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18 The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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Editors Anja Steinbauer, Grant Bartley
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Graphic Design Grant Bartley, Katy
Baker, Anja Steinbauer 6 Is There a Human Right to Internet Access?
Book Reviews Editor Teresa Britton Jesse Tomalty considers natural versus legal rights
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Administration Ewa Stacey, Katy Baker Vittorio Bufacchi & Xiao Ouyang discuss linguistic differences
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jay.sanders@philosophynow.org Ian Fishback argues that pure theory cannot make torture okay
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Human Rights 14 What Are Human Rights?
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Editorial Human Rights & Wrongs
F
or over forty years the human rights organisation
Amnesty International has coordinated a vast worldwide
network of volunteers called the Urgent Action Network.
If they hear of anybody anywhere in the world who has been
arrested for the peaceful expression of their political views and
who they consider to be in imminent danger of execution or
torture, they immediately alert members of the network, who
respond en masse with swift, courteous letters and emails to the
responsible officials urging that the detainee be released or at
least that their rights in custody be fully respected. I was a
member of this network many years ago. If you’ve ever tried to
get a response from me to an urgent email you’ll realise that I
probably wasn’t the ideal person for this, but I did my best. I
found that one problem you face when writing such letters is
that you are writing to officials who may not be remotely
enthused by the notion of human rights. How then to convince
them to treat their prisoner well? You can point to the detainee’s
legal rights under the laws of their country; you can remind the
officials of their country’s signature on the UN’s Universal
Declaration of Human Rights; you can appeal to their sense of
compassion, or fair play, but in the end you know that none of
these things can really restrain their behaviour. How then to
convince them? By appeals to Kant or John Stuart Mill? Few
functionaries of authoritarian regimes really care. Yet there is
considerable evidence that such letter-writing campaigns do
indeed work. Amnesty International certainly believe that, and
in support of this belief sometimes circulate thank you letters
from recently released prisoners. The main reason for the effec-
tiveness of such campaigns appears to be this: the officials
receiving the letters become aware that people around the world
are watching their actions. Even the nastiest little dictatorship
generally has some regard for its international image. When the
letters and emails start rolling in, they tread more carefully.
All this started me wondering about the foundations and justi-
fications of human rights, which is the theme of this issue. What
exactly are human rights, and what underpins them? Where do
they come from? Are they invented or discovered? Are they local
to different cultures, or truly universal? This is philosophy at the
sharp end. Philosophy of mind and aesthetics pose fascinating
and important questions, but lives do not generally depend on
the answers. Yet every day innocent men, women and children
suffer dreadful wrongs, often at the hands of their own govern-
ments, and the question is what we should do about it. So I’ve
wanted for a long time to put together an issue of Philosophy Now
exploring human rights from a range of angles and perspectives,
and this, finally, is it. I was delighted by the number of philoso-
phers who volunteered to contribute – far more than we could
print – and I’m very grateful to all of them.
4 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
Jesse Tomalty begins our special section by asking whether
there’s a human right to internet access. She uses this question
to explore the nature and justification of human rights in
general, and in particular the important distinction between
natural rights and legal rights. Tim Dare delves into the nature
of human rights claims and obligations, and urges us to resist
‘human rights inflation’ which carries the risk of all rights
being taken less seriously.
Some say that human rights reflect the values of the West
rather than being truly universal, and that this undermines
their applicability in a country like China. Vittorio Bufacchi
and Xiao Ouyang respond to this in their article looking at the
way the UN Declaration was translated and interpreted in
China. Hamid Anishan’s article on Sartre examines a related
suspicion: that the rhetoric of human rights is a tool of
colonialism or at best is blind to the injustices of colonialism
and the need to correct those injustices. Is this suspicion
justified? Sartre, it seems, never fully made up his mind, and it
exposed a conflict between his existentialist commitment to
individualism and his political sympathy for collectivism.
Trump said during his election campaign that he was in
favour of waterboarding “and worse.” Nonetheless, if there is
one human right that most would consider essential and
absolute, it is the right not to suffer torture. During his time as
a serving US Army officer, Ian Fishback took a public stand
against the use of torture during interrogations. Writing for
this issue he argues that while justifications for torture can be
put forward relating to farfetched hypothetical situations, in
practice the arguments against torture are unassailable.
Patrícia Fernandes examines what the American pragmatist
Richard Rorty had to say about human rights. Rorty believed
that trying to rationally justify human rights is impossible so we
should concentrate on what he called ‘sentimental education’.
This sounds defeatist, but on reflection it reminds me of David
Hume’s idea of sympathy as the basis of morality. If enough of
us feel a normal human concern for other people then this can
be the justification – and is in fact the only justification
required – for attempts to ensure their wellbeing through the
structure of international human rights agreements.
The most famous such agreement – and nearly all of the
articles in our special section refer to it – is the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Its adoption by most of the
world’s nations in 1946, in a period riven by paranoia and
ideological conflict, is surely one of the most astonishing and
impressive achievements in the entire history of world
diplomacy. We have printed the text of that Declaration in full.
It is very short, and everyone on this planet should read it.
Know your Declaration rights!
• Irish President calls for more philosophy in
schools • Judge rules on chimpanzee rights
• Derek Parfit and Zygmunt Bauman dead •
News reports by Anja Steinbauer and Katy Baker.
Derek Parfit (1942-2017)
The philosopher Derek Parfit died on New
Year’s Day, aged 74. Parfit is best known
for using imaginative thought experiments
in his 1984 book Reasons and Persons to
show problems with the concept of
personal identity. One thought experiment
looks at what might happen if you were to
step into a teletransporter. In this device,
your body is first scanned atom-by-atom
and then completely destroyed. But the
information is transmitted somewhere else,
say to a corresponding teleportation device
on Mars, where you are exactly recreated
using local materials. Some people might
see this simply as a way of travelling at vast
speeds; the person on Mars who is just like
you, is so because they are you. Not so, says
Parfit. To explain he asks us to imagine
that you go into the device again, except
this time it malfunctions. You appear on
Mars as normal, but the device on Earth
fails to destroy your body and it now seems
as if there are two of you. This also opens
up the possibility of there being hundreds
of replicas of you, with no way for us to say
which is the ‘real’ you. Each shares all your
memories, which is a blow to the idea that
memory anchors identity. Parfit aims to
show that any time we try to produce a
criterion for personal identity, it fails and
what matters instead is the relation of
mental continuity and connectedness.
Reasons and Persons focused on personal
identity, rationality and ethics. Later Parfit
continued to write on ethics in On What
Matters, an objective theory of ethics that
involved a synthesis of three major ethical
theories (Kantianism, consequentialism
and contractarianism). The book became
well known and much discussed while still
circulating in manuscript form before it
was finally published in 2011.
On the subject of his death Parfit
wrote: “My death will break the more
direct relations between my present expe-
riences and future experiences, but it will
not break various other relations. This is
all there is to the fact that there will be no
one living who will be me.” (R&P, 281-82)
Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017)
Zygmunt Bauman, a prolific Polish-born
intellectual, has died at the age of 91 at his
home in Leeds, England. Bauman’s work
explored ideas about identity, consumerism
and globalisation. He was a controversial
figure in Poland for having served as an
officer in a Stalinist-era military organisa-
tion, the Internal Security Corps, but
gained a worldwide reputation as a versatile
and humane interdisciplinary thinker.
Bauman wrote more than fifty books, all
strongly philosophical in approach,
including Modernity and the Holocaust, in
which he described the Holocaust as an
outcome of industrialisation and ratio-
nalised bureaucracy: “It was the rational
world of modern civilization that made the
Holocaust thinkable.” Bauman’s concept of
‘liquid modernity’ was an attempt to
account for what he believed to be a loss of
identity in our contemporary world.
Constant change means that individuals are
without frames of reference or lasting
human relationships, as Bauman described
in publications such as Liquid Times and
Liquid Modernity: “In a liquid modern life
there are no permanent bonds, and any
that we take up for a time must be tied
loosely so that they can be untied again, as
quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when
circumstances change.”
Teaching Philosophy in Ireland
Irish President Michael D. Higgins has
done something very few politicians do: he
has given the thumbs-up to the value of
philosophy in schools. Referring to it as a
“path to a humanistic and vibrant demo-
cratic culture,” Higgins and his wife
Sabina, a philosophy graduate, have called
for the expansion of the curriculum to
include philosophy. “The teaching of
philosophy,” Higgins said in November,
“is one of the most powerful tools we have
at our disposal to empower children into
acting as free and responsible subjects in
an ever more complex, interconnected,
and uncertain world.”
Irish 12 to 16-year-olds now have the
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 5
News
option of studying philosophy and educa-
tors are also exploring the possibility of
establishing philosophy for children as a
subject within primary schools.
Textbook Troubles
In Morocco a new school textbook caused
a stir by describing philosophy as a
perversion and blasphemy. A passage in
Manar At-Tarbia Al-Islamiya, intended
for first year baccalaureate students,
refers to philosophy as “a production of
human thought that is contrary to Islam”
and as “the essence of degeneration.”
Philosophy teachers reacted with outrage
and organized protest sit-ins, according
to moroccoworldnews.com. The Education
Ministry defended the book, saying that
the controversial passage was intended as
part of a reasoning exercise
Animal Persons
A judge in Argentina has ruled that a
chimpanzee has rights under the law. The
judge consequently ordered Cecilia the
chimpanzee to be released from Mendoza
Zoo, where she lived without a
companion. The Association of Profes-
sional Lawyers for Animal Rights
(AFADA) had filed the case, arguing that
the conditions of Cecilia’s confinement
were damaging to her health.
This is an historic judgement in recog-
nising the rights of apes. AFADA had previ-
ously sought a court ruling to release Sandra
the orangutan from Buenos Aires Zoo,
arguing that she was a ‘non-human person’
due to her advanced mental abilities. This
reasoning, and therefore the potential status
of ‘non-human personhood’ would arguably
extend not only to other great apes
(orangutans, gorillas and bonobos), but also
to cetaceans (whales, dolphins and
porpoises). Professor Thomas I. White of
Loyola Marymount University explains:
“The scientific evidence is so strong for the
intellectual and emotional sophistication of
dolphins that there simply is no question
that they are ‘nonhuman persons’ who
deserve respect as individuals.”
Human Rights
Is There A Human Right To
Internet Access?
Jesse Tomalty considers what human rights are and how they’re justified.
A
few months ago there was a spate of headlines
announcing that the UN had made internet access a
human right. It turns out that this claim was rather
misleading. What the UN did was pass a resolution
emphasizing the importance of internet access for the fulfill-
ment of many human rights. The resolution called for states to
take measures to work towards universal access to the internet,
and it condoned heavy restrictions on access to content on the
internet as a violation of human rights (see article19.org/data/files/
Internet_Statement_Adopted. pdf). However, it does not follow
from this that there is now a human right to internet access.
Something can enable the fulfillment of human rights without
itself being a human right. For example, having shoes enables
a number of human rights, such as the right to freedom of move-
ment and the right to an adequate standard of living; but it
would be very strange indeed to say that there is a human right
to shoes. Conversely, interference with people’s enjoyment of
some good can constitute a violation of their rights without that
good being a human right. For example, it would be a violation
of the right to privacy if the government read people’s credit
card bills without their consent; but there is no specific human
right not to have one’s credit card bills read. Nonetheless, if
internet access really is as important as the UN resolution sug-
gests, maybe it should be considered a human right. Popular
opinion seems to support this view. According to a survey con-
ducted in 2012 by the Internet Society, 83% of the more than
10,000 respondents from twenty different countries agreed that
‘Access to the internet should be considered a basic human right’
(internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/ GIUS2012 -GlobalData-
Table-20121120_0.pdf).
Despite popular opinion, I doubt that access to the internet
can appropriately be characterized as a human right (let alone
a basic one). To see why, we need to consider what human rights
are and how they’re justified.
Natural & Legal Rights
We can begin by clearing up an ambiguity in the use of the term
‘human right’. Sometimes when people talk about human rights,
what they’re referring to are the legal or quasi-legal rights artic-
ulated in international human rights documents, such as the
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights. Let’s call these ‘legal human rights’. Other times when
people talk about human rights, what they are referring to are
natural rights – the universal moral rights taken to be held by
all humans simply in virtue of being human. Much of the time
people talking about human rights are actually equivocating
between these distinct concepts. It’s important to avoid this
6 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
equivocation, however, because legal human rights and natural
rights are different sorts of moral entities, with different roles.
We can therefore ask both whether there is a natural right to
internet access and whether there ought to be a legal human
right to it.
As said, natural rights are universal moral rights thought to
be held by all humans simply in virtue of their being human. As
such, they must be grounded in some morally relevant feature(s)
of what it is to be human. Although there is no consensus on
what these features are, the dominant and most plausible view
is that natural rights are grounded in fundamental interests
shared by all, or at least the vast majority, of humans. On this
view, there is a natural right not to be arbitrarily killed, because
everyone has an important interest in not being killed; there is
a natural right not to be tortured, because everyone has an impor-
tant interest in not being tortured; there is a natural right not
to be forced into slavery, because everyone has an important
interest in not being enslaved; and so on.
With this in mind, it’s difficult to see how there could be a
natural right to internet access, because the interest in having
access to the internet is not sufficiently fundamental. How could
it be, given its historical contingency? Thousands of years ago,
humans had interests in not being killed, tortured, or enslaved,
and it’s reasonable to suppose that humans will have such inter-
ests thousands of years from now (assuming there still are any
humans). But it’s a stretch to say that the ancient Greeks, for
example, had an interest in having internet access, given that
they couldn’t even conceive of this technology. And we can’t
know whether humans in the future will have such an interest:
they might not if the internet is replaced by some other, more
powerful, technology. Natural rights are supposed to be held
universally by all humans simply in virtue of being human. It there-
fore doesn’t make sense to say that there is a natural right to
internet access.
Interestingly though, it doesn’t follow from this that there
shouldn’t be a legal right to internet access. Unlike natural rights,
legal rights are social constructs. Natural rights either exist or
they don’t. There is no sense in asking whether there ought to
be a particular natural right, since this is not up to us to decide.
Natural rights have a moral reality that is beyond our ability to
manipulate. By contrast, the content of legal rights is up to us.
Of course, not all of us have a say over what legal rights there
are, but the point is that their content is decided by people, not
discovered. So even though a right to internet access isn’t cur-
rently included in international human rights legislation, it nev-
ertheless makes sense to ask whether there ought to be one. And
in order to ascertain whether there ought to be a legal human
right to internet access, we need to consider how the contents
of legal human rights are justified.
 INTERNET RIGHTS © KEN LAIDLAW 2017
PLEASE VISIT WWW.KENLAIDLAW.COM TO SEE MORE OF KEN’S ART

February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 7

Human Rights
Legal Rights Are Not Natural Rights
It is sometimes assumed that legal human rights are just legal
expressions of natural rights, and that the question of whether
there ought to be a legal right to some good therefore depends
entirely on whether there is a natural right to it. On this view,
the fact that there is no natural right to internet access settles
the question of whether there ought to be a corresponding legal
right. We should, however, reject this view. First, when we look
at the actual content of international human rights legislation,
we find that it is both wider and more specific than that of nat-
ural rights. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights includes a right to a nationality as well as a right to form
and join trade unions. Nationality and trade unions are both his-
torically contingent, and therefore cannot be the objects of nat-
ural rights. It might be argued that these rights should not, then,
be included among legal human rights. But why should we think
this in the absence of some good reason for thinking of legal
human rights as simply legal expressions of natural rights?
Furthermore, legal human rights have a very different role
to natural rights, and so it’s not clear why we should think they
have identical content. Natural rights are moral claims held by
each human against all moral agents. By contrast, legal rights
are legal claims that individuals have specifically against the
states to whose power they are subject, and which act as con-
straints on the sovereignty of those states. To say that legal
human rights are just legal expressions of natural rights is to say
that only natural rights can serve these functions. But why should
we accept this? It doesn’t seem particularly problematic to sup-
pose that all individuals should have legal claims against their
governments not to be stripped of their nationality or not to be
prevented from forming and joining trade unions. But we have
seen that such rights cannot be natural rights.
Although legal human rights are not simply legal expressions
of natural rights, then, there is an important connection between
them: both natural and legal human rights are grounded in fun-
damental interests shared by all humans. The difference is that
legal human rights can include rights derived in a particular
social and historical context from more basic rights. The legal
right to nationality, for example, is not grounded in a fundamen-
tal interest in nationality held by all humans, since there have
not always been nations and there might not always be nations.
Instead, people have an interest in having a nationality because
in the contemporary world having a nationality is instrumental
for the fulfillment of other, more basic interests, some of which
ground natural rights. Without a nationality one cannot obtain
a passport, for example; and without a passport, one’s freedom
of movement is severely limited. Freedom of movement is
arguably a fundamental interest shared by all humans, which
therefore grounds a natural right to freedom of movement. This
interest also provides grounds for a basic legal right to freedom
of movement, from which we can derive a more specific legal
right to nationality.
Internet Access Rights?
Could a legal human right to internet access be justified in this
way? The interest in having internet access is certainly grounded
in more basic interests, and some of those interests are the sort
that ground natural rights; for example, the interests in freedom
8 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
of expression and freedom of association. The internet is now
perhaps the most important platform for the expression of opin-
ions and the spread of information, and provides a multitude of
opportunities for a wide variety of forms of association.
It might be argued that without internet access people can
still enjoy the freedom to express themselves and to associate,
assuming that they can still gather in public places, publish their
opinions in newspapers, and so on. However, the rights to free-
dom of expression and freedom of association do not require
merely that right-holders have at least some opportunity to express
themselves and to associate. Rather, they are fulfilled only to the
extent that people have adequate opportunities to express them-
selves and to associate. To arbitrarily prevent people from pub-
lishing their opinions in all but one little-read newspaper would
constitute a violation of their right to freedom of expression
despite their retaining some opportunity to express themselves.
Likewise, to arbitrarily prevent people from joining all but one
association, organization, party, or club would be a violation of
their right to freedom of association, despite their retaining some
opportunity to associate with others. Exactly what constitutes
adequate opportunity and ability to exercise one’s freedom of
expression and association is an important and difficult question;
but in view of the tremendous importance of the internet it seems
reasonable to hold that to prevent someone from accessing the
internet is to deprive her of adequate opportunities to exercise
her freedom of expression and association. It looks as though a
legal human right to internet access might therefore be deriv-
able from the more basic natural rights to freedom of expres-
sion and freedom of association, in the same way that a legal
human right to nationality can be derived from the more basic
natural right to freedom of movement.
However, there is an important difference between nationality
and the internet. It is impractical to have international laws that
constantly need to be updated. As such, legal human rights not
only need to be of great importance now, but also for the foresee-
able future. So the lightning-fast pace of technological progress
makes the internet, and consequently a legal right to it, much more
precarious. The fact that there is no natural right to internet access
does not preclude the possibility that there ought to be a legal
human right to it, since internet access is nowadays incredibly
important for the fulfillment of other human rights. But given the
likelihood of the internet becoming obsolete in the not-so-distant
future, I’m inclined to think that access to it doesn’t quite warrant
the status of an international legal human right.
© DR JESSE TOMALTY 2017
Jesse Tomalty is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of
Bergen, Norway. She teaches courses in ethics and political philosophy.

