What happens when Plato mixes with playtime?

Illustrations: Justin Metz/The Guardian

  Every child is a natural philosopher. They’re puzzled by the world and they try to puzzle it out.

 And they’re good at it, too. Kids are clever and courageous thinkers.

 In fact, adults can learn a lot from listening to them – and thinking with them.

 Philosopher Scott Hershovitz answers the questions that confound children and adults alike.

 

Everything Must Change!

In Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, 10 friends escape from the city of Florence when it is shut down by the Black Death and hole up in a villa in the hills, where each night for a fortnight they tell one another stories of love and tragedy. 

Something of the same spirit animates this collection of conversations that occurred in the strangest of fortnights in our own times: the weeks at the end of March and the beginning of April last year when the whole world was first forced behind closed doors by Covid-19. 

 The conversations, conducted over Zoom, are mostly convened by the Croatian activist and writer Srećko Horvat who, along with Yanis Varoufakis, is the driving force behind DiEM25, a radical initiative that aims to more fully democratise the EU. The storytellers in this case, isolated in their studies and sitting rooms across the world, include leading figures of the intellectual left such as Noam Chomsky and Richard Sennett; critics of surveillance capitalism like Shoshana Zuboff and Evgeny Morozov; artists, musicians and actors including Brian Eno and Gael García Bernal; and, inevitably, contrarians like Tariq Ali and Slavoj Žižek. Their subject is the opportunity presented by the pandemic to reshape society, to “build back better” as the politicians’ phrase goes. 

more

 

The intelligent monster that you should let eat you

One day, a philosopher was walking down the street, when a monster jumped out.

 Despite its terrifying fangs, it was actually more polite and articulate than expected. “I want to eat you, please,” the monster said. “Sorry, but I’d prefer not to be your lunch,” the philosopher replied, and moved to keep walking.

 “Wait,” said the monster, holding up a clawed finger. “What if I could present you with a sound argument?” Armed with tenure and a TED talk, the philosophy professor very much doubted that any monster could be so persuasive, but was nonetheless intrigued.

 “Proceed,” the philosopher said. A few minutes later, the monster stomped away, with a dead professor in its belly.

 This theoretical beast, called a “utility monster”, is a philosophical thought experiment, originally proposed in the 1970s. To reject its argument and stop it eating you, it asks you to discard a widely held and intuitive principle about how to weigh up right and wrong. Long regarded as unlikely, if not impossible, the utility monster is usually considered the stuff of fanciful imagination. 

However, according to some researchers, we could be on a trajectory to building one – but it’ll be made of silicon, rather than flesh and claws. 

 If they are right, we could soon have some tough choices to make if we want to avoid being eaten.

 continue

 

'A reckoning for our species': the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene

Timothy Morton wants humanity to give up some of its core beliefs, from the fantasy that we can control the planet to the notion that we are ‘above’ other beings.
 His ideas might sound weird, but they’re catching on.
 Read more 

 

Atheism has ancient roots and is not ‘modern invention’, claims new text

Pioneering disbeliever ... statue of Socrates in Athens. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Atheism is not a modern invention from the western Enlightenment, but actually dates back to the ancient world, according to a new book by a Cambridge academic – which challenges the assumption that humanity is naturally predisposed to believe in gods.
 In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh, professor of Greek culture at Cambridge University, lays out a series of examples showing that atheism existed in polytheistic ancient Greece.

 

What is love?

Philosophically, the nature of love has, since the time of the Ancient Greeks, been a mainstay in philosophy, producing theories that range from the materialistic conception of love as purely a physical phenomenon—an animalistic or genetic urge that dictates our behavior—to theories of love as an intensely spiritual affair that in its highest permits us to touch divinity.
Historically, in the Western tradition, Plato’s Symposium presents the initiating text, for it provides us with an enormously influential and attractive notion that love is characterized by a series of elevations, in which animalistic desire or base lust is superseded by a more intellectual conception of love which also is surpassed by what may be construed by a theological vision of love that transcends sensual attraction and mutuality.
Since then there have been detractors and supporters of Platonic love as well as a host of alternative theories—including that of Plato’s student, Aristotle and his more secular theory of true love reflecting what he described as ‘two bodies and one soul.’   continue 

 

We should "hope" that there's a god?

