tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/philosophy-234/articlesPhilosophy – The Conversation2024-03-27T19:07:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2199072024-03-27T19:07:34Z2024-03-27T19:07:34ZA philosopher makes the case for a thoughtful life – but life is more than a thought experiment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584328/original/file-20240326-26-46r6h3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C19%2C4255%2C2824&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yuliia Myroniuk/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Svend Brinkmann’s <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Think%3A+In+Defence+of+a+Thoughtful+Life-p-9781509559602">Think</a> is a book in praise of the thoughtful life and an easygoing exploration of the role of thinking in our lives today. </p>
<p>The book is essentially in two parts. The first is descriptive. It explores questions like “what do we mean by thinking?”, “why has it become difficult to think in today’s world?” and “where does thinking come from?” </p>
<p>The second part is prescriptive. Brinkmann provides some quick and relatively simple strategies for bringing more thoughtfulness into our everyday lives.</p>
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<p><em>Think: In Defence of a Thoughtful Life – Svend Brinkmann (Polity)</em></p>
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<p>The reader is introduced to a variety of important and complicated philosophical questions. Brinkmann introduces, for example, the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates and refers to a challenge that Plato’s brother, Glaucon, raises in <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/republic/">The Republic</a>. </p>
<p>Glaucon asks Socrates to imagine that the existence of a ring capable of making one invisible whenever the wearer desired. Anyone with such a power, Glaucon argues, would steal and murder and “in all respects be like a god among men”. </p>
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<p>At the heart of Glaucon’s challenge is the claim that it is the possibility of being discovered that compels us to be good. If we could safely be unjust, then we would be. </p>
<p>Brinkmann summarises Socrates’ important response to this challenge, which involves Plato’s views on the intrinsic value of justice, understood as harmony within the soul. </p>
<p>But he does not settle the question of whether or not Socrates’ response is adequate. His point here, and with the many other “thought experiments” that appear in his book, is to exercise our thoughtfulness: “the act of rationally thinking about questions to which there is no single answer”.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-platos-republic-127724">Guide to the classics: Plato’s Republic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>What Brinkmann means by thoughtfulness must be distinguished from other popular treatments of rational thinking. For example, he opens his book with references to Daniel Kahneman’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/thinking-fast-and-slow-9780141033570">Thinking, Fast and Slow</a> (2011). Kahneman distinguishes between “System 1” and “System 2” modes of thought. System 1 is thinking that is fast, intuitive and automatic. System 2 thinking is slower and more analytical. </p>
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<p>Consider the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task">Wason selection task</a>. Imagine you are presented with four cards, each with a number on one side and a colour on the other. You are dealt the cards in the following order: 3, 8, Blue, Red. </p>
<p>You are then asked which card or cards you must turn over in order to prove the rule that a card showing an even number is blue on its opposite face. Which card or cards do you turn over? </p>
<p>The test seems simple, but the original experiment found that about one in ten of us answer it correctly. </p>
<p>The Wason test probes our ability to apply rules of classical logic surrounding hypothetical syllogisms, or conditional reasoning. Intuitive answers to the test which utilise only System 1 modes of thought won’t cut it here. It takes slow and careful deliberation, the kind of rational thinking Kahneman attributes to System 2, to deduce that we should turn over the 8 card and the red card to prove the rule. </p>
<p>Brinkmann’s idea of thoughtfulness, however, is not just about exercising our rational powers to solve puzzles like this one. He calls for a greater emphasis on what he calls “the existential dimensions of thinking”. </p>
<p>Just as the mindfulness movement seeks to bring our attention to our being in time and space, Brinkmann’s thoughtfulness is about exercising our capacity to contemplate ourselves and the world around us.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/finding-your-essential-self-the-ancient-philosophy-of-zhuangzi-explained-196215">Finding your essential self: the ancient philosophy of Zhuangzi explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Thought experiments</h2>
<p>The breadth of Brinkmann’s exploration of thought-provoking ideas is likely to please the curious reader. In just the first two chapters, he briefly introduces the ideas of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/">Aristotle</a>, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/">Martin Heidegger</a>, <a href="https://hac.bard.edu/about/hannaharendt/">Hannah Arendt</a>, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/">John Dewey</a>, <a href="https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/thomson-judith-jarvis">Judith Jarvis Thomson</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">John Rawls</a>. </p>
<p>Each of these philosophers, either in the study of their work or in the exercise of their thought experiments, offers important lessons in the significance of the thoughtful life. </p>
<p>Each chapter ends with an exercise – mostly famous thought-experiments from various fields of philosophy – which Brinkmann offers as a practical applications of the kind of thoughtfulness he explores.</p>
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<span class="caption">Svend Brinkmann pictured in November 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Svend_Brinkmann.jpg">Mogens Engelund, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>The second part of his book, the prescriptive part, is unfortunately the shortest part. But Brinkmann offers seven different ways we can all better incorporate thoughtfulness into our lives. </p>
<p>We can think with the world, by which he means we can curate our environments in such a way that is conducive to living a thoughtful life. This might involve learning how best to externalise certain cognitive exercises (for example, by keeping a journal) and creating an “ecology of attention” for ourselves. </p>
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<span class="caption">Plato, Seneca and Aristotle – artist unknown (c.1330).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plato_Seneca_Aristotle_medieval.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>We can think with our bodies and think while moving. There is a long tradition of walking and thinking. Socrates famously walked with the citizens of Athens as he practised his distinct line of philosophical questioning. Aristotle’s school in Athens also became known as the peripatetic school, after his habit of walking while lecturing. </p>
<p>We can think with books, so long as we take the time to read slowly, carefully and thoughtfully. We can think with children, who constantly inspire us to imagine, question everything, and think creatively. And we can think in conversation because, Brinkmann argues, “all thinking is dialogical”. Thinking with others and thinking with ourselves requires the time and patience of inquiry in the form of dialogue. </p>
<p>Finally, we can think with history. We ought to direct a thoughtful attention to the past, according to Brinkmann, because the better you understand “the historical forces that shape you, the better you can think”. </p>
<h2>Instructing and teaching</h2>
<p>The final experiment that Brinkmann leaves us with is thought-provoking. “Leave behind philosophical reflections on ethics, politics, and personal identity,” he says, and instead “undertake a more personal and existential thought experiment”. </p>
<p>Imagine that our lives are to be turned into books. What would the chapters be named? How would the book begin? How would the book end? </p>
<p>Brinkmann here envisions a personal framing of the thoughtful life. Our reflexivity and contemplative abilities are supposedly what distinguish us, <em>homo sapiens</em> (literally “wise human”), from non-human animals. So if we are to lead more meaningful and fulfilling lives, then: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>we need to practise thoughtfulness and create better conditions for thinking, particularly in a society that has focused for so long on efficiency over immersion, and utility over meaning.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite its merits, this is a book in praise of thoughtfulness which may ultimately fail to prompt the meaningful contemplation it espouses. Its pace and brevity are likely to make the book more accessible and appealing to the modern reader, but Brinkmann risks falling prey to the very “efficiency” and “utility” he criticises. </p>
<p>The philosopher is a lover of wisdom. Inspiring thoughtfulness, and so inspiring the process of being and becoming a philosopher, must involve loving attention, wonder and awe towards the world, and towards our existence as members of a global community. </p>
<p>Reminding us that thinking is what makes us human, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/">Immanuel Kant</a> wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not merely conjecture them and seek them as though obscured in darkness or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon: I see them before me, and I associate them directly with the consciousness of my own existence. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps the flaw of Brinkmann’s book can be best summarised in an analogy. A great science teacher does not just lay out the laws that govern the natural world and list the many achievements and discoveries that have resulted from humanity’s collective efforts over millennia. This is merely instruction. </p>
<p>A great science teacher, with the aim of inspiring his students to truly become scientists, fosters the curiosity within them. This is teaching. </p>
<p>The many thought experiments that Brinkmann offers are removed from the context of their debates. They are used as trials of thoughtfulness. But it is not clear how <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-trolley-dilemma-would-you-kill-one-person-to-save-five-57111">Trolley Problems</a> (to take one example from the book) inspire meaningful thinking about the particularities of our complex and dynamic moral lives. </p>
<p>Instead of being asked yet again if we would pull the lever, Brinkmann should perhaps spend more time challenging us to rethink what thinking really involves. Living more thoughtful lives is hard and not always convenient. Meaningful thought must be done slowly and carefully. It is also easy to forget that it requires practice, patience and guidance from good teachers.</p>
<p>The project of creating a short and accessible book in praise of thoughtfulness and its significance to the modern world is timely and important. Brinkmann is right to remind us of this. </p>
<p>But he also takes on the more challenging task of guiding his readers’ thinking, in an attempt to model what thoughtfulness involves, and this is where he may be underestimating them – where he does more instructing than teaching.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219907/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oscar Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Svend Brinkmann’s idea of thoughtfulness is not just about exercising our rational powers to solve puzzles, but the existential dimensions of thinking.Oscar Davis, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and History, Bond UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2261502024-03-22T10:15:52Z2024-03-22T10:15:52ZWilliam Blake’s Universe: making a European out of the poet and artist who never left England<p>William Blake’s Universe, the new (free) <a href="https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/plan-your-visit/exhibitions/william-blakes-universe">exhibition</a> at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, is a celebration of work by the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/romanticism">Romantic artist</a>, writer and visionary. </p>
<p>Famous now but little known in his lifetime, Blake (1757-1827) has been given star billing by <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/william-blake-artist">Tate Britain</a> recently. But at the Fitzwilliam, he is made to share the spotlight with fellow artists from Britain and Germany, notably <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Philipp-Otto-Runge">Philipp Otto Runge</a> (1777-1810), whose luminous <a href="https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/de/objekt/HK-1016/der-morgen-erste-fassung?term=&filter%255Bobj_actuallocation_s%255D%255B0%255D=19.%2520Jahrhundert&filter%255Bfacet_obj_artistName%255D%255B0%255D=Philipp%2520Otto%2520Runge&context=default&position=9">The Small Morning</a> hangs in the exhibition’s final room.</p>
<p>The approach of exhibition curators David Bindman and Esther Chadwick is quietly provocative. Blake is known tb as a poet, he never left Britain, and he never met Runge. He was also a contrarian, with broadly anti-establishment views. So what is at stake in reframing Blake as a European artist, and does the exhibition convince?</p>
<h2>Blake’s universe</h2>
<p>The exhibition’s title and the life-sized cast of Blake’s head that greets you as you enter, suggest its aim will be to present a trip inside his mind. And to an extent, it does. The bulk of work on display is by Blake himself, much of it drawn from the Fitzwilliam Museum’s own magnificent collection.</p>
<p>Particular highlights are Blake’s glowing drawing <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1856-0209-417">Albion Rose</a> and the mysterious <a href="https://blakearchive.org/copy/europe.k?descId=europe.k.illbk.01">Ancient of Days</a>, his beautifully coloured, hand-printed poems <a href="https://blakearchive.org/copy/america.o?descId=america.o.illbk.02">America</a> and <a href="https://blakearchive.org/work/europe">Europe</a>, and his energetic re-interpretations of ancient Greek sculptures like the <a href="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-6749">Laocoön</a>.</p>
<p>Also on display are spectacular works by other artists, including Benjamin West’s <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/death-on-the-pale-horse-1">Death on the Pale Horse</a> and Caspar David Friedrich’s series of seven sketches in sepia, <a href="https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/friedrich-caspar-david">Ages of Man</a> (Die Lebensalter).</p>
<p>Evidently this “universe” does not belong to Blake alone. It is rather a shared imaginative and cultural space, inhabited by Blake and other Romantic artists across Europe from the 1770s to the 1820s. </p>
<p>Portraits of the main players appear in the exhibition’s ante-room. First Runge, whose soulful self-portrait is twinned with Blake’s life mask at the entrance. Then John Flaxman, James Barry, and Henry Fuseli, whom Blake knew personally, and Asmus Jacob Carstens and Caspar David Friedrich, whom he did not. </p>
<h2>Blake the artist?</h2>
<p>It is revelatory to see Blake in the company of artists like these. Poems like The Tyger, London and the verse <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54684/jerusalem-and-did-those-feet-in-ancient-time">And did those feet</a> (better known as the hymn Jerusalem, after it was set to music by Hubert Parry in 1916), mark Blake out as a poet.</p>
<p>In fact he was this and more. The online <a href="https://www.blakearchive.org">William Blake Archive</a> hints at the range of his work rendered in text, engraving, printmaking, drawing and painting. </p>
<p>It was rare for Blake to write a poem without illustrating it. Working with his wife Catherine, he hand-engraved, hand-coloured and hand-printed “illuminated books” of his verses, releasing dozens of copies over his lifetime essentially as small press editions. </p>
<p>However, he made his living creating and selling visual art – engravings and book illustrations – to commercial publishers. He also produced single and serial works of art for private patrons. </p>
<p>Blake aspired to be better known as an artist (and writer too), and to share his work with a larger audience. But his career floundered, hampered by the precariousness of the art market during the Napoleonic wars, the low social status of his commercial engraving, and his contrary views.</p>
<h2>The exhibition</h2>
<p>The bold exhibition design ensures there is a strong central narrative. Each room focuses on the engagement by European artists with the past, present and future. </p>
<p>The past is that of classical antiquity and the old masters, whose works were copied and repurposed by artists across Europe as they honed their skills in academy schools. The present is that of war and revolution, in America, France and Haiti. The future is that of spiritual renewal, conceived of variously in mystical, Christian, pantheistic and nationalist terms. </p>
<p>Within this historical narrative are clustered smaller scenes which reward attentive viewing. Sketches after Michelangelo, visits to a leper hospital, and the mystical Christian philosophy of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jakob-Bohme">Jakob Böhme</a> are just some of the themes identified and shown to be common concerns among what initially may seem like a disparate group of artists.</p>
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<p>The exhibition architecture invites active engagement too. Separated pages of Blake’s illuminated book, Europe, are displayed on a corrugated screen zig-zagging across the central room, jagged as a bolt of lightning – a phenomenon associated with political revolution. </p>
<p>Early on in the exhibition, a window is cut from the “past” to the “future”, complicating the historical narrative. Is it true that we always progress, that things always get better?</p>
<h2>Blake the European?</h2>
<p>Blake never had the funds to travel to mainland Europe, nor was he sponsored by one of his patrons to go to Rome. He also never read German, although he did learn Italian later in life, and illustrated Dante. </p>
<p>He was not, like <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/samuel-taylor-coleridge">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a>, influenced by German idealist philosophy. But to be schooled at the Royal Academy, as Blake was from 1779 to 1785, was to learn from European models. And to have a <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0029.xml">Moravian</a> (a type of Protestant) mother may have included learning German songs and hymns in childhood.</p>
<p>The Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, the mystics Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg were all favourites of Blake’s, and commonly read across continental Europe. Add to this the reverberations of revolution, war, trade, imperialism – all of which sound in Blake’s art and poetry – and it’s clear that Blake was not insular in his outlook.</p>
<p>The question of Blake’s Europeanness is posed everywhere in this exhibition, but never overtly. The working title “Blake in Europe”, was lost along the way. Never quite asked are further questions about the limits of the shared European Romantic culture that the exhibition promotes. Which culture, or cultures, you could ask, and whose?</p>
<p>As <a href="https://blakesociety.org/open-letter-to-the-guardian/">Sibylle Erle, Chair of the Blake Society</a> has said: “For us, Blake is for everybody.” Go to William Blake’s Universe if you can, and see what you think.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Haggarty works for the University of Cambridge, to which the Fitzwilliam Museum belongs. Sarah Haggarty wrote an essay for the exhibition catalogue for William Blake's Universe. </span></em></p>A subtle and thoughtful show, full of shimmering connections that put Blake back in touch with European art figures and influences.Sarah Haggarty, Associate Professor in English, University of Cambridge, and Fellow and Director of Studies in English, Queens' College, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250342024-03-15T13:31:59Z2024-03-15T13:31:59ZThe mystery of consciousness shows there may be a limit to what science alone can achieve<p>The progress of science in the last 400 years is mind-blowing. Who would have thought we’d be able to trace the history of our universe to its origins 14 billion years ago? Science has increased the length and the quality of our lives, and the technology that is commonplace in the modern world would have seemed like magic to our ancestors.</p>
<p>For all of these reasons and more, science is rightly celebrated and revered. However, a healthy pro-science attitude is not the same thing as <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203703809-18/accept-scientism-rik-peels">“scientism”</a>, which is the view that the scientific method is the only way to establish truth. As the problem of consciousness <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-as-we-know-it-cant-explain-consciousness-but-a-revolution-is-coming-126143">is revealing</a>, there may be a limit to what we can learn through science alone.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most worked out form of scientism was the early 20th century movement knows as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/">logical positivism</a>. The logical positivists signed up to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/verifiability-principle">“verification principle”</a>, according to which a sentence whose truth can’t be tested through observation and experiments was either logically trivial or meaningless gibberish. With this weapon, they hoped to dismiss all metaphysical questions as not merely false but nonsense. </p>
<p>These days, logical positivism is almost <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vienna-circle/">universally rejected</a> by philosophers. For one thing, logical positivism is self-defeating, as the verification principle itself cannot be scientifically tested, and so can be true only if it’s meaningless. Indeed, something like this problem haunts all unqualified forms of scientism. There is no scientific experiment we could do to prove that scientism is true; and hence if scientism is true, then its truth cannot be established. </p>
<p>In spite of all of these deep problems, much of society assumes scientism to be true. Most people in the UK are totally unaware that “metaphysics” goes on in almost every philosophy department in the country. By metaphysics, philosophers don’t mean anything spooky or supernatural; this is just the technical term for philosophical, as opposed to scientific, enquiry into the nature of reality. </p>
<h2>Truth without science</h2>
<p>How is it possible to find out about reality without doing science? The distinguishing feature of philosophical theories is that they are “empirically equivalent”, which means you can’t decide between them with an experiment. </p>
<p>Take the example of my area of research: the philosophy of consciousness. Some philosophers think that consciousness emerges from physical processes in the brain – this is the “physicalist” position. Others think it’s the other way around: consciousness is primary, and the physical world emerges from consciousness. A version of this is the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/28/why-the-purpose-of-the-universe-by-philip-goff-review-a-real-poser#:%7E:text=In%20Why%3F%2C%20Philip%20Goff%2C,and%20the%20existence%20of%20value.">panpsychist</a>” view that consciousness goes all the way down to the fundamental building blocks of reality, with the word deriving from the two Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind).</p>
<p>Still others think that both consciousness and the physical world are fundamental but radically different – this is the view of the “dualist”. Crucially, you can’t distinguish between these views with an experiment, because, for any scientific data, each of the views will interpret that data in their own terms. </p>
<p>For example, suppose we discover scientifically that a certain form of brain activity is correlated with the conscious experience of an organism. The physicalist will interpret this as the form of organisation which turns non-conscious physical processes – such as electrical signals between brain cells – into conscious experience, whereas the panpsychist will interpret it as the form of organisation which unifies individual conscious particles into one larger conscious system. Thus we find two very different philosophical interpretations of the same scientific data.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Image of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581965/original/file-20240314-22-2a4unr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581965/original/file-20240314-22-2a4unr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581965/original/file-20240314-22-2a4unr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581965/original/file-20240314-22-2a4unr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581965/original/file-20240314-22-2a4unr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581965/original/file-20240314-22-2a4unr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581965/original/file-20240314-22-2a4unr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are particles concious?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cern-european-organization-nuclear-research-where-1287557641">D-VISIONS/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we can’t work out which view is right with an experiment, how can we choose between them? In fact, the selection process is not so dissimilar from what we find in science. As well as appealing to experimental data, scientists also appeal to the theoretical virtues of a theory, for example how simple, elegant and unified it is.</p>
<p>Philosophers too can appeal to theoretical virtues in justifying their favoured position. For example, considerations of simplicity seems to count against the dualist theory of consciousness, which is less simple than its rivals in so far as it posits two kinds of fundamental stuff – physical stuff and consciousness – whereas physicalism and panpsychism are equally simple in positing just one kind of fundamental stuff (either physical stuff or consciousness). </p>
<p>It could also be that some theories are incoherent, but in subtle ways that require careful analysis to uncover. For example, I have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/27/galileos-error-by-philip-goff-review">argued</a> that physicalist views of consciousness are incoherent (although – like much in philosophy – this is controversial). </p>
<p>There is no guarantee that these methods will yield a clear a winner. It could be that on certain philosophical issues, there are multiple, coherent, and equally simple rival theories, in which case we should be agnostic about which is correct. This would in itself be a significant philosophical finding concerning the limits of human knowledge. </p>
<p>Philosophy can be frustrating because there is so much disagreement. However, this is also true in many areas of science, such as history or economics. And there are some questions on which there is a <a href="https://survey2020.philpeople.org/">modest consensus</a>, for example, on the topic of free will.</p>
<p>A tendency to mix up philosophy with a growing anti-science movement undermines the united front against the real and harmful opposition to science we find in climate change denial and anti-vax conspiracies. </p>
<p>Like it or not, we can’t avoid philosophy. When we try to do so, all that happens is we end up with bad philosophy. The first line of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s book <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/393369/the-grand-design-by-stephen-hawking-with-leonard-mlodinow/9780553819229">The Grand Design</a> boldly declared: “Philosophy is dead.” The book then went on to indulge in some incredibly crude philosophical discussions of free will and objectivity.</p>
<p>If I wrote a book making controversial pronouncements on particle physics, it’d be rightly ridiculed, as I haven’t been trained in the relevant skills, haven’t read the literature, and haven’t had my views in this area subject to peer scrutiny. And yet there are many examples of scientists lacking any philosophical training publishing very poor books on philosophical topics without it impacting their credibility. </p>
<p>This might be sounding bitter. But I genuinely believe society would be deeply enriched by becoming more informed about philosophy. I have hope that we will one day move on from this “scientistic” period of history, and understand the crucial role both science and philosophy have to play in the noble project of finding out what reality is like.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Goff has received funding from the Templeton Foundation.</span></em></p>What if there’s no experiment to work out which theory of consciousness is correct?Philip Goff, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2188002024-03-14T19:24:53Z2024-03-14T19:24:53ZFriday essay: from political bees to talking pigs – how ancient thinkers saw the human-animal divide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581424/original/file-20240312-18-f7g0up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C8%2C5467%2C3655&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What makes us human? What (if anything) sets us apart from all other creatures? Ever since Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the answer to these questions has pointed us back to our own animal nature.</p>
<p>Yet the idea that, in one way or another, our humanity is entangled with the non-human has a much longer and more venerable history. In the West, it goes all the way back to Classical antiquity – to Greek and Roman views about humans and animals. </p>
<p>The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322) first argued the human stands out from all other animals through the presence of <em>logos</em> (“speech” but also “reason”). Numerous Greek and Roman thinkers engaged in similar attempts to name what, exactly, sets humans apart. </p>
<p>Who or what is man? The arguments these philosophers came up with verged from the obscure to the outright bizarre: The human alone has the capacity to have sex at all seasons and well into old age; the human alone can sit comfortably on his hip bones; the human alone has hands that can build altars to the gods and craft divine statues. No observation seemed too far-fetched or outlandish. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of a bearded man, Aristotle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581448/original/file-20240312-28-9lkgw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aristotle, as painted by Raphael.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet, above all, the argument that animals lack logos continued to resonate. In classical antiquity it became powerful enough to coin the very word for animals in ancient Greek: <em>ta aloga</em> – “those without logos”. </p>
<p>This position was taken up by the philosophical school of the Stoics and from there came to influence Christianity, with its view of man made in the image of God. </p>
<p>The idea of an insurmountable gap between humans and other animals soon became the dominant paradigm, informing, for instance, the 18th century naturalist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carolus-Linnaeus">Carl Linnaeus’s</a> influential classification of the human as <em>homo sapiens</em> (literally: the “wise”, or “rational man”). </p>
<p>The practical implications of this idea cannot be underestimated. What has been termed “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-animal/">the moral status of animals</a>” – the question of whether they should be included in considerations of justice – has traditionally been linked to the question of whether they have logos. Because animals differ from humans in lacking both speech and reason (so this line of argument goes) they cannot themselves formulate moral positions. Therefore, they do not warrant inclusion in our moral considerations, or at least not in the same way as humans. </p>
<p>Increasingly, of course, as many contemporary philosophers have pointed out, this idea seems too simple. </p>
<p>New research in the behavioural sciences illustrates the at times astonishing capacities of certain animals: crows and otters using tools to crack open nuts or shells to make their contents available for consumption; octopuses lifting the lids to their tanks and successfully escaping to the ocean through pipes; bees optimising their flight path on repeated trips to a food source.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A pink octopus in a tank." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581188/original/file-20240312-24-3u7e8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Octopus have lifted the lids of their tanks and escaped.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dofleins-octopus-latin-enteroctopus-dofleini-tentacles-2278086727">Victor1153/shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there is, in fact, a considerable body of evidence from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds showcasing the complex behaviours of different kinds of animals.</p>
<p>Ancient authors like <a href="https://www.livius.org/articles/person/pliny-the-elder/">Pliny</a>, <a href="https://www.livius.org/sources/content/plutarch/">Plutarch</a>, <a href="https://oxfordre.com/classics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-4570">Oppian</a>, <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095353490">Aelian</a>,<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/porphyry/"> Porphyry</a>, <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095431452">Athenaeus </a>and others have dedicated whole books or treatises to this topic, pushing back on the notion of animals as merely “dumb beasts”. </p>
<p>Their views anticipated the modern debate by attributing animals not only with forms of reason; they also highlighted their capacity to suffer, to feel pain and to feel empathy towards each other and, occasionally, even towards members of the human species. </p>
<p>Then there are the human-animal hybrid creatures of the Greek and Roman myths (more on this later) – the Sirens, the Sphinx, the Minotaur. All combine the body parts of human and animal. Individually and collectively they thus raise a fundamental yet potentially disturbing question: what if we are really, in part at least, animal?</p>
<h2>Ancient animal-smarts</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581189/original/file-20240312-26-17ijsr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581189/original/file-20240312-26-17ijsr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581189/original/file-20240312-26-17ijsr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581189/original/file-20240312-26-17ijsr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581189/original/file-20240312-26-17ijsr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581189/original/file-20240312-26-17ijsr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581189/original/file-20240312-26-17ijsr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11879565">On the Nature of Animals</a> (late second/early third century CE), Aelian, a Roman author writing in Greek, described fish that helped their unfortunate mates when caught at sea, setting their backs against the trapped creature and “pushing with all their might to try to stop him from being hauled in”. </p>
<p>He wrote, too, of dolphins that helped fisher-folk, pressing the fish in “on all sides” so they couldn’t escape. In return, they were rewarded for their labours by a share of the catch.</p>
<p>He celebrated the clever design of beehives, observing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first thing that they construct are the chambers of their kings, and they are spacious and above all the rest. Round them they put a barrier, as it were a wall or fence, thereby also enhancing their importance of the royal dwelling. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>By parading animal-smarts in action these examples – of which there are hundreds - astonish, inform, and entertain at the same time – similar perhaps to the ubiquitous reels showing animals doing amazing things circulating in modern social media.</p>
<p>Modern ethological studies variously observe animal behaviours which reverberate with Aelian’s examples.</p>
<p>Pairs of <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150925085344.htm">rabbit fish</a> have been shown to cooperate, with one partner standing on guard protecting the other one while feeding. Honeybees indeed build bigger cells for their queen that are set apart at the bottom of the hive separated by thicker walls. And <a href="https://www.pnas.org/post/podcast/cooperative-fishing-between-humans-and-dolphins">bottlenose dolphins</a> have been found to cooperate with humans in their efforts to capture fish. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dolphins swimming over seagrass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581193/original/file-20240312-16-rsj49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bottlenose dolphins have been seen cooperating with humans while fishing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anita Kainrath/shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While not all of the ancient anecdotal evidence is confirmed by modern research, the overall thrust is clear: it deserves to be taken seriously and is part of the ancient conversation of what makes us human. </p>