Hens, Ducks, &
Human Rights In China
Vittorio Bufacchi & Xiao Ouyang discuss some philosophical & linguistic difficulties.
C
hina has long been a soft target for Western human
rights activists. Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution,
between 1966 and 1976, was attacked at the time and
is still demonized today for the innumerable viola-
tions of fundamental human rights that then occurred. In 1989
the Western media reported how the pro-democracy protest in
Tiananmen Square was allegedly crushed by tanks of the Chi-
nese army, with great but unknown human costs. And Western
political leaders rarely miss an opportunity to raise human right
concerns with Chinese counterparts during rounds of diplo-
matic talks. But as illustrated by the 2016 meeting between Pres-
ident Obama and President Xi Jinping during the G20 summit
in Hangzhou, these talks continually fail to generate consensus
on the question of human rights, despite productive agreements
being reached on many other issues. It is as if the Western lan-
guage of human rights is untranslatable or unintelligible to the
Chinese; or as the Chinese proverb says, it’s a case of a hen talk-
ing to a duck – ji tong ya jiang, 鸡同鸭讲.
DUCK PROTESTING TO FOUR HENS © FEDERICO DE CICCO 2017. TO SEE MORE OF HIS ART, PLEASE VISIT ZUMAR7.COM
Human Rights
Three Ways to Think About Human Rights in China
How to make human rights discourse intelligible and construc-
tive in China is a serious challenge not only for international
lawyers and heads of state, but also for human rights philoso-
phers. Different philosophical approaches to solving this conun-
drum have been put forward over the years, albeit with scarce
results, at least so far.
One approach is to accept that ‘human rights’ is fundamen-
tally a Western concept, but notwithstanding its origin, one that
has universal validity and appeal.
The idea here is for the West to unapologetically stick to its
philosophical guns and hope that through a mix of globaliza-
tion and intercultural education the Chinese authorities and
people will one day see the light and embrace the human rights
project. If education can do all – l’éducation peut tout, as Helvétius
famously claimed in 1772 – imagine what human rights educa-
tion could achieve in China.
That human rights as we understand them in the West are
essentially a Western construct cannot be denied. Yet accepting
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 9
Human Rights
this can lead to undesirable complications. One of the great
appeals of human rights philosophy is its alleged universality,
but presented under a Western banner, the universality of
human rights can transform into thinly-veiled cultural imperi-
alism, and the noble goal of promoting human rights into a stick
used to beat non-Western cultures. We will return to the ques-
tion of universality below.
A second strategy is to suggest that human rights are, and
always have been, part of Chinese culture, and all that needs
doing is to remind the Chinese, and us, of the beliefs we share.
The premise of Micheline R. Ishay’s anthology The Human
Rights Reader (2007) is to provide an historical journey through
the idea of human rights in both secular and religious tradi-
tions, among other stops visiting Hammurabi’s Code in ancient
Babylon; the Hebrew Bible; the Hindu, Islamic, and Buddhist
rights traditions; and of course Confucianism. The core intu-
ition explored here is that human rights represents the overlap-
ping ethical consensus between different cultural, religious, and
philosophical traditions.
This approach is both attractive and instructive. The appar-
ent convergence of different traditions in the history of ideas
undoubtedly demands closer scrutiny and general support. Yet
the suspicion remains that one can always find what one wants
in the history of ideas if only one looks hard enough and is not
afraid to be flexible in one’s interpretations. Retrospective read-
ings in the history of political thought have turned Plato into a
champion of democracy (as suggested by James Kastely) and Aris-
totle into a liberal (as recommended by Martha Nussbaum); so
why can’t Confucius be read as a proto-human rights advocate?
These readings are as misleading as they are appealing. The truth
is that human rights as we understand them in the West today do not
exist in historical Chinese culture. No amount of soul searching
or philosophical investigation will uncover the notion of human
rights in the great Chinese philosophical traditions.
That is why we think a new, radical method needs to be devel-
oped when engaging with China on human rights, which can
be considered a synthesis between the two positions just high-
lighted. So instead of shoehorning a Western concept into a
Chinese context, or searching for elusive human rights ideas
where they never existed, we suggest that the key lies in a lin-
guistic turn: the way forward is to abandon the Western termi-
nology of human rights, and appeal instead to aspects of Chi-
nese philosophy that can perform a similar role, although the
term ‘human rights’ is never used. As the Daoist would say,
sometimes it’s best to leave things unsaid.
The Universality of Human Rights
Universality is arguably human rights’ greatest asset. What was
put forward by the United Nations General Assembly on 10
December 1948 was not just a Declaration of Human Rights, but
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And the universal-
ity we attach to human rights is not merely a description based
on the fact that this Declaration tried to be as geographically
inclusive as was feasible at the time. Instead, universality speaks
to a normative quality: that is, their foundational moral nature is
what implies that human rights have universal application.
But in what sense are human rights truly universal?
When it comes to promoting universality, the West doesn’t
10 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
have a good track record. Enlightened Westerners, including
many philosophers, have a tendency to remain in their concep-
tual comfort zone, albeit being modestly aware of the limita-
tions of their (sometimes non-existent) knowledge of Chinese
or other intellectual traditions. The truth is that modern West-
ern conceptions of universal values are fundamentally cultur-
ally specific, just as modern Western geographical terminology
is fundamentally Eurocentric. ‘East’ and ‘West’, not to men-
tion the exotically-named ‘Far East’, reveal more than may first
appear, since they place Europe as the geometrical point of ref-
erence for the world. But Westerners may not be surprised to
find out that the country they call ‘China’ is known to its inhab-
itants and in the Sinosphere as ‘Zhongguo’, 中国 – literally ‘the
Central Kingdom’. Perhaps before interrogating China for
neglecting human rights, we should ask ourselves what we in
the West have been neglecting about China.
The point is not to endorse a naïve cul-
tural relativism, but to question the idea of
‘universality’ underpinning human rights
concepts and other ‘universal’ moral values.
In both the Chinese and Western intellec-
tual traditions the idea of ‘universality’ itself
is not problematic. However, ‘moral univer-
salism’ is a typical Western approach, just as
relativism reflects the Chinese spirit as exem-
plified in Daoism. But even if the idea of
human rights does refer to something uni-
versal (through, for example, the Kantian idea
of reason as the foundation for morality), this
idea has to be concretized into particular activities within spe-
cific contexts. In other words, even if what is denoted by the Eng-
lish term ‘human rights’ refers to an idea applicable to all human
beings despite differences in race, gender, cultural background,
religion, etc, this does not in the least indicate that all the practi-
cal applications of this idea must be completely identical.
A Linguistic Turn
In the West we may draw strength from the fact that because
China is a signatory to the UN Universal Declaration of Human
Rights it is legally bound under international law to uphold and
respect human rights. However, we are engulfed by uncertainty
whenever international laws concerning human rights are vio-
lated by China, and the best response we can muster is to apply
diplomatic pressure (whatever that is) on the culprit state.
Part of the problem concerns the language of human rights.
There is a hermeneutic fallacy in the legal argument – in other
words, a fallacy concerning interpretation. That is, although it
is not wrong to assume that there is only one Universal Decla-
ration of Human Rights, dating back to 1948, it is incorrect to
assume that all the signatories signed an identical document.
This Universal Declaration exists only via various interpreta-
tions, including being translated into many different languages:
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the most trans-
lated document in the world. It requires a gargantuan leap of
faith, and a good dose of ingenuity, to assume that all those
translations say precisely the same thing.
For just one example, a subtle difference between the offi-
cial English and Chinese versions of the Universal Declaration

reveals a much greater schism. The majority of the thirty arti-
cles in the English version of the Declaration refer to ‘every-
one’ and ‘no one’, while the Chinese translation conveys all such
expressions with the phrase ‘ren-ren’, ‘人人’ – literally, ‘man and
man’. This linguistic nuance is significant, since it means that
the two languages convey the meaning of ‘universality’ in meta-
physically distinct ways.
The difference lies in ‘being universal for everyone’ in con-
trast to ‘being universal for all’. Although both formulations
endorse a sense of universality, the English version (‘everyone’)
stresses its universal application to the singular person, while
the Chinese version (‘all’) is imbued with a sense of the com-
munity as a whole (that is, of the whole human race). The phrase
‘ren-ren’, ‘man and man’, consisting of two human beings, incor-
porates the idea of social relationship, thus the ideas of com-
munity and cooperation. ‘Ren-ren’ also merges the senses of
‘one’ and ‘all’ together. The subtextual
implication of the language of the Chi-
nese version suggests that there will be no
individual without a community. From
this linguistic insight, we can infer that the
inalienable ren-quan – 人权 , the Chinese
translation of ‘human rights’ – is predi-
cated on the assumption of a functioning
community. Hence in the Chinese version
of the Declaration, the community has to
be acknowledged in any ren-quan conver-
sation. This invariably clashes with West-
ern assumptions regarding the individu-
alistic foundations of the idea of human rights.
This linguistic understanding can help Western readers
better comprehend the violations of human rights in China,
from the imprisonment of protestors to the contempt for free-
dom of speech, in terms of an appeal to social stability. In the
last analysis, in China, what is considered good for the commu-
nity is paramount. This also explains why the Chinese economic
success that has pulled millions out of poverty is presented in
China as working towards protecting human rights, even if this
success has been achieved at the expense of individual human
rights violations in some local cases.
The Confucian virtue of filial piety also undermines the indi-
vidualistic idea of ‘self-ownership’, since one’s body (roughly,
one’s physical existence) is given by the parents and nourished
by the family; therefore, self-preservation is not a matter of self-
interest, but rather is an obligation to take care of the family
‘property’. Moreover, Confucian ethics transforms the ‘person’
or ‘self’ talked about in the West, the abstract moral being or
individualistic moral agent, into various concrete social roles or
relationship within specific contexts. In fact, the idea of the ‘self’
is derogatory in China, due to its close association with the ‘pri-
vate’ and ‘self-interest’. Daoism, despite being very different
from Confucianism, also demotes the idea of ‘self’, but in a more
metaphysical fashion: the idea of ‘myself’ is considered a limita-
tion or boundary which ought to be abandoned in order to
reunite with heaven and earth, and in the process gain true free-
dom, or so-called xiaoyao you (‘carefree wandering’). Chinese
Buddhism generally holds that the idea of a self (Sanskrit atman,
or wo in Chinese) and of external things (dharmas or fa) are both
Human Rights
erroneous beliefs, and that the ultimate ‘awakening’ of life lies
in recognising the emptiness of the self and the world. Even from
this cursory overview of the main traditions in Chinese philoso-
phy, we can see that none of these schools can provide the nec-
essary ethical or metaphysical grounding for human rights as we
understand them in the West. We should not be surprised there-
fore if a quick and simple transplantation of this idea from Europe
to China proves difficult, or even impossible.
Which Declaration of Human Rights did China sign? Can
one be sure that the Chinese people – not only government offi-
cials, but also ordinary citizens – understand ‘human rights’
exactly as we do in the West? The fundamental conflict does
not lie in whether or not individual rights are or are not worth
protecting in China, but the fact that Chinese culture may not
have the conceptual apparatus, or need, to distinguish the ‘com-
munity’ from the ‘individual’. Rightly or wrongly, this lacuna
manifests itself in the priority of the former over the latter.
The problem of untranslatability and the danger of unwar-
ranted faith in univocal terminology in cross-cultural studies have
long been exposed by comparative philosophers. Some of the
solutions put forward include finding metaphorical links between
different conceptual schemes (Karl Potter) or working on analo-
gies as a tool of investigation (G.E.R. Lloyd). Another promis-
ing line of inquiry is provided by hermeneutics, according to
which translation and interpretation cannot be separated.
Conclusion
Fortunately, that the concept of human rights doesn’t easily trans-
late into Chinese is not as serious an obstacle as it may at first
seem. If the intention behind promoting human rights is to pro-
tect people from unnecessary suffering and to advocate their well-
being, then there is no lack of equivalents in the Chinese intel-
lectual tradition. For instance, the primary meaning of the fun-
damental Confucian notion, the cardinal virtue as Confucius him-
self defines it, ‘ai ren’, ‘爱 人 ’, is ‘to love and care for people’
(Analects, 12.22; the point is reaffirmed in the Mencius, 4b28).
The linguistic, ultimately conceptual, asymmetry between
English and Chinese regarding the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights urges us to be more cautious in dealing with uni-
versal values. It is not a question of rejecting universality or uni-
versal ideas as timeless truths; but of acknowledging that any
such truth has to be told by someone within a context, and cru-
cially, from a particular perspective, and in a particular language.
Perhaps the best way to understand and promote human rights
in China is therefore to give up on the term ‘human rights’, to
let go of certain Western theoretical frameworks, and instead
work towards equivalent goals with the terms and ideas that the
rich Chinese philosophical traditions have to offer. From there,
through more empathetic and constructive conversation, an
intellectual mechanism may grow which allows both conceptual
convergences and the preservation of cultural identities, while
fostering political cooperation between China and the West.
Political and comparative philosophers in China and in the West
have a key role to play in bringing about this paradigm shift.
© DR VITTORIO BUFACCHI & DR XIAO OUYANG, 2017
Vittorio Bufacchi is Senior Lecturer and Xiao Ouyang is a post-doc-
toral fellow in the Department of Philosophy, University College
Cork, Ireland.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 11
Human
Rights Rights
The Absolute In-Practice
Human Right Against Torture
Ian Fishback argues that torture should never be allowed in practice.
A
t one time international recognition of a right against
torture was considered one of the best, if not the sin-
gularly best, triumphs of the human rights regime.
However, since the US implemented its enhanced
interrogation program in the wake of the terrorist attacks of
9/11, the consensus of a human right against torture seems to
be in tatters. The new President of the United States and his
choice for National Security Advisor have both endorsed inter-
rogational torture, and a majority of Americans support using
interrogational torture on suspected terrorists (Chris Kahn,
Reuters, 30 March 2016; see reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-
torture-idUSKCN0WW0Y3). What was once unquestionably
taboo is now largely a matter of partisan politics. Apparently
robust signs of widespread support for the legal prohibition of
torture, such as the UN Convention Against Ali Shallal al-Qaisi
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrad- being tortured
ing Treatment, now seem hopelessly vague. in Abu Ghraib
The demarcation between torture and ‘cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment’ remains both
controversial and fundamentally important,
since if an act is categorized as ‘torture’ it is
always illegal, but if it is categorized as ‘cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatment’ it can some-
times be legal in some countries if it can be
shown to be instrumentally necessary.
Perhaps as a result of the contours of the polit-
ical and legal debate, ethicists thinking about
this issue seem preoccupied with explaining
whether or not torture is so bad that it ought to be categorically
prohibited regardless of its efficacy. The fault lines tend to be
between deontologists and consequentialists. Deontologists – eth-
ical theorists who maintain that actions are right or wrong inde-
pendent of the consequences – tend to advocate an absolute in-
principle human right against torture. Absolute in-principle claims
such as this assert that certain acts are so wrong that they cannot
be justified under any circumstances, regardless of the conse-
quences. And if an act is absolutely prohibited in principle, then
it follows that it must also be absolutely prohibited in practice.
On the other hand, consequentialists – ethical theorists who hold
that consequences determine the rightness or wrongness of actions
– tend to advocate a human right against torture that admits of
both in-principle and in-practice exceptions. A third camp admits
the possibility of an in-principle justification for torture while
denying the possibility of an in-practice justification. Here I want
to support this third camp, and argue that the human right against
torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is best under-
stood as admitting of a necessity justification in-principle which
however cannot be satisfied in practice.
Many people assert that torture is absolutely in-principle
morally wrong because it is a particularly egregious violation
12 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
of human dignity. However, just because something is particu-
larly bad does not mean that it cannot be justified in any cir-
cumstance. The view that torture ought to be prohibited
absolutely in principle is especially problematic for those who
acknowledge that war can be justified in principle. Given that
war inherently involves widespread suffering, exploitation and
violations of autonomy, it is hard to acknowledge an in-princi-
ple right to war without acknowledging an in-principle right to
torture as well. As a matter of consistency, advocates on an in-
principle prohibition of torture should probably be pacifists.
War can only be justified, if it ever can be, on the grounds
that large-scale violent coercion of a morally-innocent enemy
civilian population (which is what war usually involves) is neces-
sary to preserve the greater good. But it seems that in principle
this basic ‘lesser evil’ justification could equally
apply to interrogational torture in counterter-
rorism operations. This raises a fundamental
challenge for those who claim that war can be
justified in practice but torture cannot: Is tortur-
ing one innocent person really worse than the
harms inflicted on many innocent people dur-
ing the course of a war? If wars can be fought in
order to protect innocent people, then why not
also allow torture in order to protect innocent
people? But this analogy might not carry through
for in-practice justifications for torture compared
with war.
The critical move of those who advocate the
admissability of torture, is to think of in-principle hypothetical
cases, and then to say these principles apply to actual cases. ‘Tick-
ing time-bomb’ scenarios often fulfil this role. The harrowing
scenario is of an imminent terrorist attack that threatens thou-
sands, if not millions, of lives; say, of a dirty bomb hidden some-
where in a city. Authorities detain a culpable terrorist who has
information that could prevent the attack, but the detainee will
not willingly divulge the information. Torture is the only way
to coerce them to provide the information in time. Therefore,
torture is the only means capable of stopping the attack, and
saving many innocent lives. Surely, if torture is the only way of
coercing a culpable terrorist to give up information that can save
millions of lives, then that justifies its use?
However, one might agree with this reasoning and yet deny
that such ticking time-bomb cases ever actually exist, or at least
argue that they have an extraordinarily low probability of occur-
ring. Critics like me of the use of hypothetical ticking time-bombs
to justify torture, say such thought experiments fail to apply to
real life because they add or leave out features common to actual
cases. For example, in reality authorities often mistakenly detain
innocent suspects; guilty and innocent detainees alike frequently
lack the information authorities need to act effectively; and acquir-