The argument, made by the 17th -century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, holds that believing in God is a good bet at any odds, since the possible payoff — eternal happiness — far outweighs any costs of believing — even of believing in a God who does not exist. Most discussions of Pascal’s wager take it as a peculiar if not perverse calculation of self-interest. As Pascal puts it: “If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing.” Taken this way, the argument seems morally suspect; William James noted that those who engaged in such egotistic reasoning might be among the first that God would exclude from heaven. In considering it again, I found what I think may be a more fruitful way of developing the wager argument. The wager requires a choice between believing and not believing. But there are two ways of not believing. I can either deny that God exists or doubt that God exists. Discussions of the wager usually follow Pascal and lump these two together in the single option of not believing in God. They don’t distinguish denying from doubting because both are ways of not believing. The argument then is about whether believing is a better option than not believing. My formulation of the argument will focus instead on the choice between denying and doubting God. Pascal’s Wager 2.0 by Gary Gutting / continue 

 

Philosophy Explained With Donuts

via

 

Finding The True Philosophical Discussion In 'Irrational Man'

Woody Allen's new film engages in philosophical conversation, in arguments and justifications for actions, though not much reasoning is seen in individual characters, says philosopher Alva Noë.

 

The Absurd Philosophy of Albert Camus Presented in a Short Animated Film by Alain De Botton

What is the meaning of life? This may sound simplistic or naïve, especially in relation to much contemporary philosophy, which assumes the question is incoherent and reserves its focus for smaller and smaller slices of experience. And, of course, prior to the rise of secular modernity, the question was answered for us—and still is for a great many people—by religion. One either believed the answer, through coercion or otherwise, or one kept quiet about it. But at least since Søren Kierkegaard, philosophers in the West have taken the question very seriously, and found all of the answers wanting. By the mid-twentieth century, there seemed to thinkers like Albert Camus to be no answer.
Life has no meaning. It is inherently absurd and purposeless.
 This Camus concluded in challenging essays like “The Myth of Sisyphus” and novels like L’Etranger, a book most of us know as The Stranger but which Alain de Botton, in his School of Life video here on Camus’ philosophy, translates as The Outsider.

 

Nietzsche, Wittgenstein & Sartre Explained with Monty Python-Style Animations

Angst. Nausea. Selbstüberwindung. All, surely, words we’ve used before, but have we paid attention to their proper philosophical contexts? The well-known and widely-read philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Friedrich Nietzsche used those words and others in very specific ways to express concepts essential to their certainly eccentric but even more certainly important philosophical writings. These brief, Alain de Botton-narrated video primers from The School of Life’s series on philosophy will get you started on coming to grips with just what these 19th- and 20th-century thinkers had to tell us about our own lives.

 

I watch therefore I am

The dilemma in chilling new drama Force Majeure raises philosophical quandaries, but it’s not the first film to do so. Memento, Ida and It’s A Wonderful Life all address the Big Questions.

 

Should Philosophers Be Loners?

Egon: Why did you keep quoting Plato at me over dinner?
 Tina: Why not? His ideas seemed relevant to what you were saying.
 Egon: Never mind what Plato thought, I care about what I think. Authentic philosophizing is a first-person singular activity. I must do it for myself. No one else can do it for me. I can’t do it for anyone else.
 Tina: So why are you talking philosophy to me?
 Egon: I’m telling you to do it for yourself.
 Tina: Isn’t that for me to decide?
 Egon: Yes, but I can still put ideas into your head. It’s up to you whether you accept them.
 Tina: Why should I?
 Egon: You’re a rational person.
 Tina: Thanks.

