second, turtles 15, and flies 250.
This idea goes some way to illustrate
Kant’s view of the subjectivity of time, as
well as explaining why if you try to swat a
fly you’re unlikely to be successful.
Further puzzles concerning whether or
not our perceptual account of the world is
accurate may arise from the physical pro-
cesses involved in perception. For
instance, light takes approximately eight
minutes and twenty seconds to travel from
the Sun to the Earth. This means that if
the Sun suddenly ceased to exist, we would
carry on with our lives in blissful ignorance
for over eight minutes until the unfortu-
nate news overshadowed us. But not only
is there a time-lag between the Sun’s light
reaching Earth, there’s also a time-lag in
our everyday perception, since it takes
time for the brain to process the informa-
tion coming into our senses and create an
experience of it for our minds. This means
that we’re perceiving even everyday things
not as they currently are but as they were
milliseconds ago.
We might not be too concerned with
this revelation. Does this substantively
undermine the view that we perceive the
world as it is? Well, perhaps milliseconds
later is only a minor aberration and we
may still perceive a world of external phys-
ical objects directly – just slightly delayed.
However, some intriguing implications
for extraterrestrial life could be more
Perception
chilling. We may only be one of hundreds
of advanced civilizations in the galaxy.
Sadly, space being the way it is (pretty spa-
cious), the average distance between any
two of these civilizations is unlikely to be
less than two hundred light years. If
extraterrestrial beings have developed
telescopes advanced enough to see us,
they’re watching light that left Earth at
least two hundred years ago. So, they’re
not seeing you and I, but instead observ-
ing George Stephenson invent the steam
engine, the First Mexican Empire declare
its independence from the Spanish, and
the world population reach one billion.
Then again, the aliens may have different
faculties of perception altogether...
What is it Like to be Human?
In his paper ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’
(1974) Thomas Nagel argues that a com-
plete biological account of a bat’s life, in
terms of their use of sonar, flying, hanging
upside down in caves and so on, would not
be enough for us humans to understand the
subjective experience of a bat. We might
try to imagine what it would be like, but
that would be using a human mind rather
than a bat mind to imagine it, and so already
we’ve defeated the purpose.
In aiming to fathom what it’s like to
be a dragonfly we may similarly fall short.
Perception is subjective in nature and so
not understandable in terms of the
observable physical properties of the
organisms involved. That goes for bats,
dragonflies and aliens. So aiming to anal-
yse consciousness objectively could well
be futile due to the very subjectivity of
consciousness. Our quest for understand-
ing is all too human.
So if Kant is correct in his Copernican
Revolution and the mind is foundational
to how the world appears, then we might
give up the gruelling task of desperately
trying to grasp the way the world is in
itself and settle for a reality that is, ulti-
mately, human. This doesn’t need to be
a defeating realisation. We may need to
accept that the world as we know it is gov-
erned by the structure of our human
minds; but awe and wonder can still be
found in contemplating how other beings
who share our universe perceive it, as well
as in how we perceive it ourselves.
© BENEDICT O’CONNELL 2019
Benedict O’Connell teaches Philosophy and
English at Strode’s College in Surrey.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 39
Perception
Locke’s Question to Berkeley
Alessandro Colarossi imagines a perceptive conversation about reality.
I
magine Locke and Berkeley enjoying a stroll together
around Oxford’s Christ Church Meadow, talking philos-
ophy. Biting into an apple from one of the trees, Locke
asks, “George, the taste of this apple right now tells me
more about myself than about the apple. And isn’t there a lot
about the apple that I am simply not getting, and am unable to
get, from my tasting it?”
John Locke (1632-1704) and George Berkeley (1685-1753)
never actually met. although both believed that all our knowl-
edge originally comes from our senses. However, they had very
different views about the nature of the reality our experiences
reveal. According to Berkeley, objects are constituted by ideas
and so are perceiver-dependent and do not exist without a mind
perceiving them: his motto is ‘to be is to be perceived’. Locke,
on the other hand, thinks that the external world exists indepen-
dent of minds, and that objects in the external world possess so-
called ‘primary qualities’. The primary qualities comprise the
physical nature of a thing. Our senses interact with these pri-
mary qualities to give rise to ‘secondary qualities’ (a.k.a sensa-
tions), such as colour, taste, and smell. Considering these two
40 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
perspectives, I will propose an answer that Berkeley would give
to Locke if Locke asked him whether or not there were more
to an apple than could be discerned by a person sensing it. Berke-
ley would argue that there is nothing in the apple over and above
the ideas formed of it based on sense experience, since to him
the apple consists of nothing other than one’s sensory experi-
ence of it (a sensory experience of an object is an ‘idea’ of it in
both Berkeley’s and Locke’s terminology). I will then argue that
this response would not be plausible for two reasons. First, it
fails to recognize the inherent complexity that objects possess.
Second, it fails to account for mistakes in perception.
Berkeley’s World
Berkeley would respond to Locke’s question by saying it’s inco-
herent or falsely founded, because the apple, according to
Berkeley, does not have any existence independent of our per-
ception of it. Rather, the existence of the apple consists of a
collection of ideas in minds, and therefore the reality of the
apple is exhausted by the various perceptions of it.
Berkeley rejects Locke’s notion of material substance. He

argues that the words ‘material’ and ‘substance’ cannot refer to
the qualities we perceive an object to have independent of minds,
such as its “figure, motion and other sensible qualities”, since
‘material’ and ‘substance’ are themselves ideas in the mind (A
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, p.29,
1710). Indeed, for Berkeley, to talk about ideas of things not in
the mind is a straightforward contradiction.
LOCKE & BERKELEY TALKING © ATHAMOS STRADIS 2019
Berkeley also claims that because our thoughts and ideas of
objects are their reality, our perception and thoughts are an
accurate representation of the reality of things. In saying this,
Berkeley is saying that his principles are opposed to skepticism.
If he is aware of perceiving something, this awareness alone is
enough evidence to not doubt reality. Specifically, he states that
there is no need to question the relation between an idea and
the existence of the thing, because, as he says, “that what I see,
hear and feel does exist, that is to say, is perceived by me, I no
more doubt than I do of my own being” (p.38).
Berkeley’s idealism prompts us to question what populates our
minds with the various thoughts and ideas. He states that upon
opening his eyes, it is not in his power to be able to choose what
his senses will perceive (p.34). This leads him to believe that the
vast array of ideas in his mind cannot be created by his own will.
They must be imprinted on his mind by “some other will or spirit
that produces them.” Specifically, our ideas are imprinted on us
by the will of a spirit more powerful and capable than ourselves
– namely, God. He also states that the overall “steadiness, order
and coherence” shows that God does not give us our ideas with-
out reason. According to (Bishop) Berkeley, this shows that God
is a wise and benevolent designer of our ideas. This in turn allows
Berkeley to conclude that his ideas and experiences are part of
the natural order of things governed by God. Therefore we can
be sure that the experiences and sensations that we have when
biting into an apple are fully proportionate to the apple itself,
because a wise and benevolent God who governs the laws of nature
and our ideas would not deceive us.
Not Ideal
The first difficulty that arises for Berkeley from Locke’s ques-
tion relates to the notion that objects consist of nothing other
than our ideas (or sensations) of them. Investigation into the
structure of objects demonstrates that our senses do not tell us
everything there is to know about them, but rather that there
is always more to discover. When we scientifically examine
objects we notice that they contain a great deal more complex-
ity than is apparent to our senses, and this complexity pre-exists
our knowledge and perception of it. For instance, any physical
object has an atomic structure that is not perceivable without
specialist scientific instruments. This alone indicates that there
must be more to an apple than the simple ideas we form of it
through our senses. Therefore Berkeley’s metaphysics is insuf-
ficient for explaining the nature of objects.
Locke would agree with this objection, arguing that our
ideas of objects are based on their secondary qualities, which
are dependent on an object’s primary qualities, which exist
independent of our perception of the objects. This illustrates
that we cannot even infer all the secondary (sensory) qualities
an object could provide if we only have a normal human sense
of its qualities.
Perception
This objection allows us to question Berkeley’s theory fur-
ther. Why would a wise and benevolent God give our mind the
idea of an apple and not allow us to fully experience the possi-
ble range of its sensations?
A second problem for Berkeley’s theory is that it is unable to
account for errors in perception. Berkeley’s idealism denounces
all skepticism: we must trust the input of our senses. Further-
more, Berkeley presumes that there are no mind-independent
objects for us to compare and measure the validity of our ideas
against. We must just accept that all of our ideas constitute the
various attributes of an object. How then can we account for the
possibility of error? For example, if we have an idea of a stick in
water that appears to be bent we must accept it as true because
not only has a wise and benevolent God given us this idea but
there is no external reality to which our idea can be compared
to see if it is correct or incorrect. In response Berkeley would
perhaps say that objects are exactly as they appear to us in our
minds. But Berkeley’s idealism here ignores common sense.
Ultimately, Berkeley’s response to Locke is that when biting
into an apple there is nothing other than the idea of the apple
in our mind. In other words, there are no qualities in the apple
over and above those available to human sense and cognition.
However, this answer led to two fundamental problems. The
first was its inability to account for the fact that we don’t expe-
rience all the qualities of an object. Specifically, there is an abun-
dance of initially-unobserved complexity found in objects that
we uncover as we investigate the objects further. This indicates
that our senses do not exhaust an object, and so strongly sug-
gests that some (primary) qualities in objects pre-exist our sen-
sory acquaintance with them. The second problem with Berke-
ley’s response is that it is unable to account for error. The fact
that we can be mistaken about what it is we see indicates that
there is the possibility of a ‘mismatch’ between perception and
reality. This mismatch could only occur if there was an exter-
nal, mind-independent reality in which objects existed. These
problems indicate that Berkeley’s idealism is implausible.
© ALESSANDRO COLAROSSI 2019
Alessandro Colarossi is a Technical Consultant from Toronto. He has
a BA in Philosophy from York University, and an Advanced
Diploma in Systems Analysis from Sheridan College, Toronto.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 41

Thoughts on Minds
DEAR EDITOR: I was fascinated to read in
Peter Stone’s review of Daniel Dennett’s
book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back in
PN Issue 129 that the book was actually
written by a crowd of tiny robots! Amaz-
ing! Think of the logistics required to
get them all to work together coherently,
particularly when it seems that none of
them speak English!