ing information through torture may take too much time to facil-
itate effective action. Thus, the existence of an in-principle justi-
fication does not entail the existence of an in-practice justifica-
tion. This means that torture could be absolutely prohibited in
practice even though it can be justified in principle. Therefore,
we argue that there are no in-practice justifications for torture in
the real world.
The problem with the ticking time-bomb debate for advo-
cates of the sometimes-admissability of torture is that it focuses
on the wrong type of case. The strongest argument for interro-
gational torture is not that it is an effective means to thwart spe-
cific enemy terrorist attacks, but that it is an effective means to
attack enemy cells. French counterinsurgency operations in
Algeria against the FLN in the 1960s are commonly thought to
be the best example demonstrating this.
This case was actually part of my military training as a US
Special Forces officer. In 2004, I was part of a small group of
fifteen junior officers under the tutelage of a more senior men-
tor. The mentor had us watch The Battle of Algiers, a movie that
depicts the French occupation of Algiers. It shows French para-
troopers using interrogational torture to destroy the FLN ter-
rorist network. Our mentor then articulated the supposed effi-
cacy of torture as a method for defeating urban insurgent orga-
nizations that rely on cellular organization for protection.
Urban insurgents, which include many terrorist organizations,
divide their organization into a hierarchy of cells. The lowest level
of cells carry out the tactical tasks that have the greatest risk of
capture, such as placing bombs. Members of each cell only know
their immediate leader in the cell so that they cannot provide infor-
mation about the higher levels of the organization, and even that
limited information has a narrow time-horizon of usefulness. The
leader of the cell will go into hiding as soon as he or she learns of
a subordinate’s capture. Therefore, a counterinsurgent force has a
very short time in which to use a detainee’s information to target
the detainee’s associates. One way to destroy the highest levels of
the organization is to consecutively exploit several detainees in
this manner, swiftly working up the insurgent chain-of-command.
‘Soft’, rapport-building interrogation techniques take far too much
time to facilitate such a campaign, but as the French supposedly
demonstrated in Algeria – the lesson our mentor tried to impress
upon us – interrogational torture is fast enough to facilitate it.
My concerns with our mentor’s argument are rather straight-
forward: the French lost the war in Algeria, and it is even harder
to use interrogational torture in contemporary counterterror-
ism operations than it was in the Sixties.
The instrumental value of interrogational torture in rooting
out the FLN is questionable; but even if it was instrumentally
valuable, it did not translate into strategic success. And since
hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Algerians were tortured
as part of the campaign against the FLN, arguably, this activity
undermined the French war there. Algerian support for French
rule crumbled, and the FLN won the political battle, which is
the end that terrorism and war are ultimately aiming to achieve.
So one question that French interrogational torture in Algeria
raises is: Do the tactical benefits of interrogational torture out-
weigh the strategic costs?
They clearly did not do so in Algeria, and there is even less
reason to believe that they do in contemporary counterterror-
Human Rights
ism campaigns. Urban insurgents learned from the FLN expe-
rience, and have adopted countermeasures to foil the speed of
interrogational torture. Now Al Qaeda operatives are selected
and trained to resist interrogational torture, and we have every
indication that this training is effective. For example, Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, a high-ranking Al Qaeda leader captured
by US Forces, was waterboarded more than seventy times before
he provided information. It’s possible that he ‘cracked’; but it
is at least as likely that he endured waterboarding until he
thought the information he relinquished was no longer valu-
able enough to justify his withholding it. This would be pre-
cisely what Al Qaeda trained him to do.
There is scant evidence that interrogational torture has been
instrumental in the defeat of Al Qaeda or other terrorist orga-
nizations. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that inter-
rogational torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treat-
ment, such as occurred at Abu Ghraib and Bagram, yielded sig-
nificant strategic costs in the US-led counter-terrorism efforts
against Al Qaeda.
Proponents of interrogational torture claim that the Abu
Ghraib events were the result of ‘a few bad apples’ rather than
a necessary side-effect of the enhanced interrogation program.
This argument is specious. The prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib
and elsewhere was not the product of a few rogue soldiers.
Rather, it was the predictable result of removing safeguards
against detainee abuse in a combat environment. The sad fact
is that combat produces psychological stress likely to motivate
torture and the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of
prisoners. It has been shown that soldiers do not need com-
manders to issue orders to torture in order to commit acts of
torture. Rather, soldiers need commanders to issue orders that
prevent them from committing acts of torture. Normal human
beings placed in combat circumstances may be liable to torture
unless institutions shape their behavior.
One of the most effective safeguards for reducing instances
of prisoner abuse is to clearly communicate an absolute prohi-
bition of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
To admit of exceptions to the prohibition is to invite rational-
ization and abuse of those exceptions. Thus, the hypothetical
ticking time-bomb is dangerous because it encourages soldiers
to misrepresent real world scenarios to themselves as more sim-
ilar to the ticking time-bomb case than they actually are. There-
fore the hypothetical ticking time-bomb is a moral hazard best
excluded from deliberation concerning the issue of torture and
cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, especially by front-
line combat troops. As an institutional practice, torture, and
cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, ought to be absolutely
prohibited in the soldiery. This argument is undoubtedly too
contingent and narrow to satisfy many advocates of an absolute
in-practice prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrad-
ing treatment, but it is the best afforded by reason and the body
of evidence available to us at this time.
© IAN FISHBACK 2017
Ian Fishback is a former U.S. Army officer with four combat tours.
He took a stand against torture, eventually writing a public letter in
2005 to Senator John McCain explaining his concerns about abuse
of detainees. From 2012-15 he was an Instructor at West Point. He
is now a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Michigan.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 13
Human Rights
What Are Human Rights?
Tim Dare considers how far human rights claims can stretch.
H
uman rights are, of course, rights of a certain kind,
and rights are specific kinds of moral, political or
legal claims. Consider the following cases. Sup-
pose I lose my wallet and won’t be able to get home
unless I come up with $5.00 for the train. I might ask a col-
league for a loan, pointing out that, were he to agree, he would
display the virtues of generosity and kindness, and would also
promote utility, since his $5.00 would create more happiness
in my hand than sitting unused in his wallet for the night. How-
ever, I cannot insist he help me, even if I am right about what
virtue and utility recommend. He has no duty to make the loan.
Suppose alternatively that discovering the absence of my
wallet reminds me that last week I lent $5.00 to another col-
league on the condition that she would pay me back today. I go
to her office and ask her for the $5.00. Given our agreement, I
have a right to the money, and she has a duty to give it to me.
On this account, rights-based claims – by contrast with claims
based on utility or virtue – are always accompanied by correla-
tive duties. If someone has a right, then some other person or
group of persons has a duty to give or allow the rights-holder
to have or do that to which the rights-holder has a right.
I was able to demand my $5.00 ‘as of right’ because my col-
league and I had entered into an agreement. My right depended
upon a convention or practice and we can easily imagine the
convention being different. It could have been the case that
promises to repay loans, like contracts for the purchase of land
14 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
in many countries, were only enforceable if written.
If all rights were conventional, then what rights people have
would depend upon what conventions particular communities
or groups had adopted. What appeared on a list of rights and
who had them would depend upon particular and changeable
conventions.
Champions of human rights aim to avoid this contingency.
There are, many of them claim, rights which are not contingent
upon conventions, but instead are rights that people have simply
by virtue of being human, and so which cannot be removed by
contingent practices or institutions.
It is easy to see why this idea is attractive. If such rights exist,
they provide a basis for claims on peoples’ behaviour that hold
no matter what particular conventions particular communities
adopt. These rights will be universal, in the sense that they will
apply to all people, no matter where they are or to what con-
ventions they happen to be subject.
Such rights would also provide a perspective from which one
could criticize and assess particular conventions. For instance, if
there are human rights to education, to the absence of discrim-
ination, to access to adequate health care, or whatever, then any
social conventions that deny those things to some members of
the communities they govern will fail to respect the human rights
of those people, and those people will be able to identify duty-
holders and demand that to which they have a human-rights-
based claim.
WWW.CHRISMADDEN.CO.UK
CARTOON © CHRIS MADDEN 2017

Within a system which
denies the existence of
basic human rights, fear
tends to be the order of
the day.
Aung San Sui Kyi
Problems With This Account of Human Rights
” ‘subject to resources’. It is also sometimes difficult to identify
There may seem to be an immediate problem with this account
of rights and human rights, since it suggests that many of the
most familiar and influential examples of human rights are in
fact not rights or human rights at all.
Consider the rights set out in the 1948 United Nations Uni-
versal Declaration of Human Rights. On the account above,
human rights do not depend upon conventions, but the Decla-
ration does seem to ground its rights on a convention – specifi-
cally, upon the facts that member states have “reaffirmed” the
value of human rights, and upon their “determination” and
“pledge” to promote their universal recognition. Further, fulfil-
ment of many of the rights in the Declaration and associated
instruments depend upon participation in complex social and
economic practices. Other rights in the UN documents assume
very specific social and institutional arrangements: rights to work,
to paid holidays, and to social security, for instance, are rights
that make sense only against the backdrop of particular and con-
tingent social arrangements. These rights seem not to be human
rights in the sense sketched above either, since they are not held
by people simply by virtue of their being human. Instead, they
are held (if they are) because people stand in particular relations
to social practices and to one another.
It is also unclear what sort of demands the UN rights allow.
In our opening scenario, my right allowed me to insist upon my
$5.00, but everyone accepts that realization of the rights in the
UN Declaration will take time and be hampered by a lack of
resources. Signatory states are often obliged only to take appro-
priate measures towards the ‘progressive realization’ of many
of those rights, subject to ‘available resources’. This obligation
can be cast as a duty correlative to a right; but notice just how
indeterminate that duty will often be, because of how difficult
it can be to specify just what a rights-holder can demand from
a duty-holder obliged to the ‘progressive realization’ of a right
Human Rights
AUNG SAN SUI KYI © FOREIGN & COMMONWEALTH OFFICE 2016
duty-holders for the rights in the UN Declaration. According
to Article 23 “Everyone has the right to work” but an unem-
ployed person cannot insist that any given employer take them
on. Perhaps their government is obliged to provide employ-
ment, but governments might quite properly eschew the role
of employer, and moreover, it seems implausible that states that
provide support for the unemployed rather than jobs are breach-
ing the human rights of the unemployed.
These concerns connect with a broader feasibility issue.
According to our original simple account of rights claims, rights-
holders can insist on that to which they have a right. It is
acknowledged on all sides, however, that it may not be possible
to realize many of the UN’s alleged economic and social rights
for all – that at least some of those rights are infeasible. This
issue connects with the principle of ‘ought implies can’, which
says that we cannot be under a duty to do that which we cannot
do. If that’s correct, and a certain duty is infeasible, then there
is no such duty, and consequently – at least according to the
above account of rights – there is no correlative right.
Furthermore, as a practical matter, allowing infeasible rights
might devalue rights claims. Rights are especially powerful
claims on behaviour precisely because they allow their holders
to insist upon that to which they have a right. If we allow that
there are infeasible rights claims, we threaten to surrender a
core feature of rights claims, and in particular human rights
claims, that made them attractive at the outset.
Responses
Much of the considerable recent philosophical literature on
human rights is connected to these ideas. Some commentators
have tended toward the view of human rights as absolute, and
so have been more or less critical of the human rights move-
ment associated with the Declaration (see for instance Maurice
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 15
Human Rights
Cranston, ‘Human Rights, Real and Supposed’ in The Philoso-
phy of Human Rights ed. by Patrick Hayden, 2001). At the other
end of the spectrum, Charles Bietz argues in ‘What Human
Rights Mean’ (Daedalus, 132.1, 2003) that in order to “appreci-
ate the real nature of human rights and the reasons why we
should care about them” we should “look first at human rights
as they actually operate in the world today” – so giving priority
to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and associated
documents.
Some commentators who have thought it an error to hold
on to an abstract conception of rights have sought ways to
explain how a claim could be a human right and not run afoul
of the above criticisms. For instance, in ‘Elements of a Theory
of Human Rights’ (Philosophy & Public Affairs 32.4, 2004),
Amartya Sen relies on Kant’s distinction between perfect and
You can chain me,
“ you can torture me,
you can even destroy this body,
but you will never
”
imprison my mind.
Mahatma Gandhi
16 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
imperfect duties in order to avoid problems based on the absence
of clearly specified duties. Perfect duties are precise and
absolute. So, for instance, I have a perfect obligation not to tor-
ture anyone [see elsewhere in this issue, Ed.]. But the perfect
duty not to torture is accompanied by a less precisely specified
requirement to consider the ways that torture might be pre-
vented and to decide what one can reasonably do to implement
them. Sen insists that these imperfect duties are not vacuous.
And they leave room for just the sort of limited or progressive
realization contemplated by the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
Other writers have defended various types of ‘minimalism’
about human rights, abandoning problematic rights such as that
to work and paid holidays. Michael Ignatieff, for instance, argues
that the “priority of all human rights activism [is] to stop tor-
ture, beatings, killings, rape and assault, to improve, as best we
can, the security of ordinary people” (Human Rights as Politics
and Idolatry, 2003, p.173). Rights minimalism is a response to
the above criticisms because a shorter, well-defined list of rights
is straightforwardly less demanding. Not only are there fewer
rights, but the realization of negative rights against torture,
beatings, killings, etc, is likely to be cheaper than more expan-
sive economic and cultural rights, and so (in theory) easier to
fulfil. They are also thought more likely to gain broad support.
The Grounds of Human Rights
It is easy enough to see how conventional rights arise. Conven-
tions are practices that have a certain kind of social traction.
Promises work because promisees and promisors take it to be
true that they have gained rights or assumed duties, respec-
tively, and observers disapprove of people who promise then
fail to act consistently with the convention.
Those things which are true of humans simply because they
are human – their reason, their capacity to plan, or to suffer, or
perhaps to realize their potential – could generate rights and
duties in a similar way, if all or most of us took it to be true that
any entity of whom those things were true had a right to, for
example, work or equal respect, and disapproved of those who
didn’t act consistently with that truth. But that right would then
be conventional: it would depend upon its recognition in a prac-
tice, and not upon the fact of someone’s humanity. Conversely,
it is not easy to see how the things that are true of humans simply
because they are human could generate obligations independently
of conventions: how a natural fact about me could generate
rights and duties if it were not in general taken to do so and
accommodated in a sufficiently widespread practice.
Some human rights advocates have suggested that human
rights can be directly grounded in ethics. Sen, for instance, sees
“proclamations of human rights… as articulations of ethical
demands” (‘Elements’, p.320). On this account, to say that there
is a human right not to be tortured is simply to say that there is
a good ethical argument, sustainable by open public reasoning,
for the claim that the interest against being tortured should be
protected by appropriate (perfect and imperfect) duties. This
approach, Sen maintains, frees human rights from reliance on
legislation, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
and also from reliance on whatever ethical values happen to be
popular at the time, since the arguments that survive open public
 Human Rights
reasoning may shift current views. It needs to be remembered,
however, that human rights will often be required precisely in
circumstances in which their background ethical justifications
are not accepted. So although it may be fine to work out which
human rights exist by considering ethical positions, at the ethi-
cal coalface those rights must have force independently of those
justifications.
Other commentators, such as Beitz, have emphasized the dis-
by Melissa Felder
tinctive political function of human rights. Advocates of the politi-
cal view have tended toward fidelity to existing human rights prac-
tices, and to rights minimalism, given the need to find common
ground among the variety of political responses to human rights
ideas. But because the political view construes human rights as
dependent upon political institutions and practices, it is unlikely
to satisfy those attracted to human rights precisely because of their
independence from particular political practices.

Rights & Flags

We began with an account of rights that portrayed them as
having duties attached. If someone has a right, we said, then
some other person or group of people has a duty to give or allow
the rights-holder to have or do something. Rights understood
this way are powerful and important. Unfortunately, the term
‘right’ is used much more widely than this account allows. In
particular, it’s common to describe any interest someone wishes
to mark as especially important as a ‘right’, regardless of whether
or not there are identifiable duties and duty-holders. That is,
‘rights’ are often used to refer not to a narrow class of moral
and political claims that are accompanied by duties, but as flags
to signal that some interest – to life, to health, to employment
– is regarded as morally or politically significant. This broader
use of the term ‘right’ is unfortunate because rights understood
as moral or political claims correlative to duties and upon which
right-holders can insist, are important, and the proliferation of
‘rights’ that inevitably flows from the rights-as-flags strategy
undermines their morally-obliging force. We simply cannot
insist on all the things considered important by all the people
who make rights-as-flags claims, and so we must dismiss at least
some, perhaps many, rights claims. And if we know that many
rights claims must be dismissed, we are unlikely to think that
rights claims are all that important.
The tendency to use rights as flags leads to rights prolifera-
tion, which leads to rights inflation. Rights become worth less,
if not worthless. The human rights culture is a significant con-
tributor to this rights inflation. Ideally, we should preserve the
term ‘rights’ to describe feasible and enforceable claims accom-
panied by duties. Of course, the horse has already bolted. The
expanded human rights culture and practice is so well established
that there is little prospect of limiting the expansion of rights
claims, but we should at least try to curb rights inflation. Among
the alternative groundings for human rights, the political
approach probably gives the best opportunity for doing so. If we
are to allow ‘human rights’ at all, we should favour a minimal
list of rights that rests ultimately on convention.
© DR TIM DARE 2017
Tim Dare qualified as a lawyer but is now an Associate Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He has a SIMON + FINN CARTOON © MELISSA FELDER 2017 PLEASE VISIT SIMONANDFINN.COM
special interest in legal ethics.

February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 17

Human Rights
The United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
Preamble
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation
of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in
barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the
advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech
and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the
highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse,
as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human
rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly rela-
tions between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaf-
firmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth
of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have
determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in
larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-
operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for
and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of
the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL
DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement
for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every
organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive
by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and free-
doms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure
their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the
peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territo-
ries under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one
another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Dec-
laration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, lan-
guage, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, prop-
erty, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on
the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the coun-
try or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent,
trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade
shall be prohibited in all their forms.
18 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before
the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimina-
tion to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection
against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any
incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national
tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the con-
stitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an
independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and
obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed
innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he
has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any
act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national
or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heav-
ier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the
penal offence was committed.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy,
family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and rep-
utation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such
interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence
within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and
to return to his country.
Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asy-
lum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely
arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes
and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the
right to change his nationality.
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race,
nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They
are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dis-
solution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent
of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and
is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in associ-
ation with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and reli-
gion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and free-
dom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to
manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and obser-
vance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regard-
less of frontiers.
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and asso-
ciation.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his coun-
try, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his coun-
try.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of govern-
ment; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which
shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote
or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and
is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-oper-
ation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State,
of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity
and the free development of his personality.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to
just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unem-
ployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for
equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuner-
Human Rights
ation ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human
dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protec-
tion.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the pro-
tection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limita-
tion of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health
and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, hous-
ing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to secu-
rity in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old
age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assis-
tance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same
social protection.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least
in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall
be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made gen-
erally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on
the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human
personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fun-
damental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friend-
ship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the
activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall
be given to their children.
Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the
community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and
its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material
interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of
which he is the author.
Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the
rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and
full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be sub-
ject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the pur-
pose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms
of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order
and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary
to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any
State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform
any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set
forth herein.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 19
Human Rights
I Hate You,
My Lovely France!
Hamid Andishan tells us how Sartre, a philosopher of freedom, had problems with
the politics of the land of liberté, and how this affected his view of human rights.
H
ave you ever heard of someone loving and hating
something at the same time? It can lead to madness,
or at least, to profound anguish. The situation
becomes worse if that thing is one’s motherland.
Jean-Paul Sartre was in such a situation. He was a French
philosopher against France. Philosophical offspring of René
Descartes and admirer of Honoré de Balzac, he fought for France
in WWII, and was a prisoner of war in Germany; but after the
war he turned into a bitter critic of French policy. Why?
Sartre had witnessed how France – the land of liberty, equal-
ity and fraternity – had acted as a colonial predator in Algeria,
Cameroon, and Indochina. In the first editorial of his journal
Les Temps Modernes in 1945, Sartre and the phenomenologist
Maurice Merleau-Ponty declared that members of the French
Resistance who had fought to liberate France during WWII,
and who were now in Indochina, were like the German soldiers
fighting for fascism. Paris was to him the symbol of freedom
against the machinery of fascism (see The Liberation of Paris,
1945), but barely a week after Hitler’s death, the same city of
romance and freedom sent troops to commit a bloody massacre
in the Algerian market town of Sétif, slaughtering thousands of
Algerians. In the years that followed, civilized France contin-
ued to brutally repress the growing anti-colonialist movement,
frequently sentencing people to death in military courts. This
led Sartre to declare, “we are all murderers” in an article of that
title published in Les Temps Modernes, No.145, 1958:
“In November 1956 Fernand Yveton, a member of the Combattants
de la Libération [a guerrilla group established by the Algerian
Communist Party] planted a bomb at the Hamma power station, an
attempted sabotage which can in no way equate with a terrorist
Sétif, site of a
massacre by the French
in May 1945
20 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
action. Analysis proved that it was a time bomb precisely set so that
the explosion could not occur before the personnel had left. To no
avail: Yveton was arrested, sentenced to death, a reprieve was refused,
he was executed. Not the slightest hesitation: this man declared and
proved that he did not wish to kill anyone, but we wanted to kill him,
and we did so without wavering.”
According to Sartre, France was no longer a champion of
freedom; on the contrary, it was against freedom. France was
playing a double game, trying to take a leading role in the human
rights discourse and at the same time repressing native people
in its colonized territories. In his preface to Frantz Fanon’s 1961
book The Wretched of the Earth, Sartre says that France should
rid itself of France. That is, the ideal free France should sepa-
rate itself from the colonial France.
René Cassin, a French law professor, was the French repre-
sentative on the committee drafting the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, and worked to revise its first draft in the years
after the war. A wave of nausea would have engulfed Sartre if he
had seen that draft, for it declared that human rights presup-
pose a high degree of civilization, and so do not apply to people
in ‘primitive’ stages of development. Such statements indicate
that human rights are not for all humans, only for those who
are more human. (Remember the declaration of the pigs in
Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals
are more equal than others.”)
In any case, Sartre oscillated for three decades towards and
away from the idea of human rights, because he was doubtful
about the honesty of human rights theory towards those
wretched so-called ‘uncivilized’ peoples. If the Declaration was
passed by colonial empires such as France and Britain, would it
really be peaceful, decent and well-intentioned? Behind this
lovely humanitarian smile, was there a set of sharp teeth?
Sometimes Sartre defended the Declaration, because he saw
that despite its limitations, it promoted basic rights that every
person must enjoy. In his statement ‘On Genocide’ at the Second
Session of the Bertrand Russell International War Crimes
Tribunal in 1967, he showed his profound concern for univer-
sal human rights, condemning the United States for violating
them in Vietnam.
Yet as a Marxist, Sartre also worried about what he saw as
bourgeois elements implicit in the Declaration, particularly
extreme individualism. He criticizes ‘the bourgeoisie’ for using
an analytic method to explain everything; every composite real-
ity must be reduced to simple elements. Like water that is
reduced to oxygen and hydrogen, bourgeois analysis wants to
reduce human society to isolated individuals. In Introducing Les