  By Timothy Williamson / continue

 

Squirrel Photos by Geert Weggen

more

 

‘Calvin and Hobbes’: America’s Most Profound Comic Strip

In the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Caldwell argues that the revered Calvin and Hobbes was America's most profound comic strip. He quotes the late political scientist James Q. Wilson, the inventor of the Broken Windows Theory of policing, who stated that Calvin and Hobbes expressed an Aristotelian worldview: The late political scientist James Q. Wilson described “Calvin and Hobbes” as “our only popular explication of the moral philosophy of Aristotle.” Wilson meant that the social order is founded on self-control and delayed gratification—and that Calvin is hopeless at these things. Calvin thinks that “life should be more like TV” and that he is “destined for greatness” whether he does his homework or not. His favorite sport is “Calvinball,” in which he is entitled to make up the rules as he goes along. Day-in, day-out, Calvin keeps running into evidence that the world isn’t built to his (and our) specifications. All humor is, in one way or another, about our resistance to that evidence.

 

How Seneca became Ancient Rome’s philosopher-fixer.

Sometime in the spring of the year 59, the emperor Nero decided to murder his mother. As you can imagine, the two were not on good terms. In a gesture designed to appear conciliatory, Nero invited his mother, Agrippina, to join him at a festival in Baiae, a resort town near present-day Naples. During the festivities, he treated her with great affection. Then, when it was time for her to leave, he presented her with a gift—a beautifully appointed boat to ferry her up the coast. The gift was supposed to be a death trap. But just about everything that should have gone wrong didn’t. The deck of the ship fell in, yet, rather than killing Agrippina, it crushed one of her attendants. The hull, too, had been crafted to break apart; in all the confusion, though, it failed to do so. The rowers tried to overturn the ship. Once again, the effort fell short. Agrippina and a second attendant, Acerronia, swam free. Acerronia—“rather unwisely,” as Tacitus puts it—kept screaming that she was Agrippina and needed help. The rowers rushed over and bashed her on the head with their oars. The real Agrippina slipped away. She was picked up by a fishing boat and deposited safely onshore. When Nero learned that his mother had survived, he sent his minions to stab her.
This series of unfortunate events put the emperor in a pickle. The whole point of the affectionate display and the gift of the boat had been to make Agrippina’s death look like an accident. (Even in imperial Rome, matricide was, apparently, bad P.R.) Now this was impossible. And so Nero turned to the man he had always relied on, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, better known as Seneca the Younger, or just plain Seneca.
If poets and philosophers dream of influencing those in power, Seneca was uniquely positioned to do so. He was a celebrated rhetorician, a satirist, the author of several books of natural history, and a playwright. He was also what today might be called an ethicist. Among his many works of moral philosophy are “De Ira” (“On Anger”), “De Providentia” (“On Providence”), and “De Brevitate Vitae” (“On the Shortness of Life”). Seneca had been Nero’s tutor since the younger man was twelve or thirteen, and he remained one of his closest advisers.
 After the botched boating accident, Seneca set to work.

 

Unf*ck the World

Here’s the thing: the earth is not fucked. The earth will go on evolving with or without us. In fact, in many ways it is better off without us. No, it’s the human world that’s fucked. Either we adapt and overcome by making cooperation primary and competition secondary, or we’re fucked. It really is that simple. Unfucking the world will not be a walk in the park. It will be a complete upheaval of what we think we know about how human beings are “supposed” to live on this planet. We’ll have to turn the tables on our egos, our so called leaders, and even our loved ones. We’ll have to outgrow being indifferent and get used to being different. We’ll have to awaken and clear outdated, multigenerational patterns that need interrogation and then integration at a higher vibration.
 Here are five ways to attempt unfucking an otherwise fucked up world.

 

Why Life Is Absurd

In the 1870s, Leo Tolstoy became depressed about life’s futility. He had it all but so what?
In “My Confession,” he wrote: “Sooner or later there will come diseases and death (they had come already) to my dear ones and to me, and there would be nothing left but stench and worms. All my affairs, no matter what they might be, would sooner or later be forgotten, and I myself should not exist. So why should I worry about these things?”
 Life’s brevity bothered Tolstoy so much that he resolved to adopt religious faith to connect to the infinite afterlife, even though he considered religious belief “irrational” and “monstrous.”
Was Tolstoy right? Is life so short as to make a mockery of people and their purposes and to render human life absurd?

 

Do People Like To Think?

Commentator Alva Noë considers a widely discussed study — and debate that has ensued — showing that we'd rather get shocked with electricity than spend time alone with our own thoughts.

 

Eagle Eye

Photography by Erin Tucker