However, my amazement changed to
concern when I thought about the royal-
ties that the book will earn. Dennett has
admitted that the tiny robots wrote the
book, but he’s still claiming to be the
author! Clearly he intends to keep the
royalties to himself instead of ensuring
that the tiny robots get what is rightfully
theirs. Sadly, Philosophy Now appears to be
colluding in the swindle by crediting
Dennett with sole authorship in all its
headings and listings. I trust that PN will
print a correction in the next issue,
acknowledging the true authorship of the
book [the robots, Ed]. Indeed, it would be
highly commendable if PN were to go
further and initiate legal proceedings
against Dennett on behalf of the robots. I
feel certain that many readers would will-
ingly contribute to that worthy cause.
LES REID,
EDINBURGH
DEAR EDITOR: ‘The mind is an illusion!’
‘Mind is flat!’ But if there is no mind,
then there’s no manic depression, there’s
no anorexia/bulimia, no attention sur-
plus disorder, and I’ve been wasting my
time with all those doctors, psychologists
and psychiatrists – all those fellow selves
who have tried to help me, myself and
my brain work better. All those psy-
choprofessions will not exist if this non-
sensical idea takes hold. The flat mind
idea is as silly as the flat earth hypothesis.
Was my husband ‘illuded’ (that obsolete
word fits here) when he turned me in to
the medical authorities? Was all that
pain nothing? That action nothing?
So here I sit at the bottom of the pond
42 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
Letters
When inspiration strikes, don’t bottle it up.
Email me at rick.lewis@philosophynow.org
Keep them short and keep them coming!
trying to flatten my mind. Damn, that
isn’t working. I stayed up all night trying
to bend it shapeless, make it into a floor.
My medical specialists have been working
on my brain chemistry to ease my mind,
to control my actions, which are a product
of my mind, generated by my brain. I
might be ignorant, mad, or not even exist;
but I’m not stupid.
KATE STEWART,
BELLTHORPE, QUEENSLAND
DEAR EDITOR: Regarding Stephen
Anderson’s review of Markus Gabriel’s
book I Am Not A Brain in PN Issue 129:
I’m going against the grain.
A mind is not a brain.
There’s something that’s unique
Of which I dare not speak.
We know that we know.
And have the ability to show:
We can direct our evolution
By offering a solution.
We’re not just instinctive
We’re also self-reflexive.
We can think twice
And don’t need to pay the price
Of thinking that we’re ‘mere’,
With no need of being sincere.
We can start to be responsible
And not accept the inevitable.
There’s no need to use an excuse
To cover up our abuse.
We could start to transcend
And we’d soon begin to mend.
Through activating our wills
We might cure all our ills.
PHIL ORD
Plumbing and Modesty
DEAR EDITOR: Carol Nicholson’s
account of Mary Midgley’s scholarly
contributions in her obituary in Issue
129 includes what might be Professor
Midgley’s most memorable metaphor:
philosophy can be understood as a form
of plumbing, in that bad smells force us
to “re-examine the deep infrastructure of
our life as a whole... to find confusions
and conflicts that are causing the serious
problems in the pipes.” This work is
something “we all do all the time.”
As a consequence of training and prac-
tice on inanimate devices, plumbers’
efforts produce worthwhile results: sinks
are cleared, showers are installed and
bathroom taps get replaced. In a
plumber’s busy week, dozens of customers
might be satisfied – and without much
discussion on the precise nature of their
technical difficulties. But problematic
communities hold considerable variety:
the detail of a group’s logic, language, val-
ues and aims may not match anything dis-
cussed in tutorials at Cambridge, Newcas-
tle, or Harvard. So should practical
philosophers adopt a distinctly modest
stance when rolling up their sleeves and
knocking on new doors, confident some
toolbox of concepts is the one lay people
need to think deeply about confusions in
attempts to improve their life as a whole?
NEIL RICHARDSON,
KIRKHEATON
Decline and Rebirth
DEAR EDITOR: In PN 130, Daniel Kauf-
man gives a useful account of the decline
of philosophy as an academic subject. But
to a large extent, this has resulted from
wider changes in the role assigned to uni-
versities within capitalist societies.
The nature of this change is even
more evident in the UK than in the US.
A principle has been explicitly adopted by
the British government that the purpose
of a university course is to enhance the
future earnings potential of its students.
Unsurprisingly, philosophy has not come
out of this assessment very impressively.
Currently under discussion is a plan to
refuse student loans for such ‘low value’
courses. The intended effect of this will
be to close down departments of philoso-
phy and many other ‘arts’ subjects.
But, as Kaufman makes clear, the end
of academic philosophy will not entail the
end of interest in the subject. Popular
curiosity about philosophy is, if anything,

on the increase. So perhaps it is time for
philosophy to leave the shelter of
academia and return to the public square –
the agora – where it began? That is where
today the need is greatest for logical argu-
ments and challenges to received assump-
tions. Philosophy Now, as a non-academic
publication, is ideally placed to help sup-
port this transition.
PETER BENSON,
LONDON
DEAR EDITOR: My perspective on Daniel
Kaufman’s discussion on ‘The Decline &
Rebirth of Philosophy’ is of an outsider.
But I think the major problem with phi-
losophy as it’s practiced today, as a purely
academic activity, is that it doesn’t fit into
the current economic paradigm which tac-
itly governs all value judgements of a pro-
fession or an activity. In other words, it
has no perceived economic value either to
corporations or to governments. On the
other hand, everyone can see the benefits
of science in the form of the technological
marvels they use every day. Yet I would
argue that science and philosophy are
joined at the hip. The same people who
benefit from the magic of modern tech-
nology are often unaware of the long road
from the Enlightenment to the industrial
revolution, through the formulation of the
laws of thermodynamics, followed closely
by the laws of electromagnetism, followed
by the laws of quantum mechanics, upon
which every electronic device depends.
CARTOON © WOLFGANG NIESIELSKI 2019
“No, Herr Nietzsche, I don’t feel stronger yet.”
Plato’s Academy was based on Pythago-
ras’s quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy and music. In Western culture,
science, mathematics and philosophy have
a common origin.
John Wheeler, best known for coining
the term ‘black hole’ in cosmology, said,
“We live on an island of knowledge sur-
rounded by a sea of ignorance. As our
island of knowledge grows, so does the
shore of our ignorance.” I contend that
the ‘island of knowledge’ is science and
the ‘shore of ignorance’ is philosophy. In
other words, philosophy is at the frontier
of knowledge, and because the sea of
ignorance is infinite, there will always be a
role for it. The marriage between science
and philosophy in the Twenty-First Cen-
tury is about how we are going to live on a
planet with limited resources. We need a
philosophy to guide us into a collaborative
global society that realises we need Earth
more than it needs us.
PAUL P. MEALING
MELBOURNE
DEAR EDITOR: Re. Daniels Kaufman’s
article, the decline and rebirth of philoso-
phy are topics close to my heart. With
decline the philosophers still known to
the general public are the old guys like
Plato and Aristotle. Many have also heard
of the Hebrew philosopher, Solomon,
with the wisdom of Solomon being a well
known phrase. The definition of a
philosopher was more fluid back then,
Letters
with Solomon being a king as well as
authoring Ecclesiastes, and Aristotle a
proto-scientist. Prophets are presented in
the Hebrew Bible as wise ones, philoso-
phers, politicians, advisors whom the king
of the day would consult before embark-
ing on a battle. For example, the prophet-
ess Deborah who sat under a palm tree
giving advice to all Israel (Judges chap.4).
I am struggling to come to my point here,
but I think it’s what a lecturer in Chinese
philosophy said (while babysitting for
me): it’s all getting very atheistic. I think
her point was that the mysticism of the
old philosophers was more fun.
A philosophy lecturer at Glasgow Uni-
versity always stopped and told a joke mid
lecture just for fun. In her tradition I tell a
wee story mid letter. It’s true. Some time
ago, when the professors lived in Profes-
sor’s Square at Glasgow, a bunch of the
general public argued over a point of phi-
losophy in a nearby pub. At chucking out
time they went en masse to The Square to
ask the philosophy professor there to set-
tle the point. When they knocked on a
door the housekeeper answered and they
asked her if this was the professor’s house.
Yes, she replied, bring him in.
We modern philosophers need to
return to the fun, to chew the fat as they
say up my way. I didn’t progress in aca-
demic philosophy after my degree (no
surprise) but I certainly use what I learned
to spout forth in pub, cafe and Kirk, but
isn’t that (re)birthing philosophy?
KRISTINE KERR, GOUROCK
P.S. This letter is a bit chaotic, but
birthing is a messy business.
Niesche Nietze Nietzsche Now
“What doesn’t kill you will make you
stronger”,
Says Nietzsche, who’s not around any
longer.
Facing all kinds of miseries and bane
Instead of stronger, he went insane.
However, what’s truly disturbing and
very sad,
Spelling his name will make the rest
of us mad.
WOLFGANG NIESIELSKI, USA
Free Won’t
DEAR EDITOR: I was intrigued by Taylor
Dunn’s article ‘The Free Will Pill’ in
Issue 130. It’s a good example of a
thought experiment. However, there’s a
flaw in the argument for determining the
moral case for or against taking a pill
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 43
Letters
that will give you free will. True choices
can only be made after this pill is taken.
But true choice is a prerequisite of being
a moral agent. Hence the person is not a
moral agent before the pill is taken – so
cannot make a moral choice about taking
it! So deciding whether I ought to take
this pill is as meaningless as deciding
whether I ought to be born.
RUSSELL BERG,
MANCHESTER
Sympathetic Fallacies
DEAR EDITOR: As a devoted Humean, I
would be remiss if I refrained from point-
ing out John Shand’s logical mistake in
arguing for voluntary euthanasia for
humans in Issue 129. Simply, he commits
what my philosophical hero dubbed the
‘is-ought’ fallacy: you can’t derive a pre-
scriptive statement from a descriptive one.
