On Essentialization

“I’m most interested in how science and religion came to be essentialised such that we can talk about there being a relationship between them. The standard view is to think that today we’ve got science and religion, and that these things, or something analogous to them, are perennial features of human cultures. On this view, we look at history to see what essential relationship there is between them. I think that’s totally mistaken. What we see happening in the West is the emergence of quite specific conceptions of religion during roughly the 17th century. The very idea of ‘religion’, then, is a distinctively modern, Western notion. ‘Science’ too, to some extent. Our present understanding of what science is is also something we see developing over time. It’s really only in the 19th century that we get our current conception of the natural sciences as constituting a coherent body of disciplines that share some essential features.”

Peter Harrison, “The Best Books on the History of Science and Religion Recommended by Peter Harrison,” fivebooks.com/best-books/history-science-and-religion-peter-harrison/.

On Walking

“Before the advent of scientific evidence and philosophical guidance on the subject, literary odes to the creative and health benefits of walking flourished... Writers from Petrarch to Franz Kafka to Will Self have recorded their enthusiasm for, in Minshull’s words, ‘ambling, rambling, tramping, trekking, stomping and striding.’ Higher-quality endorsements of the creative value of walking than these would be hard to find. Yet the more I read, the more questions this 21st-century renaissance of pedestrian evangelism raised in my mind. No, I haven’t lost my desire, Kierkegaard, but I think about my desire differently—and wish I didn’t.”

Michael Lapointe, “The Unbearable Smugness of Walking,” theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/how-walking-became-pedestrian-duncan-minshull-erling-kagge-walking/592792/. I must admit to the benefits of peripatetic thinking. Very lucky to have Newcastle’s beaches for its particular joys of ambulation.

On Enlightenment Humor

“For the Earl of Shaftesbury, to practice the comic spirit is to be easy, natural, flexible, and tolerant rather than stiff-necked and fanatical. Humor is a splendid palliative for ‘superstition and melancholy delusion.’ Satire, with its coarse belligerence, is a cultural residue of a more abrasive, agonistic world, and is now to be tempered by good humor and an irenic spirit, which spring from the genteel classes’ belief in their own inexhaustible benevolence. Men and women are to be seduced rather than censured into virtue, humored rather than harangued. As the historian Keith Thomas remarks, the early eighteenth century is a period when ‘humor grows kindly and...bizarre quirks of personality are not aberrations calling for satiric attack but amiable eccentricities to be savored and enjoyed.’ Hegel notes in his Philosophy of Fine Art that in modern comedy, imperfections and irregularities are objects of entertainment rather than disdain”

Terry Eagleton, “The Politics of Humor,” - commonwealmagazine.org/whose-laughter-which-comedy

On Distractions

“Medieval monks had a terrible time concentrating. And concentration was their lifelong work! Their tech was obviously different from ours. But their anxiety about distraction was not. They complained about being overloaded with information, and about how, even once you finally settled on something to read, it was easy to get bored and turn to something else. They were frustrated by their desire to stare out of the window, or to constantly check on the time (in their case, with the Sun as their clock), or to think about food or sex when they were supposed to be thinking about God. They even worried about getting distracted in their dreams... John Cassian, whose thoughts about thinking influenced centuries of monks, knew this problem all too well... That was in the late 420s. If John Cassian had seen a smartphone, he’d have forecasted our cognitive crisis in a heartbeat.”

Jamie Kreiner, “How to Reduce Digital Distractions: Advice from Medieval Monks” - aeon.co/ideas/how-to-reduce-digital-distractions-advice-from-medieval-monks

On Cooking Technology

“Next book? Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life by Albert Borgmann, a philosopher who studied briefly under Heidegger. It was published 1984 and is definitely one of the foundational texts in philosophy of technology. Its chief contribution was to bring the focus on quality of life into the analysis. The point he was making in this book was that there are basically two types of paradigm to think about technology. On the one hand is the device paradigm: where all our experiences and daily life are somehow mediated by gadgets and technology. We heat our food in microwaves and use our heating systems to heat our house and listen to recorded music rather than going to concerts. The second, his normative idea, the one he wanted to be in, was the focal paradigm: and that was the real thing – like cooking your own food. His classic example of the device paradigm was buying frozen food in a supermarket, heating it in a microwave, and eating it while watching television. The good life and his alternative to that would be gathering the whole family and cooking your food on a stove, spending some time doing it and sitting down and conversing.”

“The Best Books on Philosophy of Technology: Recommended by Evgeny Morozov” - fivebooks.com/best-books/evgeny-morozov-philosophy-technology/

On Ethical Animals

“This gives us Kant’s fundamental principle of morality in two of its familiar formulations: act in such a way that you can will your principle as universal law; and treat all rational beings as ends and never merely as means. To treat others as ends in themselves is to regard the achievement of their goals or ends as good in itself, and not just for them. The practical upshot is that each of us has a strong reason to pursue our own ends in a way that does not interfere with the pursuit by others of their ends, and some reason to help them if they need help. But what does this imply about animals? In Kant’s view, we impose the moral law on ourselves: it applies to us because of our rational nature. The other animals, because they are not rational, cannot engage in this kind of self-legislation. Kant concluded that they are not part of the moral community; they have no duties and we have no duties toward them. It is here that Korsgaard parts company with him... ‘On a Kantian conception, what is special about human beings is not that we are the universe’s darlings, whose fate is absolutely more important than the fates of the other creatures who like us experience their own existence. It is exactly the opposite: What is special about us is the empathy that enables us to grasp that other creatures are important to themselves in just the way we are important to ourselves, and the reason that enables us to draw the conclusion that follows: that every animal must be regarded as an end in herself, whose fate matters, and matters absolutely, if anything matters at all.’”