<h2>The power of storytelling</h2>
<p>Some Greek and Roman thinkers resorted to the medium of storytelling to articulate views that are essentially philosophical in nature. The Greek philosopher Plutarch’s treatise <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Gryllus*.html">Beasts are Rational</a> draws on the famous story from Homer’s Odyssey in which some of Odysseus’ comrades are turned into pigs by the sorceress Circe. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-odyssey-82911">Guide to the Classics: Homer's Odyssey</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Odysseus is eventually able to convince the sorceress to turn them back into human beings. In Plutarch’s rendering of the story he returns to Circe’s island to check whether there are any other Greeks turned animal – and finds a pig named Gryllus (“Grunter”).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of men with animal heads." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581192/original/file-20240312-26-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of a wine cup (kylix) depicting scenes from The Odyssey including men turned into animals, circa 560-550 BCE.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detail_view_-_Odysseus_men_turned_into_animals_by_Circe_receive_antidote_photo_by_Lucas_ancientartpodcast_flickr_cca2.0_8705662763_02d64d713e_o.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Things take a turn for the unexpected when Grunter declines Odysseus’ offer of help. The reason? He prefers his animal to his human existence.</p>
<p>Grunter sets out to make an impassioned, highly rational case, arguing all animals in one form or another, have reason. Individual species differ from each other merely in the extent of and kind of reason. And, yes, this includes even those animals that have come to serve as the epitome of dumbness: sheep and the ass. </p>
<p>“Please note,” he adds, “that cases of dullness and stupidity in some animals are demonstrated by the cleverness and sharpness of others – as when you compare an ass and a sheep with a fox or a wolf or a bee.”</p>
<p>Grunter is not afraid to push things even further: Don’t individual humans, too, differ from each other in cleverness and wit? Long before the arrival of evolutionary theory, the pig here points towards a gradual view of how certain features, skills, and capacities map onto a continuum of all living creatures (the human included). The implied conclusion: there is no insurmountable gap between the human and other animals.</p>
<p>Grunter’s views are supported by others such as the speaking rooster of Lucian’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11879565">The Dream or the Cock</a> (second century CE). Claiming to be the latest in a long line of previous incarnations that include (brace yourself) – the philosopher Pythagoras, the Cynic philosopher Crates, the Trojan hero Euphorbus, the Greek courtesan Aspasia, and several animals – this rooster-philosopher, too, prefers his animal to his human existence. </p>
<p>Animals, the rooster argues, are content with the basics; humans, by contrast, over-complicate things because they can’t get enough and greedily strive for ever more. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-darwins-the-descent-of-man-150-years-on-sex-race-and-our-lowly-ape-ancestry-155305">Guide to the classics: Darwin's The Descent of Man 150 years on — sex, race and our 'lowly' ape ancestry</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Myths and hybrid monsters</h2>
<p>Myth is arguably the most influential genre of ancient storytelling. A set of malleable tales of great age and importance, myth constitutes a world apart, a medium just far enough removed from the intricacies (and banalities) of everyday life to allow for the exploration of fundamental questions concerning the human condition. And Greek myths often explore human entanglements with non-human animals in ways that reference the philosophical debate.</p>
<p>The mythical figure of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Minotaur">the Minotaur</a> for example – a hybrid creature sporting the head of a bull and the body of a human male – does not seem to adhere to the norms and conventions applying to either of his composite identities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of a minotaur." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580856/original/file-20240310-28-ykqvft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tondo of a Minotaur, circa 515 BC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tondo_Minotaur_London_E4_MAN.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His insatiable appetite for young humans sets him apart from accepted behaviour for both humans and cattle alike, identifying him as monstrous. </p>
<p>But what are monsters for?</p>
<p>This question also applies to another famous hybrid beast of the ancient world: the Theban sphinx. Perched high outside the gates of the city of Thebes, in the region of Boeotia in central Greece, this creature (half woman, half lion, often endowed with an extra set of wings) challenges all wishing to enter with the following riddle: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many try and fail to name the right answer, paying for it with their lives. Until Oedipus comes along. He gives the correct answer and thus busts the beast, which dutifully throws itself to death. </p>
<p>The creature in the riddle is, of course, the human: man first crawls on four legs, then walks on two, until in old age when a walking stick may serve as a third “leg”. And yet despite his clever wit, Oedipus is ultimately unable to use reason to his and the city’s advantage (a situation explored in depth in <a href="https://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/oedipus.html">Sophocles’ famous tragedy Oedipus the King</a>).</p>
<p>What is the point of the riddle of the Sphinx? This story poses the human as a question but also illustrates the limits of logos in gaining self-understanding. Oedipus can solve the beast’s riddle; yet the riddle of his own humanity remains unresolved until it is too late. Here, the monstrous figure holds up a mirror for the human to recognise himself. </p>
<h2>Speaking animals</h2>
<p>Logos (in the sense of speech) also features prominently in the intervention of another iconic creature from classical antiquity: Xanthus, Achilles’ speaking horse. </p>
<p>On the battlefields of Troy (featured in Homer’s Iliad) Xanthus reminds Achilles of his imminent death. In this way the horse seems to tease all those thinkers (ancient and modern) who have argued the human stands out from all other animals in his capacity to speak in complex sentences.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of a Greek god with two horses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581226/original/file-20240312-30-tn9od0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, painting by Henri Regnault, 1868.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Xanthus’s voice resonates with that of numerous other speaking animals populating Greek and Roman literature, including the gnat of <a href="http://virgil.org/appendix/culex.htm">Pseudo-Virgil’s Culex</a>, the speaking eel in Oppian’s didactic poem <a href="https://www.loebclassics.com/view/oppian-halieutica_fishing/1928/pb_LCL219.279.xml">On Fishing</a>, and the whole chorus of animals speaking to us in ancient fables. </p>
<p>Individually and as a group they raise a question: what if animals could speak to us in human language? What would they have to say to those humans prepared to listen? </p>
<p>As it turns out in these stories, often nothing too flattering. In classical antiquity, speaking animals often use their special position to question or examine the human condition.</p>
<p>Xanthus is a case in point. By reminding Achilles he is fated to die at Troy, the speaking horse reminds the Greek hero of an important aspect of the human condition: his own mortality and the fact that he, too, is ultimately subject to powers beyond human control.</p>
<h2>The political bee</h2>
<p>In Greek and Roman accounts of honeybee politics we find a peculiar human habit with a surprisingly long history: the attribution of political qualities to honeybees. </p>
<p>When we distinguish a “queen bee” from “workers” we are continuing a tradition that goes back to the ancient world (and possibly beyond). Aristotle names honeybees among the <em>zoa politika</em> (the “political animals”) – a category that includes wasps, ants, cranes, and, above all, the human.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581201/original/file-20240312-24-r54i0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Day_85_-_Sweat_Bee_-_Lasioglossum_species,_Leesylvania_State_Park,_Woodbridge,_Virginia.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He and others then set out to explore the intricacies of honeybee society. The ancient Greeks and Romans traditionally considered honeybees to inhabit a monarchy. In line with the gender realities of the ancient world, they imagined this monarchy to be led by a king or male leader. </p>
<p>Does the bee monarch have a stinger? If not, how does he assert his power and leadership? And what does the presence of the obviously unproductive drones in the hive say about the distribution of labour in a community? These are the kind of questions that resonated among Greek and Roman thinkers.</p>
<p>Honeybee society thus provided a perfect microcosm to study a set of questions that concerned human politics and society. The Roman philosopher Seneca, for instance, asserted that the bee monarch leads by <em>clementia</em> (mercy or mildness) - a form of leadership he found woefully lacking in contemporary Roman society. </p>
<h2>Meat and man</h2>
<p>So far we have seen animals mostly playing a symbolic role in Graeco-Roman storytelling. There is also a very real way in which human and animal bodies come to merge: through the human consumption of meat.</p>
<p>The ancient Greeks and Romans were ardent meat-eaters. Indeed meat-eating became a status symbol closely linked to the articulation of masculine identities. </p>
<p>In classical Greece the male citizen received his equal share of meat after communal religious sacrifices carried out by the <em>polis</em> (“city-state”). Meat eating also features prominently in several anecdotes about successful ancient Greek athletes who toned their extraordinary bodies through the consumption of ridiculous amounts of meat.</p>
<p>One of them – a boxer named Theagenes – even claimed to have gobbled up an entire oxen in one sitting. Another one – Milo of Croton – apparently gained his extraordinary strength by carrying a heifer on his back as a young man until both he and the heifer had grown up. </p>
<p>Meanwhile at Rome, the elites sought to outdo each other by hosting ever more lavish dinner parties typically featuring one or several meat dishes. More often than not this involved attempts to serve a bigger or larger quantity of boar than their peers. <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Sumtuariae_Leges.html">Roman sumptuary laws</a> eventually sought to control the worst excesses – albeit with limited success. </p>
<h2>The shearwaters of Diomedea</h2>
<p>The real also blends into the imaginary in the story of a special kind of bird. The Scopoli Shearwater (<em>Calonectris Diomedea</em>) is a species common to the Adriatic and other parts of the Mediterranean Sea. One of its outstanding features is that its cries resemble that of a wailing baby. These birds feed on small fish, crustaceans, squid, and zooplankton and are both migratory and pelagic. </p>
<p>The stories told about these birds by several ancient authors bring us to what is perhaps the most momentous way of exploring the human-animal boundary: the idea that in the realm of myth, at least, some humans, under certain conditions, could turn into animals and back again (metamorphosis). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A shearwater in the sea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581199/original/file-20240312-28-mfz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scopoli shearwater.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">D.serra1/shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.loebclassics.com/view/aelian-characteristics_animals/1958/pb_LCL446.15.xml">Aelian</a>, some shearwaters residing on a rocky, otherwise uninhabited island in the Mediterranean Sea showed puzzling behaviour. They duly ignored all non-Greeks arriving on their island. Yet if Greek people reached their shores they welcomed them with stretched wings, even settling down on their laps as if for a joint meal. </p>
<p>What motivated this curious behaviour? </p>
<p>The backstory explains that the birds were once human. They were the comrades of Diomedes, king of Argos, one of the Greeks fighting at Troy, who is said to have died on the same island now inhabited by the birds. Apparently, upon his death, his friends grieved so heavily the goddess Aphrodite turned them into birds – their cries forever bemoaning the passing of their comrade. </p>
<p>On the face of it this story is merely another example of a myth explaining an outstanding feature in nature (the birds’ endearing <a href="https://www.birdlife.org/news/2021/05/31/seabird-month-corys-shearwater-calonectris-borealis/">human-like cry</a>). Yet there is more to the birds’ curious behaviour than meets the eye. In discriminating between Greeks and non-Greeks the birds seem to recall not only their former humanity but specifically their Greekness; they even seem to engage in the central Greek practice of extending friendship to guests (<em>xenia</em>) and the sharing of food. </p>
<p>In doing so they illustrate a central point of ancient (and many modern) tales of metamorphosis: even though the body may turn animal, the mind remains human. As the seat of logos it contains our humanity while the body adds little, if anything, of substance.</p>
<p>As such, rather than imagining what the world looks like from the point of view of a non-human creature, tales of metamorphosis ultimately come to reaffirm the view that the human stands apart from all other animals. </p>
<h2>And so?</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Trojan Horse and other stories: book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581186/original/file-20240312-26-wyc3p2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cambridge University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the myth of the Minotaur, the Greek hero Theseus eventually enters the labyrinth in which the Minotaur is confined, tracking him down, and slaying him. With the help of a thread given to him by Ariadne, he finds his way back out to tell the tale.</p>
<p>But trying to make sense of the Minotaur and other iconic creatures from the ancient world leads us down a rabbit hole into a place of blurred boundaries: where the human emerges as a contested figure somewhere in the space between mind and body, human and animal parts.</p>
<p>In the end, then, there is no hard and fast boundary separating us from all other creatures – notwithstanding all efforts to dress ourselves up as different.
Rather, it is the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/trojan-horse-and-other-stories/6DD8408FDBA4C5C6604536F6EC7406D5">negotiations between different facets of our identity</a> which make us human</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218800/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Kindt received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and is a member of the Sydney Environment Institute.</span></em></p>What makes us human? Greek and Roman thinkers were preoccupied with this question. And some of their observations of animals foreshadowed recent findings in the behavioural sciences.Julia Kindt, Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2187962024-03-11T19:13:04Z2024-03-11T19:13:04ZJürgen Habermas is a major public intellectual. What are his key ideas?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578129/original/file-20240227-20-1a0aos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C4%2C2946%2C1950&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jurgen Habermas pictured in 1981.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Roland Witschel picture alliance via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 13 November 2023, following the terrible attack by Hamas on Israel, Jürgen Habermas and three other prominent German academics released a <a href="https://www.normativeorders.net/2023/grundsatze-der-solidaritat/">statement</a> condemning the rise of antisemitism in Germany. They also criticised the use of the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s response. </p>
<p>Israel’s military retaliation was “justified in principle”, they argued, and despite</p>
<blockquote>
<p>all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population […], the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions. </p>
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<p>The statement generated a fierce <a href="https://publicseminar.org/2023/11/a-response-to-principles-of-solidarity-a-statement/">response</a>, with an open letter signed by numerous senior academics, many of whom had either worked with or been influenced by Habermas. They argued the statement’s “concern for human dignity is not adequately extended to Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are facing death and destruction”. Instead, they continued, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>solidarity means that the principle of human dignity must apply to all people. This requires us to recognise and address the suffering of all those affected by an armed conflict.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the age of 94, Habermas had yet again inserted himself into one of the major issues of the day. The dispute over Israel’s right to defend itself, and Palestine’s right to a homeland, exemplifies some of the tensions at the heart of his astonishing philosophical journey. </p>
<p>So who is Jürgen Habermas? And why is he such a major public intellectual, not only in Germany, but globally? </p>
<h2>War and philosophy</h2>
<p>Habermas was born in Düsseldorf, in 1929, coming of age during the second world war. He joined the Hitler Youth movement and was called up to the army. But immediately after the war, and with the revelation of the horrendous Nazi atrocities, he quickly grasped the moral and practical catastrophe of Hitler’s regime.</p>
<p>He eventually began studies in philosophy. After completing his graduate work, he became a research assistant to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/">Theodor Adorno</a> at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, which Adorno directed with the sociologist Max Horkheimer. Adorno and Horkheimer were influential German intellectuals who developed what came to be known as the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School">Frankfurt School</a>” of critical theory. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of Habermas." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578127/original/file-20240227-22-wqqi7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Habermas in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas#/media/File:Habermas10_(14298469242).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Taking a critical stance not only towards German society and its history (Adorno famously wrote there could be “no poetry after Auschwitz”), but also towards the nature of rationality and the Enlightenment more generally, they inaugurated a research program that still resonates today. </p>
<p>Although Habermas left the institute after a brief period, he eventually returned to the University of Frankfurt, this time as professor of philosophy, where he remained until his “retirement” in 1994. During this period and after, he produced a remarkable array of work, which has shaped debates not only in philosophy, but in sociology, political science, history, law, cultural studies, and not least, in the broader public culture of Europe and North America. </p>
<p>The 18th century philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/">Immanuel Kant</a> once described his philosophical project as driven by three questions: What can I know? What must I do? And what may I hope? That’s a pretty good summary of Habermas’s <a href="https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/07/inenglish/1525683618_145760.html">project</a> too. </p>
<p>However, unlike Adorno and Horkheimer, who were sceptical about the promise of radical politics given the pathologies of modern “unreason”, Habermas was interested in the extent to which modernity was an “unfinished project”. </p>
<p>This sense of the unfulfilled promise of the Enlightenment shaped some of his most important ideas. I want to explore two of them here.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-montesquieus-persian-letters-at-300-an-enlightenment-story-that-resonates-in-a-time-of-culture-wars-160176">Guide to the Classics: Montesquieu’s Persian Letters at 300 — an Enlightenment story that resonates in a time of culture wars</a>
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<h2>‘The unforced force of the better argument’</h2>
<p>The first is what Habermas calls “discourse ethics”. The underlying idea is that the conditions required for successful communication between people prefigures a form of public reasoning that helps us make sense of the normative grounds of liberal democracy. </p>
<p>“Discourse” is a special form of rule-governed communication. It is oriented towards truth seeking and providing reasons to others that they could, in principle, accept. The “unforced force of the better argument”, as Habermas puts it, should carry the argumentative weight in discourse, not economic or political power. </p>
<p>At first glance, in a world of corrosive social media and Trumpian “fake news”, this seems preposterous. But Habermas isn’t demanding that we convert politics into a philosophy seminar. Rather, he wants us to pay attention to (what are for him) the universal and unchanging moral presuppositions of genuine communication. </p>
<p>If human beings are fundamentally free and equal, then certain things follow as to how we ought to treat one another. Habermas takes Kant’s idea of the “categorical imperative” – in essence, act only in ways that you would rationally want everyone else to act – and converts it into a <em>discursive</em> imperative.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-kant-121881">Explainer: the ideas of Kant</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>What does this mean? He ties moral reasoning more closely than Kant did to people reasoning together. And so the imperative becomes: act only in ways that could be justified from within an “ideal speech situation” – a thought experiment in which communication is imagined to be free from the distorting effects of power and inequality. </p>
<p>Note two things about Habermas’s focus on “discourse” here. </p>
<p>First, he is using the thought experiment of an ideal speech situation as a way of getting us to focus on what standards we <em>should</em> appeal to, as opposed to unquestioningly assuming our existing ways of communicating and behaving are morally and politically satisfactory. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Habermas’s is a thought experiment in which communication is imagined to be free from the distorting effects of power and inequality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">fizkes/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And second, he is linking these standards to <em>dialogue</em> and <em>consensus</em> between human beings. The right thing to do, in life as well as in politics, is, roughly, what others most affected by your actions could agree to. </p>
<p>Our politics is, obviously, far removed from such ideal conditions. But we can only make sense of just how distorted it is, argues Habermas, by reflecting on the presuppositions inherent in the very idea of communication itself.</p>
<p>Habermas’ arguments provide standards against which to make sense of the purpose and legitimacy of liberal democratic institutions. This leads to the second big idea I want to highlight. </p>
<h2>Deliberative democracy</h2>
<p>Like the American political philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/dec/20/john-rawls-can-liberalisms-great-philosopher-come-to-the-wests-rescue-again">John Rawls</a>, with whom he had an ongoing philosophical <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-habermas-rawls-debate/9780231164115">conversation</a> over many years, Habermas thought that liberty and equality needed to be reconciled through our democratic institutions. </p>
<p>And the more he reflected on the pluralism of modern societies, the more he saw the function of legal and political institutions as helping to bind them together. </p>
<p>Consensus on valid moral norms was a necessary but insufficient condition for legitimacy. Convergence on the justification of the main political institutions was also required. This led to the development of his influential “deliberative” theory of democracy, outlined in his important book, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262581622/between-facts-and-norms/">Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy</a> (1992). </p>
<p>Once again, at first glance, this idea of convergence seems deeply unpromising. Aren’t disagreements about liberty and equality at the heart of some of the most polarising disputes today?</p>
<p>They might well be, but Habermas argues there is a deep interdependence between the kind of freedom associated with our “private autonomy”, protected by liberal rights, and our “public autonomy” as self governing citizens. But what is the nature of this interdependence? </p>
<p>First, for Habermas, democracy has a double structure. In civil society, (the informal sphere), citizens debate ideas and express themselves in a myriad of ways. In the more formal sphere of parliaments, courts and bureaucracies, politicians, judges, and civil servants legislate, adjudicate, and implement policies. </p>
<p>What is crucial, however, is that the formal sphere must remain sufficiently porous to the informal. Legal and political institutions must remain sensitive to the demands for changes emanating from civil society. Democratic legitimacy rests on striking the right balance between these different spheres. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean civil society isn’t prone to corruption or capture: Habermas is deeply <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/A+New+Structural+Transformation+of+the+Public+Sphere+and+Deliberative+Politics-p-9781509558957">concerned</a> about the impact of social media on public debate, for example. But this double structure of politics is a crucial feature of his conception of deliberative democracy. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/im-right-youre-wrong-and-heres-a-link-to-prove-it-how-social-media-shapes-public-debate-65723">I'm right, you're wrong, and here's a link to prove it: how social media shapes public debate</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Second, unlike many contemporary political theorists, Habermas rejects any sharp distinction between liberalism and civic republicanism. </p>
<p>Civic republicanism has, at its core, the idea that we are only truly free when we are self-governing; that is, when we are actively participating in shaping those laws and policies that affect our most important interests. Liberalism, on the other hand, is more ambivalent about the value of political participation. What is more important is that our basic rights are protected – including the freedom <em>not</em> to participate in politics! </p>
<p>Habermas thinks there is, in fact, a deep connection between the republican and liberal traditions. Private and public autonomy are, as he puts it, “co-original”. Our basic rights – like freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion – which are highly valued by liberals – are best protected through participatory self-government. </p>
<p>But the specific content of our rights will need to be determined through a deliberative process. And given the deep diversity of modern societies, protecting the private autonomy of individuals is a necessary condition for the legitimate exercise of self-government. You can’t engage in a genuine dialogue with others if you are too afraid to speak your mind, or if certain voices are privileged over others.</p>
<p>Habermas doesn’t deny that these different aspects of democracy can come apart. However, for him, one of the functions of democratic law is to help mediate these tensions. </p>
<h2>Criticisms</h2>
<p>Criticisms of Habermas often start with his claim that there is an inherent logic within the structure of discourse illuminating a path towards freedom from domination. And many of these critiques bite. </p>
<p>Philosopher <a href="https://thepointmag.com/politics/a-republic-of-discussion-habermas-at-ninety/">Raymond Geuss</a>, for example, asks, “is ‘discussion’ really so wonderful?” For him, and other critics, “discourse”, does not, in fact, have an unchanging structure that enables us to discern universal rules we can live by. This is sheer assertion on Habermas’s part, or what Geuss calls the “soft nostalgic breeze of late liberalism”. </p>
<p>The force of the better argument appears perpetually deferred, if not drowned out, in the cacophony of our dysfunctional public sphere. Arguments for justice — from <a href="https://theconversation.com/alexei-navalny-had-a-vision-of-a-democratic-russia-that-terrified-vladimir-putin-to-the-core-223812">Alexei Navalny</a> in Russia to the campaign for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-from-undermining-democracy-the-voice-will-pluralise-and-enrich-australias-democratic-conversation-205384">Voice to Parliament</a> in Australia – seem even less likely to carry the day than ever before. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/far-from-undermining-democracy-the-voice-will-pluralise-and-enrich-australias-democratic-conversation-205384">Far from undermining democracy, The Voice will pluralise and enrich Australia’s democratic conversation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>However, in appealing to an ideal that stresses the dialogical nature of persons, Habermas provides a distinctive argument for the moral basis of democratic institutions. The ultimate validity of the underlying norms of liberal democracy rests with the participants in the discourse – you and me. </p>
<p>You might well disagree with him. But in doing so, you are committing yourself to a view that can’t help but draw on ideas he has done so much to put into our public consciousness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218796/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Duncan Ivison has received funding for his research from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, now 94, is a thinker of global significance. Duncan Ivison explains two of his most important ideas.Duncan Ivison, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2082772024-02-16T13:18:22Z2024-02-16T13:18:22ZAs a rabbi, philosopher and physician, Maimonides wrestled with religion and reason – the book he wrote to reconcile them, ‘Guide to the Perplexed,’ has sparked debate ever since<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574467/original/file-20240208-26-bikf0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C9%2C2041%2C2026&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A bas-relief of Maimonides, sculpted by Brenda Putnam, hangs in the U.S. House of Representatives among statues of historical lawmakers.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maimonides_bas-relief_in_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_chamber_cropped.jpg">Architect of the Capitol/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I teach a <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/judaic-studies/profile.html?id=friedman">philosophy of religion</a> seminar titled “Faith and Reason.” Most students who register arrive with a mistaken assumption: that the course explores the differences between the two.</p>
<p>“Faith” is often defined as belief in a supernatural God that transcends reason – and belief that science can only go so far to explain the fundamental mysteries of life. Reason, meanwhile, means inquiry that draws on <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/#Rati">logic and deductive reasoning</a>. </p>
<p>It seems like a stark choice, an either-or – until we read Maimonides. For Maimonides, a 12th century theologian, philosopher, rabbi and physician, there is no true faith without reason.</p>
<p>Maimonides’ full name was Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, and he is often referred to by the abbreviation “Rambam.” His writings spurred <a href="https://davidwacks.uoregon.edu/2019/07/10/maimo/">centuries of conflict</a> and were even <a href="https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/persecuting-ideas/">banned in some Jewish communities</a>. Yet he also penned one of the most famous guides to Jewish law and still stands as one of the most influential rabbis to have ever lived.</p>
<p>It is surprising for many students to learn that Maimonides, who lived in present-day Spain, Morocco and Egypt, embraced reason as the only way to make sense of faith. In this rabbi’s view, the idea of a battle between faith and reason sets boundaries where none need exist. </p>
<p>Faith must be grounded in reason, lest it become superstition. This synthesis is at the heart of Maimonides’ most famous philosophical work, “<a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Guide_for_the_Perplexed?tab=contents">The Guide for the Perplexed</a>.”</p>
<h2>Jerusalem and Athens</h2>
<p>Treating faith and reason <a href="https://public.wsu.edu/%7Ecampbelld/amlit/hellenism.htm">as if they are at odds</a> is nothing new. Some philosophers have described them as two different cities, as when University of Chicago professor <a href="https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/biography/">Leo Strauss</a> <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/leo-strauss/jerusalem-and-athens-some-introductory-reflections/">wrote of “Jerusalem and Athens</a>.” </p>
<p>Both cities love wisdom, Strauss wrote, but attribute it to different things. In “Jerusalem,” where life is grounded by faith in God, “the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord,” Strauss wrote in 1967, quoting the biblical books of <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Proverbs.9.9?lang=bi">Proverbs</a> <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Job.28.28?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">and Job</a>. In “Athens,” on the other hand, symbolized by the ancient Greek philosophers, “the beginning of wisdom is wonder” – the wonder of inquiry and reason.</p>
<p>Almost 800 years before, however, Maimonides was arguing that true religion, true wisdom, requires both. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bronze-colored statue of a man in robes and golden shoes sitting with an open book in his lap, positioned in a sunny courtyard with plants growing behind it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574497/original/file-20240208-24-fjzign.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A statue of Maimonides in Cordoba, Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/statue-of-jewish-philosopher-maimonides-cordoba-span-news-photo/184251484?adppopup=true">Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Rambam was deeply steeped in Jewish learning. As a doctor, astronomer and philosopher, however, he was just as knowledgeable about the science of his day. He ostensibly wrote “The Guide to the Perplexed” to help his student Joseph Ibn Aknin navigate between the truths of philosophy, natural science and revelation.</p>
<p>Maimonides’ understanding of God and the universe <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides/">mostly agreed with Aristotle’s </a>. In <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Guide_for_the_Perplexed%2C_Part_2.1?ven=Guide_for_the_Perplexed,_English_Translation,_Friedlander_(1903)&lang=en">Part II of his “Guide</a>,” Maimonides credits Aristotle with helping to prove three key principles about God: God is incorporeal, without a physical body; God is one; and God transcends the material world. Yet God created the world and set it in motion, Maimonides asserts, and everything in it depends on God for its existence.</p>
<h2>Science and scripture</h2>
<p>Throughout these chapters, the rabbi does not turn to scripture to prove or disprove philosophical propositions, although <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Guide_for_the_Perplexed%2C_Part_2.5.3?ven=Guide_for_the_Perplexed,_English_Translation,_Friedlander_(1903)&lang=en&with=Navigation&lang2=en">he notes</a> that Aristotle’s opinion may be “in accordance with the words of our prophets and our theologians or Sages.”</p>
<p>This does not mean that Maimonides does not care about sacred texts – far from it. Rather, he argues that the truths of science and philosophy must inform how people interpret the Bible.</p>
<p>Many people of faith have read the Book of Genesis’ <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.1.27?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">story of creation</a> literally. For them, God’s creation of humanity “in our image and likeness” means both that God must have a body and that humanity shares much in common with God.</p>
<p>For Maimonides, however, language like these passages in Genesis was allegorical. If reason teaches that <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Guide_for_the_Perplexed%2C_Part_1.1.2?lang=bi">God is incorporeal</a>, this means that God has no body; God does not physically see, nor do people see God. God does not speak, sit on a throne, stretch out an arm, rest or become angry. Reading these passages literally misunderstands the nature of God.</p>