In this specific case, just because it’s true
that we are putting animals that are suffer-
ing to sleep, it doesn’t necessarily follow
that we ought to do the same concerning
humans. Of course Shand may reply, why
shouldn’t we? To which I would answer
the onus is not on me to prove a negative.
The fact is he cannot prove we ought to
allow voluntary euthanasia for humans
just because we practice it on animals.
TRACEY BRAVERMAN
BROOKLYN, NY
Pain, Happiness & Conceptual Art
DEAR EDITOR: I found Trevor Pateman’s
critique of conceptual art (PN 129) less
than convincing. Conceptual art probes
the boundaries around art and raises diffi-
cult questions about how we classify
something as art. That act seems invalu-
able in itself. The labelling matters.This
is why Marcel Duchamp’s urinal labelled
‘Fountain’ was so important.
Trevor claims that you have to experi-
ence art first-hand to respond to it
‘appropriately’. This raises the question,
what is an ‘appropriate’ response to any
work of art? Most people consume art
second-hand: they buy prints that are
copies, not originals. They may enjoy the
copy even if they haven’t seen the origi-
nal. Is that an ‘appropriate’ response to
art? I would argue ‘yes’. It still enables
pleasure or study. Much of Richard
Long’s landscape art is subject to decay,
being outdoors. This leaves us to rely on
photographs of it and the opinions of
authors and critics. It’s great to visit a
work of art in a physical location, but is it
44 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
vital? And is being influenced by a critic
or an author’s explanation bad, if we can’t
see the work of art in person? I say no.
When we view any work of art we do
so through preconceived ideas about art,
artists and art galleries. We rely on teach-
ers, lecturers, authors, critics, newspapers
and magazines to help us understand the
‘meaning’ or significance of a piece of art,
even if we do look at the art later. We also
understand art by recognising cultural
codes from everyday life. We can’t stand
in the physical presence of art and free our
minds from everything outside it.
Curiously, Trevor Pateman’s article in
PN is an example of a critic trying to influ-
ence our view of conceptual art and its
meaning by discussing seeing artworks,
most of which we may never see.
GRAEME KEMP,
SHROPSHIRE
DEAR EDITOR: In ‘The Case Against
Conceptual Art’, Trevor Pateman’s main,
and as it seems sole argument, relies on
the fact that in order to experience con-
ceptual art “you just need a description
spelling out the idea that the actual art-
work itself was created to illustrate.” His
conviction that the actual artwork simply
illustrates an idea reveals his misunder-
standing of conceptual art’s essence.
Even Pateman must agree that con-
ceptual art somehow differs from other
types of art – otherwise, his ‘case against
conceptual art’ is a rather futile endeav-
our. But Pateman doesn’t fully accept
the implication of the distinction, since it
means that ‘properly’ appreciating con-
ceptual art differs from ‘properly’ appre-
ciating, say, sculptural art.
So what counts as conceptual art’s
essence? According to pioneering con-
ceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, “Concep-
tual art, simply put, has as its basic tenet
an understanding that artists work with
meaning, not with shapes, colours, or
materials” (The Art Bulletin, 78(3), 1996,
pp.407). Sol LeWitt, another renowned
conceptual artist, declares that “Ideas can
be works of art” (Artforum, 5(10), 1967,
p.82). Similar thoughts were uttered by,
for instance, Lawrence Weiner, Terry
Atkinson, Lucy Lippard. But if indeed
the idea is the artwork, then what is the art
object presented to us?
It’s hard to disagree with the principle
that in order to communicate an idea,
one has to present that idea. Thus, if an
artist wants to expose an idea as an art-
work, she or he will have to find a proper
way of presenting it. However, this does-
n’t turn the form of presentation into the
actual artwork: the form of presentation
simply works as an instrument that
guides us towards the actual artwork,
which is the idea.
Although I don’t necessarily disagree
with Pateman that you best experience
art at first hand, I would like to point out
that experiencing art as an idea differs
from experiencing conceptual art’s form
of presentation. It turns out that Pateman
is right when he answers his own (semi-)
rhetorical question “How can you love
the piece if you haven’t seen it? All you
can love is the idea of it”. Well, that’s
exactly how one ought to appreciate a
piece of conceptual art!
LOWIE GEERS,
BRUSSELS
DEAR EDITOR: I am grateful to Dr Alexan-
der Joy in Issue 130 for mentioning my
work and identifying my system, Painism,
as the most promising consequentialist
ethical approach for the future. Painism is
to do with the happiness of others, but art
is very much part of this. A report in The
Times (18 Dec. 2018) highlights the
immense power that visual art can have in
causing human emotional and physiologi-
cal reactions, some healthy and others
dangerous. Music probably even more so.
Your editorial ‘The Functions of Art’
(Philosophy Now 129), is a brilliant sum-
mary but I worry on one point, when you
list the functions of contemporary art as
including “investment, prestige, and virtue
signalling.” Surely the basic function of art
remains the happiness it causes? Chiefly,
as you indicate, this happiness is caused by
beauty. The love of beauty is innate within
all of us and is linked with sexual attrac-
tiveness, the beauty of song and the sight
of comfortable and supportive landscape.
Thank goodness beauty is staging a come-
back, and the belief that art is only an effi-
cient means of expressing ideas or con-
cepts is in retreat! As Trevor Pateman
writes in the same issue, “a painting is
made to be seen.” One could add “and
concepts are made to be talked about.” I
believe the perception of beauty, skill and
imagination remain the three main
sources of the happiness to be derived
from visual art.
DR RICHARD D. RYDER
(Author: Speciesism, Painism and Happiness:
A Morality for the 21st Century)
IMAGE BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON
The Other Side
of the Coins
Peter Adamson on the philosophical edge of numismatics.
H
istorians of philosophy are
philosophers, but they are
also historians. This means
that, in principle, they may
benefit from knowing whatever historians
can know. We usually think of the histo-
rian of philosophy as working only on
philosophical texts, reading Aristotle or
Hume, not the Domesday Book or war
chronicles; but I think there are philosoph-
ical insights to be found in even the most
archeological areas of the historical record.
As a kind of test case, I suggest thinking
about numismatics – the study of coins.
Yes, coins! Especially old ones, such as
you’ve probably walked past in museums
on your way to view more obviously inter-
esting artefacts. Historians love them
because, like clay pots and stone inscrip-
tions, they are among the few physical
objects that can survive for millennia, and
be dated quite specifically. But why would
a historian of philosophy care about coins?
Well for starters, coins are themselves
philosophically fascinating, because of the
different ways they embody value. We now
think of money as precious only by custom
or decree: if you melt down a Euro coin you
won’t get a Euro’s worth of metal. But back
in the day, coins were assumed to have the
value of the precious materials from which
they were made. One of the first theoretical
works about the nature of money, written
by Nicole Oresme in the fourteenth cen-
tury, urged the king of France not to debase
currency by adding in base metals, so creat-
ing a gap between its customary value and
its ‘true’ value. In this Oresme anticipated
‘Gresham’s law’ that “bad money drives out
good”. When debased currency is intro-
duced, older, purer coins are hoarded, or
taken abroad, to exploit their higher gold
and silver content. And long before then, in
Classical Greece, Cynic philosophers
showed their understanding of the power-
ful link between custom (nomos) and the
value of coinage (nomisma) by comparing
their own philosophy of social critique to
‘defacing the currency’.
Coins issued at a specific time and place
can be philosophically revealing in other
Philosophy Then
ways too. When rulers choose the images
for the coins of the realm, they convey the
ideology by which they justify their rule.
Thus medieval Christian coins have
Christian religious imagery on
them, whereas the Roman
Emperor Augustus put
his zodiacal sign on the
coins. In both cases,
citizens were able to
hold a whole theory of
legitimacy in their
hands. Where the
Christian kings were
appointed by God,
Augustus’ rule was a decree
of Fate – an idea also conveyed by
a propagandistic anecdote in which the
young Augustus consulted an astrologer,
who simply fell down in awe when he saw
what the horoscope foretold. Or consider
the occasional appearance of women on
coins, as with Empresses of Byzantium.
Their depiction on currency is used by his-
torians to track the extent to which women
were able to overcome cultural attitudes
towards gender as they claimed and
wielded power.
Historians of philosophy spend a lot of
their time thinking about the transmission
of ideas between cultures, and if you want
to know about cultural exchange it helps to
know about coins, although admittedly,
coins travel more easily than ideas. There
have been remarkable finds of coinage
from the Islamic world in early medieval
England, whereas there is no evidence of
influence of Islamic philosophy on early
English philosophy (which did exist, by
the way: Alfred the Great translated
Boethius into English, for instance). But
numismatics can also shed additional light
on the exchanges that did happen, or may
have happened. For example, Islamic
coins were imitated by the Byzantine
mints, in a sign of the openness of Eastern
Christian culture to influence from its
chief antagonist. And if I were trying to
persuade you that Greek and Indian phi-
losophy influenced one another, the first
thing I’d do is show you an image of the
‘Indo-Greek’ coins from Bactria
(Afghanistan), which sometimes have
inscriptions in more than one language.
It’s fascinating to see the way monarchs
are depicted on coins from India,
in particular how they are
dressed (such as in a toga), as
this can betray the cultural
background of the rulers
– or at least the back-
ground they wanted to
claim for themselves.
The religious trappings of
coinage also provide infor-
mation about the dominance
of Buddhism, or a given branch
of Hinduism, under any given Indian
ruler. This is of evident importance for the
study of philosophers who lived in that
time and place.
So closely tied are the circulation of
ideas and of money that the emergence of
philosophy itself has been connected to
the first coinage. You might assume that
it’s just coincidence that the earliest
philosophers, the Milesians, lived just as
coins came into being in the seventh cen-
tury BC, in the area where coinage was
invented (Western Turkey). But scholars
such as George Thomson and Richard
Seaford have argued that it’s no coinci-
dence at all. Money encouraged a certain
kind of society, fluid in its exchanges and
more advanced in its thinking. Unlike
exchanging a cow for three goats, buying
something with a coin implies a certain
level of abstract thinking – the kind of
thinking on display in the earliest Greek
philosophy. How apt, then, that our very
first substantial surviving fragment of Pre-
Socratic philosophy uses a monetary
metaphor to describe the whole cosmos:
Anaximander said that when things come
to be and perish, “they pay penalty and
retribution to one another for their injus-
tice, according to the assessment of time.”
© PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2019
Peter Adamson is the author of A History of
Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1, 2
& 3, available from OUP. They’re based on his
popular History of Philosophy podcast.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 45
 We seek purpose and enlightenment as Stephen
Anderson attempts to understand Raymond Tallis’s

Books attempt to understand our understanding of the world, and

Lachlan Dale considers a naturalistic view of Buddhism.

Logos
by Raymond Tallis
WE ARE SOMETIMES SLOW
to recognize any downside
to our modern age’s mad
enthusiasm for scientific
achievement, technological advancement,
globalization, bureaucratic rationalization
and the proliferation of information. But
philosophers have highlighted the paradox of
the proportional diminishment of the
human: knowledge is increased, but the
genuinely human recedes. Measurement
replaces mere human judgment. General
theories are established by the elimination of
the particular, the exceptional. Globalization
eliminates key markers of individual identity:
ethnicity, nationality, locality. Government
institutions render communal action redun-
dant. Technological innovation replaces the
body. We are more powerful, but less
personal. The paradox is that for knowledge
to count as knowledge at all, it must be
processed in an individual consciousness.
From the one who makes the discovery to the
community of persons who recognize and
implement it, to the person ultimately
receiving the knowledge, the entire process
is shot through with the participation of
particular human beings. Therefore, any
reduction of the role of people in the produc-
response (Quine, Ramsey, Tarski, et al) holds
that apparently non-physical things such as
minds, values, experience, consciousness,
even science itself, are no more than by-prod-
ucts of the evolutionary process working on
the physical structures of the brain. They
burst out, emerging suddenly and inexplica-
bly, as conditions not entirely adequately
explained by their cause. Yet however odd
they may be, these things are in principle
entirely explicable in terms of brain mapping
or some related matter-based strategy, the
materialists say. Sure, there are questions
about it at the moment: but all will eventually
be absorbed into all we know about the phys-
ical world. In this way materialism issues a
promissory note for the future.
A second response is from idealism (Berke-
ley, Kant, Hegel, et al, or more recently,
Wheeler). In idealism, the apparently mate-
rial world is thought to be the product of mere
ideas, and (in Kant’s case at least) these ideas
entail no genuine access to the reality beyond
the appearances. We stand in a sort of soli-
tude, a very long distance from whatever
objective realities give rise to our experience.
That we feel our experiences, viewpoints,
insights and factual claims to straightfor-
wardly represent reality is natural; but it is also
essentially a misunderstanding. If there is a
real world out there beyond our experiences,
it is not accessible to any of us in a clear,
distinct, unmediated way.
In both of these putative ‘solutions’, one
side of the problem is merely dismissed.
Either all our consciousness and cognitive
complexity is ground down to mere matter,
or reality itself is reduced to mere ideas float-
ing in atomistic minds. Both solutions to the
problem of the intelligibility of the universe,
argues Tallis, are deeply flawed and existen-
tially unsatisfying. As he puts it, “There
comes a point at which the divorce between
how the world looks and feels, and our scien-
tific understanding of it comes to feel like a
deep cognitive wound” (p.172). Indeed so.
Tallis sets out his argument in several phases
to circumvent this arbitrary divorce between
the realm of human experience and the realm
of the scientific/objective description of real-
ity, to heal this ‘deep cognitive wound’.
Chapter One introduces the basic issues.
How can we possibly make sense of a world
we presume is generated by random, irra-
tional causes? The issue here is not just that
something exists where we might reasonably
expect nothing; it’s that the something is capa-
ble of becoming the partner of intelligent

PAINTING OF FIRST MAN AND FIRST WOMAN BY GERALD NAILOR © SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE
tion and circulation of knowledge is not a
step in the direction of wisdom: rather, it is
evidence of a kind of amnesia about what
we’re doing. If today we fail to marvel at the
world, this is only a signal of how far our loss
of self-awareness has progressed.
This is where Raymond Tallis enters the
discussion, with his new book, Logos: The
Mystery of How We Make Sense of The World
(2018). The central question he’s asking
here is, ‘How is it that the universe – presum-
ably a product of the random actions of
chance and time – is so consistent and law-
like that the human mind can understand,
predict. and interact with it effectively?’ Or,
minimally, ‘How is in that the human mind
can understand the world with any degree of
clarity at all?’ These are not idle questions.
They reach to the bottom of philosophy.
Two forms of reductionism have sprung
up in response to them. The materialist

46 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019 Book Reviews


reflection by personal observers – a huge
surprise. The something is also governed by
laws of particular types, with specific values,
and consistency, and coherence. How could
such a marvelous fit between conscious
beings and a world that makes conscious
sense come to be? It hardly seems random.
The second chapter deals with the concep-
tual background to the problem. Tallis
forages briefly through the etymological,
historical, and religious background of the
idea of logos, from which we get both logic and
all our –ologies. Logos means the coherent
word of explanation, and this word is how
Classical civilisation thought about the
comprehensible content of physical reality.
Tallis thoughtfully parses both Genesis and
the first chapter of John’s Gospel – “In the
beginning was the Word” – from a symbolic
perspective. For those worried that Tallis is
here reopening the door to metaphysics, or
even (gasp!) to religion, he vows that he writes
from the view of a secular Humanist – but
with a healthy respect for the intelligence of
ancient writ, and of the Biblical narrative in
particular, rather than the modernist
presumption that wisdom began with the
Renaissance or the French Enlightenment.
In the next two chapters Tallis shows why
both materialism and idealism are inade-
quate responses to the question of human
knowledge. Essentially, materialism aban-
dons the human in order to grasp the phys-
ical, and idealism embraces the world of
experience at the expense of recognising the
indispensability of objective reality itself. In
Chapter Five, Tallis further shows that the
subjectivity of human knowledge cannot be
explained or, as he puts it, ‘casually elimi-
nated’ by presuming a tidy continuity
between basic animal stimuli and the
complex corpus of human knowledge and
modes of understanding. Chapter Six intro-
duces ‘the realm of thatter’ – the gap between
immediate sensation and the knowledge that
something is true. These types of experience
are not identical, nor are they even on a
continuum: knowledge is both quantita-
tively and qualitatively different from mere
sentience. Here Tallis rejects the reductive
narrative about how we allegedly went from
the latter to the former.
His final two chapters bring the case
home. He argues that we need both confi-
dence in the accessibility of the physical
realm, and a healthy skepticism about the
firmness of our access to it. We may not be
infallible, even when it comes to compre-
hending our own thoughts; but this is a great
distance from implying that there is nothing
Book Reviews
‘out there’, or that the physical world is not
the real cause of what’s going on in us. Not
only that, but some of our persistent uncer-
tainties are actually assets. Opacity, the
impenetrability of objects to our vision, is
the basis of vision itself. Similarly, it is the
resistance of the world to our manipulations
and judgments that bestows on it the pecu-
liar quality we recognize as reality. More-
over, ‘knowing that’ requires a distance
between the mind and the world that
permits reflective speculation rather than
mere reaction to stimuli.
For Tallis, the key is that knowledge is a
relational property. There is both a real real-
ity ‘out there’ and a genuine knower ‘in
here’. Eliminate one, and you’ve stultified
human knowledge. Knowledge is not the
one-sided material disposition of the human
cranium, nor is it a mere figment of the
imagination of a ghost inside a phantom
machine. Rather, it is a kind of dance, a
production of the constant dynamic of
human consciousness moving between the
internal world of experience and the real,
resistant, physical world. The imperfections
and challenges of this process, far from
being signals of failure or any reason to
abandon hope, are actually the indispens-
able preconditions of human knowledge.
Moreover, there’s a community of knowers
‘out there’ too; and we cannot reckon with-
out them: individually, we will only ever
know partly, imperfectly, incompletely, no
matter how full the stock of human knowl-
edge grows. Essentially, then, Tallis calls for
an end to the unfruitful antagonism
perceived to exist between the human
dimension of knowledge and the hard facts
of objective reality. It is only by accepting
the reality of both, and by paying more
attention to the dynamic interplay between
them, that we are able to make sense of things.
This book requires careful, thoughtful
reading, and readers who already have some
familiarity with the debate concerning
knowledge will have an easier time. That
said, it offers a substantial new direction in
a pretty hot area of philosophy. In particular,
Tallis’s critiques of the extremes are well-
considered. If this is in your area of interest,
then this book is more than worth its
purchase price.
© DR STEPHEN L. ANDERSON 2019
Stephen Anderson is a philosophy teacher in
London, Ontario.
• Logos: The Mystery of How We Make Sense of
The World, by Raymond Tallis, Agenda, 2018, 320
pages, $27 hb, ISBN 978-1788210874
Books
Why Buddhism Is True
by Robert Wright
ROBERT WRIGHT’S BOOK,
Why Buddhism Is True: The
Science And Philosophy Of
Meditation And Enlightenment (2017) is part of
the ‘Secular Buddhist’ movement – a project
which seeks to strip away the religion’s meta-
physical and mystical content and ground it in
a naturalistic or science-based interpretation.
In this sense the title is something of a
misnomer. Wright has little interest in
preserving tradition if it cannot stand up to his
secular critique. Still, he is convinced that
Buddhism anticipated by a matter of centuries
knowledge about the human mind that we are
only now unearthing through science. Addi-
tionally, Wright believes that Buddhism has
techniques which allow us to lessen certain
negative aspects of the human condition,
namely ignorance, suffering and discontent.
To argue his case, Wright draws upon evolu-
tionary psychology, neuroscience and his own
engagement with meditation, in order to anal-
yse the core tenets of Buddhism and reflect
upon their moral and philosophical implica-
tions. He’s hopes that Buddhism might help
realise a more sustainable future for humanity.
The View from Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary psychology considers how
millions of years of evolution has shaped
human perception and behaviour; or as
Wright puts it, “how the human brain was
designed – by natural selection – to mislead
us, even enslave us” (p.3).