Temps Modernes (republished by Harvard University Press as
What is Literature and Other Essays), Sartre said he believed that
this principle presided over the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights as well. But when a people have lost their land, their
trade, their young generation, and have nothing except their
own being, they do not need individuality and private posses-
sions. On the contrary, they need collectivity rather than indi-
vidualism. They need to return to their traditional collectivity
and their collective right of self-determination.
If he was only a leftist thinker, his position against absolute
individualism would be clear; but he was an existentialist too.
Individuality is one of the main cornerstones of existentialism.
In his 1945 lecture Existentialism is a Humanism, he declared
that the existentialist “point of departure is, indeed, the subjec-
tivity of the individual – not because we are bourgeois, but
because we seek to base our doctrine on truth.” In Being and
Nothingness (1943), he argued that every individual is existen-
tially responsible to undertake and to create his or her way of
life. This is the type of existence which Kierkegaard calls singu-
larity or individuality. We must notice that for Sartre, singular-
ity or individuality is different from individualism. Extreme
individualism is the negation of any collective identity; however,
individuality can incorporate being with others.
Although Sartre belongs to the left side of the debate on
human rights, his critiques don’t align exactly with contempo-
rary leftist thinkers such as Slavoj Žižek in ‘Against Human
Rights’ (2005). Žižek associates the theory of human rights with
liberal capitalism, just as Sartre did; however, he pays attention
to a new phenomenon – the phenomenon of humanitarian inter-
ference. Critics such as Žižek have recently been witness to the
Human Rights
SARTRE PORTRAIT © ATHAMOS STRADIS 2017
destructive way that Western countries intervene politically,
economically and militarily in Third World countries in the
name of defending human rights. As Žižek writes: “For exam-
ple, it is clear that the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein,
legitimized in terms of ending the suffering of the Iraqi people,
was not only motivated by hard-headed politico-economic inter-
ests, but also relied on a determinate idea of the political and
economic conditions under which ‘freedom’ was to be deliv-
ered to the Iraqi people: liberal-democratic capitalism, inser-
tion into the global market economy, etc.”
So it is not easy to say that Sartre was utterly for the theory
of human rights, nor completely against it. I should mention
two crucial points. Firstly, human rights theory has many
humanitarian potentials; one can claim that it at least contains
the seeds for equal rights among all human beings. Secondly, if
we don’t pay enough attention to the colonial-capitalist estab-
lishment’s tendency to protect their political and economic
interests, ignoring human rights when they are incompatible
with those interests, then human rights theory can be easily
misused by those powers.
Combining these positive and negative points, one can say,
although Sartre and Third World activists may appeal to Human
Rights in their claims regarding human equality and dignity,
the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights shows
that at first the rights were written in defence of European citi-
zens against the terror of Nazism, not in defence of non-Euro-
peans against European colonization.
© HAMID ANDISHAN 2017
Hamid Andishan is currently taking his PhD in Philosophy at the
University of Ottawa.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 21
Human Rights
Richard Rorty On Rights
Patrícia Fernandes looks at Rorty’s idea for promoting human rights.
F
or his 1993 Oxford Amnesty Lecture, the American
philosopher Richard Rorty presented a paper that
would become one of his most popular texts:
‘Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimen-
tality’. In it he argued for the following ideas: 1) We
cannot justify human rights; 2) Reason is a useless
apparatus to promote human rights; 3) We
should concentrate our energies instead on sen-
timental education.
The Contingency of Reason
To understand what Rorty meant by this, we need
to go back to his first original book, Philosophy and Richard Rorty
the Mirror of Nature (1979). In it Rorty offered an (1931-2007)
analysis of the philosophical context of the second half
of the Twentieth Century. According to him, ever since
Descartes, Locke, and Kant in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, philosophy has been centered on questions about
knowledge (as the relation between humanity and reality), and
in the study of the mind (as the entity able to establish that rela-
tion). From this perspective, knowledge is a matter of estab-
lishing a representational relation between ideas and reality. As
Rorty writes, “to know is to represent accurately what is out-
side the mind” (p.3). Rorty says that this is the core of the rep-
resentationalist paradigm, and that analytic philosophy is the heir
of this paradigm. However, Rorty uses Twentieth Century
developments in the analytic tradition (by the later Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Wilfrid Sellars, W.V.O. Quine, and Donald
Davidson, among others) to argue that the representationalist
paradigm is merely contingent, and so philosophically optional.
Language plays an important role here. For Rorty, language
is not merely a medium between the self and reality. Language
has, rather, a constitutive role in thought: it determines the way
we think. The availability of particular words or a specific gram-
mar, for instance, sets how we think about reality. And language
use is ubiquitous. We cannot access reality without it. That
means we can’t know if the language we use accurately repre-
sents the world. To use Hilary Putnam’s expression, we cannot
step outside language to see the world from ‘a God’s-eye point
of view’. In this sense, our language is contingent: we use a cer-
tain language for accidental reasons, and not necessarily because
that’s the way the world works. After all, as Rorty said ten years
later in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, “the world does not
speak. Only we do” (p.6).
This philosophical position means that we have to give up
the project of philosophy as the search for Truth. We are stuck
in our historical conditions and our contingent language, and
we cannot expect to step outside them to reach absolute Truths
or Reality-In-Itself. Ultimately, we cannot offer any absolute
foundation to our beliefs, nor can we can find absolute justifi-
cations which would be able to persuade every reasonable person
that we are right. It means giving up what Nietzsche called
22 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
‘metaphysical comfort’. However, Rorty wants to persuade us
that we can gain something better. What?
If we give up the notion of knowledge as representation,
we can think of a more useful paradigm of knowl-
edge. In the first volume of his Philosophical Papers
(1991), Rorty proposes that we should substi-
tute the representationalist paradigm for an
anti-representationalist one. He argues that this
new paradigm would renew our sense of com-
munity and would be more useful for achiev-
ing our social aims. In this sense, Rorty sees
philosophy as serving political purposes: if our
political values, inherited from the Enlighten-
ment, are to create a more democratic society and
to promote human solidarity, then a non-representa-
tionalist or pragmatic paradigm will be more useful in achiev-
ing them than a representationalist one.
Rorty’s Pragmatic Approach to Rights
These are the most important of Rorty’s ideas. But how can we
apply them to the matter of human rights? Rorty does so in
‘Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality’ (published in
the third volume of his Philosophical Papers, 1998). His central
goal is to show that a pragmatic paradigm would be more effi-
cient for promoting a ‘human rights culture’ (Eduardo Rabossi’s
term) than projects that try to give rights a foundation in objec-
tive truth. Let’s see how he does it.
Firstly, for Rorty, ‘foundationalist’ philosophers like Plato,
Aquinas, and Kant tried to find premises about human beings
capable of being known to be true independently of our moral
intuitions and capable of justifying those moral intuitions. But
as we saw, from Rorty’s perspective we cannot find such foun-
dations; rather, our moral community determines what is
morally good, and we can’t go beyond our language and our his-
torical conditions to find moral Truth-In-Itself. In that sense,
“the most philosophy can hope to do is to summarize our culturally
influenced intuitions about the right thing to do in various situa-
tions. The summary is effected by formulating a generalization from
which these intuitions can be deduced… That generalization is not
supposed to ground our intuitions, but rather to summarize them.”
(Philosophical Papers III, p.171).
Secondly we must keep in mind that Rorty is a pragmatist –
his main concern is not with proving moral statements to be
true, but about finding what works, and in this case about how
best to fulfill the utopian vision sketched by the Enlightenment:
“If the activities of those who attempt to achieve this [foundational-
ist] sort of knowledge seem of little use in actualizing this utopia,
that is a reason to think there is no such knowledge. If it seems that
most of the work of changing moral intuitions is being done by

manipulating our feelings rather than by increasing our knowledge,
that is a reason to think there is no knowledge of the sort that
philosophers like Plato, Aquinas, and Kant hoped to get.” (p.172)
Appeals to reason and knowledge have little effect in Rorty’s
thought. We have to concentrate on what works, he says, and his
conclusion is that “the emergence of the human rights culture
seems to owe nothing to increased moral knowledge, and every-
thing to hearing sad and sentimental stories” (p.172). Since there
is probably no knowledge of the sort Plato imagined, it’s useless to
point at rationality as the thing we all have in common. Rorty uses
the examples of the Serbian torturers who didn’t recognize their
Muslim victims’ humanity, or the Nazis in relation to the Jews:
“[I]t does little good to point out to the people I have just described
that many Muslims and women are good at mathematics or engi-
neering or jurisprudence. Resentful young Nazi toughs were quite
aware that many Jews were clever and learned, but this only added to
the pleasure they took in beating such Jews. Nor does it do much
good to get such people to read Kant and agree that one should not
treat rational agents simply as means. For everything turns on who
counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the only rele-
vant sense – the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with
membership in our moral community.” (p.177)
Thirdly of course we should remain profoundly grateful to
Plato and Kant, “not because they discovered truths but because
they prophesied cosmopolitan utopias” (p.173); but if we put
foundationalism behind us, we could “concentrate our energies
on manipulating sentiments, on sentimental education” and that
would be the best way to promote those cosmopolitan utopias:
“That sort of education gets people of different kinds sufficiently
well acquainted with one another that they are less tempted to think
CARTOON © BILL STOTT 2017 FOR MORE, PLEASE VISIT WWW.BILLSTOTT.CO.UK
Human Rights
of those different from themselves as only quasi-human. The goal
of this sort of manipulation of sentiment is to expand the reference
of the terms ‘our kind of people’ and ‘people like us’.” (p.176)
This would correspond to what the ethicist Annette Baier
called “a progress of sentiments” – which progress is towards
increasingly seeing the similarities between ourselves and others
instead of the differences.
Finally, as an anti-foundationalist, Rorty doesn’t think of ‘bad
people’ as being deprived of moral knowledge. Instead, he thinks
that a well-functioning human rights culture results from two
conditions, security and sympathy:
“By ‘security’ I mean conditions of life sufficiently risk-free as to make
one’s difference from others inessential to one’s self-respect, one’s
sense of worth… By ‘sympathy’ I mean the sort of reactions Athenians
had more of after seeing Aeschylus’s The Persians than before, the sort
that whites in the United States had more of after reading Uncle Tom’s
Cabin than before, the sort we have more of after watching television
programs about the genocide in Bosnia.” (p.180)
Rorty for our Current Crises
Rorty’s account is particularly relevant in our day. The recent
surge of xenophobic movements in Europe, the hostility to immi-
gration in many countries, and all the polemic surrounding the
giving of support to desperate refugees – none of this is indepen-
dent of the current global economic crisis. People didn’t suddenly
become more ignorant concerning human rights, they simply
feel more insecure, and that’s an obstacle to more sympathy. As
Rorty says, “The tougher things are, the more you have to be
afraid of, the more dangerous your situation, the less you can
afford the time or effort to think about what things might be like
for people with whom you do not immediately identify.” (p.180).
This is why Rorty’s account is so interesting. On the one
hand, his idea of contingency
liberates us from the endless
quest for Truth, Certainty, and
Nature. On the other hand, it
liberates us from the burden of
rationally justifying our moral
sentiments that we have been
carrying over the last two hun-
dred years. Finally, a Rortian
perspective is a great one for
thinking about the challenges
we are presently facing. “Sen-
timental education works only
on people who can relax long
enough to listen” Rorty writes
(p.180) – so let’s relax and listen
to the tribulations of other
people. This is how we can
build and improve human
rights culture.
© PATRÍCIA FERNANDES 2017
Patrícia Fernandes is a PhD
student at the University of
Minho in Portugal.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 23
Philosophy Then
The Right to Be Poor
Peter Adamson looks into the surprising derivation of
the right to property ownership.
O
ne of my favorite things about the
history of philosophy is finding out
that ideas we now take for granted
originally emerged in surprising ways. I can
think of no better example than the notion
of a right to own property. Not that we can
take it for granted that we have such a right,
if we consider the history of communism in
the Twentieth Century. Still, it seems such
an obvious concept that it must surely
always have been with us. But you can make
a good case that it was first explicitly artic-
ulated in the later Middle Ages. And here’s
the surprising part: the thinkers who first
explored this notion were actually con-
cerned with their right to own nothing.
They were members of the mendicant
orders, especially the Franciscans. Follow-
ing the example of their founder, Francis of
Assisi, Franciscans argued that spiritual per-
fection requires the voluntary embrace of
poverty. Like Blanche in A Streetcar Named
Desire, they depended on the kindness of
strangers, living on charitable donations.
Hence the term ‘mendicant’, meaning,
‘given to begging’. Christ and his Apostles,
the Franciscans argued, had shown the way
by giving up all their possessions. Further-
more, ownership of property is a conse-
quence of the Fall. In a state of innocence
there would be no need for possessions,
since by generosity of spirit all things would
be shared. However, as well as an individ-
ual religious commitment, the embrace of
poverty amounted to an implicit and some-
times explicit political critique, since the
medieval church as an institution most cer-
tainly did not embrace poverty. The men-
dicants’ very existence was a rebuke to the
opulence and worldliness of the papal court
and the rest of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
At first, the church grudgingly accepted
the mendicants’ lifestyle nonetheless, and
criticism initially came from rival theolo-
gians at the university of Paris rather than
the papacy. But in the early 1320s Pope John
XXII declared the Franciscan stance inco-
herent, and even heretical, since it falsely
claimed that Christ owned nothing, when
24 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
this was in fact impossible. Why impossi-
ble? Well, even the most pious mendicant
has to eat, since starving yourself would be
suicide, which is a sin, and it makes no sense
to claim that you don’t own the food you
eat. Even if it is charitably donated to you,
once it passes into your possession, it must,
well, be your possession. It is your owner-
ship that gives you permission to destroy
the food by eating it.
The mendicants gave this problem deep
thought, and not only as it applied to food.
Ironically, their orders had become very
wealthy thanks to the generosity of pious
Francis
of Assisi
by Giotto
laypeople, with libraries full of books, and
buildings in which to live and work. But
they argued that these things did not belong
to the individual friars, they belonged to
the church, and the mendicants were just
using them. Therefore, to respond to crit-
ics such as Pope John, Franciscans and their
allies had to work out a sophisticated
account of the difference between mere use
and actual ownership.
The distinction is actually rather plausi-
ble. You might be reading this magazine
without owning the copy you’re perusing.
Perhaps you’re at a bookshop and haven’t
yet paid for it, or perhaps you borrowed it
from a friend. Although you are using the
magazine, you do not own it, as shown by
the fact that you have no legal rights over
it. If someone steals the magazine you’ve
borrowed, it will be its true owner and not
you who has legal recourse against the thief.
On behalf of the mendicants, the anti-
papal polemicist Marsilius of Padua argued
that one can only take ownership of some-
IMAGE BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON
thing on a voluntary basis. When some-
thing is transferred into your possession,
you can decline to take ownership, so that
the original possessor can demand it back
at any time. This applies even to goods that
are destroyed in the process of using them,
such as food. The generous noblewoman
who allows a friar to eat the bread she has
donated continues to own the bread even
as it is being consumed. Or, if she volun-
tarily gives up her rights over the bread,
then the bread belongs to no-one. The
mendicants’ opponents found this absurd,
but Marsilius could point to a precedent in
Roman law. Antique jurists had developed
the idea of a res nullius – something owned
by no-one. Marsilius gave the example of a
fish in the sea, which belongs to no-one. If
a mendicant catches it but voluntarily
declines to own it, so that he acquires no
legal right over it, it keeps on belonging to
no-one even as the friar grills and eats it.
With arguments like these, Marsilius
and other theorists of voluntary poverty,
such as Peter Olivi and William of
Ockham, articulated a right of ownership
precisely in order to deny that the men-
dicants were exercising such a right. After
all, in the normal case, people do consent
to own what is given to them, or what
they purchase, and when they do so they
acquire a special right over these things.
Not only a right of use, since that could
be present even without ownership –
everyone uses the air they breathe, but
no one owns the air. Rather, this is a new
kind of right that imposes obligations on
other people. If you own bread, I can’t
just eat it without your permission, as I
legally could if you were a mendicant who
denied that it is his property. We might
say, then, that property ownership is a
right that was discovered precisely in the
process of dis-owning it.
© PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2017
Peter Adamson is the author of A History of
Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1, 2
& 3, available from OUP. They’re based on
his popular History of Philosophy podcast.
 Moral Certainty
Toni Vogel Carey connects the dots.