Thomas Nagel, “What We Owe a Rabbit,” - nybooks.com/articles/2019/03/21/christine-korsgaard-what-we-owe-a-rabbit/. Very insightful review of Christine Korsgaard’s latest, Fellow Creatures: What We Owe to Other Animals. Korsgaard rehabilitates key features of Kant’s project with reference to ethical treatment of animals that is grounded in our own rationality and not the reduction of suffering as such, as in utilitarianism. While more individualistic, Korsgaard’s approach circumvents the need to measure suffering or capacity to suffer. Rather, it draws upon our intellectual empathy and the need to reflect upon our own ethical maxims. Persistent acts of cruelty reflect cruelty in us, or as Kant would have it that we have adopted a cruel maxim for ourselves. While utilitarian arguments have taken us a long way towards adopting laws that reduce animal suffering, Korsgaard’s approach puts the burden much more firmly upon us. Key to her argument is the distinction between passive and active membership of an ethical community. It strikes me that active members cannot shirk their responsibility to passive members by debating their levels of suffering or intellectual abilities across species. Rather, Korsgaard gives grounds to return to the ethical basis to say that cruelty is wrong, full stop.

On Moral Reality

“So was Murdoch a novelistic philosopher or a philosophical novelist? Her philosophy, like her fiction, is populated by the varied reality of moral life: mothers who find their daughters-in-law unpolished and juvenile, concentration camp guards who are kindly fathers. There is nothing illusory about this life: the courage of a parent, the meanness of a child, are as much features of the world as cabbages and kings. And someone with a just and loving gaze can discern these aspects of moral reality just as someone with a good eye can appraise the length of a timber. But being good is difficult and that dear self, our selfish ego, gets in the way of our seeing things as they really are. If we are to do better, we need the virtues, we need beauty, we need the development of a capacity for loving attention. It is this unselfconscious and visceral belief in the enduring power of love that is at the centre of both Murdoch’s philosophy and her fiction. Her work now, as then, is a provocation, where goodness is real, and love is seeing aright.”

Anil Gomes, “Iris Murdoch and the Power of Love,” - www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/iris-murdoch-power-love/

On Intellectual Charity

“Is it possible to morally justify treating their ideas with sympathy and intellectual charity, given our knowledge of this legacy? I think that we can, although it makes reading and interpreting them a more complex task. Following Mill, I would argue that each of these authors presents important truths about the world we now inhabit that can compel us to reflect more deeply on our own dogmatically held opinions. Rousseau taught us a great deal about how the crass pursuit of naked self-interest can lead to a deep sense of inauthenticity. Marx’s analysis of how capitalism is a revolutionary mode of production which upends tradition societies and their values was a brilliant insight. It can tell us a great deal about how our societies have become increasingly fragmented and pluralistic. Nietzsche’s psychological account of resentment remains the most damning critique of the politics of victimhood to this day, and his genealogical look at the history of moral truths was pioneering. Heidegger’s interpretation of human existence in the world can be separated from his more nefarious political commitments, and provoke deep reflection on some of the rationalistic dogmas all too common today. Indeed, I often think a deeper look at Heideggerian computing in the manner of Herbert Drefyus would do away with certain popular but reductionist accounts of human consciousness and behavior. In each of these examples, it is a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff.”

Matt McManus “How Should We Read the Totalitarian Philosophers?” - quillette.com/2019/01/30/how-should-we-read-the-totalitarian-philosophers/. Interesting summary of some of the views of controversial thinkers such as Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger in the context of counterpoints such as Hannah Arendt and John Stuart Mill. As the article notes, Arendt’s On the Origins of Totalitarianism, would not have been possible without her appropriation of Heidegger’s ideas. Hers was one of the most charitable minds of that era.

On Solipsism

“If a proposition is a picture of the world, disconnected from any reference to the self whose picture it is, then we are totally vulnerable to skepticism or solipsism. How are we to bridge the gap between ourselves and that world? How can we even make claims about that world? Wittgenstein’s primary world ‘contains no thought’. If we want to understand the world, we must not neglect the ‘subjective side’... We need the irreducible secondary world, full of hypotheses, laws and claims about the existence of objects, if we are to think about the world at all.”

Carole Misak, “What is Truth? On Ramsey, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle,” - aeon.co/essays/what-is-truth-on-ramsey-wittgenstein-and-the-vienna-circle. Insightful short essay in Aeon’s history of ideas section on Ramsey’s pragmatism. Once recovered it provides new avenues of progress in philosophy. The other title listed on the cover image sums it up nicely: “Philosophy must be useful. For Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, much of philosophy was mere nonsense. Then came Frank Ramsey’s pragmatic alternative.”

On Democratic Truth

“The assumption that the last 50 years or so have marked some unprecedented break with a previous age of truth reflects both an inattention to history and an attitude that might be labeled ‘pessimistic narcissism’...Against this backdrop, it is a relief to open Sophia Rosenfeld’s brilliantly lucid Democracy and Truth. Not only does she make short work of the ‘postmodernism is to blame’ argument; she provides the historical background necessary to understand our current truth crisis. That a crisis does indeed exist, Rosenfeld has no doubt. But it is not one that came upon the Western world from nowhere, like a meteor strike vaporizing a peaceful pastoral landscape. Instead, it broke along an epistemological fault line that has existed in modern democratic regimes since their founding: Who has the authority, in a democracy, to determine what counts as truth—an elite of the supposedly best, most intellectually capable citizens, or the people as a whole?”

David Bell, “An Equal Say: Where Does Truth Fit into Democracy,” - thenation.com/article/david-bell-democracy-and-truth/