As a starting point for his analysis, Wright
invites us to consider the fleeting nature of
pleasure. While we experience powerful crav-
ings for food, sex, or social prestige, the satis-
faction accompanying the fulfillment of these
desires is often short-lived. Our minds seem
to overestimate the pleasure we’ll receive
from achieving our goals. There are strong
evolutionary reasons for this. It makes sense
for evolution to create animals that crave
things that will help them survive and repro-
duce, and also for the satisfaction of achieving
them to be fleeting. A creature which contin-
ually needs to strive in order to satisfy its crav-
ings is more likely to actively seek mates, for
instance. So deep and lasting happiness is not
something that comes easily to human beings.
Modern psychology has also demonstrated
many ways in which we are prone to delusion
and illusion. There are some fairly benign
examples: we overestimate the speed of
objects coming toward us; we alter memories
as we recall them; and we consider ourselves
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 47
 Books
above average in terms of morality, athleti-
cism, and social skills. But the consequences
can be far more serious. Our tendency
towards delusionary self-righteousness
provides fuel for tribalism, which in turn can
pave the way for large-scale atrocities. The
Stanford Prison Experiment, and Milgram
Experiment, among others, have demon-
strated how social pressure can disable our
moral compass to enable cruelty and torture.
Wright argues that evolution favours
genetic proliferation above all else. Natural
selection has no inherent bias towards truth,
or towards helping us perceive reality accu-
rately. If a particular delusion actually
increases our chances of passing our genes
on, then that delusion will flourish. Wright
uses this as an argument against the deifica-
tion of our natural instincts and impulses.
And even if we don’t accept that argument,
we must admit that the world today is dras-
tically different from the environment in
which our instincts were developed. For
Wright, such drastic social, cultural, and
environmental changes make our minds
even less reliable guides to reality.
The portrait Wright paints from evolu-
tionary psychology is a powerful one. If there
is a weakness, it is that evolutionary psychol-
ogy theories are largely unable to be tested
directly. Rather, they are extrapolations into
past processes based on present evidence
guided by the principles of evolution. Wright,
like other evolutionary psychologists, patches
together a series of facts into a narrative struc-
ture. This requires a level of artistry and
creative flair, perhaps bringing the endeavour
closer to the humanities than a traditional
physical science enterprise. And figures such
as Jordan Peterson have demonstrated how
evolutionary psychology can be used to smug-
gle in philosophical and political biases.
Wright, however, does well to allow cognitive
science to form the basis of his argument,
rather than merely using an evolutionary
framework to reinforce his own perspective.
The Buddhist Solution
While studying evolutionary psychology in
college, Wright found it a powerful way to
understand the human condition, but saw
that it lacked a way to transform one’s life.
Wright wondered whether “there was a way
to operationalize the truth – a way to put the
actual, scientific truth about human nature
and the human condition into a form that
would not just identify and explain the illu-
sions we labor under, but would also help us
liberate ourselves from them” (p.110). His
search brought him to Buddhism, whose
48 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
philosophical foundations he found aligned
well with the view from evolutionary
psychology and cognitive science.
In his Four Noble Truths, the Buddha
states that life is inherently unsatisfactory
(today ‘unsatisfactoriness’ is generally
accepted as a more accurate translation of
the term dukka than ‘suffering’). The basic
cause of this is tahna – a craving for the pleas-
ant, and an aversion to the unpleasant. This
calls to mind the ‘hedonistic treadmill’ of
psychology: a constant craving and striving
towards fleeting pleasures. The Buddha’s
solution is the Eightfold Path, which
includes a regime of meditative introspec-
tion designed to train and ultimately trans-
form the mind. The end goal is liberation or
nirvana. Traditionally, this has been
regarded as possessing a metaphysical
dimension, as liberation from the cycle of
on-going reincarnation. However, Wright,
with his naturalistic bent, interprets the goal
as the liberation of consciousness from the
reality-distorting mechanisms of evolution:
“Liberation consists of changing the rela-
tionship between your consciousness and
the things you normally think of as its ‘con-
tents’ – your feelings, your thoughts, and so
on. Once you realize that these things are
‘not-self’, the relationship of your con-
sciousness to them becomes more like con-
templation than engagement, and your con-
sciousness is liberated” (p.67).
Research has shown that meditation can
indeed help people develop the metacogni-
tion Wright is talking about here – an aware-
ness of and distance from our own thought
processes. This in turn leads to a non-iden-
tification with the thoughts, feelings and
perceptions that assail our mind. Indeed,
neuro-imaging has shown that for advanced
meditators, the area of the brain that is
responsible for a wandering of the mind and
of attention has significantly reduced activ-
ity. For Wright, this metacognition is the
process through which a person can develop
an awareness of our evolved reality-distort-
ing mental mechanisms and begin to coun-
teract them. He also believes that secular
accounts of meditation and mindfulness
which focus purely on short term, therapeu-
tic benefits, do not go far enough. He advo-
cates a view from Buddhist philosophy
which instead seeks to ask “basic questions
about the relationship of the perceiver to the
perceived and… the underpinnings of our
normal view of reality” (p23). Through
Buddhist practices, he claims we can begin
to strip away layers of illusion, and thereby
bring ourselves closer to truth.
The Roots of Emotion
To evaluate this claim, we need to understand
Wright’s analysis of the human mind. Evolu-
tionary psychology suggests that our emotions
developed from rudimentary brain mecha-
nisms which encourage or discourage partic-
ular activities. For instance, anger and fear
promote defensive reactions (fight or flight in
the face of a threat) to improve our chances of
survival; lust fuels sexual activity; and pleasure
provides positive reinforcement for evolution-
ary goals (orgasm; the satisfaction of hunger;
or the warm glow of a fire on a cold night). In
this way, emotions can be regarded as auto-
matic judgements about our environment. But
these reflex judgements are not always accu-
rate. For instance, social justice movements
the world over have struggled to bring our
unconscious inferences about gender or
otherness into conscious consideration, argu-
ing that despite the ‘natural’ character of these
judgements – racism, for instance, can be seen
as an instinctive reaction to an individual you
do not identify as part of your in-group – they
are inaccurate, and incompatible with our
sense of morality, and so must be overcome
through rationality and will.
Although admittedly in its infancy, the
theory of the modular mind sheds light on
some of the neurological mechanisms
involved. This theory conceives of the brain
as possessing a variety of structures or
networks which support specific functions:
self-protection, enabled by a quick reaction to
threats; mate attraction, enabled say through
demonstrations of empathy or strength; mate
retention; kin care; status-seeking, and so on.
These modules continuously compete for the
prize of conscious attention. But this compe-
tition takes place as a nonconscious level. So
many of our impulsive reactions are noncon-
sciously generated. Compare this idea with
the phenomenon of ‘priming’. By exposing
people to stimuli they perceive subcon-
sciously, the way they react in certain situa-
tions can be manipulated in a fairly reliable
way. One study Wright cites involved asking
two sets of men to judge the facial expressions
of men of a different ethnic group in
photographs. One of these sets of judges had
been shown part of The Silence of the Lambs
beforehand. This set judged the photographs
to be showing much angrier expressions than
those who hadn’t been exposed to the film.
Experiments just like these build a view of the
mind as suggestible and often unreliable in its
perceptions. They also demonstrate the
Book Reviews

PHOTO BY JASON COOPER ON UNSPLASH
surprising extent to which our perception of
reality is both constructed and constantly
shifting. This is a particularly poignant real-
isation for morality.
The implications are far-reaching. If our
perception of reality and of ourselves can be
so easily influenced, how can we maintain
the classic conception of free will, which
depicts us as acting both independently and
rationally? At the very least, our sense of free
will must be tempered by the Buddhist (and
scientific) view of universal interconnectiv-
ity. And if it’s true that “the conscious self
doesn’t create thoughts; it receives them”
(p.112) – that we’re continually processing
information at a nonconscious level – what
does this say about the primacy of reason? If
anything, cognitive science suggests that the
conscious mind plays a lesser role in choice
than previously thought – that we make
countless important judgements below the
level of consciousness. Through mindful
introspection we can bring these judgements
into consciousness, then work to circumvent
them if necessary.
Essential Judgements
Wright develops his argument to question
the very nature of perception. He claims that
humans are predisposed to a kind of essen-
tialism – a belief that both people and physical
objects have fixed essences – but that this
Book Reviews
tendency of thought is incompatible with our
understanding of reality, which is that people
and things can change, sometimes radically.
This particular delusion has very specific
negative consequences. Psychology has
demonstrated that when we evaluate the
actions of someone we do not consider part of
our in-group, we strongly underestimate the
role of situational factors. The stranger who
cuts us off on the highway, or who cheats one
of our friends, is considered not a victim of
circumstance but rather as revealing their
essence as a fundamentally bad person. Our
friends, however, are afforded the benefit of
the doubt. When they cut someone off in traf-
fic, the action is far more likely to be excused
as ‘out of character’, and we maintain the idea
that they’re somehow fundamentally good.
You can see this bias playing out on a
grand scale in politics. Some of the conspir-
acy theories coming from extremists seemed
unhinged – such as accusations that Hillary
Clinton amongst other Democrats were
part of a secretive, almost cartoonishly evil
paedophile ring. This is part of a desire to
demonise one’s opponent, coupled with the
cognitive delusion that we can fairly judge
someone as having an evil nature.
Here Wright’s argument intersects with
his political project. He believes that most
of the world’s violence, cruelty and suffering
stems from our inability to perceive the
Books
world clearly. This is perhaps the weakest
aspect of his thesis, and he admits it’s part of
his own worldview. Certainly, the view fits
comfortably within the framework of
Buddhist moral philosophy. But it is not
significantly substantiated in the text, and
it’s also not clear how a profound transfor-
mation of consciousness at the individual
level can take place within the time-frame
required by pressing issues such as climate
change or the threat of nuclear war.
Additionally, little time is spent actually
exploring how meditation and mindfulness
will create a more moral life in Wright’s terms.
Wright provides many anecdotes and gener-
alities: if we achieve distance from our instinc-
tive emotional reactions, we will be able to
better evaluate their validity; if we actively
cultivate our sense of compassion, we are more
likely to be kind and caring… But he does not
establish his ethics through substantial philo-
sophical argument. Instead, he states that
Buddhist moral instruction must go along
with meditative practise – thereby sidestep-
ping the need to philosophically ground
Buddhism’s particular moral code.