T
he quaint-sounding term ‘moral certainty’ dates to me that we may believe, by a highly probable guess, that in the
back to c.1400. The Oxford English Dictionary void all speeds would be entirely equal.”
defines it as “a degree of probability so great as to
admit of no reasonable doubt.” In the seventeenth Galileo’s methodological continuum has been called the first
century it became an important term in the law; according to a principle of relativity. In a thought experiment in 1632, Galileo
commentator in 1677 it meant “such a certainty as may war- realized that a sailor working below deck on a windowless ship
rant the judge to proceed to the sentence of death against the traveling on a perfectly smooth sea would not be able to tell
indicted party.” By the eighteenth century ‘moral certainty’ had whether the ship was moving or stationary. And by similar rea-
become interchangeable with ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ not soning, he suggested, it would make no difference to our expe-
only in the law, but also in philosophy and polite conversation rience whether the Sun revolves around the Earth or the Earth
– even in religion, where it was argued into the nineteenth cen- revolves around it. This in itself didn’t prove that the Earth
tury that the truth of Christianity could be proven “beyond a ‘moves’, but it made the idea less counterintuitive, just as watch-
reasonable doubt” (see p.31 of Barbara Shapiro’s paper refer- ing ships disappear over the horizon had made it less counter-
enced at the end). intuitive that the Earth might be round rather than flat.
Of course, if you’re not sure whether guilt has been estab-
lished beyond a reasonable doubt, it might not help much to
Beneath decks on a
ask whether it has been established to a moral certainty. Then calm sea, could you
again, it might, for the two phrases have somewhat different tell whether you are
connotations. One goes to the idea of external, objective proof, in motion or at rest?
the other to the subjective question whether one feels able in
good conscience to convict and sentence a fellow human being.
DNA evidence today is capable of satisfying both criteria; but
of course this is a relatively recent development, and I’m get-
ting way ahead of myself.
We speak of a scientific revolution in the seventeenth cen-
tury largely because of a paradigm shift from qualitative to quan-
titative thinking. Aristotle had understood science as the study
of qualitative causes, and this idea became set in stone for some
2,000 years until Galileo declared in 1623 – in a remark so famil-
iar it’s in Bartlett’s – that the universe is written in the ‘language’
of mathematics, without which we cannot understand a single
‘word’ of it.
Another difference was that Aristotle and the scholastics had
seen the world in terms of either-or dichotomies: true or false,
hot or cold, motion or rest. By contrast, Galileo saw rest not as
the opposite of motion, but as the lowest degree of slowness (a
speed of zero). His idea of a scientific law was a mathematically
ordered continuum leading to an ideal limit-case, something
we never expect to be reached. Aristotle defined science in terms
of what occurs “always” or “for the most part” (Metaphysics
1027a20); Galileo’s view was that it deals with what occurs at
the ideal limit, and so never (Carey 2012). In his last work Two
New Sciences (1638), he gave this account of his law of falling
bodies (1974, p.76):

“If we find in fact that moveables of different weight differ less and
less in speed as they are situated in more and more yielding medi-
ums: and that finally, despite extreme differences in weight, their
diversity of speed in the most tenuous medium of all (though not
void) is found to be very small and almost unobservable, then it seems

February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 25

 Galileo wasn’t saved from the Inquisition by the fact that he
did not introduce the idea of a heliocentric universe, but merely
supported Copernicus, who did. Needless to say, however,
Copernicus and Galileo prevailed; and so did the method of
approximation to an ideal limit. Robert Boyle (1627-91), who
studied in Italy during Galileo’s lifetime, built his ideal gas law
on the concept of a methodological continuum. And another
who abandoned either/or opposites for “a world of continua,”
Lorraine Daston writes in Classical Probability in the Enlighten-
ment, was Jakob Bernoulli (1655-1705). He introduced the idea
of degrees of probability from zero to one, “a graduated spec-
trum of belief...from total ignorance or uncertainty to firm con-
viction or ‘moral’ certainty.” Among other things, this helped
to “bridge the chasm between the absolute doubt of the skep-
tics and the dogmatic certainty of the scholastics.”
Probabilities could be combined to increase the degree of
certainty. Testimony by two or more witnesses was more con-
vincing and provided greater certainty than the same testimony
by a single witness. Boyle spoke of a “concurrence of probabil-
ities” that “mount to a moral certainty” (Shapiro p.30). In eigh-
teenth-century America, James Wilson, a signer of the Decla-
ration of Independence and the Constitution, and an early Jus-
tice of the Supreme Court, spoke of a continuum of evidence
rising by “insensible gradation, from possible to probable and
from probable to the highest degree of moral certainty.”
(Shapiro p.47)
If probability was important in the law, it was essential to the
insurance industry. In 1777 Buffon set moral certainty equal to
a probability of 0.9999; and reckoning from existing mortality
tables, he pronounced it a moral certainty that a healthy 56-
year-old man would survive the next 24 hours. Adam Smith
remarked in Wealth of Nations (1776) (I.x.b.27), “Adventure upon
all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the
greater the number of your tickets the nearer you approach to
this certainty.” In London, however, you could buy insurance
against almost anything, even “losing at the lottery.” (Daston
pages 77, 164, 207, 348) Quantification had its virtues; but one
effect of rendering moral certainty mathematical was to de-
moralize it (Hankins p.630).
Simplicity and Moral Certainty
Philosophers and theoretical scientists alike have historically
placed a high value on simplicity, or explanatory parsimony.
Thales reduced everything to water, Heraclitus to fire – and
flux. Duns Scotus and William of Occam codified this in the
scholastic principle known as Occam’s Razor: “Plurality is not
to be posited without necessity”; or, “What can be done with
fewer would in vain be done with more.”
Occam’s Razor resurfaced in modern science as Newton’s
first Rule of Reasoning in his Principia of 1687:
“We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are
both true and sufficient to explain the appearances. To this purpose
the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is
in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and
affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.”
26 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
Newton was not known for generosity in crediting others (I
dished the dirt on Newton in Philosophy Now Issue 88). But he
cites Galileo numerous times in the Principia, understandably,
since he relied heavily on the Galilean continuum in working
out his laws of motion, and in uniting such diverse phenomena
as the revolution of the planets, the tides, and the fall of an apple
under the single principle of gravitation.
You may not have heard of Dugald Stewart, the last of the
constellation of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers who included
David Hume and Adam Smith; but few philosophers were more
highly regarded in the first half of the nineteenth century. In
1820 former President John Adams wrote to former President
Thomas Jefferson: “I think Dugald... has searched deeper and
reasoned more correctly than Aristotle, Descartes, Locke,
Berkeley, Hume...” (Adams-Jefferson Letters, pp.560-1). I men-
tion Stewart here because he connected the dots from explana-
tory parsimony to probability to moral certainty:
“The probability of a hypothesis increases in proportion to the
number of phenomena for which it accounts, and to the simplicity of
the theory by which it explains them; and…in some instances, this prob-
ability may amount to a moral certainty.” (Works 1829, 2: 299-300;
italics original.)
Graphing
Squared paper had been used since the seventeenth century for
designing ships. But not until well into the eighteenth was it
used for plotting data, and the term ‘graph’ was coined only in
1878 (Hankins pages 605 and 608). It was mainly the astronomer
and polymath scientist John Herschel (son of William Herschel,
who discovered the planet Uranus in 1781) who put this method
on the map. And as late as 1833 squared paper was still so new
that Herschel took pains to write out minute instructions how
to construct it. He used it for calculating the orbits of double
stars, which (unlike objects in your rear-view mirror) tend to
be farther away from each other than they appear. In effect he
had to find “the best approximation of the orbit from very poor
data” (p.609). He solved this problem by recording the points
he observed, and drawing a simplifying curve through as many
points as possible. He called his method ‘graphical’ (p.608).
Herschel’s friend and fellow scientist William Whewell called
it the ‘method of curves,’ and used it himself to study the tides.
By correcting for errors of observation and “random fluctua-
tions caused by wind, barometric pressure, and the like,”
Whewell found that the method of curves provided a result
“more true than the individual facts themselves.” Herschel pro-
nounced it “a conviction approaching a moral certainty” that the
resultant ellipse is “close to the correct orbit” – good enough to
consider the risk of error “more or less infinitesimal,” something
“we make up our minds to disregard” (pages 618 and 630-1).
Graphing may at first seem like a simple mechanical proce-
dure. But two observers may plot the same dots and yet not con-
nect them by the same curve; so graphing falls somewhere
“between observation and theory.” Beyond a mere “sum of the
particulars” (the dots), it involves “a subjective leap dependent
on judgment.” Either you “see the law or you do not.” (Hankins
pages 621-2, 625, and 633)
 Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Phi-
losophy (1830) is said to be the first original book on scientific
method to appear since Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum of
1620 had helped launch the Scientific Revolution. Among other
things, Herschel refers here to “that general law which seems
to pervade all nature – the law... of continuity.” Even something
“generally regarded the most opaque in nature,” he says, is “pos-
sessed of some slight degree of transparency.” Thus “opacity is
not a contrary or antagonist... of transparency, but only its extreme
lowest degree.” (section 200; italics original.)
Herschel associated this form of continuity with the idea that
“nature does not act by leaps.” And Charles Darwin, who was
greatly influenced by Herschel’s book, adhered to this same
gradualist principle. Thirty years later, however, Herschel saw
fit to argue against Darwin that homo sapiens couldn’t have
evolved gradually from the lower animals, but must have been
expressly created by God. (I wrote about John Herschel, and
the tortured back-and-forth between him and Darwin on this
point, in Philosophy Now Issue 48.)
Not-So-Moral Certainty
As two recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings (in 1984 and 1994)
attest, the term ‘moral certainty’ is no longer in use, and few
judges or jurors even know what it used to mean (Shapiro 51).
The term went into decline after 1850, when Herschel intro-
duced the term ‘practical certainty’ in place of ‘moral certainty’
in order “to avoid the ambiguities in the word ‘moral’.” (Han-
kins pp.618 and 630-1)
So it is interesting that in 1996 Philosophy Now ran an article
(in Issue 15) by Peter Lloyd called ‘The Dangers of Moral Cer-
tainty’. What Lloyd meant by moral certainty, though, had little
to do with probability, or graphing, or a continuum ending in
an ideal limit. What he meant was certainty about morals. He
drew a contrast, in fact, between this ‘dangerous’ kind of moral
certainty and the ‘public certainty’ available in the sciences,
which are ‘open to all comers’ with the time and resources to
repeat the relevant experiments and see for themselves.
REFERENCES
• ‘Always or Never: Two Approaches to Ceteris Paribus’, Erkenntnis
77, Toni Vogel Carey, 2012
• Two New Sciences, Galileo Galilei,1638 translation. S. Drake, 1974
• ‘A “Large and Graceful Sinuosity”: John Herschel’s Graphical
Method’, Isis 97, Thomas L.Hankins, 2006
• ‘The Conflict between Aristotelian and Galilean Modes of
Thought in Contemporary Psychology’, Journal of General
Psychology 5, Kurt Lewin, 1931
• Principia Mathematica, Sir Isaac Newton, 1687, 1726, translation,
A. Motte, 1995
• ‘“Beyond Reasonable Doubt”: The Neglected Eighteenth-Century
Context’, Law and Humanities 8, Barbara Shapiro, 2014
The motto of the Royal Society of London, which played a
crucial role in the Scientific Revolution, was Nullius in verba,
meaning, “Take no one’s word for it.” So Lloyd’s point has long
been a truism. But is it true? How many will ever hear the sound
of two black holes colliding, the little ‘chirp’ that recently con-
firmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity? For that matter,
how many can even understand Newton’s Principia or Einstein’s
general relativity theory, much less work out the laws of grav-
ity and relativity on their own?
Nor is this the only problem with the idea that scientific cer-
tainty is available to all, or even most. As we saw with the method
of graphing, different people look at the same thing and see it
differently. This goes to Thomas Kuhn’s famous notion of par-
adigm shifts. The Aristotelians looked at a swinging body, Kuhn
says in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970, p.119), and
saw something “falling with difficulty;” Galileo looked at it and
saw a pendulum, which led him to the laws of falling bodies and
motion along an inclined plane.
Another problem with Lloyd’s thesis is that even when knowl-
edge has been available for centuries, philosophers don’t nec-
essarily get the message. Take the difference between Aristo-
tle’s qualitative and Galileo’s quantitative methods. During the
1960s, in addition to Kuhn’s idea of revolutionary paradigm
shifts, philosophers of science were trying to find workable
analyses of such notions as law-likeness, disposition and ten-
dency, and dealing with the intractable ceteris paribus (‘other
things being equal’) clause. Nobody seemed to realize that
Galileo had long ago provided a concept of lawlikeness that
allows us to bypass and ignore these ‘other things’. One who
did see this clearly was Kurt Lewin, the ‘father’ of social psy-
chology. He wrote in 1931 that Galileo had replaced “dichoto-
mous classifications [like] the distinction between lawful and
chance events [with] continuous gradations,” so that “whether
the event described by the law occurs rarely or often has noth-
ing to do with the law. Indeed, in a certain sense, the law refers
only to cases that are never realized, or only approximately real-
ized, in the actual course of events.” Lewin thought the field of
psychology in 1931 was facing many of the “theoretical diffi-
culties [that had] culminated in the conquest over Aristotelian
ways of thinking in physics” in the seventeenth century (1931,
pp.144-6 & 152-3)
Even though the laws of ideal gases in physics, of perfect
speakers and hearers in linguistics, and of perfect competition
in economics, are well known to most college-educated people
today, in psychology and philosophy the method of successive
approximation is still seen through a glass darkly, if at all. In
these two fields, not much seems to have changed since 1931,
or even since the seventeenth century. Moral certainty came
into use, caught on, and then went out of vogue. The method
of approximation that supported it scientifically in the work of
Galileo, Boyle, Bernoulli and others came and stayed, but has
yet to fully catch on. I wouldn’t call that progress.
© DR TONI VOGEL CAREY 2017
Toni Vogel Carey has been a regular contributor to Philosophy Now
since 2002, and serves on its US advisory board. She is an indepen-
dent scholar who also publishes in scholarly journals, gives papers at
scholarly conferences (Oxford, Sorbonne, Princeton, Aberdeen, Toronto,
Rotterdam ...), and is concurrently at work on three books.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 27
“Will the real
Mr Bowie
please stand up?”
Stefán Snævarr explores Derek Parfit’s ideas about
the self, and how they might apply to the complex (of)
personalities of David Bowie.
D
avid Bowie (1947-2016) was a man of many faces,
even many selves. He was baptized David Robert
Jones, but changed his name and his self by becom-
ing David Bowie. Then Bowie adopted the personas
of Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke, and
so on. In his song ‘D.J.’ from the album Lodger, Bowie sings “I
am a D.J., I am what I play.” Contemplating Bowie’s life raises
a number of philosophical questions concerning the self. Are
we what we do, as he hints at in ‘D.J.’ and as Jean-Paul Sartre
said explicitly? Can we be the authors of our selves, as Friedrich
Nietzsche and Michel Foucault maintained? Did David Jones
truly recreate himself as David Bowie? Did David Bowie in his
turn recreate himself as Ziggy Stardust? And do Aladdin Sane’s
multiple personalities include those of Bowie, Ziggy and the
elusive Mr Jones? Will the real Mr Jones please stand up?
In this article, I will focus on Oxford philosophy professor
Derek Parfit’s analysis of the self in his book Reasons and Per-
sons (1984). I’ll begin by giving a short explanation of his
approach, then proceed to critique it. I’ll put forth some criti-
cal arguments of my own, then discuss criticisms of Parfit made
by Paul Ricœur and Marya Schechtman criticisms of Parfit.
Parfit’s Continuity
Born in 1942, Parfit, who died on New Year’s Day, was a British
philosopher of the same generation as Bowie. They evidently
shared an interest in the questions of selves and identities.
In Reasons and Persons, Parfit argues that it isn’t true that every
human individual must possess one and only one self which per-
sists through his or her (adult?) life-time. He also tries to show
that the concept of personal identity is empty. To vindicate these
theories, he conducts some mind-blowing thought experiments
of the science fiction kind. Let’s take a look at Parfit’s ‘My Divi-
sion’ thought experiment (pp.253-266). Suppose I am one of
identical triplets. My brain is surgically removed and divided
into two halves. Each half is transplanted into each of my broth-
ers, who have had their own brains removed to make room for
mine. Both the resulting persons remembers my life, has my
personality, is psychologically continuous with me, and believes
that he is me. Now, what has happened to the ‘real’ me?
There are only four possibilities:
1) I do not survive;
2) I survive as one of the two people;
3) I survive as the other person;
4) I survive as both.
28 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
Derek Parfit
RIP
The objection to 1) is that I would survive if just one half of
my brain had been successfully transplanted. People are known
to have survived even though half of their brains were destroyed.
The last possibility is not a coherent option, since the logic of
identity – that a thing is itself and not two things – excludes the
possibility of there being two things that are both identical with
one original thing, me. By the same token, it does not really make
sense to say that either 2) or 3) are true, since both surviving broth-
ers are exactly like me – are me for all intents and purposes.
Parfit argues that this thought experiment and its possibil-
ities show that identity in the logical sense is not what matters
for the self. What matters here is psychological continuity: if the
resulting person is sufficiently strongly psychologically con-
nected to me as I was before the transplantation, then it makes
sense to say that the resulting person is me: not necessarily that
the resulting person is identical with me, rather that there are
enough overlapping psychological facts about me and that later
person to say that they’re continuous with me. We might for
instance share a host of memories. More precisely, for psycho-
logical continuity, there must be what Parfit calls ‘strong con-
nectedness’ between the current me and a past person. He says
we have a case of strong connectedness when at least half the
number of psychological attributes that hold at any give time
for a given individual are maintained at a later time. This would
be true for someone when asleep and when he wakes, for instance.
Continuous personal identity over a lifetime is then defined in
terms of overlapping chains of strong connectedness. Moreover,
a person at a given time is either strongly connected to a per-
son who existed earlier, or is not. There is no middle ground.
Furthermore, personal identity is an all-or-nothing relation:
either Adam and Brian are the same person, or they are not.
Let us assume then that Adam’s brain-halves are transplanted
into the bodies of Brian and Charlie. Then, given psychologi-
cal continuity, both Brian and Charlie are identical with Adam.
However, Brian and Charlie are not identical with each other.
Doesn’t the non-identicalness of Brian and Charlie create prob-
lems for the psychological continuity view? Parfit tries to avoid
the problem by modifying the definition of identity. He main-
tains that personal identity is constituted by non-branching psy-
chological continuity, such that Adam is the same person as Brian
only if Adam is psychologically continuous with Brian and nobody
else. In other words, if Adam is psychologically continuous with
both Brian and Charlie, and Brian and Charlie are distinct, then
Adam is not the same person as either Brian or Charlie.
 To explain his ideas, Parfit uses clubs as an analogy to selves.
Let’s assume that a certain club disbands, but later a few of its
members reconvene. Is it the same club? The question has no
definitive answer. Since a club’s being that club depends on more
basic facts, concerning for instance the activities of its members,
there is no fact of the matter about whether it is the same club.
In other words, the question of identity is not the main question
here. As long as we know all the facts about who is meeting,
where, when and why, we know everything that we need to know
about the club. If we still felt that there must be some deep fact
that determined club identity, then we would be disturbed by
our inability to give a clear-cut answer to the question. Parfit’s
point is that the identity of persons is similar to the identity of
clubs, and cannot have a definitive, clear-cut answer. In the trans-
plantation case, he says that the original person survives as both
of the resulting persons, but is identical to neither.
Multiplying The Self
Parfit maintains not only that it is logically possibly that we can
change selves during our lifetime, but also that it’s logically pos-
sible that people can have simultaneous multiple selves (if it
makes sense on his view to say that we have selves). So David
Jones could have changed self from David Bowie to Ziggy Star-
dust; and Ziggy Stardust could have had the self of both David
Jones and David Bowie at the same time.
Parfit further says that it is logically possible not only that
selves can divide, but that two selves can merge into one – if, for
instance, two halves from different brains were fused into one
brain. Note however the caveat about logical, that is, theoretical,
possibility. He is not saying that this could happen in the real
world. Despite this, he notes that there have been split-brain cases
where people report that another person is inside their head with
them, and these erstwhile split-brain individuals do act as if they
were two persons. Perhaps Aladdin Sane was such a split person-
ality. In the Seventies TV documentary/interview, Cracked Actor,
Mr Bowie said that Mr Sane had many personalities.
Parfit’s view of the changing self has both moral and existen-
tial ramifications. It means we should not worry too much about
the future, because our current selves will not be around then.
Similarily, we should not brood about past mistakes, as they
A line of various Bowies, from various album covers
were made by other selves. It also means the giving-up of ego-
ism, not just because there is no such thing as our continuous
ego, but also because we have no more reason to care more
about our future selves than about the selves of other people
now or later. As Parfit emphasizes (pp.281-282), this is in accor-
dance with Zen Buddhist views. Parfit approvingly discusses the
Buddhist view that the self is in some ways a fiction, and that
understanding this is the way to enlightenment.
Surgical Complications
One might reasonably ask whether such wildly speculative exam-
ples as Parfit’s My Division thought experiment can have any
bearing on anything. What exactly is proven by their use? What
if brain-transplantation and teleportation turn out to be practi-
cal impossibilities? Wouldn’t that undercut his arguments? Also,
such examples as Parfit uses can only be used to generate theo-
ries given certain intuitions. However, most of us have the intu-
ition that we have a continuous identity and one self. So why
should Parfit privilege his intuitions due his outlandish exam-
ples over the intuition most people have that they possess con-
tinuous identity and one self?
Furthermore, wasn’t David Bowie’s creation of different char-
acters just a playing with ideas? Wasn’t David himself simply
someone with one self – that of David Jones? To be sure, he said
in the Cracked Actor interview that there are moments when he’s
not quite sure whether he’s himself or one of his creations; but
that might just have been some kind of delusion or joke. Per-
haps it was only wishful thinking or poetic exaggeration when
he sang “Gonna have to be a different man” (from the song
‘Changes’ on the album Hunky Dory). Maybe we are simply
stuck with one given identity and one self, even if we might sin-
cerely wish to be different, to change our identities and selves.
Be that as it may, Parfit’s conclusion to the My Division
thought experiment makes sense on a radically materialist view.
This is the view that matter, its configurations and movements,
is all there is. If the self is but a function of material configura-
tions, then copying and dividing these configurations, and by
implication dividing the self, is surely logically possible. But
suppose instead that the self is a mental entity, albeit tied to the
body through the brain. If that’s the case, then the My Division
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 29
thought experiment would not necessarily tell us anything about
the nature of the self.
I do not exclude the possibility of radical materialism being
true. The trouble is that we do not have any conclusive evi-
dence in favour of this idea. Indeed, does it make sense to look
for empirical evidence supporting radical materialism? If ‘Yes’,
what kind of evidence would we be talking about? And even if
that question could be usefully answered, empirical evidence is
fallible, so we cannot look for conclusive empirical evidence in
favour of radical materialism.
What about analytical (that is, purely theoretical) necessi-
ties? The statement ‘the only thing that exists is matter’ is def-
initely not an analytically true statement – that is, it is not true
simply in virtue of its meaning, as the statement ‘two plus two
equals four’ is – since it can be negated without logical incon-
sistency: ‘It is not true that only matter exists’ is also a mean-
ingful statement. Of course, this might be an over-simplifica-
tion, and to show that materialism is theoretically necessary we
might need a complex analysis of the Parfitian kind. However,
the onus is on those who maintain that such an analysis is pos-
sible to demonstrate the theoretical necessity of materialism.
Maybe the theory that matter is all there is can be justified
as an inference to the best explanation of our experience of the
world, from the fact that the continuity of most of our sense-
impressions seems to be rooted in the mind-independent exis-
tence of material objects? Say the cheese in the larder has dis-
appeared. Last night scratching sounds were heard from the
larder. There have also been sightings of mice recently. The
inference to the best explanation here, given this evidence, is
that mice ate the cheese. Similarily, I repeatedly see some
colours, a given shape, and experience a certain substantiality,
when I am using my kettle. The best explanation of the stabil-
ity of these sense-impressions may be that they stem from a
concrete, stable, material object – the kettle that generates them.
(See Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduc-
tion, pp.29-33, 2002.) However, even if postulating the exis-
tence of material objects is the best explanation of the stability
of our sense-impressions, it does not follow that radical mate-
rialism can be vindicated by this, as there may be minds as well
as matter. Again, the burden of proof is on whomever claims
materialism follows from this. The upshot is that we do not
30 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
have any compelling reasons to take a radical materialist inter-
pretation of the My Division example, which would make its
conclusions viable.
Nevertheless, there might be a viable version of the My Divi-
sion example. If, as Parfit assumes, psychological continuity, not
bodily (that is, brain) continuity, is what matters for personal con-
tinuity, then we could think the self is an immaterial psychologi-
cal entity, and perhaps this entity could divide in a similar way to
bodies without any material processes being involved.
One problem is that we can easily imagine how material con-
figurations can divide, but can we fathom the division of some-
thing mental? Further, we have hardly any empirical evidence
in favour of the contention that there are mental entities. In
addition, no logically necessary truths are involved in positing
their existence, since statements such as ‘There are mental enti-
ties distinct from material entities’ can be coherently contra-
dicted too: ‘There are no mental entities distinct from material
entities’ is also a meaningful statement.
Further Divisions Over My Division
The late French philosopher Paul Ricœur quite correctly said
that Parfit just assumes without argument that the self should
be analysed as an isolated phenomenon which might or might
not exist. Questions such as ‘Could the self be essentially a social
phenomenon?’ are not even raised by Parfit. For instance, maybe
Bowie’s self was irreducibly part of the society and culture in
which he acted. But maybe the self is irreducibly a social phe-
nomenon (see Ricœur’s Oneself as Another, pp.130-139, 1992).
In that case Parfit would be dead wrong.
Parfit’s arguments concerning strong connectedness are also
not impressive. How does one measure strong connectedness
or count psychological attributes? If there are unclear bound-
aries between two or more, how should they be counted? Why
do half of the connections have to hold, as he claimed, rather
than 75%, or 45%? This smacks of arbitrariness, as American
philosopher Marya Schechtman indeed points out in The Con-
stitution of Selves (pp.43-44, 1996). There she asks us to imag-
ine that her present person-stage is connected to a previous one
by exactly half the connections that hold every day in the lives
of nearly every person. If there are overlapping chains of such
connectedness going back to the person-stage who was there
ten minutes ago, then she’s the same person she was ten min-
utes ago. Now let us assume that in the next moment one con-
nection is lost, without a new one being added. On Parfit’s view,
there is no longer strong connectness between the present per-
son-stage of Marya Schechtman and the one of ten minutes
ago. But it also means that Marya Schechtman, who was sitting
here for the previous ten minutes, has vanished! There’s some-
thing deeply counterintuitive about this. It’s also inconsistent,
since because she has only lost some connections with who she
was a few moments ago, she also is the same person as she was
a few moments ago!
The same counterintuitiveness holds for Parfit’s ‘non-branch-
ing’ concept. Schechtman points out that it flies in the face of
common sense to believe that Adam and Brian might be the
same person if Charlie does not exist, but not the same person
if Charlie does exist, despite no other facts about Adam and
Brian being altered by the fact of Charlie’s existence.
For these and various other reasons, Schechtman wants to
replace Parfit’s psychological continuity view with a theory that
focuses on what kind of characteristics a given self has. So instead
of saying that we know who Adam is if and only if we know there
is non-branching psychological continuity between Adam at one
time, and Adam later, we say that we can recognise Adam again
later because we know the characteristics Adam has. (To be sure,
re-identification is of great importance when we’re trying to
work out whether Ziggy Stardust is the same person as David
Bowie.) Schechtman says the answers to such questions largely
concern not psychological but corporeal continuity: we recog-
nise bodies before we recognise minds. The psychological dimen-
sion is of greater importance when we have the sort of identity
crises that lead us to ask “Who am I, really?” In such contexts
we focus on ourselves as subjects and refer to the psychological
characteristics we do or don’t possess.
Identification via character refers to the set of personality
traits that each person has which make her the person she is.
To understand this identity, one must know not only which
characteristics form part of a person’s history, but the role of
these characteristics in that history. One must also know which
of the characteristics are central to the person – which of them
she regards as part of her true identity – and which not. But
what does it mean to say that some particular characteristics
are those of a given person – for instance, what characteristics
are really hers, and not, say, the result of brainwashing, or even
other external influences, such as education? How can we tell
which of her actions, thoughts and experiences are really in
character, and which are less so, or even not so? What thoughts
and character traits really do belong to her? The question of
what traits are mine seems important, perhaps because by them
we can tell which actions I’m really responsible for.
There certainly was corporeal continuity between David
Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, and Aladdin Sane; but to complicate mat-
ters, one of Bowie’s central psychological characteristics was his
unique imagination, manifest in, among other things, his ability
to invent characters and put on new personas.
Conclusion
Parfit maintains that it is not logically necessary that each indi-
vidual has one given self: it is not unthinkable that more than
one self can inhabit the same body, that selves are divisible, or
that selves can merge, and that in some sense, the self is an illu-
sion. To make his case he uses scenarios such as My Division.
But he has not succeeded in showing that the example is viable,
let alone that it yields necessary conclusions. His thinking seems
to presuppose materialism, and materialism can hardly be proven
to be true, either logically or empirically. His arguments could
perhaps be given a dualist twist, but proving dualism is just as
difficult as proving materialism. To make matters worse, Parfit
does not show that his speculative science fiction examples have
any bearing for the truth of real-world matters of the self. Why
should our intuition that we possess one self be less reliable
than his intuitions based on his far-fetched examples? Further-
more, as Ricœur points out, Parfit ignores the possibility of the
self being essentially social; and Schechtman puts forth force-
ful arguments against Parfit’s view that a self is really only a case
of psychological continuity, and that the identities do not mat-
ter. Knowing a self is not only a matter of physical reidentifi-
cation, but also of knowing its characteristics.
It certainly does matter to any Bowie fan whether or not Mr
Stardust was identical with The Thin White Duke.
© PROF. STEFÁN SNÆVARR 2017
Stefán Snævarr is Professor of Philosophy at the Inland Norway
University of Applied Sciences.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 31
The Virtue of Shared Experience
David Rönnegard shares his experience with us.