<p>It is hard to overstate the significance of this claim. In Maimonides’ view, saying that God has a body is not just incorrect but blasphemous and idolatrous. He sees God as unique and transcendent, irreducible to anything human or material. And if God does not literally speak, then the Bible cannot be the literal word of God.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white image of an old, worn parchment covered in letters in black ink." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574498/original/file-20240208-22-irfpck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A letter Maimonides wrote around 1172, discovered in the late 1800s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/moses-maimonides-handwritten-letter-c-1172-signature-news-photo/590537778?adppopup=true">Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Maimonides insists that the Bible be appreciated as an esoteric text. Any part of the revealed text that does not fit with a true understanding of God and the universe must be read allegorically.</p>
<p>Reason does not eliminate his faith in God, or the power of scripture. Instead, reason protects people from believing something incorrect about God’s nature. Maimonides insists that we have faith in reason and that reason ground our faith.</p>
<h2>The palace of God</h2>
<p>Maimonides’ philosophical writing is filled with debate and disagreement between him, fellow rabbis, Jewish philosophers and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-natural/">the Kalam</a>, a medieval tradition of Islamic theology. Reason was the tool needed to make sense of sacred texts, and philosophical inquiry was the process needed to get it right. The goal was truth, not mere obedience. </p>
<p>Toward the end of his “Guide for the Perplexed,” Maimonides <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Guide_for_the_Perplexed%2C_Part_3.51.1?lang=en&with=Navigation&lang2=en">lays out what he believes are different levels of enlightenment</a>. The allegory centers on a king’s palace: Only a select few, those who pursue truest wisdom grounded in philosophy and science, will reach the room where the king – God – resides. People guided by faith alone, who accept scripture literally and unquestioningly, and believe that faith transcends reason, on the other hand, “have their backs turned toward the king’s palace,” moving further and further away from God.</p>
<p>Maimonides is considered one of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides/">the greatest rabbinic authorities of all time</a>. And his resolution to the debate between faith and reason could not have been clearer: There should be no true conflict. Both reason and revelation are our guides.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Randy L. Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Faith and reason are often treated as opposites. But some philosophers believe they can only strengthen each other, including the Jewish sage Maimonides, who wrote the famous ‘Guide to the Perplexed.’Randy L. Friedman, Associate Professor of Judaic Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224802024-02-12T13:26:11Z2024-02-12T13:26:11ZAre you really in love? How expanding your love lexicon can change your relationships and how you see yourself<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574485/original/file-20240208-20-i320ao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1732%2C1732&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Language can steer your heart in unexpected ways.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/heart-with-speech-bubbles-royalty-free-illustration/639561892">VLADGRIN/Stock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is love? Could those feelings you label as love be something else? </p>
<p>What about infatuation? Obsession? A passing fancy? Being smitten? Enthrallment? Beguilement? Lust? A crush? A <a href="https://medium.com/@caitlin_murphy/whats-a-squish-cb07ce59adc1">squish</a>? Platonic admiration? Why do people categorize some attachments as romantic love but not others? </p>
<p>Suppose Holly meets someone on vacation. They quickly become romantically and sexually intimate and seem deeply compatible. Holly is from the U.K., where the term “<a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/holiday-romance_n">holiday romance</a>” is commonly used and part of her vocabulary. Because she knows this term, she can apply its social scaffolding to this relationship. She understands that the rapid emotional intimacy and apparent compatibility she experienced likely sprang from <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/36-questions-to-fall-in-love-arthur-aron-holiday-romance/">fleeting circumstances</a> that aren’t meant to last. </p>
<p>Someone from the U.S., however, where this term is <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holiday-romance">rarely used</a>, might more easily interpret this rapid intimacy as a sign of deep, significant lifelong compatibility.</p>
<p>Judging that you are in love <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-love-feel-magical-its-an-evolutionary-advantage-180443">can be powerful</a>. It can affect your feelings, relationships and even your sexuality. But how do people judge whether they are in love?</p>
<p>This, I argue, depends on your <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">linguistic community</a>. That is, how the people around you talk about romance, relationships and attraction. </p>
<p>I am a philosopher who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=M5Vxs_cAAAAJ&hl=en">studies categorization schemas</a> – how, when and why people label things such as emotions, sexuality and health. I examine the effects of those labels on how people understand themselves and on their well-being, and how alternative taxonomies and labels can make people understand and shape the world differently. </p>
<p>What happens when a culture instills a broader, more encompassing definition of love, or a narrower, more restrictive definition? How does having a richer vocabulary of words in the neighborhood of love change how we understand it?</p>
<h2>The social scaffolding of words</h2>
<p>Self-ascriptions of love <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">depend on two things</a>. The first are introspective judgments about your feelings: Are you attracted to the person? Energized by them? Nervous around them? And the second is what you think love is: Does love require caring about the person? Thinking about them a lot? Sexual attraction? When how you feel about a person and what you think love is match up, you self-ascribe love. That is, you judge that you are in love. </p>
<p>Words provide social scaffolding. That is, they create expectations and norms that steer how you behave and react to other people. And vocabularies vary by culture and era.</p>
<p>Categorizing an attachment as a “holiday romance” doesn’t just describe it but can also change its course. The label affects what Holly notices and values about the time she spends together with another person and whether she is inclined to pursue a long-term relationship.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-language-we-translate-our-thoughts-into-words-but-words-also-affect-the-way-we-think-111801">Vocabulary is empowering</a>. Having an even more expansive vocabulary would allow Holly to experiment with different labels, and these could shape her relationships in different ways. </p>
<p>For example, the term “<a href="https://www.theheartradio.org/season1/thehurricane">eintagsliebe</a>,” based on the German word for “mayfly” and translating to “one day’s love,” refers to an intense and brief relationship. “<a href="https://poly.land/2021/08/31/what-are-comet-relationships/">Comet lovers</a>” have a deep romantic bond but see each other only intermittently, living far apart the rest of the time without much contact. A “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=holibae">holibae</a>” is a perennial date that happens only when you’re visiting home for the holidays. See also “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Post%2FZip%20Code%20Rule">zipcoding</a>” – dating someone only when you’re both in the same ZIP code.</p>
<h2>The dictionary of polyamory</h2>
<p>Words create possibilities, and the recent surge of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-polycule-an-expert-on-polyamory-explains-195083">interest in polyamory</a>, or having more than one romantic relationship at a time, has introduced substantial amounts of <a href="https://www.readyforpolyamory.com/polyamory-glossary">new vocabulary</a>.</p>
<p>An “anchor partner” is a central figure in your romantic life. A “nesting partner” is a partner you live with. And a “satellite partner” has emotional and physical distance from your home. Vocabularies sculpted by traditional monogamous relationships might not distinguish between these types of attachments because they see non-cohabitating partnerships only as <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a41443281/relationship-escalator/">temporary transition phases</a> that end by breaking up or become serious by moving in.</p>
<p>By rejecting the mainstream social scaffolding about relationships, polyamory creates the <a href="https://blog.franklinveaux.com/2017/12/an-update-to-the-map-of-non-monogamy/">need for more terms</a> to describe innovative relationship structures. And those words in turn create more possibilities for how polyamorous people interpret and structure their attachments.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Backs of group of people with their arms links around each other, backlit by the sun" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Polyamory has inspired new vocabulary to describe nontraditional relationship structures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/low-angle-view-of-friends-with-arm-around-standing-royalty-free-image/961358016">Cavan Images/Cavan via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-polyamorists-next-door/201910/new-relationship-energy-what-it-is-how-deal-it">New relationship energy</a>” is the buzzing excitement of a new relationship. “<a href="https://polywithabigheart.com/2020/01/27/established-relationship-energy/">Established relationship energy</a>” is the comfort of a stable, long-term relationship. These emotions are especially salient within polyamorous relationships, where the excitement of a new relationship can arise alongside the comfort of preexisting relationships. </p>
<p>But monogamous relationships also benefit from these linguistic innovations. Monogamous relationships might also involve new relationship energy, established relationship energy, and nesting, anchor and satellite partnerships, even if they aren’t labeled as such. Such self-understandings affect the values, emotions, commitments and beliefs people use to forge relationships.</p>
<h2>Conceptual tourism</h2>
<p>Conceptual schemas, or the words and concepts we have for understanding ourselves and the world around us, have <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">permissive flexibility</a>: People can disagree about what words like “love,” “crush” and “bi-curious” mean. Disagreement doesn’t mean that someone is wrong. Rather, flexibility allows us to explore different ways to understand the world and ourselves. We can be conceptual tourists.</p>
<p>Suppose Nell develops an ambiguous attachment to a new classmate. She finds her charming, witty and pretty, but it isn’t a clear-cut case of romantic attraction. Nell can adopt a broad or narrow definition of the word “crush,” depending on whether her feelings meet how she defines a “crush.” Altering what she means by a “crush” would change whether she labels herself as having a crush. This, in turn, could affect whether Nell sees herself as queer or straight.</p>
<p>If she knows other terms to describe her feelings, Nell might interpret them as “<a href="https://www.choosingtherapy.com/types-of-attraction/">alterous attraction</a>,” which is the desire for emotional intimacy in a way that is neither platonic nor romantic. She might seek a “<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bound-together/202109/queerplatonic-relationships-new-term-old-custom">queerplatonic relationship</a>,” which resembles a conventional romantic relationship but without sex or conventional romance. Or, if her feelings are intense, Nell might self-ascribe “<a href="https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=psych_fac">limerence</a>,” which is obsessive infatuation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people sitting back to back on grass, hands loosely intertwined" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How you label your feelings toward someone influences how you interpret them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/couple-holding-hands-royalty-free-image/1209086354">Johner Images/Johner Images Royalty-Free via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">Self-ascribing labels</a> affects what people notice about themselves, how they interpret their feelings and what they appreciate about their attachments. What she pays attention to <a href="https://philarchive.org/rec/GARAOT-11">fuels particular emotions</a> and can bolster certain attitudes, like profound gratitude, that might distinguish love from crushes. </p>
<p>For example, if Nell interprets herself as having a crush, she may become more attuned to the excitement she feels around her classmate, which can fuel those emotions in a feedback loop. If she labels her feelings as platonic admiration, she might <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7snpw.8">instead interpret</a> herself as being nervous about impressing her new classmate. </p>
<p>Nell can experimentally adopt different labels – alterous attraction, queer, crush, limerence, straight and more – to see which fit best. Some labels might better match her emotions. And those labels might also change her emotions and become <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-6740420">self-fulfilling prophecies</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">Conceptual tourism</a> can be a valuable cognitive skill. It requires the mental dexterity to inhabit rival <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190860974.003.0002">conceptual schemas</a> and try on new interpretative terms. Doing so can increase your self-understanding, cultivate self-determination and even help steer your heart. </p>
<p>Culture unavoidably provides a lexicon of attachment that shapes how you relate to other people. A culture that is more <a href="https://www.bonn-institute.org/en/news/psychology-in-journalism-2">deliberate about the words</a> it uses for different kinds of attraction can help people bond in new and more open-minded ways. </p>
<p>It’s also a great motivator for education: Learning new words can help you improve your love life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222480/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georgi Gardiner receives funding from the University of Tennessee. She has previously received funding from the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS). </span></em></p>Words have power, and what vocabulary you have at your disposal to describe your relationships with other people can shape what directions those relationships can take.Georgi Gardiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of the University of Tennessee Humanities Center (UTHC), University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059382024-02-11T19:05:24Z2024-02-11T19:05:24Z‘Self-love’ might seem selfish. But done right, it’s the opposite of narcissism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574314/original/file-20240208-16-qv7i63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C4479%2C2991&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bart Larue/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“To love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron” <a href="https://archive.org/details/jungsseminaronni0000jung">said psychonalyst Carl Jung</a>.</p>
<p>Some may argue this social media generation does not seem to struggle with loving themselves. But is the look-at-me-ism so easily found on TikTok and Instagram the kind of self-love we need in order to flourish? </p>
<p>The language of <a href="https://theconversation.com/teaching-positive-psychology-skills-at-school-may-be-one-way-to-help-student-mental-health-and-happiness-217173">positive psychology</a> can be – and often is – appropriated for all kinds of self-importance, as well as cynical marketing strategies.</p>
<p>Loving yourself, though, psychological experts stress, is not the same as behaving selfishly. There’s a firm line between healthy and appropriate forms of loving yourself, and malignant or <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-types-of-narcissist-are-there-a-psychology-expert-sets-the-record-straight-207610">narcissistic</a> forms. But how do we distinguish between them? </p>
<p>In 2023, researchers Eva Henschke and Peter Sedlmeier conducted <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355152846_What_is_self-love_Redefinition_of_a_controversial_construct">a series of interviews</a> with psychotherapists and other experts on what self-love is. They’ve concluded it has three main features: self-care, self-acceptance and self-contact (devoting attention to yourself). </p>
<p>But as an increasingly individualistic society, are we already devoting too much attention to ourselves? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574312/original/file-20240208-28-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Loving yourself, the experts stress, is not the same as behaving selfishly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Polina Kovaleva/Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Philosophy and self-love</h2>
<p>Philosophers and psychology experts alike have considered the ethics of self-love.</p>
<p>Psychology researcher Li Ming Xue and her colleagues, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.585719/full">exploring the notion of self-love in Chinese culture</a>, claim “Western philosophers believe that self-love is a virtue”. But this is a very broad generalisation. </p>
<p>In the Christian tradition and in much European philosophy, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770.2020.1839209">says philosopher Razvan Ioan</a>, self-love is condemned as a profoundly damaging trait.</p>
<p>On the other hand, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2107991">many of the great Christian philosophers</a>, attempting to make sense of the instruction to love one’s neighbour as oneself, admitted certain forms of self-love were virtuous. In order to love your neighbour as yourself, you must, it would seem, love yourself. </p>
<p>In the Western philosophical context, claim Xue and her colleagues, self-love is concerned with individual rights – “society as a whole only serves to promote an individual’s happiness”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574315/original/file-20240208-26-onei4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aristotle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Francesco Hayez/Gallerie Accademia Venice</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This individualistic, self-concerned notion of self-love, they suggest, might come from the Ancient Greek philosophers. In particular, Aristotle. But <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/philosophy-stirred-not-shaken/201502/love-yourself-love-your-character">Aristotle thought only the most virtuous</a>, who benefited the society around them, should love themselves. By making this connection, he avoided equating self-love with self-centredness. </p>
<p>We should love ourselves not out of vanity, he argued, but in virtue of our capacity for good. Does Aristotle, then, provide principled grounds for distinguishing between proper and improper forms of self-love? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-3-ways-philosophy-can-help-us-understand-love-155374">Friday essay: 3 ways philosophy can help us understand love</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bar too high?</h2>
<p>Aristotle might set the bar too high. If only the most virtuous should try to love themselves, this collides head-on with the idea loving yourself can help us improve and become more virtuous – as <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137383310_6">philosophers Kate Abramson and Adam Leite have argued</a>.</p>
<p>Many psychologists claim self-love is important for adopting the kind and compassionate self-perception crucial for overcoming conditions that weaponise self-criticism, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/clinical-perfectionism-when-striving-for-excellence-gets-you-down-43704">clinical perfectionism</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-people-have-eating-disorders-we-dont-really-know-and-thats-a-worry-121938">eating disorders</a>.</p>
<p>More broadly, some argue compassion for oneself is necessary to support honest insights into your own behaviour. They believe we need warm and compassionate self-reflection to avoid the defensiveness that comes with the fear of judgement – even if we’re standing as our own judge. </p>
<p>For this reason, a compassionate form of self-love is often necessary to follow Socrates’ advice to “know thyself”, says <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9578-4">philosopher Jan Bransen</a>. Positive self-love, by these lights, can help us grow as people. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574316/original/file-20240208-20-bikmly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Positive self-love can help us grow as people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nashua Volquezyoung/Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Self-love ‘misguided and silly’</h2>
<p>But not everyone agrees you need self-love to grow. The late philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/nov/29/guardianobituaries.obituaries">Oswald Hanfling</a> was deeply sceptical of this idea. In fact, he argued the notion of loving oneself was misguided and silly. His ideas are mostly rejected by philosophers of love, but pointing out where they go wrong can be useful. </p>
<p>When you love someone, he said, you’re prepared to sacrifice your own interests for those of your beloved. But he thought the idea of sacrificing your own interests made no sense – which shows, he concluded, we can’t love ourselves. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751159">He wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I may sacrifice an immediate satisfaction for the sake of my welfare in the future, as in the case of giving up smoking. In this case, however, my motive is not love but self-interest. What I reveal in giving up smoking is not the extent of my love for myself, but an understanding that the long-term benefits of giving it up are likely to exceed the present satisfaction of going on with it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We often have conflicting interests (think of someone who is agonising over two different career paths) – and it’s not at all strange to sacrifice certain interests for the sake of others. </p>
<p>This is not just a question of sacrificing short-term desires in favour of a long-term good, but a matter of sacrificing something of value for your ultimate benefit (or, so you hope). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-love-in-pop-culture-love-is-often-depicted-as-a-willingness-to-sacrifice-but-ancient-philosophers-took-a-different-view-187159">What is love? In pop culture, love is often depicted as a willingness to sacrifice, but ancient philosophers took a different view</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Self-compassion</h2>
<p>Hanfling fails to consider the role of compassionate self-love. While we might understand it’s in our interests to do something (for instance, repair bridges with someone we’ve fallen out with), it might take a compassionate and open disposition towards ourselves to recognise what’s in our best interests. </p>
<p>We might need this self-compassion, too, in order to admit our failures – so we can overcome our defensiveness and see clearly how we’re failing to fulfil <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9578-4">these interests</a>.</p>
<p>Self-acceptance in this context does not mean giving ourselves licence to run roughshod over the interests of those around us, nor to justify our flaws as “valid” rather than work on them. </p>
<p>Self-love, as promoted by contemporary psychologists, means standing in a compassionate relationship to ourselves. And there’s nothing contradictory about this idea. </p>
<p>Just as we strive to develop a supportive, kind relationship to the people we care about – and just as this doesn’t involve uncritical approval of everything they do – compassionate self-love doesn’t mean abandoning valid self-criticism. </p>
<p>In fact, self-compassion has the opposite effect. It promotes comfort with the kind of critical self-assessment that helps us grow – which leads to resilience. It breeds the opposite of narcissistic self-absorption.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Robertson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What is healthy self-love? Psychology experts and philosophers have long debated the question.Ian Robertson, PhD Candidate (Teaching roles at Macquarie & Wollongong), University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206192024-01-31T12:24:33Z2024-01-31T12:24:33ZWhat inner speech is, and why philosophy is waking up to it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571609/original/file-20240126-25-ei5wf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C2556%2C1582&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/es/image-vector/set-bubble-speech-white-empty-space-1535722826">Hunia Studio/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is quite rare for philosophers to start investigating a new area, and a lot of the questions they explore have been around since ancient times. However, there is something they have only begun to look at closely in the last 15 years or so, which sits at the intersection of psychology and philosophy: inner speech.</p>
<p>Also known as the internal monologue, inner speech is the voice we hear in our minds when thinking or reading. Surprisingly, empirical research has found that <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/93p4r8td">not everyone has this inner voice</a>, though the majority of us do. </p>
<p>Science and psychology have given it plenty of attention. We have known for over a century that the inner voice – especially when reading text – is accompanied by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1412271?origin=crossref">tiny movements of the larynx</a>, showing a clear link between “internal” and “external” speech.</p>
<p>Philosophers have occasionally thought about inner speech before. The well known behaviourist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gilbert-Ryle">Gilbert Ryle</a> saw it as playing a key role in what philosophers call “self knowledge”. We learn about others by listening to what they say, and in his seminal 1949 book, <a href="https://www.google.es/books/edition/The_Concept_of_Mind/FHJ4AgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">The Concept of Mind</a>, Ryle suggested that we are able to do the same to ourselves by “eavesdropping” on our own inner speech. </p>
<p>The phenomenon has made an appearance in other philosophical contexts, but it has not, until recently, been a topic of sustained attention in the field. Philosophers are now realising that psychology can only explain it up to a point: there are certain aspects of inner speech that can only be addressed by distinctively theoretical thinking.</p>
<h2>Psychology vs philosophy</h2>
<p>Inner speech has received a lot more attention from psychologists than philosophers over the years. Soviet psychologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/L-S-Vygotsky">Lev Vygotsky</a> was a very influential figure on the subject. </p>
<p>Vygotsky noted – as we have all undoubtedly seen – that children of a certain age often speak to themselves aloud, but that they gradually stop as they grow older. He suggested that inner speech develops as this practice fades. According to Vygotsky, inner speech is simply external speech that has been internalised.</p>
<p>Many philosophers agree, but some see the phenomenon differently, as there are not, as far as we know, any other activities that we can perform both internally and externally. Some philosophers have thought that inner speech might not actually be speech but a mental representation of it.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amacad.org/person/ray-s-jackendoff">Ray Jackendoff</a>, for example, has suggested that we are imagining what speech sounds like when we produce inner speech, but doing so in a way which imitates how we would express ourselves if we were speaking aloud. We are not actually speaking, but simulating speech.</p>
<p>This is purely theoretical reasoning, but it does not aim to challenge or disprove psychological approaches. On the contrary, it enriches empirical research by adding a valuable new perspective.</p>
<h2>Talking to ourselves?</h2>
<p>One question we can answer, at least partly, is why we produce inner speech, even though no one else can hear it. There are a number of benefits.</p>
<p>Putting our thoughts into words can help to clarify our thoughts, and make them more precise. Sometimes we can only work out our true thoughts by saying them aloud. We often speak to others – or perhaps write our ideas down – to try and solve a problem or deal with emotions. Producing inner speech helps us to develop our own thoughts in a similar way.</p>
<p>There may be other benefits too. Making an existing thought or belief conscious by expressing it internally can help to advance a process of reasoning, even on everyday matters. “If I’m home by 6:30, I can cook dinner by 7:30,” you might say in inner speech. But this prompts the further thought, “Oh, but the game starts at 7. I’d better get takeaway instead.”</p>
<p>These answers, however, still leave a question open: are we actually talking to ourselves in the same way we talk to others? Or are we just talking?</p>
<h2>Controlling the voice in your head</h2>
<p>Another area with room for philosophical thinking is the question of whether producing inner speech is an action, or something that just happens.</p>
<p>When we physically speak aloud, it is typically an action: we can choose to do it, or not do it. The same cannot be said for inner speech, which is often unprompted, or even intrusive and undesired.</p>
<p>It can actually be hard to silence our internal monologue, and doing it at will is all but impossible. See for yourself, right now: concentrate on trying to think of nothing and stop producing inner speech. You will probably, paradoxically, find yourself producing more, and further efforts will only make it harder. Conditions such as <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7870507/">stress</a>, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/depression-management-techniques/201604/rumination-a-problem-in-anxiety-and-depression">anxiety or depression</a> also have proven psychological links to inner speech.</p>
<p>We can decide to produce a particular piece of inner speech – to “say” a word in our minds – but it often seems to happen without us doing anything at all.</p>
<h2>What is an action?</h2>
<p>In my <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7672716">research</a>, I have argued that producing inner speech is almost never an action, though the question of what makes something an action is itself a topic of philosophical debate.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2024676">One prominent theory</a> holds that actions are things that we can try to do, or that require effort. Producing inner speech often requires no effort, and as we have seen, we even struggle to stop it. This seems to indicate that it isn’t something we try to do, but that it just “happens”. </p>
<p>Other theories of action yield a similar result: inner speech almost never fits the definition.</p>
<p>A huge amount of philosophical work has been done on the subject of conscious experience in general. However, philosophers have not always paid attention to specific mental phenomena. Inner speech is a unique kind of conscious experience, which seems to involve a typically external activity – speaking – taking place in the mind. Investigating it will undoubtedly lead us down fascinating paths in years to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Gregory's María Zambrano Postdoctoral Fellowship is funded by the European Commission's Next Generation EU package, via the Spanish Ministry of Universities. He is also a member of the Inner Speech in Action: New Perspectives research project, which receives funding from the Spanish State Research Agency and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant number PID2020-115052GA-Ioo).</span></em></p>We are constantly talking to ourselves, but our internal monologues have received surprisingly little attention from philosophers, until now.Daniel Gregory, María Zambrano Postdoctoral Fellow, Universitat de BarcelonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2216052024-01-29T02:29:41Z2024-01-29T02:29:41ZWho we care about is limited – but our research shows how humans can expand their ‘moral circle’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571787/original/file-20240128-23-p9w2if.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C65%2C5005%2C3571&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/help-concept-hands-reaching-out-each-1588320151">Bignai/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A cost-of-living crisis, the ongoing impact of COVID, climate change, and numerous global conflicts and refugee crises. When it feels like so many people are doing it tough, how do we decide where to direct our compassion? </p>
<p>In a world that seems <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01012-5">increasingly fractured</a>, we wanted to find out if people can bridge the divide between “us” and “them” – to grow their feelings of wanting to help others, who would be typically beyond their “moral circle”.</p>
<p>We discovered that a surprisingly short period of compassion training can expand how much someone cares about people far beyond their immediate circle. </p>
<h2>Measuring who matters most to us</h2>
<p>Not all moral connections are equal. If the person suffering is our child, our partner, our friend, we are quick to help. But when faced with the suffering of a complete stranger, or someone on the other side of the planet, our motivation to help is likely reduced.</p>
<p>Taking this further, what if the person suffering was actually someone we disliked, or even someone who may have caused harm to others? Would we care then? </p>
<p>Philosophers such as Peter Singer have developed the popular term “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_circle_expansion">moral circle</a>” to refer to those we consider worthy of our concern and those we do not. Typically we prioritise the moral needs of our family and <a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/ingroup">ingroup</a> (the social group we belong to) first, and we care much less about those different or distant to us.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-decide-who-and-what-we-care-about-and-whether-robots-stand-a-chance-91987">How we decide who and what we care about – and whether robots stand a chance</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Researchers have found we order groups <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/pspp0000086">in this fairly predictable way</a>: family/friends, ingroup, revered, stigmatised, outgroup, animals (high sentience), environment, animals (low sentience), plants, and villains. </p>
<p>Research also shows <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221101767">Australia is not particularly high</a> in terms of moral expansiveness – the size of one’s moral circle. In a 2022 study, Australia ranked 32nd on a moral expansiveness scale (MES), with countries like Canada, France and China ranking much higher.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571790/original/file-20240128-27-zdt35n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Average moral expansiveness scale (MES) scores per country. Higher numbers indicate greater moral expansiveness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221101767">Kirkland et al. (2022)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But are our moral boundaries fixed, or can we move up the moral expansiveness ladder? The question of whether our moral concern for others is stable or zero sum (that is, “my concern for someone comes at the expense of another”) is an empirical one.</p>
<h2>Can we expand our moral circles?</h2>
<p>When thinking about ways to grow our moral circle, things like empathy and mindfulness may come to mind. But our work shows that <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34279046/">compassion is stronger than both</a> at predicting the size of one’s moral circle.</p>
<p>Our work also shows that compassion predicts our <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-022-01900-z">willingness to help those we dislike</a>. And other research shows compassion training increases <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45363-1">feelings of closeness toward a disliked person</a>. </p>
<p>Building on this, our latest research found that a brief <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-023-02300-7">compassion training intervention</a> can increase our moral expansiveness. </p>
<p>In this study, 102 participants were randomly assigned to complete a brief two-hour seminar on compassion training, or to a control group who didn’t attend a seminar.</p>