Still, Wright has achieved a considerable
amount with Why Buddhism Is True. He
interweaves secular Buddhism and evolu-
tionary psychology with precision and clar-
ity, and in doing so he has followed perhaps
the best route for modern philosophy: to
glean insights from contemporary science in
order to examine the human condition and
reflect upon our moral imperatives. And by
coupling a powerful argument against selfish
individualism and anthropocentrism with an
urging of the Buddhist path of meditation,
mindfulness, and introspection, Wright
prescribes an active solution for suffering and
delusion – and, moreover, one that is open
to revision and refinement. While it is doubt-
ful that more traditional schools of
Buddhism will approve of Wright’s prag-
matic approach – that is, his willingness to set
aside centuries of metaphysical speculation,
ritual and myth in the name of secularism –
this approach is crucial to the development
of secular forms of Buddhist practice and
philosophy. This makes Wright’s book an
invaluable introduction to and argument for
the riches of secular, naturalistic Buddhism.
© LACHLAN R. DALE 2019
Lachlan Dale is a writer and musician. He is
currently undertaking a Masters of Creative
Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.
• Why Buddhism Is True, by Robert Wright, Simon
& Schuster, 2017, 336 pages, $11.55 pb.
ISBN 978-1439195451
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 49

Film
I
n Arrival (2016), a number of large
oval craft arrive on Earth from outer
space. Rather than follow the hysteria
of a planet coming to terms with its
first encounter with aliens, as is a frequent
trope of films with this sort of premise, the
movie follows a linguist who works as part
of a team tasked with figuring out how to
communicate with these visitors from
another world. She’s picked up in the
middle of the night and taken by helicopter
to a military campsite near where one of the
spacecraft hovers. Military personnel,
intelligence personnel, and scientists are
already working there, and monitoring the
progress of those working at similar sites
around the world. After a number of break-
throughs in communicating with the aliens,
the sharing of information between the
global sites breaks down as the movie shifts
to the question of what the aliens really are
here to do: Are their intentions hostile and
linked to a desire to divide and conquer, or
are they here for some other reason? The
plot thickens into an interesting conclusion
FILM IMAGES © PARAMOUNT PICTURES 2016
What could it mean?
50 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
A R R I V A L
Christopher Carroll asks if communicating with aliens
really would be possible.
I will not spoil for those who have not seen
the film yet.
What makes Arrival unique is how the task
of communicating with extraterrestrials is at
its core, rather than sidelined or avoided. Too
many first contact classics, such as Indepen-
dence Day (1996), avoid the question of
communication altogether, leaving those
with their thinking caps on confused about
how plot twists such as a computer virus
infecting an alien mothership (as is the climax
of Independence Day) are meant to work.
There’s plenty of sci fi material where the task
of establishing interspecies communication is
treated as almost magic – much like the Babel
Fish in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,
which you stick in your ear and it translates all
alien languages for you. An explanation of
how the aliens knew human language was not
discussed at all in The Day the Earth Stood Still,
neither in the 2008 remake nor the 1951 clas-
sic. By contrast, Arrival goes straight to ques-
tions like “Should human languages be intro-
duced to the alien visitors in both written and
audio form?” And “Would this make their
task of understanding us more complicated or
easier?” Using theories of language acquisi-
tion, the linguist, Louise Banks (Amy Adams)
argues to her superior in military uniform
(Forest Whitaker) that human language
(specifically, American English) should be
introduced in both written and audio form.
But an interesting question is brought to the
surface here: is the task of communicating
with aliens even possible? Contrary to what
Arrival suggests, I think not.
The Problem Goes Deeper
One assumption we would probably be wise
to make when encountering extraterrestrials
is that they will have had a biological history
which will have played a major role in how
they evolved to think and speak. Whatever
this history was, the capacity for using and
understanding language is likely to be hard-
wired into them, much like it is for us. This
would give their thought and speech specific
capacities and limitations, just as it does for us.
The nature of the aliens’ intelligence and
of their ability to communicate will have

been generally shaped by their evolutionary
history. First, it seems very generous for us
to presume that learning a language in audio
and/or written form will be something that
an extraterrestrial will be practically adjusted
to do. They might not even have the neces-
sary sense mechanisms or cognitive capaci-
ties. To make progress, we might need to
understand the processes which brought
about their ability to use their own language.
But this task is complicated by the fact that
we barely understand how our ability to use
language came about. That’s still the subject
of intense debate amongst linguists, biolo-
gists, psychologists, and philosophers. Even
if we assume that aliens can engineer their
language-learning faculties to free them to a
degree from the chains of their evolutionary
upbringing, their biology would still have a
limited ability to support a common gram-
mar, syntax, and vocabulary to allow for
communication between them and
members of our own species.
Second, language doesn’t just come from
a hard-wired biologically-inherited ability,
but also from the social context in which
language use occurs. This context is used by
humans to gain specific insight into what-
ever language they’re learning: what the
sound ‘cat’ means in English, for example.
Understanding human social conventions
are vital for us in learning language. Point-
ing, for example, is a primitive social
convention that allows for words to be
assigned meaning, as well as for translation
between languages: I point to something
and say what it is called in my language.
The scientists do something similar to
communicate with the ‘heptapod’ aliens in
Arrival. They also use demonstration to try to
make apparent the meaning of certain words
they write on cards to display to the aliens.
Translation via this method seems reason-
able on the surface. Repetition of the same
phrase in a similar context gives a hint as to
what is being said, we assume. But even if we
do assume that we and the aliens we
encounter have enough common grounding
in language facility (either engineered or
evolved), we would not necessarily share with
aliens the social conventions of demonstra-
tion and pointing that would allow for mean-
ing to be shared. Pointing might not be
understood by them as anything to do with
communication. Physical demonstration in
other ways might not be understood as linked
to word meaning, either. And any of the aliens’
conventions of meaning and translation are
likely to be equally unclear to us. An attempt
at communication grounded on shared scien-
tific and mathematical facts does not make
this less of a problem. If you are communicat-
ing concerning something, and you don’t
know what’s being talked about, the task of
understanding exactly what’s being commu-
nicated is impossible. Some common social
context and conventions are needed for trans-
lation – and these we can’t assume.
Issues of alien communication are not well
represented within academic literature about
Film
linguistics. One of the reasons for this has to
do with the fact that it’s impossible (so far) to
test our intuitions of what challenges would
exist should we encounter aliens. Any
assumptions we make are necessarily hypo-
thetical. Take the task of communicating with
aliens via radio waves. (Carl Sagan’s book
Contact and its 1997 film adaptation are great
explorations of this idea.) Not knowing what
we are communicating with entails that there
are a lot of our own assumptions to deal with,
many of which we won’t even recognise.
To communicate with aliens, we will be
forced to the limits of what we currently
know; and it remains highly possible that
what we currently know will not be enough.
Like Talking To Cosmic Infants
If we encounter aliens, it’s probable that we
will do so on their terms. This is a fair
assumption to make about contact if our
species is in a comparative infancy. The vast
quantity of potentially life-supporting plan-
ets in our galactic neighbourhood, as well as
the sheer age of the universe, make the like-
lihood of our comparative infancy high.
There would be a lot they would have to
figure out before they could communicate
with us. However, if we do meet on their
terms (and assuming that first contact is not
intended as, for instance, a raiding party) the
hard work of figuring out how to communi-
cate is likely to have been done by them
already. If so, sci fi accounts of aliens turning
up who can speak our languages might not
be as unrealistic as we might otherwise think.
However, this scenario itself makes a key
assumption: that somehow the challenges
of communicating with those from another
planet will be as pressing for them as they
would be for us. To achieve this aim they
would need to be able to answer difficult
questions about us to which we ourselves do
not currently have answers. Without them
having done the heavy lifting of decoding
our language, and until we fully understand
how we ourselves understand language, the
task of communicating with aliens will
remain impossible.
© CHRISTOPHER EDWARD CARROLL 2019
Christopher Carroll is a Postgraduate Student
in Philosophy at Massey University, NZ.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 51
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allis
T in
Wonderland
T
here are many ways of failing to be
a philosopher. The most efficient
is not to bother being a philoso-
pher in the first place. It is the
strategy of choice for the vast majority of the
population. Some of the things that exercise
philosophers – or seem to do so – are of
limited interest to the man or woman in the
street, the pub, the lounge, or the kitchen.
Agonizing over whether objects are logical
constructions out of sense data, whether mind
is localized to individual subjects or is spread
throughout the universe, or even whether we
are free agents, is a minority pastime.
In my decades as a doctor, I met many
admirable patients and colleagues, but less
than a handful evinced any interest in the
philosophical topics that have preoccupied
me since I was a teenager. The Socratic
claim that ‘the unexamined life is not worth
living’, if ‘examination’ here means ‘philo-
sophical examination’, would imply that
most lives are not worth living. This
dismissal does scant justice to the many
people whose lives are not only worth living
but who have coped courageously with
being examined by life.
Even so, anyone who takes philosophical
ideas seriously must regret their negligible
presence in both the private and public
realms of daily life. There is the dream of
philosophers – more common perhaps than
many philosophers would admit to – that
philosophy might be influential – not neces-
sarily directly, but upstream of the collective
conversation which otherwise seems to be
conducted without the assistance of their
cognitive labours. This perspective is beau-
tifully expressed in John Stuart Mill’s essay
on Jeremy Bentham:
“But [Bentham and Coleridge] were des-
tined to… show that speculative philosophy,
which to the superficial appears a thing so
remote from the business of life and the out-
ward interests of men, is in reality the thing
on earth which most influences them, and in
the long run overbears every other influence
save those which it must itself obey.”
54 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
On Failing to be
a Philosopher
Raymond Tallis thinks through what not thinking things
through involves.
There are many reasons why philosophy
seems to have been largely squeezed out of
public discourse. It often appears amateur-
ish and armchair-bound compared with
science. That’s when it is not forbiddingly
technical or in danger of losing its way in the
echo-chamber of academe (of which more
presently), where the footfalls are footnotes.
Its very scrupulousness demands a patience
rare in an age when the Big Conversation is
dominated by clickbait. Given that the
leader of what is called ‘The Free World’ is
a destructive, lying toddler elevated to office
by Reality Television, the idea of the
philosopher as a Shelleyan ‘unacknowl-
edged legislator of the world’ takes wishful
thinking to new heights.