Y
ears ago I was attending a conference in Honolulu
when one morning on Waikiki Beach I experienced
the most beautiful sunrise. Alone. It was a stunning
sight, and it made me feel terrible. How could this
be? How could a lack of companionship transform an other-
wise beautiful event into a depressing experience?
As we travel through life we learn more about ourselves and
who we are. These insights come to us in bursts as we enjoy
and cope with life’s highs and lows. Particular events force us
to question and answer who we are. But such understanding
doesn’t exist in a relational vacuum. We understand ourselves
in part by recognizing how we are similar and different to oth-
ers. The sad sunrise made me realize my deep need for shared
experiences, but it has just dawned on me that we are not all
like this. Some people seem perfectly fine on their own, while
others need company to accentuate an event, or perhaps to even
enjoy it at all. Is this just a difference of character traits among
people, or is one disposition better than the other? At first sight
it would appear that an inability to be satisfied with one’s own
experiences is quite an existential handicap.
Recent psychological research suggests that shared experi-
ences are amplified – both the good and the bad. For example,
the sweetness or bitterness of a piece of chocolate is intensified
when shared and compared with someone else. But such research
is narrow in scope and masks both differences in types of expe-
riences as well as individual differences in the magnitude of
siveness that I am primarily thinking about, but rather the char-
acter of shared vs solitary experiences. Are my experiences not
good enough on their own?
I have previously written in Philosophy Now (‘Atheist in a Fox-
hole’, ‘The Party Without Me’) that the meaning of life, as I see
it, resides with our shared experiences. Our loved ones are the
objects of our affection as well as partners on life’s journey. In a
certain sense, a life fully lived is in part lived through others. I
have argued that this is what we are left with if we reject an
appeal to a higher power to give our lives meaning. But perhaps
I might be overstating my case if there is a wide range of psy-
chological dispositions towards shared experiences.
Indeed, there is a broad spectrum of experiences that people
find valuable and which give their lives meaning. A brisk walk
through an enchanting forest, the smile on your friend’s face, pride
on your graduation day. Clearly not all valuable experiences need
to be shared, although many by their very nature do. But irre-
spective of what we value, the experience gets amplified if it is
shared, albeit at different intensities. As such, sharing experiences
makes them more significant, makes them more meaningful.
Nevertheless, the sharing of an experience is not only about
amplification. Many of our most valuable moments are special pre-
PHOTOS © BROCK ROSEBERRY 2007

amplification. Can such variances be significant enough to be

pathological? Is there something wrong with me?
The idea that we as a species are inherently social creatures
will not surprise anyone. If we step back for a moment and put
on our anthropological glasses, we can on a daily basis observe
our fellow humans gazing at their televisions for hours bewitched
by other humans interacting. This curious phenomenon is surely
rooted in our own desire for interaction and a sense of belong-
ing. It is no coincidence that social shunning has long been
likened to a death penalty. But it is not the yearning for inclu-

32 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017


cisely because they are shared experiences. The moment you got
engaged; refurbishing an old boat with your son; getting caught
horsing around with your best friend. These experiences assume
their significance in the act of sharing. And this highlights that it
isn’t sufficient for an event to be shared with just anyone to make it
significant. Refurbishing a boat with a colleague is just a job. Get-
ting caught horsing around with a stranger is just embarrassing.
Who we share an experience with can be central to its meaning.
So what’s so great about shared experiences? Besides being
some of our most memorable moments, and also amplifying
our experiences, shared experiences have the virtue that they
continue to be shared. For one thing, sharing allows the expe-
rience to be relived more vividly through mutual recollection
and the telling of anecdotes. And for someone like myself, whose
memory leaves a little something to be desired, it also serves
the function of actual recollection. Sharing an experience affirms
the reality of what is being witnessed. If I’ve had an experience
but no one was there to share it, did it happen? The character
of the experience, its sweetness or bitterness, is validated by
another’s similar perception.
As an event is recollected over time, the totality of a shared
experience can be distinguished from the initial experience. Bit-
ter chocolate might taste more bitter when shared, getting busted
with your friend might be a nuisance in the moment; but the
lasting impression is sweeter by having been through it with
someone else. As such a shared experience need not only be
viewed in terms of circumscribed moments in time, but may
also be viewed more broadly. Together with the select few (or
special someone) who accompany us through life, there is a
sense that more than you alone are bearing witness to your exis-
tence. By sharing our experiences there is someone other than
ourselves who is aware of the sum total of our journey.
This temporal dimension of shared experiences also has the
virtue of being one of the few ways we can become immortal.
Because a shared experience doesn’t belong to us alone, it has the
quality of living on once we are gone. By living on in the memo-
ries of those we leave behind, we do not get a new lease on life,
but in a certain sense, the lease on the life we have had gets extended.
So is there something wrong with me, or you? Clearly being
dependent on others to heighten our experiences and make
them more meaningful makes us psychologically vulnerable.
Our state of mind is not within our sole control, but contingent
on being accompanied.
There are ways of mitigating this vulnerability. For exam-
ple, meditation techniques can allow us to find contentment in
our own headspace. Finding peace of mind in solitude can help
us be less exposed to the contingencies of life. But such solitary
solace surely cannot itself be what fundamentally brings our
lives meaning.
If our lives have meaning it resides with us, but not necessarily
as isolated islands of self-contentment. Rather, validation is pro-
vided by our companions. Our most memorable moments, the
terrific and the tragic, are shared. The need to share experiences
makes us vulnerable, but it might also be the meaning of life.
© DR DAVID RÖNNEGARD 2017
David Rönnegard has a PhD in Philosophy from the London School
of Economics, and is a researcher and teacher in corporate social respon-
sibility in Stockholm.
Philosophical Haiku
THOMAS PAINE
(1737-1809)
Just revolution:
Common sense proscribes despots
Nature prescribes rights.
.
T
homas Paine was exactly the sort of revolution-making rights-
loving do-gooder that Edmund Burke found tiresome. But lots of
other people liked him. Paine was born to be a revolutionary –
which was lucky, because there happened to be two jolly good revolu-
tions during his life-time.
With Benjamin Franklin’s help, the British-born Paine emigrated to
the American colonies in 1774 to rouse the rabble to overthrow the
yoke of British oppression. Paine’s book Common Sense (1776)
explained to the still politically-undeveloped Americans why they were
justified in telling King George III to shove off. The book became an all-
time American bestseller. Fellow Founding Father and second Ameri-
can President John Adams even said that without Paine there would’ve
been no revolution (he might’ve added that there’s no revolution with-
out pain!).
Having sorted out the Americans, Paine headed off to France to
take care of the revolution there. In response to Burke’s hostile Reflec-
tions on the Revolution in France (1790), he penned The Rights of Man
(1791), in which he explained how it is that everyone comes to have
lots of rights to lots of things (thereby laying the groundwork for the
‘Me generation’). He claims that human rights come to us from nature
– we’re born with them – and if the sovereign isn’t doing a good job in
protecting our rights and providing us with what we need, one of those
rights says we can get ourselves a new sovereign.
Paine spent most of the 1790s living in France, even being elected
to the revolutionary National Convention. Then the usual story: he joined
the wrong group of revolutionaries, the revolutionary leader Robe-
spierre took a dislike to him, and he was arrested and imprisoned. He
only just managed to keep his head. Robespierre lost his in the mean-
time, effectively saving Paine’s. Paine (possibly) finished writing The
Age of Reason (1794) while in prison.
When not stirring up revolutions, Paine was just your typical humble
corset-maker, which it was his right to be.
© TERENCE GREEN 2017
Terence is a peripatetic (though not Peripatetic) writer, historian and
lecturer. He holds a PhD in the history of political thought from
Columbia University, NYC, and lives with his wife and their dog in
Wellington, NZ. He blogs at hardlysurprised.blogspot.co.nz
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 33
Street Philosopher
Daydreaming In Prague
Seán Moran rambles purposefully about the streets of the Czech city.

W
e can only guess at the lurid
thoughts pulsating through her
mind; and the dog’s owner is
just as mysterious. My photograph taken
on a Prague street gives no reliable access
to the thoughts of the two walkers. In fact,
we don’t always know what we ourselves
think, let alone another human being. As
Sigmund Freud puts it, a person “is not
even master in his own house, but... must
remain content with the veriest scraps of
information about what is going on uncon-
sciously in his own mind” (A General
Introduction to Psychoanalysis, 1920).
Incidentally, Freud is honoured by a
strange statue in Prague, it being the sort
of city where you just don’t know what lies
around the next corner (or in Freud’s case,
hangs by one hand from a long pole over
the street). But if we are not even transpar-
ent to ourselves, what hope have we of
understanding another person?
With non-human animals, such as the
dog in the photograph, our difficulties are
even greater. In his book Mortal Questions
(1979), American thinker Thomas Nagel
asks, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’. We can
just about visualize being a human trapped
in a bat’s body, but that’s not an authentic
bat in all its battiness. It’s less easy to imag-
ine hanging upside down from a church
belfry, eating a moth that you tracked
down by echolocation, then urinating on
the archdeacon, unless it’s a hazy memory
of a drunken initiation ceremony for the
Society of Sonar Engineers. But even if
you can imagine this, the experience is that
of an intoxicated Homo sapiens in a bat cos-
tume, not the genuine schtick. Along simi-
lar lines, Ludwig Wittgenstein claims that
“if a lion could talk, we would not under-
stand him.” (In my daydream, the lion says:
“I don’t understand Wittgenstein either.”)
The point is that the world-views, con- say. Furthermore, we can sometimes figure dream. To help us to rove mentally, we can
cerns and experiences of bats and lions are out what’s on the minds of our fellow also roam physically. The French poet
so far removed from our own that we human beings. But occasionally our Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) invented
would struggle to find common ground thoughts and feelings are so fugitive that the term ‘flâneur’ to describe those who
with them, and having some shared nobody could keep up, not even ourselves. habitually take unhurried, purposeless
assumptions is a prerequisite for meaning- We flit from one topic to the next in an strolls through the city streets.
ful communication. unpredictable way, like a moth dodging a Becoming a flâneur or flâneuse is a way
However, many dog owners claim to bat. of encouraging our minds to wander.
experience a rapport with their pets that Bringing a dog along would probably only
bridges the species gap, so that they do Wandering Aimlessly limit our movements (as well as intruding
know what Lassie is feeling. And Lassie, in One time our minds drift freely over ran- upon our thoughts when she encounters
turn, knows what mood they are in, they dom thoughts and feelings is when we day- another dog with an alluring scent).