<p>In the seminar, we focused on defining compassion. The message was: things like anger, anxiety and sadness are normal human emotions, but we have a responsibility to learn and practice how to work with these feelings in helpful and supportive ways.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in tshirt and jeans sitting on the forest floor listening to earphones" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571792/original/file-20240128-23-ly0d61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Participants in the moral expansiveness study spent two weeks listening to audio exercises.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-forest-lean-against-tree-headphones-1889602081">Aleksandr Pobeda/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Participants then had two weeks to continue to practice what we did in the intervention by listening to guided audio exercises, which were a combination of compassionate breathing and imagery exercises, as well as meditations.</p>
<p>Compassion meditations typically follow a set structure. We begin by expressing compassion to a target – someone we like – but then expand out to other targets, such as strangers or disliked others, to other sentient beings like animals, and to elements of the natural environment, such as coral reefs or forests.</p>
<p>We found that two weeks after the program, participants who had completed compassion training has greater moral expansiveness towards family and revered groups in society (for example, charity workers). </p>
<p>At the three month follow-up, these outcomes improved further. Moral concern for others had increased across the board, including towards outgroup members (such as political opponents), stigmatised members of society, animals, plants, the environment – and even towards supposed “villains” in our society (for example, convicted criminals).</p>
<p>This shows compassion and moral expansiveness are closely connected. We don’t know for sure, but the improved results at the three month mark may have been due to continuing the audio exercises, or perhaps due to a “sleeper effect” – it takes time for people to shift their moral view.</p>
<h2>A hopeful future?</h2>
<p>The year 2024 is full of big choices, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-4-billion-people-are-eligible-to-vote-in-an-election-in-2024-is-this-democracys-biggest-test-220837">4 billion people eligible to vote</a> on who should lead their country.</p>
<p>Election years often spiral into divisions of “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0">us” and “them</a>”, with “we” the public having to choose between the people and policies we hope will improve our world. </p>
<p>Compassion might offer one way to ensure we don’t fall into the trap of turning against one another. We can all recognise the right for people and sentient creatures to live a life free of suffering. </p>
<p>And if compassion helps guide us in our decisions and actions, and even expand our moral sensibilities, we may be better placed to tackle some of the big challenges we are facing – and ensure those who are suffering most don’t get left behind. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-gooders-conservatives-and-reluctant-recyclers-how-personal-morals-can-be-harnessed-for-climate-action-164599">'Do-gooders', conservatives and reluctant recyclers: how personal morals can be harnessed for climate action</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Kirby receives funding from the Mind & Life Institute and is a board member of the Global Compassion Coalition. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlie Crimston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When it feels like so many people are in need of compassion, how do we decide where to direct it?James Kirby, Associate Professor in Psychology, The University of QueenslandCharlie Crimston, Lecturer in Psychology, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2208432024-01-22T19:03:23Z2024-01-22T19:03:23ZWhat does the ‘common good’ actually mean? Our research found common ground across the political divide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570505/original/file-20240121-27145-v4nyx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C5176%2C3430&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Timon Studler/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some topics are hard to define. They are nebulous; their meanings are elusive. Topics relating to morality fit this description. So do those that are subjective, meaning different things to different people in different contexts. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12713">recently published paper</a>, we targeted the nebulous concept of the “common good”. </p>
<p>Like moral issues that elicit strong arguments for and against, conceptualisations of the common good can vary according to the different needs of individuals and the different values they hold. One factor that <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19379034/">divides people</a> is political orientation. Those on the far left hold very different opinions on moral and social issues than those on the far right. </p>
<p>How can we expect people across the political spectrum to agree on a moral topic when they have such different perspectives? </p>
<p>If we set aside the specific moral issues and focus instead on the broader aspects of the common good as a concept, we may well find foundational principles – ideas that are shared between people, ideas that are perhaps even universal. </p>
<h2>Folk theory</h2>
<p>To find such underlying commonalities, we used a social psychological <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1990-98641-000">folk theory</a> approach. Folk theories are non-academic or lay beliefs that comprise individuals’ informal and subjective understandings of their world. </p>
<p>The concept of the common good bleeds into cultural perceptions and worldviews. The currency of such ideas influences how we think and what we talk about with other people. By asking people to write about or define elusive concepts, social psychologists can search for frequently expressed words and phrases and derive a shared cultural understanding from the collection of individual texts. </p>
<p>We asked 14,303 people who participated in a larger study for the <a href="https://australianleadershipindex.org/">Australian Leadership Index</a> to provide a definition of the common good, also sometimes called the greater good or the public good.</p>
<p>The sample was nationally representative, meaning it reflected the demographics of the Australian population at the time the data was collected. We then used a linguistic analysis tool, called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, to analyse the responses. </p>
<p>The program has a new function called the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358725479_The_Development_and_Psychometric_Properties_of_LIWC-22?channel=doi%26linkId=6210f62c4be28e145ca1e60b%26showFulltext=true">Meaning Extraction Method</a>, which processes large bodies of text to identify prevalent themes or concepts by analysing words that frequently occur in close proximity. </p>
<p>Using this method, we explored Australians’ definitions of the common good. From the word clusters derived from this analysis, we identified nine main themes:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>outcomes that are in the best interest of the majority</p></li>
<li><p>decisions and actions that benefit the majority</p></li>
<li><p>that which is in the best interest of the general public</p></li>
<li><p>that which serves the general national population rather than individual interests</p></li>
<li><p>that which serves the majority rather than minority interests</p></li>
<li><p>that which serves group rather than individual interests</p></li>
<li><p>that which serves citizens’ interests</p></li>
<li><p>concern for and doing the right thing for all people</p></li>
<li><p>moral principles required to achieve the common good</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Interestingly, these broad themes did not differ for the most part between right-leaning and left-leaning participants, meaning they were shared by liberals and conservatives alike. There is indeed common ground in people’s understanding of the common good. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-universal-values-exist-a-philosopher-says-yes-and-takes-aim-at-identity-politics-but-not-all-of-his-arguments-are-convincing-208014">Do universal values exist? A philosopher says yes, and takes aim at identity politics – but not all of his arguments are convincing</a>
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<h2>A working definition</h2>
<p>These nine themes thus reflect a deeper conceptual structure. They can be distilled into three core aspects of the common good. These relate to outcomes, principles and stakeholders. </p>
<p>The first describes the <em>objectives</em> and <em>outcomes</em> associated with the common good – for example, the decisions and actions that are seen to be in the best interests of most people. </p>
<p>The second refers to the <em>principles</em> associated with the common good and the <em>processes</em> and <em>practices</em> through which the common good is realised. </p>
<p>The final aspect relates to the <em>stakeholders</em> who make up the community or communities that are entitled to the common good and its benefits. </p>
<p>From this we arrived at a working definition of the common good: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The common good refers to achieving the best possible outcome for the largest number of people, which is underpinned by decision-making that is ethically and morally sound and varies by the context in which the decisions are made.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the definition above, you will detect the nine components, as well as the three broader themes. </p>
<p>While we identified a shared understanding of the common good, it is important to acknowledge that people may share the “big picture” of the common good, but differ when it comes to the social and moral issues they prioritise and the practical ways in which they think the common good should be achieved. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Why+We+Disagree+about+Inequality%3A+Social+Justice+vs+Social+Order-p-9781509557134">recent research</a> suggests that people care deeply about fairness, but society is divided by how they view fairness concerns. </p>
<p>On one side, you have the social order perspective, which focuses on processes or <em>how</em> justice is achieved. On the other side, the social justice worldview is concerned with outcomes and <em>what</em> justice looks like as a result. Both sides share a disdain for inequality, but don’t often see eye to eye about naming or fixing societal inequality. </p>
<p>If the two sides were willing to start by finding their common ground, using our working definition to probe for areas of convergence first, then moving on to discuss areas of divergence with an openness to learn from each other’s strengths might become possible. Intractable conflicts could be broken down and systematically addressed. Of course, this requires a willingness from both sides to lower their defences and listen. </p>
<p>Community leaders will encounter challenges when they unite to advance the common good. Leaders from different industries bring different backgrounds, education and priorities to the table. In order to integrate their efforts, it becomes essential to set aside contextual (and often biased or partisan) understandings of the common good to focus on the “big picture”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Wheeler has previously received philanthropic funding to conduct research on responsible leadership. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Naomi Baes has previously worked with the Australian Leadership Index to research responsible leadership and currently receives funding from the Australian government. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Wilson receives philanthropic funding for the Australian Leadership Index.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vlad Demsar receives philanthropic funding to conduct research on responsible leadership.</span></em></p>Finding common ground is a crucial first step in overcoming differences of opinion and perspective.Melissa A. Wheeler, Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT UniversityNaomi Baes, Research Assistant in concept creep - Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of MelbourneSamuel Wilson, Associate Professor of Leadership, Swinburne University of TechnologyVlad Demsar, Lecturer of Marketing, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211662024-01-18T16:49:19Z2024-01-18T16:49:19ZAi Weiwei says art that can be replicated by AI is ‘meaningless’ – philosopher explains what that means for the future of art<p>Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous dissident and artist, has called art that can be easily replicated by artificial intelligence (AI) “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/jan/11/art-that-can-be-easily-copied-by-ai-is-meaningless-says-ai-weiwei#:%7E:text=Art%20that%20can%20be%20easily%20replicated%20by%20artificial%20intelligence%20is,had%20existed%20in%20their%20era.">meaningless</a>”. What I find most striking about this comment is how it manages to look both backwards into the intricate corridors of art history and forwards into the uncertain future of the art world. </p>
<p>Does Ai Weiwei mean that AI should make us rethink our appreciation of the works of art of the past? Or is AI so powerful that it should shape the mission of future artists?</p>
<p>The undertones of this double challenge are familiar to philosophers of art, who have, at times, seriously entertained the claim that art can come to an end. </p>
<h2>Exploring art’s goal</h2>
<p>Among the most famous and influential voices are <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/index.htm">G. W. Hegel</a> in the early 19th century and <a href="https://archive.org/details/philosophicaldis0000dant/page/n7/mode/2up">Arthur Danto</a> in the late 20th century. Both have argued that while artworks can continue to be produced in great numbers – and perhaps even in new and exciting ways – there is a sense in which the progress of art has reached its peak. </p>
<p>According to their arguments, art has “ended” because it has completed its goal. This claim might seem obscure to a contemporary audience, but what both Hegel and Danto were getting at is pretty simple. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of G.W Hegel" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569322/original/file-20240115-27-vq1nzr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">G.W Hegel was a prominent philosopher of art.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel#/media/File:1831_Schlesinger_Philosoph_Georg_Friedrich_Wilhelm_Hegel_anagoria.JPG">Alte Nationalgalerie</a></span>
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<p>If you think about art as having some sort of innermost goal, then you can imagine that at some point in time, that goal has been attained. Art always does something in that it has an effect. An effect on the artist creating it, on its audience and ultimately on the world. But that intended overall effect can change. </p>
<p>Danto claimed that looking into the history of art, we can extract a narrative, or a story, about how art has achieved its goal. </p>
<p>The first narrative, capturing centuries of art history from classical Greek sculpture to Renaissance paintings, was focused on verisimilitude – here art’s goal was to create realistic representations of its subject. </p>
<p>The second of art’s narratives, Danto believed, was triggered by a crisis which came from the technological advancement brought by the camera. Since art’s first goal – of creating perfect representations – had been superseded, art needed a new one. The second goal was to enquire into what art itself could be, seeking out its own limits. </p>
<p>The works of various modernist artists – such as Pablo Picasso’s The Aficionado (1912) or Wassily Kandinsky’s Bustling Aquarelle (1923), up to <a href="https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/89204">Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes</a> (1964) – could then be understood as a quest for establishing what it means for an object to be an artwork and asking: “What is the meaning of art itself?”</p>
<p>Writing in 1967, Danto believed that even this second goal had been fulfilled – but perhaps its repercussions haven’t quite been felt yet. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hegel-is-considered-the-hardest-philosopher-but-his-views-arent-actually-that-outlandish-196066">Hegel is considered the hardest philosopher, but his views aren’t actually that outlandish</a>
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<hr>
<h2>A third goal for art</h2>
<p>This is where I think Weiwei’s new perspective is refreshing. It seems to suggest that AI technology might be pushing us towards a new goal for art. The new challenge would be establishing what a truly digital future of art might look like – and what our human contribution to it might be.</p>
<p>We can then ask how art can be meaningful again in our AI-shaped social worlds. And what the role of the artist should be in creating this meaning. </p>
<p>Philosophers of various convictions, from <a href="https://archive.org/details/deweyjohnartasanexperience">John Dewey</a> to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/marvelous-images-9780195177947?cc=gb&lang=en&">Kendall Walton</a>, have pointed to such a solution for a long time. We can create new meaning for art by exploring new forms of expression – by doing new things with both new and old tools.</p>
<p>Art not only adapts to new tools and technology, it does something new with them, and in that process, it has the potential to become something new itself. </p>
<p>Ai Weiwei himself touches upon this in one of his quotations in his book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691157665/weiwei-isms">Weiwei-isms</a> (2012), when he says that art is: “About freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall … I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics.”</p>
<p>The subtle slide here, from new forms of expression to new ways of contributing to political conversations, prompts another important question: how can art contribute to political conversations in distinctive ways? </p>
<p>In his new book, <a href="https://shop.royalacademy.org.uk/artists-remake-the-world-a-contemporary-art-manifesto">Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto</a>, philosopher Vid Simoniti suggests a possible answer. He claims that art provides a distinct mode of political expression which enables audiences to reflect on central issues while momentarily setting aside binary judgments of right or wrong. </p>
<p>Art permits engagement with political matters without imposing the burden of adopting a specific stance. It is moored to the real world, but allows also for an open-ended space where new positions can be imagined, explored and inhabited. Could AI create those artistic spaces with us, or for us? Perhaps confronting this challenge could set a new goal for the digital art of the future. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Serban does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Philosophers of art have, at times, entertained quite seriously the claim that art can come to an end.Maria Serban, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2183322024-01-11T13:25:07Z2024-01-11T13:25:07ZIn the ‘big tent’ of free speech, can you be too open-minded?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567876/original/file-20240104-29-nyvlra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C6%2C2142%2C1386&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the 'big tent' philosophy of free speech, the more views, the better. But how does that hold up in practice?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/small-red-illuminated-circus-tent-at-night-royalty-free-image/1479473992?phrase=circus+tent&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">imageBROKER/Manuel Kamuf via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People often extol the virtue of open-mindedness, but can there be too much of a good thing?</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://honors.wayne.edu/profile/ae9123">college dean</a>, I regularly observe campus controversies about the Israel-Hamas war, race relations and other hot-button issues. Many of these concern free speech – what students, faculty and invited speakers should and shouldn’t be allowed to say. </p>
<p>But free speech disputes aren’t merely about permission to speak. They are about who belongs at the table – and whether there are limits to the viewpoints we should listen to, argue with or allow to change our minds. As <a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/ae9123">a philosopher</a> who works on “<a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/bulr99&div=79&id=&page=">culture war” issues</a>, I’m particularly interested in what free-speech disputes teach about the value of open-mindedness.</p>
<h2>Talking together in the ‘big tent’</h2>
<p>Free-speech advocates often find inspiration in the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill, who argued for what we might call a “big tent” approach: engaging with a variety of viewpoints, including those that strike you as mistaken. After all, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AjpGAAAAcAAJ&q=editions%3AHMraC_Owoi8C&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Mill wrote</a>, you could be wrong. And even if you’re right, the clash of opinions can sharpen your reasons.</p>
<p>Some critics believe that Mill’s arguments haven’t worn well, especially in an age of demagoguery and “fake news.” Do I really need to listen to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/flat-earthers-what-they-believe-and-why/">people who believe the Earth is flat</a>? <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/one-in-five-young-americans-believes-the-holocaust-is-a-myth-poll-finds/">Holocaust deniers</a>? My relatives’ crackpot conspiracy theories at the holiday dinner table? Whose benefit would such openness serve?</p>
<p>The primary argument for the big tent approach is rooted in <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/intellectual-humility-125132">intellectual humility</a>: properly recognizing the limitations to what each of us knows. In one sense, it is a recognition of human fallibility – which, when combined with hubris, can have disastrous results. </p>
<p>More positively, intellectual humility is aspirational: There’s a lot yet to learn. Importantly, intellectual humility does not mean that one lacks moral convictions, let alone the desire to persuade others of those convictions.</p>
<p>Having spent several decades advocating for same-sex marriage – including participating in dozens of campus debates and two <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/debating-same-sex-marriage-9780199756315?cc=us&lang=en&">point-counterpoint</a> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/debating-religious-liberty-and-discrimination-9780190603076?q=corvino&lang=en&cc=us">books</a> – I’m convinced of the value of engagement with “the other side.” At the same time, I’m acutely aware of its costs. All things considered, I believe that the marketplace of ideas should err on the side of a big tent.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher in 2012, during one of their many debates about same-sex marriage.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The limits of listening</h2>
<p>The contemporary <a href="https://phil.ucalgary.ca/profiles/jeremy-fantl">philosopher Jeremy Fantl</a> is among those concerned about the big tent’s costs. In his book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-limitations-of-the-open-mind-9780198807957?cc=us&lang=en&">The Limitations of the Open Mind</a>,” Fantl notes that some arguments are cleverly deceptive, and engaging with them open-mindedly can actually undermine knowledge. Imagine a hard-to-follow mathematical proof, its flaw difficult to spot, that indicates 2 + 2 = 5.</p>
<p>Interestingly, Fantl sees his stance as consistent with intellectual humility: No one is an expert on everything, and we’re all unlikely to spot fallacies in complex deceptive arguments outside our expertise.</p>
<p>There’s another worrisome cost to engaging with deceptive counterarguments: Some of them harm people. To engage open-mindedly with Holocaust denial, for example – to treat it as an option on the table – is to fail to express appropriate solidarity with Jews and other victims of the Nazi regime. More than giving offense, engaging those views could make someone complicit in ongoing oppression, possibly by undermining education about genocide and ethnic cleansing.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four people seen from the back stand facing a black wall covered in old black-and-white photo portraits." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567921/original/file-20240104-23-bjn7x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Holocaust survivors stand in 2023 in front of photos that belonged to incoming prisoners at the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz Birkenau II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/holocaust-survivors-are-seen-in-front-of-personal-photos-news-photo/1246610702?adppopup=true">Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>What about closed-minded engagement – that is, engaging with opposing viewpoints simply in order to refute them publicly? </p>
<p>Fantl grants that such engagement can have value but worries that it is often ineffective or dishonest. Ineffective, if you tell your opponents from the outset “You’re not going to change my mind” – a conversation-stopper if anything is. Dishonest, if you pretend to engage open-mindedly when you’re really not.</p>
<h2>Learning while convincing</h2>
<p>In my view, Fantl misunderstands the goals of engagement and thus sets up a false contrast between open- and closed-mindedness. There’s a space between these two extremes – and that may be where the most constructive conversations happen. </p>
<p>Consider again my same-sex marriage advocacy. When I debated opponents such as <a href="https://www.focusonthefamily.com/contributors/glenn-stanton/">Glenn Stanton</a> of Focus on the Family and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/03/22/175064250/as-support-for-gay-marriage-grows-an-opponent-looks-ahead">Maggie Gallagher</a> of the National Organization for Marriage – a prominent nonprofit group opposing same-sex marriage – did I strongly believe that I was right and they were wrong? Of course I did. And of course they believed the reverse. Did I expect that they would convince me that my position on same-sex marriage was wrong? No, never – and neither did they.</p>
<p>In that sense, you can say I wasn’t open-minded. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I was open to learning from them, and I often did. I was open to learning their concerns, perspectives and insights, recognizing that we had different experiences and areas of expertise. I was also open to building relationships to foster mutual understanding. In that sense, I was quite open-minded. </p>
<p>Audience members who approached the debates with similar openness would commonly say afterward, “I always thought the other side believed [X], but I realize I need to rethink that.” For example, my side tended to assume that Maggie’s and Glenn’s arguments would be primarily theological – they weren’t – or that they hated gay people – they don’t. Their side tended to assume I didn’t care about children’s welfare – quite the contrary – or that I believe that morality is a “private matter,” which I emphatically do not.</p>
<h2>Reason and respect</h2>
<p>At the same time, there were prominent figures whose position on the marriage question did change.</p>
<p>David Blankenhorn, founder of the think tank the Institute for American Values, had been <a href="https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-future-of-marriage/">a same-sex marriage opponent</a> for many years, albeit one who always recognized some good on both sides of the debate. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html">Eventually he came to believe</a> that instead of helping children, as he had hoped, opposition to same-sex marriage primarily served to stigmatize gay citizens. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A close-up shot of one person's hands slipping a gold and blue ring onto another person's finger." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567895/original/file-20240104-29-ff6to8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A couple exchanges rings at their wedding held at West Hollywood Park in California in June 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/same-sex-couple-exchagnes-rings-at-their-wedding-held-at-news-photo/539890754?adppopup=true">Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>So sometimes the clash of opinions can surprise you – just as Mill suspected.</p>
<p>Does this mean that I recommend seeking out Holocaust deniers for dialogue? No. Some views really are beyond the pale, and regular engagement has diminishing returns. There are only so many hours in the day. But that stance should be adopted sparingly, especially when experts in the relevant community are conflicted.</p>
<p>Instead, I recommend following Blankenhorn as a model, in at least three ways. </p>
<p>First, concede contrary evidence even when that evidence is inconvenient. Doing so can be difficult in an environment where people worry that if they give the other side an inch, they’ll take a mile. Blankenhorn’s opponents would often gleefully seize on his concessions, for instance, as if a single positive point settled the debate. </p>
<p>But keeping beliefs proportionate to evidence is key to moving past polarized gridlock – not to mention discovering truth. Indeed, Blankenhorn has since <a href="https://braverangels.org/">founded an organization</a> with the explicit goal of bridging partisan divides. </p>
<p>Second, strive to see what good there is on the other side, and when you do, publicly acknowledge it. </p>
<p>And third, remember that bridge-building is largely about relationship-building, which creates a space for trust – and ultimately, deeper dialogue. </p>
<p>Such dialogue may not always uncover truth, as Mill hoped it would, but at least it acknowledges that we all have a lot to learn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218332/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Corvino does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. This article was produced with support from UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and the John Templeton Foundation as part of the GGSC's initiative on Expanding Awareness of the Science of Intellectual Humility.</span></em></p>Intellectual humility doesn’t mean anyone can change your mind, a philosopher writes – but it might mean learning from the ‘other side’ in surprising ways.John Corvino, Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College and Professor of Philosophy, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2163542024-01-10T19:13:24Z2024-01-10T19:13:24ZIn The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch excoriated his self-absorbed society – but the book’s legacy is questionable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563787/original/file-20231205-27-b9jmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C13%2C4633%2C3953&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sum+It/Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Our cultural touchstones series looks at books that have made an impact.</em></p>
<p>A cultural critic rails against a society that worships celebrity and prizes images over ideas. A progressive intellectual attacks the dominance of corporate elites. A curmudgeonly academic condemns his society’s ignorance of its past and the dumbing down of public education. A psychologically astute writer explores the conflicts eddying around gender and sexuality.</p>
<p>Who are these disparate thinkers, you ask? Not four contemporary pundits, but a single controversialist, writing almost half a century ago. </p>
<p>The American historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lasch">Christopher Lasch</a>, who died in 1994, authored a series of books that established him as one of his nation’s leading public intellectuals. The most influential of these, first published in 1979, was <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Culture-of-Narcissism">The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations</a>.</p>
<p>This blockbuster earned Lasch audiences with President Jimmy Carter, a National Book Award, and a spread in People magazine, where he shared top billing with Olivia Newton-John. The book was contentious in its time, drawing flak from feminists and Lasch’s erstwhile friends on the Left. It received qualified support from some conservatives, who were otherwise antagonistic to his anti-capitalist principles. Reissued in 2018, this important work warrants a new look.</p>
<p>The Culture of Narcissism’s era now seems very distant. The Vietnam War had ended in American failure only four years earlier. Carter’s presidency was lurching toward its own failure in the midst of an energy crisis, soaring inflation and Cold War tensions. The Reagan revolution was yet to take the nation rightwards. A spirit of decline prevailed as the nation’s pride, confidence and optimism were under threat.</p>
<p>Lasch’s book gave this diminished condition a new diagnosis. The United States was in the grip of a narcissistic culture, a malign transformation of its individualist traditions. Whereas the individualist aspired to the Protestant virtues of self-reliance and self-discipline, the narcissist was self-absorbed and self-indulgent, seeking shallow sociability, pleasure and packaged self-awareness. Modern narcissists have a therapeutic sensibility, Lasch argued, seeing mental health as “the modern equivalent of salvation,” but they feel empty and inauthentic.</p>
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<p>Narcissism can mean many things, and Lasch was at pains to distinguish his understanding from popular alternatives. In an afterword written in 1990, he dismissed the idea that narcissism is a synonym for selfishness or that his book was just another critique of the 1970s as the “me decade”. </p>
<p>Laschian narcissism is not, he says, a moralistic concept for savaging the failings of a society or generation, nor is it another word for arrogance. </p>
<p>Narcissism should instead be understood within a psychoanalytic framework. It is embodied not only in anxiously preening individuals, but in the institutions that produce and nurture them. Following Freud and leading American analysts of his time, Lasch views narcissism as a condition of grandiosity and inner emptiness, in which the person sees the world as their mirror. Narcissism reveals itself in compulsive self-surveillance and fantasies of fame, power and beauty. Its dark side is repressed rage and envy and a tendency to engage in superficial and exploitative relationships.</p>
<p>Lasch equivocated on the extent of this new narcissism. Arguing “every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology”, he asserted that candidates for psychotherapy in the 1970s no longer complained of traditional neuroses, with their alienated obsessions and phobias. Instead, they presented with disorders of the self. He proposed that many high profile public figures were narcissists, but backs off the claim that narcissistic personalities were more prevalent in the general population than in earlier times. </p>
<p>Lasch saw the reverberations of narcissism throughout American life. Most of his book offers a critical analysis of the manifestations of a narcissistic culture in several domains.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-types-of-narcissist-are-there-a-psychology-expert-sets-the-record-straight-207610">How many types of narcissist are there? A psychology expert sets the record straight</a>
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<h2>Family, sex, education, ageing</h2>
<p>Reflecting the preoccupations of his previous book, Haven in a Heartless World (1977), Lasch sees the traditional family as the endangered foundation of society. Under pressure from hedonistic cultural trends and mass consumption, parenting has become indulgent. Mothers and fathers abdicate their authority to child rearing fads, the state, and the therapeutic professions. Authority itself has been discredited, although hierarchies remain as strong as ever in “a society dominated by corporate elites with an anti-elitist ideology”.</p>
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<p>Lasch’s critique of the “appropriation of parental functions” by therapeutic institutions is part of a broader denunciation of a “new paternalism”. He sees a troubling rise in the popular use of therapeutic jargon and in the regulation of private and public behaviour by helping and welfare professions. </p>
<p>There is a gentle irony in Lasch’s use of the concept of narcissism to criticise the “popularization of psychiatric modes of thought” in American society, but his fundamental concern is that understanding deviance as illness erodes self-reliance and personal responsibility. </p>
<p>Lasch’s account of the effects of a narcissistic culture on relations between the sexes is equally pessimistic. It trivialises close relationships and undermines marriage, as women and men flee deep emotional entanglements in search of less demanding forms of connection. </p>
<p>The decline of traditional gender roles brings with it an intensified “sexual warfare” of mutual resentment. Lasch sees feminism as a contributing current in these developments, “often mak[ing] women more shrewish than ever in their daily encounters with men”. In a not entirely convincing show of balance, he also skewers men’s “deeply irrational” feelings of being imperilled by changing gender arrangements.</p>
<p>Mass education is another of Lasch’s targets, excoriated for creating a “spread of stupidity”, an “atrophy of competence” and “new forms of illiteracy”. A progressive might be expected to celebrate the expansion of access to higher education, but Lasch sees a wholesale lowering of standards and a rising ignorance of history, literature and civics. Meanwhile, universities are plagued by grade inflation, commodified degrees, swollen administrative bureaucracies and cafeteria-style curricula.</p>