It is disheartening to think how so much
careful argument conducted by some of the
most painstaking thinkers of the present day
goes unheard. Gregory of Nyssa (335-394),
one of the Fathers of the Church, once
complained that it was impossible to go for
a haircut without someone wanting to
engage him in a discussion about some finer
point of doctrine. Those were the days! And
just how distant they are may be measured
by the loud sound of barrel-scraping emit-
ted by some academic philosophers obliged
by the UK’s government research assess-
ment exercise (now called the ‘Research
Excellence Framework’) to earn marks –
and departmental funds – by demonstrating
the public ‘impact’ of their work.
There are other ways of failing to be a
philosopher. One way is failing as a philoso-
pher. Philosophers are supposed to be wise –
it’s embedded in the job title – but many, even
the greatest, have proved remarkably stupid.
The last century provided some spectac-
ular instances of foolishness, and worse.
The twentieth century had thinkers of
genius who chose to be useful idiots for
wicked political regimes. Martin Heideg-
ger’s dalliance with Nazism and his refusal
to ever fully acknowledge the horror of the
Holocaust is the most notorious example.
Perhaps less culpable, but no less idiotic,
was Jean-Paul Sartre’s stubborn refusal to
acknowledge the horror of the left-wing
totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and
Maoist China. When Albert Camus
reminded the world how Communist
utopian visions had ended in “slave camps
[being established] under the flag of free-
dom, massacres justified by philanthropy”
(The Rebel), he was excommunicated from
Sartre’s circle of true believers. And then
there are the postmodern philosophers (did
someone mention Jean Baudrillard?),
whose critique of the idea of objective truth
may have substantially contributed to the
emergence of the ‘post-truth’ politics caus-
ing so much damage these days.
Not-Doing Philosophy
Enough already. Yes, even great philoso-
phers can be foolish like the rest of us, while
the overwhelming majority of humanity
manages to be daft, or endeavours to be wise,
without the assistance of philosophy. But
there are yet other ways of failing to be a
philosopher. Here the example of Arnold
Rimmer, the egocentric coward in the spoof
space odyssey Red Dwarf, is helpful. Rimmer
repeatedly fails the engineering exams that
will gain him the promotion he believes he
deserves. The key to his failure is his elabo-
rate revision schedule, with its colour-coded
study periods, rest periods, and self-testing
time. The weeks he wastes on perfecting this
schedule leave no time for actual revision.
Failure is consequently inevitable. Rimmer’s
approach to revision is a perfect model for
the various ways in which we ‘do things in a
non-doing it sort of way’.
There are many ways of doing philoso-
phy in a non-doing it sort of way; of dealing
in thoughts without truly thinking them.
There are equally many ways of hiding this
from ourselves. One way, perhaps, is to be a
professional philosopher.
To the uninformed observer, university
philosophers seem to be philosophers for at
least five days a week, eight hours each day.
But most of those hours are occupied with
administration, setting and marking essays
and exams, and other aspects of organizing
 the delivery of teaching to an endless succes-
sion of students who also require pastoral
care. This is entirely honorable and truly
useful, but there is a considerable distance
between engaging with the mystery of the
world and preparing a course of lectures
(with supporting handouts and bibliogra-
phy) whose primary aim is boil down the
thoughts of the philosophers on the curricu-
lum, with an emphasis on scholarly accuracy
and (if the teacher is any good) accessibility.
Hold on, you may ask, don’t academics
have time set aside for thinking – or (to use
the term that makes it respectable)
‘research’? Unfortunately, the primary aim
of research seems to be publication or other
CHRIS BARRIE AS A.J. RIMMER IN RED DWARF © BBC STUDIOS/DISCOVERY EMEA 2012
One of the galaxy’s great failures:
Arnold Rimmer
‘outputs’. Publication involves a good deal
of activity that could qualify as Rimmer-
philosophizing: proof-reading, checking
references, correcting the numbering of
notes, fiddling with this sentence and that,
respecting the house style of target journals,
multiple submissions, and so on. But the
emphasis on publication presents other, less
obvious, barriers to the true philosophizing
that’s driven by an ache for fundamental
understanding. Thinkers, as Nietzsche said,
run the risk of being mere ‘reacting
machines’. Academic outputs typically
respond to other academic outputs. The
beginning and end of the scholar’s contribu-
tion – to a conversation sometimes like a
parliament in which everyone is talking and
nobody is listening – is uncomfortably acci-
dental and inconsequential. ‘A preliminary
critique of a neo-Smithian critique of a
Jonesian externalism’ is far from a response
to the mystery of one’s existence. Academic
philosophers seem to settle too easily for
covering a small part of a long journey that
has no clear destination.
Adding a few grains to the towering ant-
hill of academic publications does, of course,
deliver secondary satisfactions: winning an
argument (however small); adding to the
curriculum vitae; increasing one’s reputation
(as measured by the number of citations of
one’s work); career advancement; and pleas-
ing one’s academic paymasters. These grat-
ifications seem to compensate for (or hide)
the fading of the dream of narrowing the
gap between what one is, what one knows,
and what one understands, or the hope of a
revelation of the nature of things.
Not-Living Philosophy
Academic philosophy is an easy target. Much
criticism of philosophy overlooks the rich
primary and secondary literature that has
been generated by honest professional toil-
ers in the field. After all, the alternatives –
each of us starting from scratch in a solitary
pursuit of truth, uninformed by the thoughts
of others, or as part of an unmoderated
babble of amateurs – are not in the slightest
bit attractive. More importantly, criticism of
academe overflies something more
profound: the vexed relationship between
the processes of thought on the one hand and
the visible products of thought on the other.
This is a relationship that preoccupied
the great essayist and poet Paul Valéry. He
described the thinker as an ‘imposter’. The
frozen contrail of books and articles coming
out of a life of thought gives a false impres-
sion of the consciousness of the writer. A
finished work has little to do with the
chaotic, endlessly interrupted and self-
interrupted processes that went into its
composition. The thinker is reified – made
into a thing – and so, too, is the reader. The
truth – an exchange between a distracted,
butterflying writer and a distracted, butter-
flying reader – is concealed. A great fat
book, or a row of books, is a deposit account
which cannot be cashed as a current account
of intellectual experience. This failure is a
distant reflection of the fact that quasi-
Platonic eternal thoughts cannot be realized
in the actual thinking of token thoughts by
actual thinkers.
And so we arrive at the subtlest mode of
doing philosophy in a non-doing it sort of
T allis
in
Wonderland
way: arguing for or accepting conclusions
that are not truly imagined, even less in any
way lived. What, after all, would it be like
truly to think that objects are logical
constructions out of sense data; or that mind
is spread out throughout the universe; or
that humans do not have agency? That these
questions are rarely asked betrays the
assumption that the work is done when a
conclusion is reached. On the contrary,
doing philosophy in a truly philosophical
way only begins with arriving at the
outcomes of arguments.
Taking philosophical ideas seriously,
really thinking one’s conclusions, must – or
should – mean fully imagining, even trying
to live, them. Living them should include
sharing them with one’s own circle, not just
fellow panelists at a symposium. Unfortu-
nately, the overwhelming majority of
philosophers (your columnist included)
rarely considers trying to convert friends,
colleagues or nearest and dearest to their
particular metaphysical standpoint – even
supposing, that is, that they have converted
themselves. We should probably be glad
that (say) panpsychists and materialists don’t
defend their opposing theories about the
nature of mind by burning each other’s
villages. However, the widespread lack of
interest in convincing non-professionals of
our views raises questions of how serious we
are in holding them. It is as if we don’t take
our own conclusions entirely seriously.
Kierkegaard famously compared certain
thinkers to the legendary Luneburg pig,
digging up truffles he throws over his shoul-
der for others to eat – a compelling
metaphor for philosophers publishing
conclusions that others (including their
future selves) have to imagine and live.
There are so many ways of failing to be a
philosopher, however much philosophizing
one does. At the heart of the problem is that
lifelong distraction we call living.
© PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2019
Raymond Tallis’s book, Logos: The Mystery of
How We Make Sense of the World has
recently been published by Agenda.
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 55
 An Unwanted Visitation
Craig Potter on a conversation out of time.
F
rom the darkness of the hallway, she pushed through
into the dimness of her small flat, guided by the small
window of light up ahead. It was a miserable place to
waste away a summer’s afternoon, but they had been
routed and had to take flight once again. She bundled her way
into the tight entry with her unwieldy placard, reaching out to
hang her hat on the wobbly stand beside her, and made towards
the brighter inner sanctum of the sitting room.
There came the sound of a long human breath, heavy with
exasperation.
She paused, all her muscles taught, as her mind tried to search
around the door frame and into the living quarters. The police?
A vengeful man? An outraged wife?
She had many enemies. Yet, confident and proud as she was,
she wasn’t perhaps as afraid as the situation warranted, and
quickly summoned her will to confront the danger. Tentatively
retracing her steps, she drew a pointed metal umbrella from
beneath her hat-stand, and, holding it out like a lance, rushed
into the light.
A man stood before her in the centre of the room. She
stopped. Her heart fluttered in fear and panic as she held the
umbrella two-handed like a mace against her shoulder, expect-
ing to be attacked. Yet he just stood there... and how pathetic
he looked, actually.
Confidence resumed: she could take him. But who was he?
Did she recognise him from somewhere? What was he doing
here? His face was youthful, but twisted with anxiety, and
marked with the suggestion of a deep inner weariness. His hair
The real life
Mabel Capper
(1888-1966)
56 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
was all askew. His skin was pale and his face haphazardly shaven,
with what unfortunately seemed to have been deliberation. His
dress was shabby, simple, but not in the manner of the poor, not
like anything she had seen; it looked excessively casual and ill-
fitting. It bore little sign of definite status or class, as though
more of an artisan or religious costume. Burglar, undercover
inspector, priest, or escaped madman; there was simply no way
to tell.
“I tried to make some tea, but I couldn’t work out the stove;
there’s no starter for it,” he apologised, turning his back to her
and then dropping into an armchair, as though she had caught
him midway through an anxious sequence of pacing and sitting.