34 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017


However, it was apparently once fashion-
able in the Nineteenth Century to amble
through the boulevards and arcades of
Paris with a tortoise on a leash. That seems
to be more the action of a poseur than of a
flâneur, though. Philosophical flâneurs
don’t have to be such dandies: our purpose
is not to be seen, but rather to observe, and
to think, as we saunter around town.
‘Saunter’: now there’s a word with an
interesting etymology. If we are to believe
American writer Henry David Thoreau
(and not many do) it refers to “idle people
who roved about the country… under pre-
tence of going à la Sainte Terre, to the Holy
Land” (On Walking, 1863). Later saunter-
ers like me typically have a camera to hand.
According to Susan Sontag, photography is
“an extension of the eye of the… flâneur...
The photographer is an armed version of
the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking,
cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic
stroller who discovers the city as a land-
scape of voluptuous extremes” (On
Photography, 1973). Armed? Voluptuous?
Cruising? Paging Dr Freud.
Where was I? Ah yes, daydreaming.
In common with the nocturnal version,
daydreaming lets us lose awareness of our
immediate physical surroundings and enter
an internal world of past events and future
possibilities. Some other practices, such as
mindfulness, encourage us to do the oppo-
site: to be fully present and in the moment.
But ‘zoning out’ in a daydream can free up
cognitive resources to tackle a problem
that’s bothering us, or help us to see things
in a new light. We can casually and safely
entertain a few imaginative scenarios to
decide what appeals to us as we indulge in
some flânerie. James Joyce gave the world an
insight into our streams of consciousness in
his 1922 masterpiece Ulysses. The book’s
protagonist, Leopold Bloom, roams around
Dublin over the course of a single day, and
we read about both his outward experiences
and the inner thoughts triggered by his per-
ambulations.
Daydreaming In Particular
Contemporary German philosopher Fabian
Dorsch distinguishes between mind-wan-
dering and ‘focused daydreaming’ (Review of
Philosophy and Psychology, 2015). The differ-
ence between the two is whether or not we
consciously control the topics of our
thoughts. Mind-wandering happens during
a boring lecture, he says: we surrender our-
selves freely to a random stream of con-
sciousness. But focused daydreaming is a lot
more structured, and can involve conscious
Street Philosopher
planning for the future. For example,
before I give a conference talk, I mentally
visualise how it will unfold over time (as
well as hope that it’s engaging enough to
stop the audience from indulging in mind-
wandering). In this case, the focused day-
dreaming is not only voluntary but pur-
poseful too. And it has a narrative arc – a
property of all focused daydreaming. We
might liken it to playing an internal video.
Such mental rehearsal is an important part
of readying ourselves for something that
has a narrative structure: a job interview, a
complicated set of travel arrangements – or
a romantic tryst in Prague.
Dorsch sees daydreaming as a with-
drawal from the sensory world. But a
mind-wandering flâneur becomes a more
focused daydreamer when stimulated by an
image such as the poster in the photo.
Dorsch concedes that episodes of concen-
trated daydreaming can punctuate free-
association mind-wandering. Likewise, a
random stroll around Prague acquires a
more purposeful flavour when something
piques our interest. We might chance
upon a side-street bar, from which the
sounds of a jazz trio drifts. So we go in.
Our attention can flit between the inner
and outer worlds. As flâneurs, we inhabit a
liminal zone: “that space between the phys-
ical and the imaginary” (Bobby Seal,
Psychogeographic Review, 2013).
To some people, such physical and
mental ramblings are merely self-indulgent
unproductive loafing. Aimless wandering,
dreaming of romance and consorting with
jazz musicians, seem to be decadent, use-
less activities. The word ‘loitering’ is
nowadays always used in a disapproving
fashion: an offence against the imperative
of busy productivity. Going absent without
leave to indulge in reverie reduces our
‘time on task’ – our attending to the busi-
ness of the day. But we should dismiss
these pernicious notions. We are, after all,
human beings, not human doings. (We
might also question the description of
players of the smartphone game Pokémon
Go as ‘modern-day flâneurs’: their explo-
rations are too goal-directed to deserve
that label.)
Notwithstanding, aimless meandering
can be productive. Aristotle and the
Classical thinkers who followed him, as well
as the Islamic philosophers al-Kindi and Ibn
Rushd, are described as ‘Peripatetic’
philosophers. This name comes from the
Greek word ‘peripateo’, to walk around.
Admittedly, Aristotle and his companions
kept to familiar paths and avoided the sunny
side of the street. They stayed on the peri-
patos – the covered walkway of the Lyceum
– that shielded the students and their
strolling teacher from the Athenian sun.
But more random peregrinations can be
rewarding too. Charles Dickens walked
miles nightly around the Victorian London
streets, dreaming up the plots and charac-
ters of his books. And Wittgenstein also
ambled about, talking to himself (but not to
lions) in an effort to solve philosophical
problems. He said that he could “only think
clearly in the dark” and had “found the last
pool of darkness in Europe” in Connemara,
Ireland. An Irish company now offers a
‘Ludwig Wittgenstein Walk’ for those who
want to follow in his footsteps.
City Stimulation
The city flâneur has a very different experi-
ence from Wittgenstein on his rural hikes,
though. Urban environments can assault
the senses in ways that would threaten
some, but which others might find stimu-
lating. When discussing city flânerie,
Walter Benjamin (pronounced
‘Benyameen’), the Frankfurt School
philosopher, contrasts Erlebnis with
Erfahrung (Illuminations, 1968). Both
words mean ‘experience’, but the first sig-
nifies a fleeting feeling of alienating sub-
jectivity in response to the city’s sensory
overload, while the second indicates the
more lasting enrichment that the flâneur
can experience with concentrated effort. I
have oversimplified Benjamin’s nuanced
thoughts, but the concept remains that the
physical and mental roving of humans
around the city is sometimes edifying and
restoring for them. We don’t need to be
going anywhere in particular to arrive
somewhere interesting. As J.R.R. Tolkien
puts it in The Lord of the Rings: “not all
those who wander are lost.”
So wandering, both mentally and physi-
cally, can be A Good Thing. The day-
dreamer may experience new insights,
which can be coaxed into our minds during
episodes of flânerie. Who knows where
they can take us? According to Edmund
White in The Flâneur (2008), one who is “a
stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles
without apparent purpose but is secretly
attuned to the history of the streets… is in
covert search of adventure, aesthetic or
erotic.” Lucky Lassie.
© DR SEAN MORAN 2017
Seán Moran is a philosopher in Waterford
Institute of Technology, Ireland, and a founder
of pandisciplinary.net, a global network of
people, ideas and events.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 35
Brief Lives
Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970)
Alistair MacFarlane looks at the possibilities of a logical life.
R
udolf Carnap has a major place in the history of analytic
philosophy. He was entranced by the promise that
Bertrand Russell’s and A.N. Whitehead’s Principia Math-
ematica (1912) seemed to hold out for creating a logical foun-
dation for mathematics, and by extension, philosophy. He was
even more excited by Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External
World (1914), in which Russell called for a reconstruction of all
knowledge on the basis of our sense experiences alone, and
urged a search for the narrowest selection of basic concepts
needed for this purpose. Carnap accepted this immense chal-
lenge ,and produced Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (1928, trans-
lated as The Logical Structure of the World, 1967). His ideas were
enthusiastically taken up by positivist philosophers, and the Auf-
bau is often regarded as the quintessential statement of a posi-
tivistic approach to the philosophy of science. Like Principia
Mathematica, the Aufbau is now considered a heroic failure, but
one that has had a huge impact on philosophy.
Carnap’s second major undertaking, to develop a sound basis
for scientific reasoning, occupied him for most of the rest of his
working life, and represents his greatest achievement.
Early Life
Rudolf Carnap was born on 18 May 1891, in Ronsdorf, near
Dusseldorf, then in the Rhine Province of Prussia. His father
Johannes Carnap came from a family of poor weavers, but after
long and hard work became the prosperous and respected owner
of a ribbon-making factory. Rudolf’s mother Anna (née Dorpfeld)
was a teacher and an aspiring author. As he watched his mother
write, the young Rudolf became fascinated by what he came to
regard as the magical activity of putting words on paper. Few
philosophers have imbibed at such an early age what was to
become their major preoccupation: how do we create reliable
descriptions of the world?
Rudolf had one sister (whose name he neglects to mention
in his autobiography!). Their mother obtained permission to
teach the children at home, but did so for only an hour a day.
His father died when he was only four years old. Then the fam-
ily moved to Barmen. He attended the local school, where both
mathematics and Latin attracted him, one by the exactness of
its concepts, the other by its expressive but rational structure.
In 1909 the family moved to Jena, where Carnap entered the
University. Physics and philosophy became his major fields, and
the pattern of his intellectual life, and the problems it would
bring him were beginning to take shape. At that time Gottlob
Frege (1848–1925), one of the greatest of all logicians, was an
associate professor in Jena, and Carnap attended his lectures
on conceptual notation (Bergriffsschrift). He became fascinated
by their intellectual implications, and the course of his philo-
sophical life was set.
The outbreak of war in 1914 proved a traumatic experience.
Although viscerally opposed to war, Carnap accepted a duty to
serve his fatherland, and volunteered to serve in the German
army. After three years in the front line he was transferred to
36 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
Berlin to work on wireless telegraphy.
During the war he married Elizabeth Schöndube. They had
four children, but divorced in 1929. In 1933 he married Eliza-
beth Ina Stögren. This second marriage flourished, lasting until
her death in 1964. The couple addressed each other as Carnap
and ina, the latter to be always written in lower case. Carnap
hated the name Rudolf and refused to be so called; ina just wanted
to be different.
In 1918, at the war’s end, he returned to Jena to resume his
studies. A combination of poverty and the chaos in post-war
Germany made it impossible for him to find the books for his
proposed field of research. He was rescued by an extraordinary
act of kindness by Bertrand Russell. The impoverished student
wrote to Russell describing both his proposed research topic
and his inability to acquire a copy of Russell’s Principia. Russell
replied by sending him a lengthy manuscript in which he had
personally copied out and annotated all the relevant parts of that
work. Vastly encouraged, and now suitably equipped, Carnap
set out to write a dissertation, Der Raum (Space), in which he
showed that the contradictions in the theories of space main-
tained by mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers were
caused by their use of entirely different approaches while all
using the same terminology.
When he submitted his thesis, the Physics department said
it was too philosophical and the Philosophy department said it
was all physics. Both rejected it. Carnap had the good sense to
swallow his pride, re-write it using a conventional Kantian
approach, and re-submit it to the Philosophy department, which,
suitably mollified, accepted it. He had by now seen how to for-
mulate a positivistic approach to philosophy, but had received a
warning that it would not be easy to communicate and promul-
gate his ideas in the way he sought.
At a conference in 1923 he had the good fortune to meet a
kindred spirit in Hans Reichenbach. Reichenbach introduced
him to Moritz Schlick, and in 1926 Schlick offered him a posi-
tion in the University of Vienna. Carnap moved to Vienna and
became a member of the Vienna Circle.
The Vienna Circle and Logical Positivism
The Vienna Circle was a group of like-minded philosophers
who sought to establish philosophy on solid logical foundations,
in a way that would allow all its conclusions to be rigorously
verified. They called their approach ‘Logical Positivism’
although a more accurate name would be ‘Logical Empiricism’.
It offered the beguiling prospect of banishing all metaphysical
speculation; but this prospect vanished when its fundamental
principle of verifiability proved untenable.
The Circle developed in the University of Vienna under lead-
ership of Schlick, who had succeeded the great scientist and pos-
itivist philosopher Ernst Mach in 1922. Its guiding ideas had
emerged from discussions starting around 1907 between the soci-
ologist Otto Neurath, the physicist Philip Franck, and the math-
ematician Hans Hahn. As it developed, the Circle attracted the
 Rudolf Carnap
Portrait by Darren McAndrew, 2017
participation of philosophers with a training in, or an attraction
to, logic, mathematics, or science. The Circle sought to show
that the various types of scientific activity had a common intel-
lectual structure, and argued that philosophy should be re-cast
in this scientific form. In its early stages the Circle attracted the
attention and participation of many leading philosophers, includ-
ing Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, A.J. Ayer and Alfred Tarski.
Positivism, Verification and Falsification
Our knowledge can only be of three kinds:
• Innate, deriving from our genetic inheritance (breathing, bal-
ancing, walking…);
• Derived from our sensory experience; and
• Derived from thought.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 37
Brief Lives
‘Empiricism’ is the attitude to knowledge that takes our sen-
sory experience as primary. Positivism is an extreme form of
empiricism that admits only sensory experience as the source of
knowledge. The name ‘positivism’ is due to Auguste Comte
(1798-1857), who believed that the empirical discoveries of sci-
ence took total precedence over all theoretical rational con-
structions. Logical positivism is positivism plus logic.
Carnap’s approach said that scientific knowledge uses a ‘Prin-
ciple of Verification’, which demands that all theories be estab-
lished by verified facts. Sir Karl Popper (1902–1994) took an
opposing view concerning science. He thought that scientific
progress results from the exercise of imagination producing the-
ories which must then be tested against the facts, and if a pro-
posed theory withstands sustained criticism and fits all the observ-
able facts, then that’s sufficient to hold it as true until it might be
refuted by newly-discovered facts. He pointed out that Carnap’s
approach is unworkable, since no matter how often a theory is
apparently ‘verified’ by observations, one reliable falsification is
sufficient to render the theory invalid. This ‘Principle of Falsifi-
cation’, Popper boasted, destroyed Carnap’s approach.
Popper’s view of science, based on falsifiability rather than
verifiability, is supported by many working scientists.
Deduction, Induction and Probability
Before Popper’s demolition of his Principle of Verification, Car-
nap had been a strong proponent of a frequency interpretation
of probability in evaluating theories. He now realised that he
would have to adopt a different approach. In his philosophical
autobiography, The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1963), he
describes how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas on probability con-
vinced him that he should seek a logical approach to the use of
probability in theory evaluation. As a result he developed the
approach described in his Logical Foundations of Probability (1950).
Carnap had seen a way to put inductive reasoning (argument
on the basis of observations) on the same absolutely logical basis
as deductive reasoning (arguments of abstract reason) by creat-
ing a unified and objective account of inductive inference spec-
ified by clear rules of procedure. Carnap had grasped how to
create an objective approach by using the idea of a degree of veri-
fication. This enabled him to develop the inductive approach on
which he continued to work for the rest of his life. Deductive
arguments are valid when their conclusions follow from their
premises. Inductive arguments, however, are very different,
since they proceed from specific cases to general conclusions.
These general conclusions cannot be seen as obviously true or
false, but can only be seen as more or less probable given the
available evidence. So inductive argument necessarily involves
probabilistic reasoning. So Popper’s claim to demolish verifica-
tion in science was premature: a rigid yes/no verification crite-
rion can be relaxed into probabilities. Probabilistic argument is
now an indispensable part of science.
Personality and Last Days
Carnap was logic personified. He was fabulously well-organised,
maintaining an extensive card file system in which was summarised
every book, significant paper, and major article he had read. This
was combined with a prodigious ability to recall conversation and
38 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
experience. The overwhelming impression he conveyed was one
of great control and sustained momentum. One of his students
compared him to a polite and friendly tank. He remained unfail-
ingly courteous in the face of ferocious and in many cases ill-con-
sidered attacks on his work. Few people have worked for decades
on such hugely difficult topics; even fewer have had the ability to
carefully consider severe and sustained criticism while remaining
gracious but unyielding.
Carnap’s socialist and pacifist beliefs put him in danger in an
increasingly pro-Nazi Austria. He emigrated to the United
States in 1935, becoming a naturalised citizen in 1941. The wis-
dom of this move was demonstrated by the appalling murder
of Moritz Schlick on the entrance steps to the University of
Vienna, in 1936.
From 1936-1952 Carnap was a Professor of Philosophy at
the University of Chicago. Thanks to Willard Quine, he was
able to spend the years 1939-41 in Harvard, where he, Quine,
and Alfred Tarski worked together on the role of logic in phi-
losophy. After a short spell at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton, he joined the Philosophy department at UCLA,
where he remained until retirement. Sadly, his wife ina com-
mitted suicide in 1964.
Carnap became seriously ill suddenly in his late seventies.
He was rushed into hospital and died after a few days, on Sep-
tember 14, 1970. The great depth of affection and respect in
which he was held became apparent when the entire Volume 8
of The Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (1971) was devoted
to assessments of and tributes to his work.
Legacy
Carnap never abandoned his belief that science and philosophy
should be founded on a bedrock of logic. He remained unmoved
in the face of ridicule by Karl Popper, who boasted that he had
‘killed’ Logical Positivism. He remained courteous when fero-
ciously attacked by Nelson Goodman, who denounced his lack
of recognition of humanistic values as ‘horrible’. His unshake-
able support of the primacy of both deductive and inductive
logic made his position an increasingly isolated philosophy dur-
ing the latter part of the Twentieth Century.
Meanwhile, technology has moved on. Agency – the capac-
ity for autonomous behaviour – can be created in a mechanical
form by a combination of sensors, motors, and computing.
Nowadays, for example, an unmanned aircraft can take off, travel
for thousands of miles to a specified destination, and land
unaided. The agency of machines will steadily increase: think
of robots, unmanned vehicles, industrial processes… so Car-
nap’s approach will become increasingly relevant, because highly
sophisticated machine agents will certainly act on a basis of
logic. What better way could there be to characterise machine
agency logic, than in the probabilistic manner that Carnap
worked so long and so hard to develop? A comprehensive expla-
nation of human agency may remain beyond our reach, but
Rudolf Carnap’s faith in logic as the basis of one form of agency
will have been vindicated.
© SIR ALISTAIR MACFARLANE 2017
Sir Alistair MacFarlane is a former Vice-President of the Royal
Society and a retired university Vice-Chancellor.

Anthony
Gottlieb
Hello Anthony.
I found your new
book The Dream of Enlightenment: The
Rise of Modern Philosophy to be an
enjoyable and informative introduction to
Enlightenment philosophy. Can you please
tell us a little about its aims, the period it
covers, and what motivated you to write it?
It’s the second installment of a chrono-
logical history of Western philosophy.
The first ran from ancient philosophy to
the Renaissance, and this new volume
covers philosophers from René
Descartes and Thomas Hobbes in the
Seventeenth Century to just before
Immanuel Kant, whose main work was
published in the late Eighteenth
Century. A third volume will run from
Kant to the present day. The overall aim
of the project is to engage readers with
some of the main ideas and arguments of
Western philosophy in a way that
requires no prior acquaintance with it. I
began this enterprise when I was science
editor of The Economist. My hope was to
do for philosophy what we tried to do in
the magazine for science – that is, to
explain it in a way that was accessible, yet
also rigorously accurate.
What criteria did you use to choose which
philosophers you would discuss?
To some extent the agenda was set by
tradition, because I wanted to provide a
deeper understanding of ideas that were
already in wide circulation. Many people
have heard a bit about Descartes and
Hobbes, for example. My aim is to tell
them more about the classic works they’ll
see alluded to in works of history or popu-
lar science. But I’ve also introduced some
less familiar figures, whose work either
played a significant role in the develop-
ment of philosophy or is of particular
interest to me – histories of philosophy
are always idiosyncratic to some degree.
Thus in the new book I have a short
chapter on Pierre Bayle, who was widely
read in the early Eighteenth Century –
and rightly so, in my opinion – but is
almost forgotten now, even by specialists
interviews the historian of
in the period. On the other hand, because
I’m not writing primarily for academics,
I’ve felt free to give much less than the
usual amount of space to Bishop George
Berkeley, who for various reasons still
looms large in university courses, but is
rather an oddball, even by the standards
of philosophy.
Do they have anything in common?
One thing the main characters in The
Dream of Enlightenment have in common
is a desire to supplant traditional ideas
inherited from ancient and medieval
thinkers and to explore the implications
of Galileo’s ‘new philosophy’, as they
called it – we call it the ‘Scientific Revo-
lution’. One outlier who doesn’t quite fit
this pattern is Gottfried Leibniz, who
aimed to find compromises between the
old and the new, even while he himself
played a big role in advancing the new.
Which thinker’s philosophy do you particu-
larly agree with or relate to?
I usually found much to appreciate in
the perspectives and achievements of
each one of my subjects, even though
there was plenty of passionate disagree-
ment between them. Like many of
today’s professional philosophers,
though, I am particularly keen on David
Hume. If I had to pick a favourite, it
would be him. This is largely because I
share not only many of his attitudes – his
naturalism and agnosticism, for instance
– but also many of his philosophical
interests – in the limits of scepticism,
and in the nature of causation and prob-
abilistic reasoning, for example.
Which of these men do you particularly
admire as a human being?
Bertrand Russell famously wrote that
Baruch Spinoza was “the noblest and
most lovable of the great philosophers.”
I fell under Spinoza’s spell, too, as many
do. There’s the humble simplicity, self-
lessness and dedication of his life; the
brave originality of his take on religion,
which he thought had led many astray
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 39
Interview
Grant Bartley
Western philosophy and
former Economist editor.
and done such harm; and the apparent
absence in his character of malice, self-
regard, or any of the destructive
passions. I also admire Hume for his
genial, affectionate nature, his even
temperament, and his preference for
gentle persuasion rather than confronta-
tion and bludgeoning.
Do you perceive a trajectory in thought as
the Enlightenment progresses?
The radical and most creative work
done in the span covered by my book
came early on, with Descartes, Hobbes
and Spinoza, in the first three-quarters
of the Seventeenth Century. This is the
period of the so-called ‘pre-Enlighten-
ment’ or ‘early Enlightenment’. I think
that a lot of what came afterwards, in
the Eighteenth Century, was a matter of
digesting, assimilating, and coming to
terms with these early ideas.
What do these thinkers have to say to us
today?
If one were to try and identify the core
values of the thinkers in my book, some
of the things that spring to mind are the
questioning of intellectual authority –
and particularly the dictates of religious
establishments – and a keen sense of the
weakness of the human mind. I’d say
that these values are needed as much
today as they have ever been.
What did you personally learn when writing
this book?
I came to have a much greater apprecia-
tion of Thomas Hobbes, whose work is
more wide-ranging than popular
accounts suggest, and more sympathy for
Leibniz, who I think was rather traduced
in Bertrand Russell’s influential History of
Western Philosophy. One general lesson I
hope I learned is a keener appreciation
of the importance of context when inter-
preting the thought of early-modern
philosophers. PN
Grant Bartley is an Editor of Philosophy
Now.