<p>Behind these grim developments, Lasch sees a decline in the social value placed on personal achievement, a narrow emphasis on relevance and the vocational mission of higher education, and an anti-elitism that erodes the quality and ambitions of education across the spectrum, from community colleges to the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Narcissistic culture also reveals itself in shifting views of ageing. Lasch bemoans a rising “cult of youth” and a dread of getting old, expressed in obsessions with physical appearance and desperate striving for longevity. </p>
<p>Behind this panic is a more basic “cult of the self”. Narcissistic adults cling to the illusion of youth because they are over-invested in personal image and appearance and feel no connection to a future beyond their lifespan.</p>
<p>Lasch is an avid collector of cults: his book also proclaims cults of authenticity, celebrity, compulsive industry, consumption, expanded consciousness, friendliness, intimacy, growth, lost innocence, pragmatism, privatism, self-culture, sincerity, sports, the strenuous life, teamwork, victory and womanhood.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/welcome-to-the-age-of-collective-narcissism-71196">Welcome to the age of collective narcissism</a>
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<h2>The book’s legacy</h2>
<p>In an introduction to the 2018 edition, the political commentator E.J. Dionne writes that “The Culture of Narcissism seems to leap across the decades” carrying enduring truths for our time. Just how prescient it was – how much it leaps rather than stumbles – is a matter for debate. The book sounds an early warning for several trends that have endured and intensified, but in other respects it seems dated. </p>
<p>One dated feature is the book’s heavy reliance on psychoanalytic ideas. Outside of small remnant communities of analysts, it is now profoundly unusual to see Freudian jargon littered so freely and unapologetically through works of social criticism, or to come across references to castrating mothers. Lasch wrote at a time when the cultural prominence of psychoanalysis in the literary Anglosphere had reached its peak, only to <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01489/full">fall off a cliff</a> in the 1990s. </p>
<p>Intellectual fashions come and go, of course – Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut are no longer literary icons either – but sections of The Culture of Narcissism now speak an almost foreign language, occasionally peddling arrant psychoanalytic nonsense, such as the familial origins and narcissistic basis of schizophrenia.</p>
<p>The Culture of Narcissism’s positions on sex and gender now seem reactionary and almost quaint. The conflicts Lasch examines continue in struggles over gender inequality and sexual violence, and in the manosphere backlash, but few would see them as being in a state of crisis: more a constant low hum of ongoing friction than signs of impending disaster. The idea that feminism has turned women shrewish now seems risible, emanating from a time when inequality at work and in the home still appeared to be the natural state of affairs. </p>
<p>Lasch’s critical remarks on mass education also seem retrograde, especially coming from a time when participation in higher education was much lower and more limited to a social elite than it is today. The proportion of Americans with college degrees is now well over double the proportion in 1979, when it was below one in six. </p>
<p>The declinist view that educational standards are slipping long preceded Lasch’s critique. It persists to this day around the globe, often in reaction to broadened access. With the complaint being so generalised across time and space, it seems questionable to attribute a decline specifically to rampant narcissism in 1970s America, especially as the excellence and scale of the nation’s universities were the envy of the world at the time.</p>
<p>But Lasch was surely correct in identifying narcissism as a major American cultural trend before others had made the connection. Narcissism is now a vastly more popular concept in everyday discourse than it was in 1979. It has become the focus of an enormous psychological literature. Repeated surveys of young Americans have demonstrated steadily <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Narcissism-Epidemic/Jean-M-Twenge/9781416575993">rising levels</a> of the trait, and it is indispensable in making sense of public figures, recent presidents included.</p>
<p>Equally precocious is Lasch’s emphasis on the rise of images in the social world. His language is anachronistic, but his sentiment resonates in this digital age:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors.</p>
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<p>Lasch could not have foreseen how social media and the internet would saturate us with alluring images, amplify our narcissistic concerns with appearance and self-curation, and foster the shallow and diffuse social relationships and obsession with youth that his book condemned.</p>
<p>More generally, The Culture of Narcissism’s critique of the then new therapeutic mindset rings even truer today. Lasch offered an early diagnosis of the prevailing tendency to frame problems of meaning in psychiatric terms and to identify mental health with personal authenticity. </p>
<p>At a time when therapy-speak is rife, when concepts of mental ill-health <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25934573-900-why-being-more-open-about-mental-health-could-be-making-us-feel-worse/">continue to expand</a>, and when “authentic” has been crowned as 2023’s <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year">word of the year</a>, it is clear Lasch’s book foretold a psychologised future.</p>
<p>The Culture of Narcissism is a product of its time: what book is not? Even so, it remains an important work of criticism. Whether its central concept can bear the explanatory weight Lasch loads upon it can be queried, but narcissism serves as a novel point of attack on an ambitious range of cultural targets. In this regard, the book still deserves to be read. </p>
<p>In our polarised times, readers might also appreciate a work of criticism that resists political categorisation. Lasch is radical on some issues, but socially conservative on others. He is fierce in his attack on corporate elites, but unabashed in his cultural elitism. He is critical of feminism, but bracing in his attack on male insecurity. He is favourable towards restoring authority and the traditional family, but keen to build new local “communities of competence”. </p>
<p>Lasch’s voice is usually sharp-tongued and dyspeptic – he is against much more than he is for – but it is always interesting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Christopher Lasch’s sharp-tonged a critique of American society was a product of its time, but has things to say about the present.Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2119782023-12-28T09:17:12Z2023-12-28T09:17:12ZA brief history of time – as told by a watchmaker<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556286/original/file-20231027-27-lyxm9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C57%2C3468%2C2038&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/antique-old-spiral-clock-abstract-fractal-765452851">Mikhail Leonov/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I once restored a 1950s timepiece for a customer who waxed lyrical about the intricacies of my work – all the while refusing to pay. They baulked when I presented them with the bill we’d previously agreed. Then they garbled on about the philosophical nature of time, still resisting payment. </p>
<p>It was during that wistful, skyward narrative that I saw the timepiece slip from their hand and hit the marble floor. The mineral glass shattered, sending the hands spiralling. Sunlight streamed in from the winter setting Sun – its sharp, angular rays reminding me of how our ancient ancestors marked the passing of time. </p>
<p>Time was important enough to our ancestors that they went to the effort of building an extraordinary prehistoric monument, Stonehenge. The first part of this <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/keeping-time-at-stonehenge/792A5E8E091C8B7CB9C26B4A35A6B399">enormous solar calendar</a> was built around 2200-2400BC.</p>
<p>But it is far from unique – primeval solar observatories are dotted around the world, including the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1624/">Chankillo mounds in Peru</a> (built in 200-250BC) and the Australian Aboriginal <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.488037339209650">Wurdi Youang</a> stone arrangement (age unknown). Societies around the world, thousands of miles apart, independently created sites to help mark the passing of time. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Stonehenge during sunset" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556285/original/file-20231027-26-7jbdxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556285/original/file-20231027-26-7jbdxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556285/original/file-20231027-26-7jbdxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556285/original/file-20231027-26-7jbdxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556285/original/file-20231027-26-7jbdxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556285/original/file-20231027-26-7jbdxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556285/original/file-20231027-26-7jbdxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stonehenge was built as a kind of solar calendar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stonehenge-during-sunset-winter-solstice-1601037709">Chuta Kooanantkul/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It’s in the timing</h2>
<p>As communities <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/311482/about-time-by-rooney-david/9780241370513">developed</a> into cities, empires and states, and societies became more segregated, time became more important and was divided into hours.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Sumerians/">The Sumerians</a> (4100-1750BC) based around <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mesopotamia-historical-region-Asia">Mesopotamia</a> (modern-day Iraq) calculated that the day was approximately 24 hours and that each hour was 60 minutes long. They used the Sun, stars and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41668444">water clocks to keep track of time</a>. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/clepsydra">Water clocks</a> used the gradual flow of water from one container to another to measure time. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556284/original/file-20231027-24-5tembs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An ancient water clock from Persia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Water_clock_zibad.JPG">Maahmaah</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ancient Egyptians also <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/24-hour-clock">introduced a 24-hour time system</a> around 1550-1069BC. But the length of these “hours” varied depending on the time of year – longer in summertime than winter. These measures of time were based on the Sun, with 12 parts during daylight, and another 12 parts through the night. The Egyptians started using a sundial to represent this time system <a href="https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co473/ancient-egyptian-altitude-sundial-or-shadow-clock-in-pine-wood-sundial">around 1000-800BC</a>. Since sundials cannot tell the time at night, they used water clocks after dark. </p>
<p>In Europe, the development of time measurement gets a bit foggy over the centuries around AD700-1300AD, as all time-telling devices are <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324002932">bundled into the same Latin word, <em>Horologium</em></a>, in written European records.</p>
<p>The economist and historian David S. Landes claims in his book, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674002821">Revolution in Time</a>, that monastic Christian prayers were more rigid compared with Judaism and Islam, using the heavens to dictate what time to pray across the Catholic church’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/canonical-hours">seven set canonical hours</a>. For example, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sext#:%7E:text=Sext%2C%20or%20Sixth%20Hour%2C%20is,of%20the%20day%20after%20dawn.">sext</a> was supposed to be recited at midday. The time period between these canonical prayers became equal in length because of the rigidity of prayer times.</p>
<p>Timepieces may also have been more important in central Europe, because the cloudier weather would have made it harder to track the Sun and stars. </p>
<h2>Prayer time</h2>
<p>While we can’t be certain from historical records if it was monks who made the first mechanical clocks, we do know that they first appeared in the 14th century. </p>
<p>Their first mention is in the Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1006002">Giovanni de Dondi’s treatise Tractatus Astrarii</a>, or Planetarium. De Dondi states that early clocks used gravity as their power source and were <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2016/09/27/mechanical-clocks-prove-the-importance-of-technology-for-economic-growth/">driven by weights</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556281/original/file-20231027-25-d5w849.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawing of the bottom section of De Dondi’s astronomical clock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giovanni_Di_Dondi_clock.png">Giovanni de Dondi</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These weren’t the accurate clocks we see today – they probably kept time to within 15-30 minutes a day. These early clocks <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2016/09/27/mechanical-clocks-prove-the-importance-of-technology-for-economic-growth/">started popping up</a> in city centres but, since they did not have a face, they used bells to signal the hours. These signals began to organise the market times and administrative needs of each city. </p>
<p><a href="https://museum.seiko.co.jp/en/knowledge/MechanicalTimepieces02/">Coiled springs</a> as a method of releasing energy for clocks began to appear in Europe in the 15th century. This didn’t do anything to improve accuracy, but it could reduce the size of the clock. So, time became more of a personal as well as status object – you only have to look at <a href="https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en/victors-victoors/a-portrait-of-a-gentleman-pointing-to-a-pocket-watch-in-his-hand-1650-oil-on-canvas-pair-to-359446/oil-on-canvas/asset/359445">oil paintings</a> where subject’s watches are <a href="https://collection.barnesfoundation.org/objects/5779/Portrait-of-a-Man-Holding-a-Watch/">proudly displayed</a>. </p>
<p>The Dutch scientist <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978044450871350084X">Christian Huygens</a> first applied the pendulum to a clock in about 1656. This bolstered their accuracy to within 15 seconds a day, because each swing now took almost exactly the same time to complete.</p>
<p>As a result, time could be used more accurately in scientific observations, including of the stars. It also meant that clocks could now show an accurate minute hand.</p>
<h2>Time tracking in other parts of the world</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556282/original/file-20231027-30-6tim3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Model of the Antikythera mechanism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Antikythera_Mechanism_(3471978200).jpg">Tilemahos Efthimiadis/National Archaeological Museum, Athens</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Elsewhere in the world, some time-tracking devices date back many centuries earlier. In the 13th century, there is evidence of the use of gears to control the movement of components in <a href="https://www.hsm.ox.ac.uk/geared-astrolabe">Arabic astrolabes</a> – devices that could calculate time and help navigators determine their position. And long before that, the Ancient Greek <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Antikythera-mechanism">Antikythera mechanism</a>, regarded as the world’s first computer, is dated at around 100BC (having been discovered in AD1901). These are both devices that predicted the motions of the planets. </p>
<p>Meanwhile in China, there was <a href="http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/songdynasty-module/tech-experiment.html#:%7E:text=The%20clock%20told%20not%20only,of%20the%20planets%20and%20stars.">Su Song’s astronomical clock</a> – dated to AD1088 – which was powered by water. So, while the clock was invented in Europe in the 14th century, Arabic and Chinese societies were far more technologically advanced at this time than their western Christian counterparts.</p>
<p>Today, wherever we are in the world, time is a unified construct – and the search for ever-more precise measurements continues. In 2021, scientists identified a new shortest timespan, <a href="https://www.snexplores.org/article/photon-journey-molecule-shortest-event-zeptosecond-physics#:%7E:text=Physicists%20have%20measured%20the%20shortest,Not%20familiar%20with%20zeptoseconds%3F">the zeptosecond</a>, which is how long it takes for a particle of light to pass through a molecule of hydrogen. </p>
<p>In modern society, time is usually organised to the minute or even second (think of train timetables, how we document transactions, or record setting in sports). This internalises within ourselves an obsession with being on time. People arrange to meet a friend, and hurry to the destination when they’re a minute or too late. But really, what’s a few minutes between friends?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jaq Prendergast does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 24-hour system was independently invented multiple times.Jaq Prendergast, Lecturer in Horology, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2188382023-12-14T13:38:10Z2023-12-14T13:38:10ZHope brings happiness, builds grit and gives life meaning. Here’s how to cultivate it<p>What is hope? In its simplest form, hope is about the future. </p>
<p>There are three necessary elements to hope: having a desire or a wish for something that is valuable, and the belief that it is possible to attain this wish, even when it seems uncertain. Then we have to trust that we have the resources, both internally and externally, to attain this important desire, even when we experience setbacks along the way.</p>
<p>For example, I may hope that I will retire in a peaceful coastal town to pursue my hobby of painting (desire) and I believe that it is possible, although I will have to plan carefully (trust in internal resources). I also trust that I will settle in the community and make friends who share my interest in painting (trust in external resources), even though it may be difficult at first. </p>
<p>When we hope, we have a vision of imaginary futures and we anticipate specific outcomes. In doing so, we choose to focus on possible good things that may happen, even when faced by uncertainty. </p>
<p>Hope has several further dimensions. It involves our thoughts, because we assess the future and the likelihood that we will attain what we wish for. In the process we are taking in information and using it to reach our goals. Hope is also about experiencing positive emotions. It can further be a motivational force, propelling us forward. </p>
<p>Hope may have a strong <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-24412-4_6">spiritual element</a> – many, if not most, faiths place importance on having trust in a higher power that valuable outcomes may be attained. This trust can maintain hope in difficult times. </p>
<p>Hope also has a social dimension, in the sense that people may share hopes, and have hopes for others. Our sense of hope may further be influenced by our <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-021-09967-x">context</a>, and how others define what is possible and desirable in the future. This aspect of hope is important when we consider our expectations of national and international futures. </p>
<p>Overall, hope is a universal human phenomenon, studied from <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-24412-4_6">several disciplines</a>, for example, philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology and economics. In recent times, we are increasingly incorporating insights from all these fields to understand the complex phenomenon of hope.</p>
<p>In studying hope, it has been measured in different ways. Most <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-24412-4_6">psychological studies</a> have used existing questionnaires in the discipline.</p>
<h2>How hope affects our lives</h2>
<p>How we think and feel about the future has an effect on us in the present. </p>
<p>Overall, hope is beneficial to our well-being. Hope encourages us to persist, even though we may be facing setbacks. Hopeful individuals are more likely to frame difficulties as challenges, rather than threats. This enables them to experience setbacks as less stressful and draining. For example, research indicates that hope is negatively associated with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X22002287">depression</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X23001094?via%3Dihub">anxiety</a>.</p>
<p>This means that people who hold higher levels of hope will be less likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety. Hope has been linked to many other positive outcomes, including higher levels of psychological well-being, life satisfaction, happiness, and meaning in life. </p>
<p>The importance of hope was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X23000040?via%3Dihub">studies</a> found that people who had higher levels of hope were less likely to experience high levels of stress, depression and anxiety. </p>
<p>The research that I am involved in, the <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-24412-4">International Hope Barometer Project</a>, investigated hope, coping, stress, well-being and personal growth among participants from 11 countries during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. </p>
<p>Most reported moderate to high levels of hope, although at the same time they experienced moderate levels of perceived stress, characterised by feelings of unpredictability, being out of control, and overload. Hope and well-being were primarily related to being able to reframe negative events in a positive manner, accepting and actively coping with everyday challenges, and finding relief and comfort in religious faith and practice.</p>
<p>Hope is not only beneficial to us on an individual level, but to society at large. Hopeful people are more likely to engage in proactive behaviours that could benefit the community. In the context of global and local turmoil, collective hope is particularly important in maintaining momentum towards the future. </p>
<h2>Learning to cultivate hope</h2>
<p>Hope can be strengthened and enhanced to some extent. Until now, most research has focused on how hope can be promoted in psychotherapeutic and medical settings. Several hope-focused interventions have been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101509">developed</a> in these contexts, with promising results. </p>
<p>On a more general level, programmes to strengthen hope among young people have been developed. One, referred to as <a href="https://www.unil.ch/scpf/en/home/menuinst/the-center.html">Positive Futures</a>, developed in Switzerland, aims to assist youth to recognise and cultivate positive things, experiences and emotions in life and foster self-worth. It further aims to develop desirable long-term future scenarios and promote hope through voluntary and meaningful projects. </p>
<p>On a more practical level, I believe it is possible to nurture hope through attending to the way we appraise difficulties. Can we see them as challenges rather than insurmountable obstacles? We can also consciously draw on our individual and collective resources and actively look for the good things around us, within the chaos we may be experiencing. </p>
<p>Sharing our hopes with people close to us can further strengthen hope through highlighting shared goals and wishes for the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tharina Guse receives funding from the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>People who hold higher levels of hope will be less likely to experience symptoms of depression. Shared hopes are also important for expectations of national and international futures.Tharina Guse, Professor of Psychology and Head of Department of Psychology, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2182352023-12-04T19:13:34Z2023-12-04T19:13:34ZWas going to space a good idea?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562901/original/file-20231201-29-6zecp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=412%2C0%2C1078%2C1092&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/astronaut-bruce-mccandless-first-ever-untethered-spacewalk/">NASA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1963, six years after the first satellite was launched, editors from the Encyclopaedia Britannica posed a question to five eminent thinkers of the day: “Has man’s conquest of space increased or diminished his stature?” The respondents were philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/">Hannah Arendt</a>, writer <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/novemberdecember/feature/the-talented-mr-huxley">Aldous Huxley</a>, theologian <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Tillich">Paul Tillich</a>, nuclear scientist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Brown">Harrison Brown</a> and historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_J._Muller">Herbert J. Muller</a>.</p>
<p>Sixty years later, as the rush to space accelerates, what can we learn from these 20th-century luminaries writing at the dawn of the space age?</p>
<h2>The state of space 60 years on</h2>
<p>Much has happened since. Spacecraft have landed on planets, moons, comets and asteroids across the Solar System. The two <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-45-years-the-5-billion-year-legacy-of-the-voyager-2-interstellar-probe-is-just-beginning-188077">Voyager</a> deep space probes, launched in 1977, are in interstellar space.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-live-in-space-what-weve-learned-from-20-years-of-the-international-space-station-144851">How to live in space: what we've learned from 20 years of the International Space Station</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A handful of people are living in two Earth-orbiting space stations. Humans are getting ready to return to the Moon after more than 50 years, this time to establish a permanent base and mine the deep ice lakes at the south pole. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of the lunar south pole showing the terrain in grey and green circles representing the crater ice deposits." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561651/original/file-20231126-15-8m249t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Water ice in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar south pole.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3577">NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Data from JAXA/Selene</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were only 57 satellites in Earth orbit in 1963. Now there are around <a href="https://www.pixalytics.com/satellites-orbiting-earth-2023/">10,000</a>, with tens of thousands more planned. </p>
<p>Satellite services are part of everyday life. Weather prediction, farming, transport, banking, disaster management, and much more, all rely on satellite data.</p>
<p>Despite these tremendous changes, Arendt, Huxley and Tillich, in particular, have some illuminating insights. </p>
<h2>A brave new world</h2>
<p>Huxley is famous for his 1932 dystopian science fiction novel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World">Brave New World</a>, and his experimental use of psychedelic drugs.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Aldous-Huxley-on-the-conquest-of-space-1980710">his essay</a>, he questioned who this “man” who had conquered space was, noting it was not humans as a species but Western urban-industrial society that had sent emissaries into space.</p>
<p>This has not changed. The 1967 <a href="https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html">Outer Space Treaty</a> says space is the province of all humanity, but in reality it’s dominated by a few wealthy nations and individuals. </p>
<p>Huxley said the notion of “stature” assumed humans had a special and different status to other living beings. Given the immensity of space, talking of conquest was, in his opinion, “a trifle silly”.</p>
<p>Tillich was a theologian who fled Nazi Germany before the second world war. In his essay he wrote about how seeing Earth from outside allowed us to “demythologise” our planet. </p>
<p>In contrast to the much-discussed “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect">overview effect</a>” which inspires astronauts with a feeling of almost mystical awe, Tillich argued that the view from space made Earth a “large material body to be looked at and considered as totally calculable”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Grey and white craters on the lunar surface." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562269/original/file-20231128-24-y80m5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An image of the lunar surface taken by the US Ranger 7 spacecraft in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/ranger-7/">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When spacecraft began imaging the lunar surface in the 1960s, the process of calculation started for the Moon. Now, its minerals are being evaluated as commodities for human use.</p>
<h2>Have humans changed, or is it how we view Earth?</h2>
<p>Like Tillich, Arendt left Germany under the shadow of Nazism in 1933. She’s best remembered for her studies of totalitarian states and for coining the term “<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-time-to-reconsider-the-idea-of-the-banality-of-evil-216737">the banality of evil</a>”. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-conquest-of-space-and-the-stature-of-man">Her essay</a> explored the relationship between science and the human senses. It’s a dense and complex piece; almost every time I read it, I come away with something different.</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, Einstein’s <a href="https://www.space.com/36273-theory-special-relativity.html">theory of special relativity</a> and <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/definition/quantum-physics/">quantum mechanics</a> showed us a reality far beyond the ability of our senses to comprehend. Arendt said it was absurd to think such a cosmos could be “conquered”. Instead, “we have come to our present capacity to ‘conquer space’ through our new ability to handle nature from a point in the universe outside the earth”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-time-to-reconsider-the-idea-of-the-banality-of-evil-216737">Is it time to reconsider the idea of 'the banality of evil'?</a>
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<h2>The new geocentrism</h2>
<p>The short human lifespan and the impossibility of moving faster than the speed of light mean humans are unlikely to travel beyond the Solar System. There is a limit to our current expansion into space.</p>
<p>When that limit is reached, said Arendt, “the new world view that may conceivably grow out of it is likely to be once more geocentric and anthropomorphic, although not in the old sense of the earth being the center of the universe and of man being the highest being there is”. Humans would turn back to Earth to make meaning of their existence, and cease to dream of the stars.</p>
<p>This new geocentrism may be exacerbated by an environmental problem already emerging from the rapid growth of satellite megaconstellations. The light they reflect is obscuring the <a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/light-pollution-threatens-millennia-old-indigenous-navigation-methods">view of the night sky</a>, cutting our senses off from the larger cosmos.</p>
<h2>The far future</h2>
<p>But what if it were technologically possible for humans to expand into the galaxy? </p>
<p>Arendt said assessing humanity from a position outside Earth would reduce the scale of human culture to the point at which humans would become like laboratory rats, studied as statistical patterns. From far enough away, all human culture would appear as nothing more than a “large scale biological process”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/longtermism-why-the-million-year-philosophy-cant-be-ignored-193538">Longtermism – why the million-year philosophy can't be ignored</a>
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<p>Arendt did not see this as an increase in stature: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The conquest of space and the science that made it possible have come perilously close to this point [of seeing human culture as a biological process]. If they ever should reach it in earnest, the stature of man would not simply be lowered by all standards we know of, but have been destroyed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sixty years on, nations are competing to exploit lunar and asteroid mineral resources. Private corporations and space billionaires are increasingly being touted as the way forward. After the Moon, Mars is the next world in line for “conquest”. The contemporary movement known as <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo">longtermism</a> promotes living on other planets as insurance against <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk">existential risk</a>, in a far future where humans (or some form of them) spread to fill the galaxies.</p>
<p>But the question remains. Is space travel enhancing what we value about humanity? Arendt and her fellow essayists were not convinced. For me, the answer will depend on what values we choose to prioritise in this new era of interplanetary expansion. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article developed from a panel discussion at the Wheeler Centre. You can <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/bigideas/space-race-travel-humanity-ethics-hannah-arrendt-science/102961384">listen to it here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Gorman is a Vice-Chair of the Global Expert Group for Sustainable Lunar Activities and a Fellow of the Outer Space Institute.</span></em></p>Sixty years ago, philosopher Hannah Arendt argued an interplanetary perspective may be bad news for humanity as we know it.Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180352023-12-04T05:21:44Z2023-12-04T05:21:44ZCould you move from your biological body to a computer? An expert explains ‘mind uploading’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563218/original/file-20231204-19-bm2rv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C22%2C3794%2C2132&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine brain scanning technology improves greatly in the coming decades, to the point that we can observe how each individual neuron talks to other neurons. Then, imagine we can record all this information to create a simulation of someone’s brain on a computer. </p>
<p>This is the concept behind mind uploading – the idea that we may one day be able to transition a person from their biological body to a synthetic hardware. The idea originated in an intellectual movement called transhumanism and has several key advocates including computer scientist <a href="https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/">Ray Kurzweil</a>, philosopher <a href="https://nickbostrom.com/">Nick Bostrom</a> and neuroscientist <a href="https://www.randalkoene.com/">Randal Koene</a>. </p>
<p>The transhumanists’ central hope is to transcend the human condition through scientific and technological progress. They believe mind uploading may allow us to live as long as we want (but not necessarily forever). It might even let us improve ourselves, such as by having simulated brains that run faster and more efficiently than biological ones. It’s a techno-optimist’s dream for the future. But does it have any substance? </p>
<p>The feasibility of mind uploading rests on three core assumptions. </p>
<ul>
<li>first is the <em>technology assumption</em> – the idea that we will be able to develop mind uploading technology within the coming decades</li>
<li>second is the <em>artificial mind assumption</em> – the idea that a simulated brain would give rise to a real mind</li>
<li>and third is the <em>survival assumption</em> – the idea that the person created in the process is really “you”. Only then does mind uploading become a way for you to live on. </li>
</ul>
<p>How plausible is each of these?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/downloading-our-thoughts-to-the-mainframe-may-be-the-stuff-of-science-fiction-but-humans-have-been-imagining-it-for-centuries-154082">Downloading our thoughts to the mainframe may be the stuff of science fiction — but humans have been imagining it for centuries</a>
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<hr>
<h2>The technology assumption</h2>
<p>Trying to simulate the human brain would be a monumental challenge. Our brains are the most complex structures in the known universe. They house around 86 billion neurons and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.24040">85 billion non-neuronal cells</a>, with an estimated one million billion neural connections. For comparison, the Milky Way galaxy is home to about 200 billion stars.</p>