“I’ve no idea how I got here either,” he added, somewhat antic-
ipating her next question. He spoke without warmth but rather
a miserable resignation, like someone well-adjusted to constant
uncertainty. “It’s probably a dream, but okay, whatever,” he
murmured to himself with bad mannered flippancy.
“Who are you?” she asked bluntly in her most commanding
tone.
“A student,” he said, almost to himself again: “Politics and
Global Citizenship.”
“A student… of politics?” she asked, bemused. “As in the
phrase, ‘a student of the game’?”
“No. I’m an actual student. You know, enrolled at university.”
This man was making no sense at all; one went up to read
law, medicine, classics or the like; politics was something one
did, not studied.
“Anyway, who are you then?” he asked, settling back in his
chair expectantly, immediately dismissing her intention of extri-
cating him from her home.
Well, he did not seem dangerous at least, she thought tenta-
tively, permitting herself to alight on a pouf opposite him,
arranging her skirts matter of factly. “Mabel Henrietta Capper,”
she announced with perfected politeness, once comfortable in
her position.
“Ah, the liberal feminist!” he said, suddenly beaming with
enthusiasm, as though already well acquainted.
“Liberal?” she replied, wondering whether or not to be
insulted.
“One of the suffragettes. You campaigned to get votes for
women passed in 1918, if I remember correctly. The right was
expanded to all those over the age of twenty-one ten years later.”
‘Wonderful, he thinks he’s from a future of his own making,’
she deduced with the wryness for which she was admired, but
she remained silent. Now, how to get rid of him? Perhaps tip
him from his chair; maybe lure him with a sugar cube? That
might work.
“…had limited other influence, aside from publishing a play
or two. Your ideas were generally timely, if conservative by
modern standards and denounced by the second wave feminists
of the 1970s as right wing: supportive of the family, the woman’s
reproductive role, and male hegemony over the workplace and
society. Third wave feminism admired the solidarity, but psy-
choanalytically determined that you were overly concerned with
imitating male role models rather than fully committing to sep-
aratism. Later, after the collapse of ideology and the rise of neo-
liberalism, you were re-admired as a strong female role model
and considered a big influence by the former Prime Minister,”
he continued unasked.
Lucid madness that it was, she was enraptured by the bio-
graphical concoction, and found herself desiring intently to
know what he was talking about, if for no other reason than
educated curiosity at the workings of the mind of the deranged.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she politely inserted, with a
slightly patronising note.
“No, I don’t suppose you would; locked into your own social
structures, discourse, and zeitgeist. There’s not a whole lot of
point explaining it, it won’t make a difference.”
Ignorance had always appalled her. The possibility that
devices were at work holding her back, limiting her liberty,
flared up her rebellious spirit immediately.
“The question we have to ask is whether greater enfranchise-
ment actually benefits the cause of a social democratic agenda?”
he said to the air in imitation of some higher authority.
“Look man, make sense! I have no idea who you are. You’ve
made yourself at home. If you wish to engage in rational dialogue,
you will find me as perspicacious as any man,” she said with irri-
tation, trying to bring his attention back to the present situation.
“Okay then,” he said in that annoying way of his. “The ques-
tion is: if we look back a hundred years from now, are you jus-
tified in your campaign to widen the vote?”
“Yes, vehemently yes! Were this a matter of the male right
to vote, would you ask such a question?
“Good point – though unfortunately most of us have forgot-
ten about all that. It’s only really you suffragettes who are
remembered. Chartists are just not as memorable as, say, Emily
Davison getting hit by that horse. It’s done better at capturing
the public imagination. I think all feminists are indebted to that.
Bra burning, slut marches… it all starts with you guys.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. It wouldn’t help your present cause. Anyway,
you’re right. Votes for women is not the specific issue here.
What I mean is, concerning both your campaigns, which greatly
expanded the electorate in Britain, for men as well as women –
has democracy benefitted from or suffered from the participation
of the masses?”
“You sound like a trade unionist. Is that it? Have the Fabians
sent you here? Because I’ve already said that we’re not –”
“No, no, don’t worry about it. Everyone talks like that these
days... I mean, where I’m from. It’s because we don’t revolt
about anything that we’re so good at sounding like radicals.”
“I follow,” she said, a strident pride returning. She was a woman
who got things done. It explained his timidity, this student, if all
he did was think about things. “So from what you are saying, in
your land – sorry, ‘the future’ – I take it that people are unhappy
with the state, even though they have full enfranchisement?” she
said, pleased to have gathered her acumen to engage on his terms.
After all, being talked down to by men was no novelty.
“Exactly. With the influence of the media, power has become
a popularity contest, and the intelligence of the electorate is still
a world behind the responsibility granted them. Again and again
they are manipulated, their pettiness and small-mindedness
granting mandates to inveterate liars, inexperienced or irre-
sponsible demagogues...” He struck a chord here. She had at
times been overwhelmed by the acrimony of those she was trying
to help. Women themselves were often among the worst heck-
lers, and the newspapers seemed entrenched against their cause.
That nothing would change in a hundred years, even with the
right to vote, was a terrifying possibility.
He continued, “The lack of understanding has widened the
gap between rich and poor, creating more and more inequali-
ties and divisions, extending across geography and generations.
The sense of being outnumbered and unrepresented creates a
growing sense of apathy on both sides of the political spectrum,
so election turn-outs decline, only furthering the interests and
ideologies of a narrow and privileged elite… The problem is
obvious: democracy itself is a failed project. Say that, however,
and we have been conditioned to automatically think of you as
a fascist – sorry that’s not been invented in Italy just yet – as an
enemy of freedom.”
“Yet without democracy you enable tyranny – the rule of the
few who cannot be held accountable for the lives of the many,”
she countered, taking his ideas seriously, if not agreeing to share
his reality.
“Oh yes, I agree, nobody has yet succeeded at a better practi-
cal alternative. And yet, typically speaking, the opinion of the very
worst voter – bigoted, stuck in their ways, making no effort to read
policies – has equal standing with that of the most experienced
and kind-hearted egalitarian. Ironically, people drag names such
as your own into the ring to justify what has become an inalien-
able right to give voice to an unmitigated, unchallengeable opin-
ion on everything, however great the ignorance and the misinfor-
mation which formed it!” Looking around the drab little flat, he
said inwardly, ‘I guess it’s despair that brought me here,’ and paused
A modern-day
guardian of law
and order
POLICE IN RIOT GEAR © HOZINJA 2010
April/May 2019  Philosophy Now 57
for a moment. Mabel herself had now discarded her umbrella and
was settled into the pouf, leaning forward eagerly, better to engage
in the debate. He resumed with aplomb, “So what I would like to
know is, do we citizens of the future world have the right to chal-
lenge the legitimacy of your ideal of universal suffrage, knowing
as we now do that it contains the possibility to fail?”
They both remained mute for a time, saddened by the accu-
sation, as though feeling themselves connected across the ages
at the very moment of their fall-out. For her it was the poten-
tial folly of her unquestionable purpose. For him, it was wield-
ing the weight of a century’s events in order to extinguish well-
meant dreams with their own hard consequences.
Possessing the greater alacrity, it was she who finally broke
the silence: “I don’t think we were meant to meet,” she said.
“This is not how time works. It doesn’t catch up to itself again.
It keeps moving, and we are both as much a part of this process.
Do you not go out and protest? Go out onto the street, make
your voice heard, defy the rule of the minority?”
“No, because nobody listens, until we break something, and
then we’ll be arrested,” he moaned hopelessly.
“Then that much has not changed. I’m glad to hear that I
am regarded well, and my legacy has survived as a ‘liberal’ –¬
at least in what I gather is your sense of the word – but in my
time I consider myself a warrior, a freedom fighter. I am not
afraid to make a stir. Willingly, I have sacrificed my entire rep-
utation for it.”
“In my day you’d probably be a terrorist,” he offered glumly.
“The point is, however, with a hundred years of change to
judge me on, you have accused me of being misguided. But who
is to say that those hundred years have not simply carried on
where I left off, like ‘waves’ – is that what you called them? The
same applies to anyone who uses any campaigner as an excuse
not to think for themselves. I think you are projecting your pow-
erlessness backwards rather than onwards,” she consoled.
His sad face looked down at the rug, his hands playing about
as he thought, while she, his captive audience, awaited the rev-
elation she had hoped to plant in his mind.
“You’re right. It’s not fair to blame you, But it really does
58 Philosophy Now  April/May 2019
seem an impossible mess to fix, at least peacefully,” he said.
She thought further for a moment, fully embroiled in this
amazing cross channel of time, which she now no longer
doubted was real, as stimulating as it was. Then she said, “It’s
strange isn’t it, that what I love, what I am willing to die for,
you disparage; and yet we do not disagree with one another on
principle? We both want the best for the greatest number. To
which, I propose, you have come to the wrong place for an
answer, when what you need above all is not an idea but a new
way. My generation has been brought up knowing our masters,
fighting with all our spirit only for the marginal freedom of
being able to choose their substitutes, and you…”
“Yes. I come from an era of many and much. My world is
smaller, crowded, and lonely. We can expect to live longer, most
of us have more than we need, the relatively few that don’t only
seem to want what they do not require…”
“Then your problem is your very gluttony! You want to pick
your leaders like the most delightful option on the menu. If that
is so, you are right that protest will not work. In such a circum-
stance I can imagine people protesting about all and everything,
each occupied with their own limited concerns rather than the
good of all.” She thought a while before continuing, as he waited,
immersed in her polemic. “Perhaps you just need to sit back
and let what has broken break a bit more, rather than being
yourself the hammer,” she determined.
This time he said nothing, only smiled. This was the answer
he had come here for.
“Thank you,” he said finally. Satisfied, he closed his eyes as
though about to fall asleep, and then simply vanished.
She stood looking at the empty chair with a small pang of
loss, weighing his words, considering the longevity of her cause.
‘Our truths are our inevitability!’ she thought after a time;
and turning back down the corridor, picked up the placard and
marched out of the door to introduce a little more civil disobe-
dience into the world.
© CRAIG POTTER 2019
Craig Potter is a sociology graduate with an interest in the
philosophical short story.
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