<p>Where are we on the path to creating brain simulations? Right now, neuroscientists are drawing up 3D wiring diagrams (called “connectomes”) of the brains of simple organisms. The most complex comprehensive connectome we have to date is of a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9330">fruit fly larva</a>, which has about 3,000 neurons and 500,000 neural connections. We might expect to map a mouse’s brain <a href="https://hms.harvard.edu/news/new-field-neuroscience-aims-map-connections-brain">within the next ten years</a>.</p>
<p>The human brain, however, is about <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo0924">1,000 times more complex than a mouse brain</a>. Would it then take us 10,000 years to map a human brain? Probably not. We have seen astonishing gains in efficiency in similar projects, such as the Human Genome Project.</p>
<p>It took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to map the first human genome about 20 years ago. Today, the fastest labs can do it <a href="https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/dna-sequencing-technique.html">within hours</a> for about <a href="https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Sequencing-Human-Genome-cost">$100</a>. With similar gains in efficiency, we might see mind-uploading technology within the lifetimes of our children or grandchildren. </p>
<p>That said, there are other obstacles. Creating a static brain map is only one part of the job. To simulate a functioning brain, we would need to observe single neurons in action. It’s not obvious whether we could achieve this in the near future.</p>
<h2>The artificial mind assumption</h2>
<p>Would a simulation of your brain give rise to a conscious mind like yours? The answer depends on the connection between our minds and our bodies. Unlike the 17th-century philosopher Rene Descartes, who thought <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/#MindRela">mind and body are radically different</a>, <a href="https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/article/id/2109/">most academic philosophers today think</a> the mind is ultimately something physical itself. Put simply, your mind is your brain.</p>
<p>Still, how could a simulated brain give rise to a real mind if it’s only a simulation? </p>
<p>Well, many cognitive scientists believe it’s your brain’s complex neural <em>structure</em> that is responsible for creating your conscious mind, rather than the nature of its biological matter (which is mostly fat and water). </p>
<p>When implemented on a computer, the simulated brain would replicate your brain’s structure. For every simulated neuron and neural connection there will be a corresponding piece of computer hardware. The simulation will replicate your brain’s structure and thereby <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/#Str">replicate your conscious mind</a>.</p>
<p>Today’s AI systems provide useful (though inconclusive) evidence for the structural approach to the mind. These systems run on artificial neural networks, which copy some of the brain’s structural principles. And they are able to perform many tasks that require a lot of cognitive work in us. </p>
<h2>The survival assumption</h2>
<p>Let’s assume it is possible to simulate a human brain, and that the simulation creates a conscious mind. Would the uploaded person really be you, or perhaps just a mental clone? </p>
<p>This harks back to an old philosophical puzzle: what makes it the case that when you get out of bed in the morning you’re still the same person who went to bed the night before?</p>
<p>Philosophers are divided broadly into <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/">two camps on this question</a>. The biological camp believes morning-you and evening-you are the same person because they are the same biological organism – connected by one biological life process.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/article/id/2109/">bigger mental camp</a> thinks the fact that we have minds makes all the difference. Morning-you and evening-you are the same person because they share a mental life. Morning-you remembers what evening-you did – they have the same beliefs, hopes, character traits, and so on.</p>
<p>So which camp is right? Here’s a way to test your own intuition: imagine your brain is transplanted into the empty skull of another person’s body. Is the resulting person, who has your memories, preferences and personality, you – as the mental camp thinks? Or are they the person who donated their body, as the biological camp thinks? </p>
<p>In other words, did you get a new body or did they get a new mind? A lot hangs on this question. </p>
<p>If the biological camp is right, then mind uploading wouldn’t work, assuming the whole point of uploading is to leave one’s biology behind. If the mental camp is right, there is a chance for uploading, since the uploaded mind could be a genuine continuation of one’s present mental life.</p>
<h2>Wait, there’s a caveat</h2>
<p>But wait: what happens when the original biological-you also survives the uploading process? Would you, along with your consciousness, split into two people, resulting in two of “you” – one in a biological form (B) and one in an uploaded form (C)?</p>
<p>No, you (A) can’t literally split into two separate people (B ≠ C) and be identical with both at the same time. At most, only one of them can be you (either A = B or A = C).</p>
<p>It seems most intuitive that, after a split, your biological form would continue as the real you (A = B), and the upload would merely be a mental copy. But that makes it doubtful that you could survive as the upload even in the case where the biological-you is destroyed. </p>
<p>Why would destroying biological-you magically elevate your mental clone to the status of the real you? It seems strange to think this would happen (although <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/nozick/#H4">one view in philosophy</a> does claim it could be true). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-stanford-professor-says-science-shows-free-will-doesnt-exist-heres-why-hes-mistaken-218525">A Stanford professor says science shows free will doesn’t exist. Here’s why he’s mistaken</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Worth the risk?</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the artificial mind assumption and the survival assumption can’t be conclusively empirically tested – we would actually have to upload ourselves to find out. </p>
<p>Uploading will therefore always involve a huge leap of faith. Personally, I would only take that leap if I knew for certain my biological hardware wasn’t going to last much longer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clas Weber receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>The feasibility of mind uploading rests on three core assumptions. How plausible is each one, really?Clas Weber, Senior lecturer, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2185252023-12-01T01:17:45Z2023-12-01T01:17:45ZA Stanford professor says science shows free will doesn’t exist. Here’s why he’s mistaken<p>It <em>seems</em> like we have free will. Most of the time, <em>we</em> are the ones who choose what we eat, how we tie our shoelaces and what articles we read on The Conversation.</p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780525560975">latest book</a> by Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, has been receiving <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/this-is-america/202310/an-attack-on-free-will">a</a> <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398369-why-free-will-doesnt-exist-according-to-robert-sapolsky/">lot</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/does-biology-trump-free-will-a-behavioural-scientist-argues-we-have-little-choice-1.7023804">of</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/free-will-sapolsky.html">media</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/23965798/free-will-robert-sapolsky-determined-the-gray-area">attention</a> for arguing science shows this is <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2023-10-17/stanford-scientist-robert-sapolskys-decades-of-study-led-him-to-conclude-we-dont-have-free-will-determined-book">an illusion</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562337/original/file-20231129-15-n9136g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sapolsky’s book was published in October 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determined:_A_Science_of_Life_Without_Free_Will#/media/File:Determined_A_Science_of_Life_Without_Free_Will.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sapolsky summarises the latest scientific research relevant to determinism: the idea that we’re causally “determined” to act as we do because of our histories – and couldn’t possibly act any other way.</p>
<p>According to determinism, just as a rock that is dropped is determined to fall due to gravity, your neurons are determined to fire a certain way as a direct result of your environment, upbringing, hormones, genes, culture and myriad other factors outside your control. And this is true regardless of how “free” your choices seem to you. </p>
<p>Sapolsky also says that because our behaviour is determined in this way, nobody is morally responsible for what they do. He believes while we can lock up murderers to keep others safe, they technically don’t <em>deserve</em> to be punished.</p>
<p>This is quite a radical position. It’s worth asking why only 11% of philosophers agree with Sapolsky, compared with the <a href="https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all">60% who think</a> being causally determined is compatible with having free will and being morally responsible.</p>
<p>Have these “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/">compatibilists</a>” failed to understand the science? Or has Sapolsky failed to understand free will?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-communicators-need-to-stop-telling-everybody-the-universe-is-a-meaningless-void-215334">Science communicators need to stop telling everybody the universe is a meaningless void</a>
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<h2>Is determinism incompatible with free will?</h2>
<p>“Free will” and “responsibility” can mean a variety of different things depending on how you approach them.</p>
<p>Many people think of free will as having the ability to choose between alternatives. Determinism might seem to threaten this, because if we are causally determined then we lack any real choice between alternatives; we only ever make the choice we were always going to make.</p>
<p>But there are counterexamples to this way of thinking. For instance, suppose when you started reading this article someone secretly locked your door for 10 seconds, preventing you from leaving the room during that time. You, however, had no desire to leave anyway because you wanted to keep reading – so you stayed where you are. Was your choice free?</p>
<p>Many would argue even though you lacked the option to leave the room, this didn’t make your choice to stay unfree. Therefore, lacking alternatives isn’t what decides whether you lack free will. What matters instead is <em>how</em> the decision came about.</p>
<p>The trouble with Sapolsky’s arguments, as free will expert John Martin Fischer <a href="https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/determined-a-science-of-life-without-free-will/">explains</a>, is he doesn’t actually present any argument for why his conception of free will is correct. </p>
<p>He simply defines free will as being incompatible with determinism, assumes this absolves people of moral responsibility, and spends much of the book describing the many ways our behaviours are determined. His arguments can all be traced back to his definition of “free will”.</p>
<p>Compatibilists believe humans are agents. We live lives with “meaning”, have an understanding of right and wrong, and act for moral reasons. This is enough to suggest most of us, most of the time, have a certain type of freedom and are responsible for our actions (and deserving of blame) – even if our behaviours are “determined”. </p>
<p>Compatibilists would point out that being constrained by determinism isn’t the same as being constrained to a chair by a rope. Failing to save a drowning child because you were tied up is not the same as failing to save a drowning child because you were “determined” not to care about them. The former is an excuse. The latter is cause for condemnation.</p>
<h2>Incompatibilists must defend themselves better</h2>
<p>Some readers sympathetic to Sapolsky might feel unconvinced. They might say your decision to stay in the room, or ignore the child, was still caused by influences in your history that you didn’t control – and therefore you weren’t truly free to choose.</p>
<p>However, this doesn’t <em>prove</em> that having alternatives or being “undetermined” is the only way we can count as having free will. Instead, it <em>assumes</em> they are. From the compatibilists’ point of view, this is cheating. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A path in a forest splits off to both sides." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562338/original/file-20231129-27-5v77ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Compatibilists believe humans are agents who act for moral reasons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/crossroads-two-different-directions-concept-choose-786770815">Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Compatibilists and incompatibilists both agree that, given determinism is true, there is a sense in which you lack alternatives and could not do otherwise.</p>
<p>However, incompatibilists will say you therefore lack free will, whereas compatibilists will say you still possess free will because <em>that</em> sense of “lacking alternatives” isn’t what undermines free will – and free will is something else entirely. </p>
<p>They say as long as your actions came from you in a relevant way (even if “you” were “determined” by other things), you count as having free will. When you’re tied up by a rope, the decision to not save the drowning child doesn’t come from you. But when you just don’t care about the child, it does.</p>
<p>By another analogy, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around, one person may say no auditory senses are present, so this is incompatible with sound existing. But another person may say even though no auditory senses are present, this is still compatible with sound existing because “sound” isn’t about auditory perception – it’s about vibrating atoms.</p>
<p>Both agree nothing is heard, but disagree on what factors are relevant to determining the existence of “sound” in the first place. Sapolsky needs to show why his assumptions about what counts as free will are the ones relevant to moral responsibility. As philosopher Daniel Dennett once put it, we need to ask which “<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/lv/podcast/daniel-dennett-on-free-will-worth-wanting/id257042117?i=1000119514678">varieties of free will [are] worth wanting</a>”.</p>
<h2>Free will isn’t a scientific question</h2>
<p>The point of this back and forth isn’t to show compatibilists are right. It is to highlight there’s a nuanced debate to engage with. Free will is a thorny issue. Showing nobody is responsible for what they do requires understanding and engaging with all the positions on offer. Sapolsky doesn’t do this.</p>
<p>Sapolsky’s broader mistake seems to be assuming his questions are purely scientific: answered by looking just at what the science says. While science is relevant, we first need some idea of what free will is (which is a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/metaphysics">metaphysical question</a>) and how it relates to moral responsibility (a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/normative-ethics">normative question</a>). This is something philosophers have been interrogating <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/">for a very long time</a>.</p>
<p>Interdisciplinary work is valuable and scientists are welcome to contribute to age-old philosophical questions. But unless they engage with existing arguments first, rather than picking a definition they like and attacking others for not meeting it, their claims will simply be confused. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-is-the-most-important-thing-a-scientist-needs-177226">Curious Kids: what is the most important thing a scientist needs?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Piovarchy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sapolsky summarises the latest scientific research relevant to determinism: the idea that we’re causally ‘determined’ to act as we do and couldn’t possibly act any other way.Adam Piovarchy, Research Associate, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134402023-11-29T13:37:37Z2023-11-29T13:37:37ZStoicism and spirituality: A philosopher explains how more Americans’ search for meaning is turning them toward the classics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561703/original/file-20231126-17-wvurn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=137%2C245%2C1977%2C1153&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Web communities have helped the ancient philosophy of Stoicism find fans in a new generation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/e-book-digital-technology-and-e-learning-royalty-free-image/1254724408?phrase=internet+philosophy&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">utah778/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Stoicism may be having a renaissance. For centuries, the ancient philosophy that originated in Greece and spread across the Roman Empire was more or less treated as extinct – with the word “stoic” hanging on as shorthand for someone unemotional. But today, with the help of the internet, it’s gaining ground: One of the biggest online communities, <a href="https://dailystoic.com/podcast/">The Daily Stoic</a>, claims to have an email following of over 750,000 subscribers. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s not so surprising. The United States’ current political climate has parallels to the last few centuries B.C. in ancient Rome, home of notable Stoics like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-life-gives-you-lemons-4-stoic-tips-for-getting-through-lockdown-from-epictetus-166487">the philosopher Epictetus</a>, a former slave, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. During this period of instability, including the fall of the Roman Republic, Stoicism <a href="https://store.doverpublications.com/0486433595.html">helped its practitioners find community</a>, meaning and tranquility. </p>
<p>Today, too, society faces widespread feelings <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html">of isolation</a>, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/10/51percent-of-young-americans-say-they-feel-down-depressed-or-hopeless.html">depression</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2020.08.014">and anxiety</a>. Meanwhile, more and more people are looking for answers outside of mainstream religion. According to a 2022 Gallup Poll, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx">21% of Americans now say they have no religious affiliation</a>.</p>
<p>Riding this resurgence of interest in Stoicism, I designed <a href="https://search.asu.edu/profile/92871">a college philosophy class</a> that covers both theory and practice. When I ask students why they enrolled, I hear not only a genuine interest in the subject but also a desire to find meaning, purpose and personal development.</p>
<h2>Core principles</h2>
<p>Ancient Stoicism aimed to be a complete philosophy encompassing ethics, physics and logic. Yet most modern Stoics focus primarily on ethics, and they typically adopt four Stoic principles. </p>
<p>The first is that virtue is the only or highest good, including the cardinal virtues of wisdom, temperance, courage and justice. Everything apart from virtue – including wealth, health and reputation – might be nice to have, but they do not directly contribute to human flourishing. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bust of a man draped in robes, with short, curly hair and a beard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1180&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1180&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561708/original/file-20231126-21-zbsxfn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1180&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Marcus Aurelius: not just an emperor but a Stoic philosopher.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marcus_Aurelius_Glyptothek_Munich.jpg">Bibi Saint-Pol/Glyptothek/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Second, people ought to live in accordance with nature or reason. This principle reflects the Stoic belief that the universe exhibits a rational order, so we ought to align our beliefs and actions with eternal principles. Living in accordance with nature also reveals <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/6367/meditations-by-marcus-aurelius-a-new-translation-by-gregory-hays/9781588361738">the interconnectedness of all things</a>, showing how humans are part of a larger whole.</p>
<p>Third, a person can control only their own actions – not external events. Epictetus laid out this dichotomy in the opening sentence of <a href="https://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html">The Enchiridion</a>, a collection of his core teachings compiled by his student Arrian: “Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.”</p>
<p>The fourth principle is that thoughts about external events are often the source of discontentment or distress – a view that <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/A_New_Guide_to_Rational_Living.html?id=3JB9sLEV-SoC">has influenced modern cognitive behavioral therapy</a>. Again, this idea comes <a href="https://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html">directly from Epictetus</a>: “Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.”</p>
<p>Taken together, these principles form the bedrock of modern Stoicism, which aims to provide a coherent philosophy of life. Its hope is that once the practitioner accepts they are not entirely in control, they start building resilience and reducing anxiety. Not only is each individual the architect of their emotional life, but people can shape their own judgments in ways that are conducive to greater inner peace.</p>
<h2>Stoicism in practice</h2>
<p>In Discourses, Epictetus unequivocally states that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/discourses-fragments-handbook-9780199595181?cc=us&lang=en&">study is not enough</a> – in order to become virtuous, a person must couple study with practice. “In theory, there is nothing to restrain us from drawing the consequences of what we have been taught,” he noted, “whereas in life there are many things that pull us off course.”</p>
<p>In other words, philosophy is not only an intellectual endeavor but a practical and spiritual one: a way of life designed to move practitioners toward the Stoic conception of the good. Learning to cultivate core Stoic principles involves certain <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Philosophy+as+a+Way+of+Life%3A+Spiritual+Exercises+from+Socrates+to+Foucault-p-9780631180333">spiritual exercises</a>.</p>
<p>My class incorporates a variety of these exercises so students can get a taste of Stoicism in practice. One is the “view from above,” which encourages the practitioner to imagine their life and certain situations from a bird’s-eye view, putting the insignificance of their current troubles in perspective. </p>
<p>Another is “negative visualization”: contemplating the absence of something we value. Instead of worrying about losing something, a person intentionally meditates on its absence, with the intention of fostering gratitude and contentment. When doing this exercise in class, students have imagined the loss of a possession, a scholarship or even a beloved pet.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A tan and gray illustration of a man in simple clothing, seated with a crutch by his side, writing and looking over his shoulder." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1333&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561709/original/file-20231126-15-wvurn7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1333&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An illustration of Epictetus, likely drawn by William Sonmans and engraved by Michael Burghers, that served as frontispiece for a translation of Epictetus’ Enchiridion, printed in 1715.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Epicteti_Enchiridion_Latinis_versibus_adumbratum_(Oxford_1715)_frontispiece.jpg">John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library/Aristeas/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>A third exercise is journaling to plan and review one’s day. Reflecting on thoughts and actions allows a more objective, rational way to judge whether someone is living in accordance with their principles.</p>
<p>Once the exercises are incorporated with theory, Stoicism can become a type of spiritual project. <a href="https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/discourses-fragments-handbook-9780199595181?cc=us&lang=en&">As Epictetus wrote</a>, “For just as wood is the material of the carpenter, and bronze that of the sculptor, the art of living has each individual’s own life as its material.”</p>
<h2>The way of the prokopton</h2>
<p>So what does it mean to be a practicing Stoic – a “prokopton,” in Greek?</p>
<p>For both ancient and modern practitioners, Stoicism <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-stoicism-influenced-music-from-the-french-renaissance-to-pink-floyd-181701">is more than a set of abstract ideas</a>. It is a set of guiding principles that permeate all aspects of one’s life. The goal is progress, not perfection – and exploring Stoic ideas alongside others is encouraged.</p>
<p>Today, there are at least three relatively robust Stoic communities online: <a href="https://dailystoic.com/">The Daily Stoic</a>, <a href="https://modernstoicism.com/">Modern Stoicism</a> and <a href="https://collegeofstoicphilosophers.org/">the College of Stoic Philosophers</a>.</p>
<p>By having dedicated communities, a guiding framework and distinctive spiritual exercises, parallels between Stoicism and many mainstream religions are undeniable. For modern people looking for such things, Stoicism may <a href="https://modernstoicism.com/providence-or-atoms-atoms-donald-robertson/">serve as a surrogate</a> or complement to mainstream religion. People today tend to find the original Stoics’ notions about physics and theology implausible, but apart from those ideas, the core principles of modern Stoicism can be palatable to people who identify with <a href="https://howtolive.life/episode/045-stoicism-in-everyday-life-with-william-irvine">contemporary faith traditions</a> – or none.</p>
<p>The ancient Greeks believed that a philosophy of life is critical for human flourishing. Without a guiding ethos, they feared, individuals are likely to lead unstructured and unproductive lives, to pursue superficial pleasures and to feel that their lives lack purpose. Stoicism offered <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-stoicism-of-roman-philosophers-can-help-us-deal-with-depression-75593">a path for some to follow</a> – then, and now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Woien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stoicism isn’t just a set of ideas; it’s meant to be put into practice. The ancient philosophy is finding new fans through online communities.Sandra Woien, Associate Teaching Professor, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2184662023-11-28T16:52:48Z2023-11-28T16:52:48ZShould I have children? Here’s what the philosophers say<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561586/original/file-20231124-25-fzrvr1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C2080%2C1407&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mother and Child by Mary Cassatt (1880).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/mary-cassatt/mother-and-child-1880">WikiArt</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Parenthood has traditionally been considered the normal outcome of growing up. A side effect of reaching maturity. Across Europe and the US, <a href="https://www.oecd.org/els/family/SF_2-5-Childlessness.pdf">only 10%-20%</a> of adults remain childless or (more positively) child free. In some cases, this is accidental. People wait for an ideal time that never arrives – and then it is too late.</p>
<p><a href="https://iep.utm.edu/anti-natalism/">Anti-natalism</a> is the philosophical view that it is ethically wrong to bring anyone else into being. The justifications draw upon worries about suffering and choice. And it’s not an exclusively modern attitude. The ancient Greek playwright <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sophocles">Sophocles</a>, writing at the end of the 5th century BC, <a href="https://chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/sophocles-oedipus-at-colonus-sb/">tells us</a> that it is “best of all” not to have been born, because life contains far more suffering than good. </p>
<p>Contemporary <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-49298720">anti-natalist</a> arguments add a nuance by focusing on an asymmetry between pain and its absence. The absence of all pain is good, but this good can only be achieved through not bringing anyone into existence at all. The presence of pain is bad, and it is always part of life. So why forego the certainty of a good thing for the certainty of many bad things?</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/should-i-have-children-148388?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=InArticleTop&utm_campaign=Parenting2023">Should I have children?</a> The pieces in this series will help you answer this tough question – exploring fertility, climate change, the cost of living and social pressure.</em></p>
<p><em>We’ll keep the discussion going at a live event in London on November 30. <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/events/the-conversation-should-i-have-children/london-tottenham-court-road">Click here</a> for more information and tickets.</em></p>
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<p>Philosopher <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-case-for-not-being-born">David Benatar</a> presents the best known contemporary argument along these lines in his 2006 Sophocles-inspired book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/better-never-to-have-been-9780199549269">Better Never to have Been</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/think/article/better-not-to-have-children/3AF8BE47794522E31BE351F4D9822344">Other versions</a> of anti-natalism focus instead upon the fact that nobody chooses to exist. Existence is thrust upon us. Inconveniently, this suggests that the vast number of teenagers who tell their parents: “I didn’t ask to be born”, may in fact be budding philosophers.</p>
<h2>The problem with anti-natalism</h2>
<p>Anti-natalist arguments can sound like something from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oscar-Wilde">Oscar Wilde</a>, rather than practical guidance for life. This makes them difficult to challenge. However, one popular response is to say that a refutation is unnecessary. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Arthur Schopenhauer black and white photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561587/original/file-20231124-19-lhz3rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Schopenhauer by Johann Schäfer (1859).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Schopenhauer_by_J_Schäfer,_1859b.jpg">Frankfurt am Main University Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Having children is part of the canvas on which ethics is painted, rather than part of the picture. The ethical picture can change, but the canvas is not optional. It holds our way of human life in place. Individuals can choose to procreate or not to procreate, but rejecting parenthood entirely has no place within a good society.</p>
<p>Critics find this response evasive. Many of us also wonder why humans are drawn toward parenthood and what we might be missing if we choose not to procreate. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/">Schopenhauer</a> answers the “why” question in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/schopenhauer-the-world-as-will-and-representation/6AA41648D7C79FD5C01EDFBA37B9FBD2#:%7E:text=First%20published%20in%201818%2C%20The,account%20for%20the%20world%20in">The World as Will and Representation</a> (1818) by claiming that biology overrides sound judgement and tricks us into producing the next generation.</p>
<p>But is it really a trick? After all, there do seem to be some important good things bound into parenthood. </p>
<h2>The philosophical benefits of parenthood</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1579/1579-h/1579-h.htm">Plato’s Lysis</a> struggles to identify these good aspects of parental care. His central character, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjBkdWwhN2CAxVyUEEAHZiyBSQQFnoECDkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2Fbiography%2FSocrates&usg=AOvVaw3khslk131_FWfqQvsuc47C&opi=89978449">Socrates</a>, gives some young men a hard time when they cannot identify what benefit they bring to their parents. What they fail to recognise is that the goods of parenthood involve seeing a child grow and mature – and finding meaning in the process.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Print of a woman with a baby on her back looking at her reflection" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561589/original/file-20231124-15-k697g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mother and Child by Kitagawa Utamaro (circa 1800).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/54866">The Metropolitan Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This recognition of the role played by care for others is also present in many religious traditions – particularly in the ways that they address life’s sufferings.</p>
<p>Buddhists celebrate the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/samsara">rebirth of enlightened humans into a world of suffering</a> in the hope that they may help other beings. </p>
<p><a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/confucianism/">Confucians</a> highlight that, across generations, children can care for parents and grandparents. </p>
<p>In both cases, care binds a good society together, in ways that sustain social hope. In contemporary <a href="https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/european-industrial-relations-dictionary/social-economy#:%7E:text=Definition,intended%20to%20be%20economically%20viable.">social economy</a>, the younger generation of taxpayers supports older generations as well as childcare. </p>
<p>While non-existence would avoid may bad things, new humans carry the possibility of making the future better than the past. Losing such hope for the future would be terrible all round.</p>
<p>Focusing instead on the lack of choice exercised by a nonexistent, unborn human generates interesting philosophical puzzles, but bypasses what runs philosophically deep. Such as the wonder that the female body is where the creation of all humans happens – the place where every pianist, pickpocket and anti-natalist starts out. </p>
<p>The female power to give birth also counteracts complex forms of sociocultural control and sets in motion practical problems: who will become family members of a new human? Will relatives and our wider society care in the right ways?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of a woman holding a baby" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561590/original/file-20231124-19-4sczxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561590/original/file-20231124-19-4sczxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561590/original/file-20231124-19-4sczxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561590/original/file-20231124-19-4sczxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561590/original/file-20231124-19-4sczxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561590/original/file-20231124-19-4sczxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561590/original/file-20231124-19-4sczxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lord, Thy Will Be Done by Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1855).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1356">Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women must make the final decision about giving or not giving birth. At the same time, to give life a sense of meaning, we share our lives with friends, life partners, and children. Disappointment, joy and loss are part of the package. Even Schopenhauer, who spurned parental love, felt the need to lavish care upon <a href="https://www.clappisonvet.com/the-pleasures-of-poodles-to-a-pessimist-2/#:%7E:text=His%20favourite%20%22Atma%22%20seems%20to,for%20after%20the%20philosopher%27s%20death">his beloved dog</a>. </p>
<p>We can love and find meaning without having children. But parenthood is one of our more entrenched ways of trying to live meaningful lives. For some, there may be no other workable path. Personal histories can lead any of us to feel incomplete without children. More disturbingly, it can lead people to feel like failures if they remain childless. And that, surely, is a bad thing.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218466/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lena Springer receives funding from European Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Milligan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Plato to Schopenhauer, the philosophers have vastly different takes on the age old question of whether to procreate.Tony Milligan, Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Ethics, Cosmological Visionaries project, King's College LondonLena Springer, Research Associate in History and Philosophy of Science, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138952023-11-26T19:19:48Z2023-11-26T19:19:48ZSimone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil and Ayn Rand all felt ‘different’ in the world – and changed the way we think<p>The “actual impulse of astonishment” that sparks all philosophising is “honest bafflement that other people live as they do,” writes Wolfram Eilenberger in his new book, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-visionaries-9780241537374">The Visionaries</a>.</p>
<p>It’s a wild ride through ten of the worst years in the 20th century, spanning the period from 1933, the year Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, to 1943 and the thick of the second world war. It’s told through the occasionally intersecting lives of four brilliant young women philosophers: Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Weil (both French), Russian-American Ayn Rand, and German-Jewish Hannah Arendt, who spent time exiled in France and New York. </p>
<p>Though very different, they all “experienced themselves as having been placed fundamentally differently in the world from how other people had been”. Eilenberger writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All of them were tormented from an early age by the same questions: What could it be that makes me so different? What is it that I clearly can’t understand and experience like all the others? Am I really driving down the freeway of life in the wrong direction – or is it not perhaps the mass of wildly honking people coming toward me flashing their lights?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I had thought myself reasonably schooled in the writings of these women, but discovered how little I actually knew about them – their early work and their jobs, who they knew and loved or loathed, and how the broken stick of 1930s Europe shaped the possibilities for their lives and thought. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the salvation of philosophy – Wolfram Eilenberger, trans Shaun Whiteside (Allen Lane)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Visionaries traces the gradual unfolding of their systems of thought, including how they changed their minds in response to the radically changed situations they found themselves in. </p>
<p>It builds, to some extent, on Eilenberger’s earlier volume, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576741/time-of-the-magicians-by-wolfram-eilenberger-translated-by-shaun-whiteside/">Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy</a>, which followed four brilliant young men who transformed European philosophy in the agonised decade following the first world war. </p>
<p>Both books weave the work of the philosophers with social history, biography, accounts of the cultural and economic environment, and depictions of the quarrels and agreements, friendships and passions that characterised their communities.</p>
<h2>Meet the philosophers</h2>
<p>The Visionaries opens at the end of 1943. Each character is a very young woman, only in her thirties. But each is already possessed of a trained mind, formidable intelligence and a determination to make sense of life, the universe, and everything. </p>
<p>Beauvoir is writing her first philosophical essay, is about to publish <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007204649/she-came-to-stay/">her first novel</a> and has a play in the works. Weil has been asked by occupied France’s shadow government to draw up plans and scenarios for the political reconstruction of France (after her offer to go “to the front to die for her ideals” was refused). </p>
<p>Rand is awaiting the publication of her debut book, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-fountainhead-9780141188621">The Fountainhead</a>, “a philosophical manifesto masquerading as a novel”. And exactly ten years after being driven out of Hitler’s Germany, Hannah Arendt is figuring out her next steps, reflecting that in “these dark times”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One only had to find the courage in oneself to open one’s eyes – keep them open – to perceive the abysses of one’s own time with an alert mind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After this opening chapter, the narrative jumps back a decade to 1933, and then progresses year by year, back to where it began. </p>
<p>First, we meet Simone de Beauvoir, who – with her life partner Jean-Paul Sartre – is associated with “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-good-life-existentialists-believed-we-should-embrace-freedom-and-authenticity-204364">existentialism</a>” (though Eilenberger writes that she avoids the term). Existentialism argues each individual is a free agent, capable of crafting their own identity and existence through acts of the will.</p>
<p>By 1943, Beauvoir was wrestling with one of existentialism’s core precepts: how individuals can achieve their best possible lives. She asked, why would someone even attempt this? After all, everything we do comes to nothing – because of time’s inexorable progress and our inevitable death – so why do anything at all? </p>
<p>At that stage, her answer is that we should do something because we are in the world as acting creatures, and therefore should grasp our freedom to act while we are able. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-good-life-existentialists-believed-we-should-embrace-freedom-and-authenticity-204364">What makes a good life? Existentialists believed we should embrace freedom and authenticity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘A heart that could beat right across the world’</h2>
<p>Simone Weil, whom we meet next, is pretty much the polar opposite of Beauvoir. Indeed, late in the volume Eilenberger notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we compare Weil’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/322933">Notebooks</a> with Beauvoir’s diaries and writings from the same time [1941–1942], we have the extremely strange impression of a telepathic contact between two minds resonating tensely at either end of an infinite piece of string.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Where Beauvoir sees herself as comparatively separate from society, Weil had, as Beauvoir wrote, “a heart that could beat right across the world”. Despite her physical fraility (and probable <a href="https://theconversation.com/disease-evolution-the-origins-of-anorexia-and-how-its-shaped-by-culture-and-time-54571">anorexia</a>), Weil was possessed by enormous passion and empathy. The wellbeing of everyone else in the world absorbed her thoughts and actions during her short life (she died in 1943). </p>
<p>For years, Weil kept from her wages “precisely the minimum sum assigned to unemployed factory workers on state support, while the rest she donate[d] to needy or feeling comrades”. And she directed her obedient parents to use their unoccupied apartment to house refugees – it once hosted a meeting between exiled communist leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Trotsky">Leon Trotsky</a> and “the new high command of the world revolution”. </p>
<p>Born into a Jewish family, Weil veered into a passionate and ascetic Christianity. For her, the point of being alive was to disappear into a future of nonbeing, confident that “Supernatural love alone creates reality” and that our meaning, if one can call it that, is to dissolve into a vessel for God’s will. </p>
<p>This is not a matter of “acting”, in Beauvoir’s terms, but of leaving the world of authenticity and safety in favour of some notion of the divine. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Weil’s often brilliant work has attracted less attention than that of her fellow characters in this book.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-simone-weils-the-need-for-roots-209514">Guide to the Classics: Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Ayn Rand and ‘no society’</h2>
<p>Ayn Rand comes next: her family’s home and possessions were expropriated in the 1917 <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-russian-revolution-100669">October Revolution</a>, on the grounds they were representatives of the Jewish “bourgeoisie”. They fled to Crimea, then lived in poverty when they returned to St Petersburg (now named Petrograd) in 1921. </p>
<p>The Russian jackboot she escaped was at least as violent as that of the Nazis’ – as Simone Weil too argues in her 1933 discussion about “the structural similarity between newly fascist Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union”.</p>
<p>Rand made it to the United States in 1926, and began a career as a thinker and writer who named her philosophical position “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/objectivism-philosophy">objectivism</a>”. Where Weil aimed to change the whole world through divine engagement, and Beauvoir perceived freedom as the freedom to act within a community, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118324950.ch1">Rand insisted on</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For “man”, read “Rand”. Her most famous character, the architect Howard Roark, the protagonist of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-fountainhead-9780141188621">The Fountainhead</a>, was after all based on herself. Roark, whose real-life admirers include Donald Trump, was a mouthpiece for objectivism: for reason, for facts, but never for compassion or empathy. </p>
<p>Like an early <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-death-of-margaret-thatcher-and-the-legacy-of-thatcherism-13324">Margaret Thatcher</a>, Rand built an entire worldview based on there being no society – only self-focused, self-seeking individuals, capable of determining who and what they are, in perfect freedom.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/atlas-shrugged-ayn-rands-hero-burns-the-world-down-when-he-doesnt-get-his-way-her-fans-run-the-world-should-we-worry-192510">Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand's hero burns the world down when he doesn't get his way. Her fans run the world – should we worry?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Hannah Arendt, with her mother, had fled Germany in 1933 after they were arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo. For some years, she lived as an exile in France, later escaping to the United States. </p>
<p>Her initial writings explored the uncertainty of freedom in a world where events can strip the individual of identity, of nationality, of freedom – and even of life. </p>
<p>Her perspectives differ markedly from both existentialism and objectivism: Eilenberger observes that, for Arendt, “self-creation is always contingent on social and cultural conditions, from which no individual can fully escape”. It is, she argued poignantly, political power, not self-determination, that sets the limits of our being. </p>
<p>In her case, this was the power of the Nazi machine, which destroyed so many members of her community – and which she had so narrowly escaped. Her philosophical concerns were, therefore, far from either individual self-realisation or self-abnegation. </p>
<p>Rather, she was concerned with what an individual’s responsibility might be in the face of overwhelming social, political and economic realities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-hannah-arendts-eichmann-in-jerusalem-and-the-problem-of-terrifying-moral-complacency-187600">The book that changed me: Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and the problem of terrifying moral complacency</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘The salvation of philosophy’</h2>
<p>These, in brief, are the four philosophers who galvanised “the salvation of philosophy”. The lines and turns of their thinking were unpacked and reframed through much of what was going on in the salons of their twenties, or the writings of their thirties. </p>
<p>They were deeply connected, through reading, through shared intellectual concerns, and in some cases through personal relationships, with the great philosophers who preceded them – all the way back to <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-platos-republic-127724">Plato</a> in the fourth century BCE – and with their contemporaries. </p>
<p>Simone de Beauvoir, for example, was intimately connected to Jean-Paul Sartre in life and work. <a href="https://theconversation.com/wittgenstein-tried-to-solve-all-the-problems-of-philosophy-in-his-tractatus-logico-philosophicus-but-he-didnt-quite-succeed-181719">Ludwig Wittgenstein</a>’s ethical and intellectual struggles with religion closely parallel Weil’s own (though there is little evidence they knew each other). <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/07/walter-benjamin-critical-life-howard-eiland-michael-w-jennings-review">Walter Benjamin</a> was Arendt’s friend throughout their period of exile (and later was the subject of her writings). </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/heideggers-notebooks-reveal-an-early-blindness-to-the-nazis-reality-24760">Martin Heidegger</a> was the most intertwined with these philosophers. His writings influenced both Weil’s and Beauvoir’s work, particularly into the nature of being, and of human consciousness. </p>
<p>He had also been Arendt’s teacher (and lover) at university; and though they were on opposite sides of the political divide – Heidegger became a Nazi in 1933, the same year Arendt was arrested by the Gestapo – Arendt reconnected with him in 1949, and remained his friend. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heidegger-in-ruins-grappling-with-an-anti-semitic-philosopher-and-his-troubling-rebirth-today-200826">Heidegger in ruins? Grappling with an anti-semitic philosopher and his troubling rebirth today</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Otherness’: danger or obligation?</h2>
<p>The four women are complex characters, and not always likeable, being neither straightforward, nor straightforwardly admirable. Beauvoir, for example, declined to join a 1934 general workers’ strike on the grounds she was not part of society. She wrote: “The existence of Otherness remained a danger to me.” In fact, “Otherness” was such a danger that at this point, she claimed to identify with no one but Sartre. </p>
<p>Interestingly though, she records a sharp criticism offered her by Simone Weil in a discussion they had about care of the Other, and what matters in the world. For Weil, the most important thing is to “feed all the starving people of the earth”. For Beauvoir, what matters is: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>not to make men happy, but to find the reason for their existence. [Weil] looked me up and down: “It’s easy to see you’ve never been hungry”, she snapped. Our relations ended right there […]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fair point. Or maybe not all that fair, since by the mid-1930s, Beauvoir was less inclined to consider the world a universe only of Beauvoir-plus-Sartre. Instead, she was beginning to take a more other-oriented, and more sensibly pragmatic, stance.</p>
<p>Perhaps this was motivated by the fact the Beauvoir-plus-Sartre unit had become a polyamorous group, incorporating a worryingly young group of people who participated in their sexual and intellectual lives. The philosophers’ ease with this complicated sexual engagement, which they characterised as “family”, did not meet social norms. </p>
<p>Beauvoir was the subject of a year-long investigation, following complaints by the mother of one of the young people that she seduced her students and then passed them on to Sartre. This crime of “incitement to debauchery” was not proven, for lack of evidence. At the same time, Sartre was sulking about his unsatisfying professional life, and insatiably sexually engaging with (it seems) pretty well anyone who entered his orbit. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sex-lies-and-hegel-did-the-intimate-lives-of-philosophers-shape-their-ideas-176570">Sex, lies and Hegel: did the intimate lives of philosophers shape their ideas?</a>
</strong>
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<hr>
<h2>Simone Weil and ‘the common people’</h2>
<p>I would imagine such experiences exposed Beauvoir to the limitations of both her philosophy and her capabilities. Certainly, such an awareness seems present in her explanation of why she and Sartre declined to join so many of their circle in travelling to Spain to serve in the war against Franco: that they were more likely to be “a nuisance rather than a help”. </p>
<p>In evidence of this, she pointed out that Weil had gone to Spain to serve in the military, but when the infantry sensibly refused to arm her, Weil instead worked in the kitchens. (Her war ended when she stepped into a pot of boiling oil and was sent back to France to recover.)</p>
<p>Weil’s passion for others often made her “a nuisance rather than a help”. She identified strongly with the concept, at least, of “the common people”, but usually got things wrong. Despite her deeply fragile health, she took a sabbatical from her job as a philosophy teacher to work in a metals factory. This, she thought, would be “real life”. Eilenberger gently teases this aspiration, but at the same time he notes her action:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>stands in a respectable tradition of philosophical experiments whose declared objective was to turn one’s back on a presumably alienated world […] Like the Buddha fleeing the temple, or Diogenes in his barrel, or of course Thoreau building his hut on Walden Pond. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was not an obviously useful experiment. Weil was a hopeless factory worker, causing herself injury, messing up the production line, and worsening her always-frail physical health. She was a hopeless social activist too. After her failure to solve the problems of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Spanish-Civil-War">Spanish Civil War</a>, and as France edged ever closer to war with Germany, she began developing suites of well-argued and utterly impractical solutions, all of which were rejected. </p>
<p>Arendt seems to have had a much stronger practical streak than did Weil, and a much clearer sense both of the complexities of being a human among other humans, and of the limitations on the fantasies of freedom, than either Beauvoir or Rand. </p>
<p>While she was still living as a refugee in France, she was developing an understanding of what it is to be a pariah: considering how to preserve the only freedom pariahs have – the capacity to think for themselves. She was also <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#Love">wondering about what love means</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-rai-gaita-and-the-moral-power-of-conversation-217670">Friday essay: Rai Gaita and the moral power of conversation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Foundations of 20th-century thought</h2>
<p>Reading through this decade, and through the thinking that propelled the four women then, I had to keep reminding myself how dire their living conditions were. </p>
<p>For the three Europeans, the looming dread of war and the nailing down of any freedom or opportunity framed their lives. Ayn Rand may have been far from Hitler’s reach, but she was unable to free her parents from the Great Terror of Stalinist Russia, she was having only uncertain success in her writing, and she lived with an unsatisfying husband. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561470/original/file-20231123-29-gl43ar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Throughout all this, the Europeans at least sharpened and nuanced their understanding of what it is to be human, the point of being alive, what freedom means, and where our responsibilities lie. In doing so, they laid down some of the intellectual and ethical foundations that have inflected much of the 20th century, and into our time. (Ayn Rand’s writings, on the other hand, <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-is-john-galt-ayn-rand-libertarians-and-the-gop-40033">provided a textbook for the US Tea Party</a> – efficacious work, no doubt, but not work I can applaud.)</p>
<p>By the end of the book, I found I had changed my mind about the four women – primarily in the form of a significantly elevated appreciation for Simone de Beauvoir and an enhanced sympathy for Simone Weil. (I retained my confirmed enthusiasm for Arendt, and my equally confirmed disdain for Rand.) </p>
<p>I also discovered a substantial admiration for the skill of the author and his translator. The clarity of voice, the respect paid to readers and to the four main subjects, and the little glimpses of humour (and larger glimpses of empathy) have left me a fan of this work. </p>
<p>Readers who are not fans of philosophy shouldn’t fear the book will tangle them in the weeds of impenetrable lines of thought: its philosophy is made highly accessible. And the human stories, with all their tragedies, irritations and delights, are luminously and empathically crafted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jen Webb has receive funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>A new book follows four women philosophers through ten of the worst years in the 20th century, spanning 1933, the year Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, to the thick of the second world war.Jen Webb, Dean, Graduate Research, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2167372023-11-22T19:09:19Z2023-11-22T19:09:19ZIs it time to reconsider the idea of ‘the banality of evil’?<p>After attending the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann">Adolf Eichmann</a>, the philosopher and political theorist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt">Hannah Arendt</a> claimed what was terrifying about this man was not his moral monstrosity. It was his sheer normality. She subtitled her 1963 book on the subject, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58709556">Eichmann in Jerusalem</a>, “a report on the banality of evil”.</p>
<p>Arendt’s phrase made its way into our broader culture. It is widely considered a salutary warning against the idea that enormous atrocities, such as the Holocaust, could never be conceived of, and carried out, again.</p>
<p>For Arendt, Eichmann, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann">the principal organiser</a> of the trains that took millions of Jewish men, women and children to concentration camps was above all an efficient, bland bureaucrat. We may find many of his kind in the modern world, her argument implied, working away efficiently in their offices, interested in building careers and not rocking the boat.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Polish women and children boarding a train to Treblinka." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560294/original/file-20231120-27-ry0pva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The deportation of Polish Jews to Treblinka from the ghetto in Siedlce in 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deportation_to_Treblinka_from_ghetto_in_Siedlce_1942.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58709556">Arendt’s version of Eichmann</a> he was neither a convinced Nazi, nor a fanatical anti-Semite. He showed no sign of “indoctrination of any kind”, she wrote, as he testified to an Israeli court in Jerusalem. But he was unable to see the world, and what he was doing, from the perspective of others, including the victims of the actions of which he was a part. </p>
<p>Whenever wider reality threatened to impose itself, Arendt wrote, Eichmann would retreat behind a wall of administrative jargon and mind-numbing “cliches”. And it was this “thoughtlessness”, she claimed, that enabled him to work so well, sending millions of innocent people to their deaths in precisely scheduled trains of cattle cars to places like <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62052493-the-hell-of-treblinka">Treblinka</a> and Auschwitz-Birkenau.</p>
<p>But the publication since Eichmann’s trial of the full transcripts of audio recordings and manuscripts he produced in the 1950s – when still at large in Argentina – show he was anything but a banal bureaucrat.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-hannah-arendts-eichmann-in-jerusalem-and-the-problem-of-terrifying-moral-complacency-187600">The book that changed me: Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and the problem of terrifying moral complacency</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A ghastly confession</h2>
<p>Eichmann in Jerusalem, published 60 years ago, has continued to generate enormous controversies. As the prosecution <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9401635">successfully established</a> during his 1961 trial, Eichmann had not always mindlessly followed orders. He even defied the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55842.Becoming_Eichmann">in the last days of 1944</a>, ordering <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/academic/the-death-marches-of-hungarian-jews-through-austria.html">death marches</a> of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. (With the Third Reich collapsing, Himmler had ordered a stop to the deportations in October 1944.)</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cover of Eichmann in Jerusalem" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560290/original/file-20231120-21-milkuj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
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<p>Indeed, by the time of the trial, <a href="https://ia902905.us.archive.org/32/items/theconfessionofadolfeichmann/The%20Confession%20of%20Adolf%20Eichmann.pdf">Life magazine</a> had published a “confession” Eichmann made to Nazi comrades in Argentina. It was drawn from the 70 so-called “Sassen tapes”, recorded in 1957, and amounting to around 1000 pages of transcript. </p>
<p>Even in this abridged version, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19288101-eichmann-before-jerusalem">the Eichmann who emerged</a> was far from the bumbling, balding clerk who presented himself at Jerusalem. We learn that, <a href="https://ia902905.us.archive.org/32/items/theconfessionofadolfeichmann/The%20Confession%20of%20Adolf%20Eichmann.pdf">when all was lost</a> in the final days of the war, Eichmann told his SS coworkers that no matter what would now happen, he would “gladly jump into his grave” knowing he had been involved in the deaths of so many “enemies of the Reich”.</p>
<p>Concluding his ghastly confession, Eichmann went farther, underlining he regretted only that the Allies’ victory had prevented the “extermination” of all of those slated for this fate by the Nazi elites at the <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/the-wannsee-conference/">January 1942 Wannssea conference</a>.</p>
<p>Eichmann was sentenced to death by the court in Jerusalem and executed on 31 May, 1962.</p>
<h2>Deeply indoctrinated</h2>
<p>In the decades since the Eichmann trial, the full transcripts of the Sassen tapes have become available <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19288101-eichmann-before-jerusalem">for historical assessment</a>. We also now have a 107-page political testament written by Eichmann in 1956, entitled “The Others Have Spoken, now I want to Speak!”</p>
<p>These documents establish that Eichmann remained a Nazi true believer throughout his life. As the retired SS <em>Obersturmbannführer</em> (“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obersturmf%C3%BChrer">Senior Storm Leader</a>”) told his comrades in Argentina, he had never been only a pen-pusher, just doing his job:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This cautious bureaucrat was attended by a […] fanatical warrior fighting for the freedom of my blood, which is my birthright […] what benefits my people is a sacred order and a sacred duty for me. Yes indeed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Eichmann was still convinced, more than a decade after Hitler’s fall, there was a Jewish “world conspiracy” and the Holocaust was a justified act of war. He was, in short, a deeply indoctrinated individual, never walking back from his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55842.Becoming_Eichmann">ideological training near Dachau and elsewhere</a> in the 1930s. He would lament only having been too “weak” not to have done more to effect the total annihilation of Germany’s “racial enemy”.</p>
<p>When in 1960-61, he was captured by the arch enemy of “his blood” and taken to their Holy City to face justice, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9401635">Eichmann and his defence did everything</a> they could to keep his Argentinian musings hidden and have the Sassen tapes disallowed as evidence. The “fanatical warrior” also morphed into the ungainly clerk next door, the man behind the glass, giving his halting testimony.</p>
<p>Eichmann would even try to persuade the court he was a moral universalist, a pacifist and a lover of nature who had been compelled to do bad things by a criminal government in which he never had believed.</p>
<h2>The deception of banality</h2>
<p>What then can we learn from Eichmann’s performance of banality at Jerusalem and the way he was able to deceive a philosopher as insightful as Hannah Arendt and, in her wake, many others?</p>
<p>For Nazis, as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19288101-eichmann-before-jerusalem">Eichmann’s writing whilst at large in Argentina attests</a>, “the drive towards self-preservation is stronger than any so-called moral requirement”.
Given “the duty to our blood” which supposedly bound everyone to their own race, universal moral rules, like “always treat others as you would yourself be treated”, were <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14721370-ss-thinking-and-the-holocaust">no more than deceptive tools</a> used by weaker people(s) to subdue the superior:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There can be no possible agreement with systems of thought of an international nature, because at bottom these are not true and not honest, but based on a monstrous lie, namely the lie of the equality of all human beings. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Jerusalem, Eichmann continued the ideological struggle in the best way he could. He monstrously lied, deftly playing a role he thought might appease his captors. As historian Bettina Stangneth puts it in her 2004 book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19288101-eichmann-before-jerusalem">Eichmann before Jerusalem</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As part of this masquerade, Eichmann [in 1961] described himself in terms that would previously have sent him into a screaming rage. He was now ‘small-minded’, a ‘pencil-pusher’, and a ‘pedant’, someone who ‘did not overstep his responsibilities’ – and the last of these lies may even have amused him a little.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By presenting himself as a banal non-entity, Eichmann must also have savoured how this would deprive survivors even of a worthy object for their anger and outrage. How could anyone rightfully blame such a mediocre, inoffensive figure, without showing themselves – not the Nazis – to be vengeful, aggressive and unjust?</p>
<p>In his final statement, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9401635">Eichmann would go so far</a> as to suggest that, far from condemning him, the court should recognise he was a victim too.</p>
<p>Arendt was not fooled Eichmann was innocent. She supported the death penalty handed down by the court. Yet he deserved death, she argued, despite “the possible noncriminal nature of your [Eichmann’s] inner life and your motives […]”. </p>
<p>About this inner life and these noncriminal motives, she was mistaken.</p>
<h2>To do is to deny</h2>
<p>Eichmann remains an enduring illustration of how evil agents can use the masquerade of banality as one way to muddy the waters, deflect those who would hold them accountable and continue to deny their victims even the thin consolation of the moral high ground.</p>
<p>There are of course many other strategies bad actors use to try to “get away with murder”. Several of them, Eichmann had already used in Argentina, when he needed to justify his crimes only to himself, not his victims and their descendants.</p>
<p>These strategies include firstly, blame-shifting onto the victims. In Eichmann’s case – but he was far from alone – blame for the second world war, even for the Holocaust itself, in which Jews were murdered in millions. They “had it coming”, they “gave us no choice”, they “had every chance to avoid it”, “what else could we do?”</p>
<p>Second, there is creating false equivalence between what perpetrators enact and what the victims were supposedly “already up to”. The enduring ideological function of conspiracy theories, like the anti-Semitic myth of the world conspiracy at the heart of Eichmann’s Nazism, comes from creating this imaginary moral equivalence. </p>
<p>Such accusations of nefarious evildoing license political and other violence against enemies, repackaging it as self-defense, even when the opponent is defenceless. “Anyone who can make you believe in absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”, as the enlightenment philosopher <a href="https://voltairefoundation.wordpress.com/2021/02/16/voltaire-on-capitol-hill-anyone-who-can-make-you-believe-absurdities-can-make-you-commit-atrocities/">Voltaire is reputed to have said</a>.</p>
<p>Intertwined with these two rationalisations of evil is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/37362/chapter-abstract/331335701?redirectedFrom=fulltext">the dehumanisation of the foe</a>. We see this in Eichmann, outside of Jerusalem, who repeatedly described the Nazi’s victims as “animals”. Sadly, we see <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/dignity-and-dehumanisation-in-israel-and-gaza-suzy-killmister/103014316">this dehumanisation of the enemy playing out</a> still, around the world today.</p>
<p>Last but not least, there is the cynicism which claims the whole world, nature itself, is a grim struggle for survival and domination, for oneself and for one’s “people”, “race”, or “nation”. This <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14721370-ss-thinking-and-the-holocaust">sophistical pseudo-philosophy at the heart of the SS worldview</a>, with roots in social Darwinism, has also reemerged in corners of the internet in our times. </p>
<p>Presenting itself as “the hard truth”, it contends that what “goody goodies”, “social justice warriors”, “liberals” and “humanitarians” call “evil” is just the way of the world. No one can be blamed for doing whatever they think is necessary. As Eichmann philosophised in Argentina:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the more I listened to the natural world, whether microcosm or macrocosm, the less injustice I found […] Everyone was in the right, when seen from his own standpoint.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This thinking is why the Nazis derisively <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedem_das_Seine">placed the slogan</a> “To each their own” above the gates at Buchenwald concentration camp.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The entrance gates to Buchenwald concentration camp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560293/original/file-20231120-17-milkuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The entrance gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp, with the slogan ‘To each their own’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gedenkst%C3%A4tte_Konzentrationslager_Buchenwald_-_Entrance_gate_of_the_Buchenwald_concentration_camp,_inscribed_Jedem_das_Seine_(%22To_each_his_own%22)_Clemens_Vasters_July_2022.jpg">Clemens Vasters/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Evil, denial and deceit</h2>
<p>The philosophical challenge posed by Arendt’s book, given what we now know, is not that of getting our heads around the banality of evil. It is that of reconsidering the connection, always at <a href="https://www.theologyofwork.org/key-topics/truth-deception/key-biblical-texts-on-truth-deception/">the heart of Biblical understandings</a>, between evil and the kind of deceptions Eichmann continued to practice until the end.</p>
<p>Philosopher Claudia Card <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/748554">has defined evil</a> as involving intolerable harms against others, culpably carried out by people who know exactly what they are doing. What the Eichmann case highlights is how, for social creatures like human beings, such actions can usually only succeed – unless and until, a total asymmetry of power is created – through concealment and deception. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-evil-exist-and-if-so-are-some-people-just-plain-evil-26911">Does evil exist and, if so, are some people just plain evil?</a>
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<p>There is first, the luring, bating and deceiving of the victims. Eichmann’s SS comrades and their associates told the Jewish deportees they were being “resettled”, they needed to be showered on arrival, they would receive food and coffee afterwards, that there was nothing to fear.</p>
<p>Secondly, there is the self-deception involved in justifying the evil to the perpetrators themselves: recasting it as necessary, truly unavoidable, a difficult, heroic task, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posen_speeches">Himmler infamously argued to the SS</a> in his October 1943 Posen speeches. It is here that ideological indoctrination is especially important, despite Arendt’s claims in Eichmann in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Thirdly, there is the deception involved in hiding the actions, so outsiders do not discover the crimes and hold the perpetrators to account. This is why Himmler ordered that <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/operation-reinhard-the-camps-of-belzec-sobibor-and-treblinka">all the bodies</a> from the Nazis’ mass slaughters were, as far as possible, to be exhumed and incinerated after 1942, so as to leave no trace. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unearthing-the-atrocities-of-nazi-death-camps/">The killing facilities</a> themselves were then mostly destroyed before the Soviets arrived.</p>
<p>There is surely nothing banal about any of this. Many lines need to be crossed to get ordinary human beings to believe that committing atrocities against others, then concealing and belittling them, is defensible or even admirable.</p>
<p>It may be true that all humans, all societies, are capable of becoming so corrupted as to come to see destroying others’ lives, outside of open combat, as a needed or heroic thing. But societies cannot typically survive undamaged, let alone flourish, if a culture of systematic lying is fostered and allowed to grow.</p>
<p>Ordinary democratic citizenship, civility and public life depend on not allowing the mendacity of evil, of which Adolf Eichmann provides one extraordinary example, to become the norm. This is why better understanding his case remains so vital today.</p>
<p><em>This article is adapted from this year’s <a href="https://www.acu.edu.au/about-acu/faculties-directorates-and-staff/faculty-of-theology-and-philosophy/school-of-philosophy/simone-weil-lecture">Simone Weil Lecture</a> at the Australian Catholic University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sharpe has received ARC funding in the past as part of a team working on religion and politics in the modern world. This text concerns the subject of his 2023 Simone Weil address at the Australian Catholic University.</span></em></p>Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was anything but banal. His case is an apt reminder of how evil agents can deflect accountability, denying victims even the thin consolation of the moral high ground.Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165402023-11-20T00:54:20Z2023-11-20T00:54:20ZHow can you define a ‘drug’? Nobody really knows<p>What’s a medical drug? Ask someone on the street and they’re likely to tell you it’s the kind of thing you take when you’re unwell.</p>
<p>This understanding is wrong, as we will see. But after a thorough investigation, my colleagues and I found no other potential definitions are any better. </p>
<p>Despite their centrality to medicine, we have no idea what medical drugs are. We can’t even tell the difference between drugs and food, let alone drugs and so-called “natural” alternatives.</p>
<h2>A Goldilocks definition</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jmp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jmp/jhad035/7206006">recent article</a> in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, my colleagues (Sara Linton, a pharmacist, and Maureen O’Malley, a philosopher of biology) and I tried to nail down a viable definition of medical drugs.</p>
<p>A viable definition should be broad enough to include everything classified as a drug. To get a sense of this “everything”, we used the <a href="https://go.drugbank.com/about">drug bank</a> compiled by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, which lists more than 16,000 substances.</p>
<p>A definition should also be narrow enough to exclude substances not typically considered drugs. Take food, for example. Eating a sandwich is usually never thought of as taking a drug.</p>
<p>In short, a viable definition of what drugs are should occupy a “Goldilocks” zone between these two demands: big enough to include all drugs, small enough to exclude everything else.</p>
<p>Based on an initial study of pharmacology textbooks, we found three broad ways to define drugs: in terms of what they are, how they work and what they’re used for.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, none of these options fall within the Goldilocks zone. </p>
<h2>Are drugs specific chemicals?</h2>
<p>If all drugs were a particular type of chemical, then defining drugs would be easy. But this idea is hopeless: there is nothing, chemically speaking, all drugs have in common.</p>
<p>It is also tempting to think drugs are “artificial” chemicals, made in a lab, whereas “natural” supplements come from nature, and that’s the difference.</p>
<p>But many drugs are “natural” in this sense. Aspirin, for instance, is derived from willow bark.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/modern-medicine-has-its-scientific-roots-in-the-middle-ages-how-the-logic-of-vulture-brain-remedies-and-bloodletting-lives-on-today-213702">Modern medicine has its scientific roots in the Middle Ages − how the logic of vulture brain remedies and bloodletting lives on today</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This has immediate implications for so-called “natural” supplements, such as fish oil. </p>
<p>If “drugs” are chemically indistinguishable from “natural” supplements, supplements should not be considered a “safe” alternative. Supplements are no less, and no more, safe than many drugs. </p>
<h2>Do drugs perform a specific function?</h2>
<p>Perhaps drugs can be defined in terms of what they do. This idea initially seems promising, as many drugs work by binding to receptor molecules in the body. </p>
<p>Think of a lock and key: the receptor molecule is the lock, and the drug is the key that opens it. </p>
<p>The discovery of receptor molecules is significant. For some, it is the “big idea” of the science of pharmacology. </p>
<p>But this definition of medical drugs is also hopeless. Many drugs don’t bind to receptors. Antacids, for instance, work simply by changing the level of acidity (pH) in a person’s body.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-placebo-effect-and-are-doctors-allowed-to-prescribe-them-55219">Explainer: what is the placebo effect and are doctors allowed to prescribe them?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Many placebos also bind to receptors. Placebos are often contrasted with drugs, but defining drugs as “things that bind to receptor molecules” would include many placebos in the definition. So this definition won’t work either.</p>
<p>Is there a way to define placebos that clearly distinguishes them from drugs? This is not obvious, since defining placebos is also quite hard.</p>
<p>For instance, one might think placebos are substances that have no therapeutic effects. But placebos can have therapeutic effects (the so-called placebo effect), so this definition won’t work. A number of other definitions face similar problems.</p>
<p>Our research paves the way toward an explanation of why it is so hard to define placebos. To properly define placebos, we need to differentiate them from drugs, which we can’t do without a definition of what drugs are.</p>
<h2>Drugs make me better</h2>
<p>This brings us back to wellness. On this view, a medical drug is just any chemical substance used in medical treatment. </p>
<p>This does better: it captures the full range of substances used as drugs in medical contexts.</p>
<p>But now there is absolutely no hope of keeping food and nutrients out. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/poison-or-cure-traditional-chinese-medicine-shows-that-context-can-make-all-the-difference-163337">Poison or cure? Traditional Chinese medicine shows that context can make all the difference</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Consider, for example, total parenteral nutrition. This is a chemical infusion given to people who have trouble absorbing nutrients in the normal way.</p>
<p>Total parenteral nutrition is used in medical treatment. But what it does for your body isn’t really different from what a good sandwich does.</p>
<p>Any treatment-based account of drugs inevitably wipes out the contrast with food.</p>
<h2>So what?</h2>
<p>In our day-to-day lives, we make choices that rely on an implicit understanding of what drugs are. </p>
<p>For instance, we take paracetamol because it is a drug. Many of us may also take fish oil precisely because we believe it isn’t a drug.</p>
<p>Without an account of what drugs are, we risk making serious mistakes.</p>
<p>We might take substances we think are “inert” (placebos) because they are “natural” (like fish oil) when in fact they are active drugs. </p>
<p>Similarly, all legal regulation of medical drugs assumes we already know what a drug is. </p>
<p>But we don’t: our understanding is clearly evolving. This means regulation must also continually change. Substantial resources must therefore be devoted to reworking legislation as we continue to rethink what medical drugs are, as the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/mdma-and-psilocybin-will-be-come-legal-from-1-juy-heres-who-can-get-it/jpf6gj4di">recent reclassification</a> of MDMA and psilocybin as medicines in Australia demonstrates.</p>
<p>Then there’s food. Food is not administered or regulated like a drug in a hospital, with the exception of total parenteral nutrition and similar substances.</p>
<p>But if doctors use food like a drug to contribute to patient wellbeing, then perhaps it should be subject to the same standards.</p>
<p>This may require radically rethinking the way meals are provided in a hospital. Perhaps meals should be administered, and regulated, with the same care as drugs. </p>
<p>Hospital lunches might never be the same. But that could be a good thing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216540/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Everybody thinks they know what drugs are, but a clear definition is surprisingly elusive.Sam Baron, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2176702023-11-16T19:03:43Z2023-11-16T19:03:43ZFriday essay: Rai Gaita and the moral power of conversation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559244/original/file-20231114-26-7uv53k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C10%2C974%2C648&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Mark Baker/MUP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ever since the University of Melbourne took from us Rai Gaita’s <a href="https://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/s/1182/match/wide.aspx?sid=1182&gid=1&pgid=6278&content_id=4306">public lecture series</a> we have been going to Rai’s house in St Kilda to talk. Not regularly, life is too much for that, whenever we can though.</p>
<p>Few people in this world believe more in face-to-face conversations – in speaking with others not when you’ve done your thinking, but in order to think – than Rai. This is how The Wednesday Lectures, first at Australian Catholic University and then at Melbourne University, where we teach in criminology and creative writing respectively, came to be. This belief is a guiding presence in Rai Gaita’s latest book, a collection of his works, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/justice-and-hope-hardback">Justice and Hope</a>.</p>
<h2>i</h2>
<p><strong>Juliet</strong>: What I would call “the St Kilda conversations” between Maria, Rai and me weren’t trite. We started with some idea of documenting the thoughts or perhaps even methodology of Rai Gaita. We would take a few moments to adjust to arriving and to decide on tea or coffee but before these important decisions had been made the conversation had begun, about war, about justice, about pain, about grief – and one of us would reach for the phone and press record. No such thing as small talk. Everything and everyone is important.</p>
<p>Rai’s idea of the preciousness of every person appears in all his thinking, and in ours almost from the moment we arrive. Why talk of war at all if there is not something inherently wrong, morally if not legally, in the loss of the uniqueness of a person in war, even if that loss is of something in them when they kill?</p>
<p>Rai’s thinking in these conversations moves from Hannah Arendt to Simone Weil to Albert Camus and back to the ideas in the room. He is promiscuous like this. He values the preciousness of their arguments as he does ours. But there is no place for lazy thought. Having slid into some abstraction, I’d be pulled up – but what do you mean by that, he’d say? It was a painful relief. And sometimes I had no answer and I was grateful even to know that.</p>
<p><strong>Maria</strong>: One day last November, nine months into Russia’s war against Ukraine, I came to Rai’s house wanting to talk about shame and denial. How is it families in Russia were telling relatives in Ukraine: we are not bombing you! you’ve been brainwashed! These photos? Staged. These ruins, air-raid alerts? They’re – if they’re real – your Ukro-Nazi forces bombing their own people, congratulations!</p>
<p>I had never known denial in the face of incontrovertible evidence to be so phantasmagorically total. <em>Mothers to their daughters!</em> I no longer understood how to think alone about this war.</p>
<p>Round that time I’d been delivering a final-week lecture in a capstone subject I coordinate, left my notes in the office, had to go off the cuff. “I’ve come to think of my mission as a teacher as helping students develop a capacity to bear shame” – these words fell out of me. </p>
<p>Could people be so afraid of bearing shame they’d do almost anything not to feel it? So we speak about shame. Rai says, “Shame is not just an emotion or an affect, it can be a form of understanding the moral reality you are caught up in.” We talk about how different forms of reality avoidance – insisting on absolutes (moral, political, historical) is one example – become forces in the lives of individuals, families, communities, nations.</p>
<p>Rai’s tough-minded conception of conversations sidesteps chat and debate alike. You speak not to say something and to hear something back, not to dazzle, be right or stake a claim, but to be held accountable to each other. A conversation is a pact. You are accountable not only for what you say but for the way what you say, and how you live your life, does or doesn’t square up. A conversation is also a precious opening. The light of another person’s presence turned towards you will almost always illuminate something you couldn’t see or find thinkable before.</p>
<h2>ii</h2>
<p><strong>Juliet</strong>: When I first met Rai I was sitting on the top floor at Melbourne Law School feeling the approach of a ferocious exhaustion, having flown from Connecticut, arriving that morning, late, delayed, rerouted, refuelled (barely) to deliver a paper at the Passions of International Law colloquium hosted by Gerry Simpson, Rai’s close friend. I can hardly read the words in front of me, I am trying to convey my feelings about months of watching hours of Holocaust testimony videos. My relationship – a feeling of confusion and a kind of irritation – to one testimonial in particular. I explain it psychoanalytically, trying not to fill the room with jargon, trying to remember that I felt something about this testimony, that I cared deeply about this woman’s experience … before the room starts spinning.</p>
<p>I look up as I read, and though everything’s a bit blurry there is the warmest gaze upon me. It’s Rai, sort of smiling, part care for me, part care for this woman I am using to explain my theories of trauma and imagination.</p>
<p>I think I’ve made a mess of it but all I care about is getting to bed. And then as I’m grasping in the break for the comfort of a piece of watermelon he approaches me and expresses his appreciation. He has heard what I said, how I both cared for this woman and felt unnerved by her melodramatic phrasing, and my own irritation. I say “yes of course, it’s hard not to care” but he doesn’t give me a way out. Nor does he pin me to my own rationales. He is curious. It is an academic manner, of sorts – I recognise it from a time before we thought we knew everything or felt we had to prove it to an audience. I’m fond of saying “I’m an academic, I know stuff about stuff”, Rai is fond of saying “let’s talk”.</p>
<p><strong>Maria</strong>: In 2005 my then publisher asked Rai to launch <a href="https://www.mariatumarkin.com/traumascapes">Traumascapes</a>. My first book, first launch – I bought my nine-year-old a matching green vest and skirt, a friend played a real-life harp. Rai didn’t know me or my work. I never thought I could be a writer once my family left Ukraine in 1989 so this whole “debut author” period felt, still feels, unreal.</p>
<p>Rai came in. Holding my book. To have a thinker of this calibre take your work seriously is destabilising. Rai had a bunch of my lines underlined and some crossed out – he really read me. Also, he was using an actual pen in a book, wow, bad Rai.</p>
<p>The launch was my first encounter with Rai’s moral seriousness, which animates his idea of a conversation. It is like a lamp you expect to be shined in your face but instead it lights up the room and everyone in it. Illuminates you, the shaky little thing in the room’s centre.</p>
<h2>iii</h2>
<p><strong>Maria</strong>: Rai Gaita has been seeking to create conditions in the public domain for people from different, sometimes antagonistic ecosystems of thought and belief to get into each other’s heads. Or – if the head image feels too ickily invasive (it’s mine, not Rai’s) – to pull their thoughts out like sock drawers (mine again) and look at what’s there and what’s stuffed at the very back.</p>
<p>Twice Rai invited me to give The Wednesday Lecture – on the royal commission into the institutionalised abuse of children, then some years later on feminism, and both nights I bitterly regretted saying yes and was finishing writing my talk with minutes (ten, five) to go. I never felt ready even though I had months to prepare. I felt rushed, pushed, whacked and then – adrenaline and self-loathing having peaked – I felt grateful. I was pinned down, called into accountability, made to face the world and myself. At the end, it was a relief.</p>
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<p>Often these public conversations don’t work (sometimes they are disasters) and people walk away saying what the hell. But the goal of disarming each other through conversation strikes Juliet and me as necessary as water. That this was something our university pulled the plug on felt to us indecent. Decency is a Rai word. In Justice and Hope (2005), the title essay of the new collection, he writes about his father Romulus and Romulus’s friend Hora, the two most important influences on his life: “For them nothing mattered more than to live decently – and when I say nothing, I really mean nothing.” If you have read <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/romulus-my-father">Romulus, My Father</a> and <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/after-romulus">After Romulus</a> you feel this “I really mean nothing” go through your heart and into the shoulder blades. Perhaps you feel it anyway. “Decent” drops its dull, egalitarian overcoat and becomes all silk with sun and wind breathing through it.</p>
<p><strong>Juliet</strong>: The lecture series was an event, historic – the world of academia does not always allow for such conversations, conversations without outcomes or grant pathways and where difficult ideas and sometimes difficult people are able to speak. Rai offered and held this hospitality, and to do so, occasionally had to be a difficult person. Hospitality on Indigenous land is a problematic premise to start with and then it’s hard to know what conversations bear airing.</p>
<p>Rai encouraged presentations and conversations on international law, feminism, colonialism, racism. Hard topics. He never shied. Perhaps the most difficult and controversial was his last series, in 2019, “Sleepwalking Through Privilege and Oppression”. Starting with his own commentary on this, he then asked <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/another-day-in-the-colony">Professor Chelsea Watego</a>, a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman, to speak to the theme, and she spoke powerfully and essentially on the importance of black nihilism, to counter his commentary.</p>
<p>When he responded, some in the audience called for him as a white man to leave the speaking to Professor Watego. An important call, a necessary call on Indigenous land when white people have what we can now describe as too much voice. But hospitality is everything to Rai and he remained at the podium, not to reassert his position but to hold the conversation with the audience. It is what I describe as standing accused: the most crucial task of white people on this land. And to walk away would have been disingenuous as the host of a series.</p>
<h2>iv</h2>
<p>We’ve been disagreeing – tangled in a conversation about Palestine and Israel; well to say disagreeing suggests it wasn’t a conversation, but it was, with differences, we shared our thoughts, listened, asked, and still disagreed. This is no skill we were born with. It comes from a belief that neither of us knew best or knew it all. It comes from time listening to and reading Rai.</p>
<p><strong>Maria</strong>: Open letters have been flying like Shahed drones, detonating on impact. Shahed drones, manufactured in Iran and sold to Russia to pummel Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure, are called flying mopeds because of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLVK-QqEguw">the sound they make</a>. In Ukraine these drones invoke a particular fear. They travel slowly enough to be seen (one was allegedly taken out by a pickled tomatoes jar) and can hit only static not moving targets, such as people, with any precision. This imprecision (“moped” is also evocative of the Shahed’s lowly standing in weaponworld), their visibility, and their use in swarm attacks – multiple drones against a single target – have put nails under the skin of nervous systems across Ukraine. Because they’re cheap, these drones don’t run out. You see where I’m going here, words are cheap.</p>
<p>I know the sickening sound of drones is what Palestinians are hearing in Gaza when they don’t hear explosions.</p>
<p>Open letters are often, if not invariably, single-use, self-detonating pieces of public discourse. I’m not too cool for them and some are astounding documents of collective labour and thought. But I haven’t signed any. It’s not the denotations (I’ve argued repeatedly that for Ukraine being anti-war equals being pro-genocide) but broken glass and craters everywhere make public spaces incapable of not causing injuries and won’t make a toenail of difference to people whose lives can still be saved. I’ve seen so many open letters that don’t mention the October 7th dead, don’t mention Hamas’s hostages. I don’t want to sign up for enshrining the choice between dehumanising the other (which starts with not seeing their dead) and betraying who and what you stand for. Even at the worst of times and our times might be the worst yet, this choice is not a thing until we make it so.</p>
<p>In his 2017 essay <a href="https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-intelligentsia-in-the-age-of-trump/">The Intelligentsia in the Age of Trump</a>, Rai Gaita writes Trump has destroyed the “space in which Americans can seriously disagree” not merely by arsoning the idea of the political office and public institutions and letting loose demons of predominantly racialised bigotry and hatred but also he “eroded the conditions under which people can call their fellow citizens to seriousness: Come now! How can you say that?”</p>
<p>Juliet, I look around and oh shit. Saying <em>come on! how can you talk about Israel without mention of Iran (and – just slightly off camera – Russia, China, Qatar)? how can you use settler colonialism as your only frame to speak about the Middle East? how can you righteously retweet genocide apologists from other contexts (Syria, Ukraine)</em> will be pounced on as morally bankrupt bothsideism of the worst kind.</p>
<p>To speak of them alongside each other, the anguish experienced by people in Gaza and in Israel, and by Palestinian and Jewish diasporas, has become in the part of Australia that considers itself progressive an abject objectionable act, like “sending thoughts & prayers”, worse, like genocide apologism lite. To me, to speak of each without collapsing them both into a sentimental ahistorical mush, letting them be in a howling tension, letting them be in a shared space of thought and sight, is the only way we (settlers in Australia) can speak of this moment at all.</p>
<p>If shared public places – where a disinclination to dehumanise is not seen as cowardice or respectability politics, and where harm minimisation is a guiding principle – feel impossible right now, the question is what would it take for them not to be? If that feels unanswerable it still needs to be asked.</p>
<p>When the dead or captured on any side get in the way of the argument, the problem is with the argument. I am not talking about “condemning” this or that atrocity, that word’s gone for me, I am referring to an ethical compulsion not to erase.</p>
<p>Dead civilians killed by IDF and by Hamas are the mountains in front of us – can’t walk around them, can’t jump over them. To be clear: I don’t for a minute believe this injunction applies to people in Gaza or the West Bank and to Palestinian families across the world. It doesn’t apply to the Israelis and nationals of other countries whose lives Hamas has destroyed. Climbing those mountains (sliding down their sides) is the job for the rest.</p>
<p>Most Australians do not have families in Gaza, Israel or neighbouring countries of the Middle East. Whatever pain and despair many are feeling (it’s about impossible not to) the responsibility bestowed by Australia’s safety and distance is to keep holding spaces in which non-catastrophic futures are imaginable. This means practising bothness that is not bothsideism and alongsideness that is not equivocation. This means protecting the idea that public spaces should be free of hate. This means not leaving speaking about the co-existence of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism to our politicians and vice-chancellors with their “In Australia there is no place for …” In Australia, we’re seeing, there’s plenty of place for all of it and more. We can’t let the speaking be done in calcified idioms and grubby grabs – “anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism”, “Israel has the right to defend itself”.</p>
<p>I’m Jewish, first gen, from the former USSR. My history encompasses not only the Holocaust and the iron-clad denial well into the 1980s that it ever happened but also the Pale of Settlement, pogroms, gulags and Stalin’s own version of the Final Solution in which Jewish doctors were to be accused of a fabricated plot to poison government members on instructions from “Western imperialists and Zionists” (who else) as a prelude to mass deportations. When Stalin’s death in 1953 pulled the rug out from what many historians believe was a three-stage genocide plan, my mum and dad were 11 and 12. Jewish people in Australia speaking about their history right now are said to be weaponising (the weaponisation of weaponising makes my teeth hurt but OK) their trauma. But speaking about my history is the only way I can be properly – which is to say, to the ends of the earth – accountable for my words and their relationship to my life. To the dead of Gaza and Israel I have to add my family’s dead.</p>
<p>Where my family comes from, the word Zionism was only used with utmost cynicism. Soviet cartoons I grew up with depicted Jews as dogs, deadly snakes, as “Zionist cobweb spiders”; swastikas got fused with Stars of David. There is a pretty straight line from that cynicism to a recent Putin psy-ops in Dagestan where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/29/mob-storms-dagestan-airport-in-search-of-jewish-passengers-from-israel">crowds tried to storm a plane arriving from Tel-Aviv</a>. It works like this: first, let people know anti-Semitism is very much on the table then crack down on it while blaming Ukraine and the West for stoking “flames of ethnic divisions”, send a message to Moscow and St Petersburg elites to sit tight and count their blessings, arrest and send (as cannon fodder) to the frontlines of the war in Ukraine some of the Dagestanis caught in “disturbances”, and, in the meantime, invite a Hamas delegation to Moscow, speak rousingly of the need for Middle East peace, breathe as one with Iran.</p>
<p>It should matter that the same term with the same inflection is used by the mass murderer Bashar al-Assad, the mass murderer Ali Khamenei, the mass murderer Hassan Nasrallah, the mass murderer Vladimir Putin, the Hamas leadership as they promise a repeat of October 7th in perpetuity to refer to all Jews everywhere who get in their way. For me there is not enough soap in the world.</p>
<p>Thirty-plus years in Australia as a migrant-settler have taught me that the question <em>where I am from</em> must be bound with the question <em>where I am now, on whose lands</em>, if it is to keep its integrity. And since the answer is I’m on stolen, unceded lands, righteousness of any kind is inappropriate for me and it’s not my place to speak to the powerful ties between Palestinian and First Nation peoples in this country – a relationship with a long history of deeply held solidarity. I will register my pain at the way Jewish people in Australia, with the exception of a handful of vetted allies, or “good Jews”, have been shoved into the role of double colonisers, the worst people of all, and so Juliet I address myself to me and you and to other settlers like us.</p>
<p><strong>Juliet:</strong> I have signed so many of those open letters you speak of. I cannot sit still with my hands on a keyboard writing words that help me think, and feel and wonder, but rarely help me be of use to others. I am no activist because I can rarely come to a decision, not a clean one, with edges that allow me to move … somewhere. I never say “moving forward” as we now say in the corporate academy, as if there is always a next step and that step means progress. As I’ve seen it, that progress usually means stepping on someone as you step away from responsibility for the past. But these thoughts keep me quiet. I cannot not sign letters which transport sentiments, ideas and demands I believe in when someone else finds it possible to write, to act. </p>
<p>I believe in them, these words. Cheap. Small. And occasionally violent as they are. I believe in letters that push a university and a government to act on one of the violences of this time. One of the most horrifying violences of this time. Not the only one. But it is one they will not act on. The Australian government did not sign the United Nations resolution that called for a truce, that called for a ceasefire, that called for the slaughter of Palestinians at this time to stop. Yes, the genocide. The Australian government did not sign but it did offer support to the Israeli government and support and care for the victims of Hamas. I do not need to write a letter asking the government to back the Israeli government and assist with trying to save the hostages. It does that of its own volition.</p>
<p>You will notice I say Australian government, not Australia and not Australians, as I do not say Israel or Israelis. That is the true anti-Semitism, the conflation of all-as-one. We are not. They are not. You are not. Just as I shy from the “innocent victims” narrative I do not say there are even combatants in this war, as distinct from children. I have watched reels of ten-year-olds speaking with rage. At what point does innocence begin and end? Is the child who sees their family killed an innocent? Is innocence shed when they join the military a few years later? I would put this question to Israelis and to Palestinians, and to myself. What work does innocence do in this violent conflict? It is the cheapest of words. And yes, I would extend this to settler Australians. It is not the same. Nothing is the same. Analogies do not help us in a war of justifications.</p>
<p>What I know is inter-generational trauma can produce innocence and culpability alike. I know something of why the Israeli government is fuelled by fear, vengeance and aggression. I know some of the stories that mean the violence towards Palestinian people in Gaza and beyond is more of a plea saying “how can you do this to us after what we’ve been through?”</p>
<p>I imagine it is fuelled by generations who watched those before them stare out the window with clouded eyes and memories that can never be spoken. I know when I sat for six months watching Holocaust testimonies I was irrevocably changed in my understanding of the significance of Israel. After hours of stories of lost families, pain, humiliation, systematic destruction of whole communities, and tortured children, the need to claim a space that was their own sounded like commonsense.</p>
<p>I understood something of Zionism. And so I say now, with the small understandings I have, that this did not begin with October 7th and did not even begin with 1948 but perhaps with Kristallnacht or perhaps with the arrogance of the Allies who thought they could declare a nation-state over the top of another. That violence is one we know well in this land and on these nations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559498/original/file-20231115-27-u4wxne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Jewish shop damaged during Kristallnacht.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1970-083-42,_Magdeburg,_zerst%C3%B6rtes_j%C3%BCdisches_Gesch%C3%A4ft.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To speak of Israel is not the same as speaking of the nation-state of Israel and this too is why I sign those letters that insist we need to be able to criticise law and policy and state practices that deny, that crush and now attempt to decimate peoples. I can understand some of the histories that have taken people there. I can explain but I cannot not fight against these practices with my small, cheap, literary pickle jars. Explanation is not justification. You cannot stretch a name across the lives of others and call it justice. That is colonialism. That is Australia. Explanation has no place on a land where others live. “Oh sorry did I step on your home, your life, the graves of your family, your future?” – this is colonialism and there is no explanation that justifies it. </p>
<p>If we’re to take moral seriousness seriously, in Rai Gaita’s terms, then I can only say that genocide is wrong. And that is what it is.</p>
<p>To say it is genocide diminishes nothing of the Holocaust. It is to use a name to make the world hear the extent of the violence, the devastation and the trans-generational impact: grief and trauma for generations. It is to demand action. Does the Israeli government <em>intend</em> to destroy a people? Well, there have been a lot of words to that effect, but I do not hold all people, or even all of the Israeli government, to the violence of some. There is resistance in all camps. </p>
<p>But if the question is about whether the name fits the act then I think that is a legal question and I am speaking of an experience more than a legal intent. Would it be better if the protests or the many open letters said “alleged genocide”, like we must say “alleged rape” when a woman is asking for her experience to be heard? The urgency is too great for such debates and abstractions. Or perhaps I would ask the Israeli government to stop the bombing while we have a such a legal debate, and allow time for food, water and medicine to be delivered.</p>
<p>I think some of the open letters try to open a dialogue where structures and law and policy are holding us back. These letters and the protests do not mention October 7th, which is to not mention the many dates. This was one. One horrible day that has extended into the lives of both communities. The hostages must be allowed to be free. But I use the word hostage advisedly, not legally, and not in the way the posters use it. I have learned through some of my own experiences with law and police that there are many forms of prison. </p>
<p>I wish October 7th could be mentioned and all those lives could be grieved without that grief taking the air from the history. It cannot. I think of Holocaust testimonies and the repetition and repetition of names. So important. Names going into the world as a pact so that the speaker and listener may share that reality. But we do not own names, we borrow them from history. And genocide is the worst of names, and the worst of worlds. This is my reason for signing letters, trying to make a space to breathe, a space for imagining the non-catastrophic futures you speak of, Maria.</p>
<p>Isn’t this what Rai means by justice – the opening of a space to think, to converse, to breathe? He quotes Camus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We gasp for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether it be in their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this silence is the end of the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cover of Justice and Hope" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559491/original/file-20231115-21-9kr4la.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/justice-and-hope-hardback">MUP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>You speak of the breaking of silence with the robotic buzz of drones and I find myself wishing for silence. Open letters add to the cacophony, it’s true. But they are also a wish to drown out the drones, bombs, screaming. I have little faith in a competition for sound but I have faith in that pickle jar you speak of.</p>
<p>I do not know if white people in this country should take these positions. But I am doing what I always believe is the thing to do. Stand accused. I learned it from Rai. And have watched him take positions I don’t always agree with, as he has commented of mine. White fragility has never been his weakness. He stands and keeps standing. And I know, when I saw you speak at his series once, that he held that stage for you, so you could speak, and I was grateful for it. As I am always grateful for your conversation and for Rai’s demand: let’s talk.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Both Juliet and Maria have an ongoing connection to Rai via their literary and academic lives.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Juliet Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bit by bit, the philosopher Rai Gaita showed Maria Tumarkin and Juliet Rogers the morally serious worth of face-to-face conversation.Maria Tumarkin, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, The University of MelbourneJuliet Rogers, Associate Professor Criminology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.