The Views On Nowhere
DEAR EDITOR: I don’t often write to
you, but Nick Inman’s lively article
‘Nowhere Men’ (Issue117) just hit the
point which was then bothering me,
namely: Why are some philosophical
superstitions apparently incurable? Why
for instance can’t today’s materialists
(now of course duly called ‘physicalists’)
get over their mind-matter dualism? If
the idea of mind makes them so uneasy,
why can’t they see that the idea of mat-
ter is every bit as awkward? Since the
two were designed to fit each other, they
have, in fact, both got to be rethought.
Dualism was devised in the Sixteenth
Century as a way of keeping modern
physics out of the way of traditional
Christianity. Since Christianity and
physics were then the only two intellec-
tual patterns available for highbrows in
Europe, confusion between them could
have had bad social, and indeed political,
effects. The old names of ‘spirit’ and
‘matter’ were therefore adopted for this
new confrontation, and were supposed to
allow the two sides to fit together.
Unluckily, however, this arrangement
was then treated as if it involved a form of
chemistry that linked two distinct sub-
stances, stuffs that must not be mixed,
chalk or cheese. Everything, it seemed,
must be made entirely either of matter or
spirit. Thus, the fact that the same person
could have both a body and a soul [or
mind] has been seen – and is still seen – as
posing a specially ‘hard problem’, because
these items have been deemed incompati-
ble, even though that same person’s hav-
ing (say) both a profession and a national-
ity, both a destiny and also a reputation,
has caused no more alarm than their hav-
ing both a size and a weight.
People still do not seem to understand
that the language of body and soul, mat-
ter and spirit – outer and inner – does not
invoke separate substances but merely
draws attention to distinct aspects of a
complex whole. The unit is always the
whole person. There is thus no need for
40 Philosophy Now l February/March 2017
Letters
When inspiration strikes, don’t bottle it up!
Write to me at: Philosophy Now
43a Jerningham Road • London • SE14 5NQ • U.K.
or email rick.lewis@philosophynow.org
Keep them short and keep them coming!
anybody to start supposing that, as the
idea of ‘spirit’ goes out of fashion, the
conscious self has ceased to exist and
become an illusion. (Who, by the way, is
supposed to be having that illusion? Isn’t
illusion, like measles or a bad temper,
something which must be had by a sub-
ject – a particular person?) There is still
less excuse for saying that when we talk
about this familiar self, nature – or the
brain, which is now the more frequently
chosen quasi-agent – is ‘pulling a confi-
dence-trick’. Trying to pretend that one
is not a subject – that one has no inner
self – is just thought-free nonsense. And
when Inman reports that “many of our
greatest contemporary thinkers” are now
doing this, he is in fact reporting the
ideas of a set of simple-minded dogmatic
materialists, skilfully disguised as sages.
MARY MIDGLEY
NEWCASTLE
DEAR EDITOR: One difficulty I come
across in Nick Inman’s ‘Nowhere Men’
piece is the inconsistent use of language.
When he asks “Am I me?” and “Do
I…exist?” it becomes clear that by ‘I’
and ‘me’, he doesn’t mean what we nor-
mally mean. When we use the word
‘car’ to refer to a four-wheeled transport
machine, we’re using it as a conve-
nience. One could say that there really is
no such thing as a car. What there is is a
collection of parts: a frame, an engine, a
transmission, et cetera; and even these
components are made up of smaller
pieces. For convenience, we sum it up
into a collective thing and label it a ‘car’.
Pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘me’ do the
same thing; they allow us to take a
whole creature into account without
tediously naming the biological compo-
nents. When using such a holistic term
as ‘I’, there’s no point questioning
whether, say, I exist, because if I didn’t,
there’d be no one to ask the question.
But Inman’s not asking about a whole
person. He’s restricting ‘I’ and ‘me’ to
an immaterial personal identity here.
Later on, however, his discussion reverts
to a more traditional use of the word
‘me’ when he reports the commonly-
held view that “half of me does not
exist” – implying that he’s now referring
to himself as a whole entity, of which
only half is the person in question.
However, Inman is consistent in his
assertion that subjective experience is
only possible via immaterial activity.
That we experience mental processes
seems all the proof he needs that there’s
something apart from matter at work in
the human person. This unjustifiably
dismisses the complexity that material
processes are capable of, in favor of the
preferred explanation that human beings
transcend physics. This belief is never
convincingly proven, just repeated.
EUGENE FRANKLIN, USA
Metaphysical Foundations
DEAR EDITOR: Issue 117 has been
another fascinating read. The list of
metaphysicians discussed suggests that
the answer to your front-cover question
“Is metaphysics out of date?” is: “Yes it
is; it is stuck in a time when nobody
knew or cared about the metaphysics of
Buddhism, Taoism etc.” Berkeley,
Spinoza, Epicurus are all very well, but
they did not solve the problem of real-
ity. Surely it is time to move on.
However, I would like to thank Peter
Adamson for his excellent and useful
article on metaphysics, which seemed to
me to contain more good sense than
many whole books on the topic. He
proposes that metaphysics is the most
general and fundamental part of philos-
ophy. While this should not need say-
ing, somehow it does. There is nothing
more depressing than seeing philoso-
phers theorising prior to establishing
any metaphysical foundation. It’s like a
house-builder working on the roof
before the footings. The result is bound
to be about the same.
PETER JONES
HOLMFIRTH

Political Foundations
DEAR EDITOR: I love the philosophy of
politics and its central question, ‘What is
the ideal state?’ When I’m waxing philo-
sophic, I think Aristotle’s ideas sound the
way we always want to live our lives. In
Issue 116, I especially liked Matt
Qvortrup’s quote of section 1281b of
Aristotle’s The Politics, about why people
participating in an enterprise as a group
may reach a better level of achievement
than any individuals can manage alone.
In more modern times, such commu-
nal action was tremendously suspected,
especially by those who wrote the United
States’ Constitution. Such ‘group work’
was called highly suspect by James Madi-
son in his Federalist Paper #10, which
focused mostly on a concern about self-
interested groups which have diverged
from the higher egalitarian principles
that Aristotle had in mind.
I understand the worries Madison and
others of his time had, but I agree with
Aristotle. It is that ‘dream’ egalitarianism
that drives probably all democratic gov-
ernments, the desire to provide for our-
selves almost better than can the gods,
that keeps at least democracies waving
the flags that say democracy is the best
way to be governed! I also think that
Madison’s and the other Founding
Fathers’ idea about a representative
democracy that becomes its own watch-
dog over factions, that an ounce of pre-
vention is worth a pound of cure, was a
very modern one, and a good one at that.
Their thinking has been another part
of what is the ideal state. But if I could
just have one election in my life based on
a plain old-fashioned, well-healed, happy,
‘everyone-voting-for-the-same-good’
kind of America, I’d take that in an Aris-
totelian heartbeat!
Thanks for the article Matt. It was a
nice read.
CORINE SUTHERLAND
LOMITA, CALIFORNIA
The Real Trolley Problem
DEAR EDITOR: I recently read Issue 116
and I’m prompted to write in response
to ‘Could There Be A Solution To The
Trolley Problem?’ by Omid Panahi. As a
high school philosophy teacher, I have
long known of this argument and its
variations, as well as other, similar, ‘no-
win scenarios’. It is a thought experiment
that often fascinates teenagers. Though I
never include the Trolley Problem as
part of my lessons, many of my students
bring it to me. After learning about it in
either their law or political science
classes, most students are eager to hear
what the philosophy teacher has to say.
One of the key concepts I try to instil
in my philosophy students is a critical
analysis of questions. There is a question
or motivation behind every question,
and understanding this subtlety is the
key to finding, and giving, better
answers. So what is the true question, or
intent, of the Trolley Problem?
In each trolley scenario, the person
faced with the dilemma will often begin
by attempting to find ways to solve the
problem without anyone getting hurt –
for instance, by calling ahead to warn the
workers of the oncoming danger, or
putting rocks on the rails in order to run
the trolley off the track. The person
proposing the dilemma must then alter
the story, incorporating more and more
detail in order to negate each solution.
Hence the Trolley Problem constantly
evolves into more and more complex
renderings. However, as noted in the
article, any answer that does not involve
someone’s death “would be to miss the
point.” The subject facing the dilemma is
‘locked-in’ to choosing between one or
five deaths, for which they will be ulti-
mately responsible.
Anyone who proposes the Trolley
Problem has at some time had the prob-
lem proposed to them. Having already
been through the thought experiment,
they have already chosen their own solu-
tion, whether they would be responsible
for the deaths of one or five people. They
have also experienced the guilt that comes
along with the decision they would make,
even if it is just pretend. So on analysis,
the Trolley Problem is not so much a
moral dilemma as a psychological one.
After experiencing the Trolley Problem
and failing to overcome the ‘no-win sce-
nario’, ultimately culminating in their
being forced to choose between the death
of one or five people, the questioner
rushes to pass the dilemma on to someone
else in the hopes that their decision will be
justified. The questioner has a need to jus-
tify their choice, thereby alleviating their
guilt. The natural way to do this is by
seeking others who agree with you.
From this analysis we can see the
divergence of two forms of morality.
The first, we could call ‘Constitutional
Morality’. Examples are the Code of
February/March 2017 l Philosophy Now 41
Letters
Hammurabi or the Ten Commandments.
Here right and wrong actions are written
clearly for all to see. Under these condi-
tions – for example under the Ten Com-
mandments – to kill is unjustifiable, either
once or five times. The limitation of this
type of morality is that it does not
account for the no-win scenario in which
we find ourselves. Nor does it easily
allow change with the ebb and flow of
the zeitgeist of evolving society.
The second form is a ‘Democratic
Morality’, in which behaviour is agreed
upon (cf ‘Reality television’, in which sit-
uations of questionable moral behaviour
are justified through ratings: ‘If millions
of people watch it, it must be morally
acceptable’). Although this sort of moral-
ity evolves with the times, it also has lim-
itations since it is so open to interpreta-
tion, and in some cases erosion: the ‘will
of the people’ can too easily undermine
what is morally unacceptable in order to
gratify current needs or desires. Under
these conditions, choosing between the
deaths of one or five people becomes a
justifiable moral act if we all agree it’s
the ‘right call’. So the real question
behind the Trolley Problem is not one
of solving a dilemma of morality, but a
desperate plea by the questioner to have
the decision they already made justified
through the authority of numbers. This
only works if the questioner can force
the person questioned to make the fatal
decision. This is why they must con-
stantly amend the problem to rule out
any scenario in which lives may be
spared. Therefore the dilemma of the
Trolley Problem becomes a psychologi-
cal quest to compel the person answering
the question into supporting the ques-
tioner’s position. Ultimately, no answer
to the Trolley Problem is adequate short
of “It’s okay, I would have made the
same decision.”
GEOFFREY WHITMAN
ONTARIO, CANADA
Conspicuous Benevolence
DEAR EDITOR: Seán Moran’s article
‘Bilateral Benevolence’ in Issue 116
prompted me to think about what I do to
practice goodwill toward others. I agree
with Immanuel Kant’s conclusions on
what is true benevolence, and don’t
expect anything in return simply because
I act towards others the way I would like
to be treated. If it makes me feel good,
that’s enough. What does it cost me to
Letters
be kind to another person? Nothing. I
especially try to be respectful to those
providing a service for me; to understand
that if curt, perhaps they are having a
bad day. It’s not my place to pass judge-
ment. More often than not I give them a
break; unless of course they are com-
pletely out-of-line. The world is harsh
enough, being nice to people is the least
one can do. Why not pay it forward?
But ‘conspicuous donation’ goes
against what I believe to be true benevo-
lence. There are those instances when a
family or an individual gives an entire
wing to a hospital and their name is on
the building. If I had such funds, I would
consider making such magnanimous ges-
tures, but I wouldn’t want my name on
the building. The underlying agenda of
those who participate in conspicuous
benevolence is to elevate their position
in the community.
CHERYL ANDERSON
ILLINOIS
A Possibility of Understanding
DEAR EDITOR: In Issue 116 Malcolm
Brown and Steve Hubbard make some
interesting points about communicating
with extra-terrestrials; but some of their
assumptions seem doubtful.
The argument that we cannot know
‘what it is like to be a bat’ founders on the
problem that, in a sense, a bat does not
know what it is like to be a bat; nor do
humans know what it is like to be human,
at least in the sense of being able to
explain what being human is like. If one
human asks another, ‘What does it feel
like to be human?’ the answer is likely to
be meaningless. ‘What it is like’ can only
be explained if there is a point of compari-
son – i.e. if two species can share their
experiences and understand their own in
terms of difference from the other’s.
Large brains do not necessarily imply
a philosophising intelligence. Dolphins
may use their brains to ensure that they
can track down the best supply of fish,
but they may be content to do so without
worrying about the meaning of life. It is
curious that the authors do not refer to
humans’ most serious attempt at inter-
species communication, namely, teach-
ing other primates sign language.
To qualify as life, aliens must share
basic needs and drives with humans, for
example, the need for nourishment or the
urge to reproduce. Even a pet dog can
communicate, inter-species, the concept
42 Philosophy Now l February/March 2017
‘I am hungry’. Also, alien science and
technology, being based on the invariable
laws of mathematics, physics and chem-
istry, will be somewhat communicable.
So our first meaningful communication
may be “Swap you three tons of food for
the plans of your warp drive.”
MARTIN JENKINS
LONDON
Camus Is an Existentialist
& De Beauvoir is an Aristotelian
DEAR EDITOR: I am writing with refer-
ence to Greg Stone’s piece ‘Why Camus
is Not an Existentialist’ (PN 115). Con-
sidering that this issue holds many theo-
retical nuances and interpretations, his
piece lacks a certain depth. Stone’s evi-
dence is mainly based on the personal
and political differences of the two
authors. Stone’s conclusion is also
demeaning of Camus’s theoretical work,
and he failed to look into other works by
Camus such as The Rebel. I would like to
add that Sartre’s notion of complete
freedom was heavily criticised, and that
in his essay ‘Existentialism is a Human-
ism’ Sartre attempts to rectify this theo-
retical mishap by introducing the notion
of responsibility towards others: “In
fashioning myself I fashion man.” This
same essay also attempts to counter the
notion of existential despair that Stone
highlights. Sartre’s aim is to show that
existentialism is a means of liberation as
opposed to a plunge into despair; a simi-
lar kind of liberation that is to be found
in Camus’s absurd hero.
FRANCOIS ZAMMIT
MALTA
DEAR EDITOR: Thanks for Anja Stein-
bauer’s essay on ‘Simone’s Existentialist
Ethics’ in Issue 115. De Beauvoir’s The
Ethics of Ambiguity is an underappreci-
ated work. Readers may be interested to
learn that it is freely available online.
De Beauvoir is certainly an existential-
ist, but in some ways she is also an Aris-
totelian: she rejects any notion of an abso-
lute goodness or moral imperative that
exists on its own, and says that a person’s
values spring up as a result of having cho-
sen a project. But what justifies the pro-
ject? There is one goal that comes with
being human, she says, the exercise of
freedom itself: “human freedom is the
ultimate, the unique end to which man
should destine himself.” (Ironically, she
wrote before the value of gender-inclusive
language was recognized.) Freedom is the
“universal, absolute end.” (Part II) This is
also Aristotelian, in that according to
Aristotle the goal or end of being human
is to do well what human beings uniquely
do. And for de Beauvoir, what human
beings uniquely do is to exercise their
freedom. A project that exercises one’s
freedom is therefore inherently justified.
But we cannot pursue our projects
alone. De Beauvoir’s contribution to
existentialist ethics, as Steinbauer notes,
is to recognize that our freedom is
achievable only in relation to others. We
can be grateful for her insight – which,
arguably, is also Aristotelian – that “we
fulfill ourselves in taking the other as an
end” (Part III, section 5). Steinbauer
says, correctly, that The Ethics of Ambigu-
ity is too rich to be covered adequately in
a short essay. In her brevity, she omits an
important aspect of de Beauvoir’s views:
the political. The paradigmatic case of
an authentic project is the struggle for
liberation, politically, socially and eco-
nomically: “the oppressed,” says de
Beauvoir, “can fulfill his freedom as a
man only in revolt” (Part III, section 2).
Readers interested in discussion of this
aspect of de Beauvoir’s work are invited
to read my short essay, ‘Simone de Beau-
voir: A Philosophy of Liberation’ at
bmeacham.com/blog/?p=451
BILL MEACHAM
AUSTIN, TX
DEAR EDITOR: I am a first-time reader
of Philosophy Now. As a casual student of
the existentialist movement, I was drawn
to Issue 115. I enjoyed the synopsis of
every writer in the magazine, but found
myself frustrated by a want I find in
most existentialist commentaries: that
more foundational to each writer than
freedom or angst is their common
engagement with nihilism and going
beyond it. Kierkegaard and Camus, the
two with whom I’m most familiar, pro-
vide the ideal examples. Kierkegaard
acknowledged the limits of our ability to
know and the underlying meaningless-
ness to all we do. However, his goal was
to posit a philosophy through which we
can acknowledge the meaninglessness of
the world and still live our lives. He sug-
gested his leap of faith. Similarly, Camus
summarizes the human condition in his
absurdist philosophy. Like Kierkegaard,
though, from the beginning of The Myth
of Sisyphus Camus tells the reader that he

is looking for a philosophy that can take
the individual beyond the apathetic or
suicidal conclusions of nihilism. Life is
meaningless, he acknowledges, but we
still have inclinations, passions, and rela-
tionships, so he tells us to live.
So for the rest of the existentialists.
Nietzsche recommended a life of aesthet-
ics and art. As Anja Steinbauer writes in
her article, Simone de Beauvoir laid out
an existentialist ethics. And Sartre
begrudgingly acknowledged our con-
demnation to freedom. Doing nothing or
suicide is just as much a choice as living.
Thus, the best definition of existen-
tialism is not a focus on freedom, indi-
vidualism, and angst, but rather a move-
ment that sought to acknowledge
nihilism and then take a logical step
beyond it into action.
DANIEL BUCK
GREEN BAY, WI
Lifting Logic Beyond the Mundane
DEAR EDITOR: David Glass and Mark
McCartney in Issue 115 skillfully slice
away the New Atheists’ claim that Ock-
ham’s Razor makes any statements about
God pointless once a scientific explana-
tion has been given. However, Glass and
McCartney’s analysis treats God-talk as
being primarily an attempt to explain
facts about the world, but the God-talk
of religious believers, while able to
encompass facts, includes a valuing
dimension that goes beyond the limita-
tions of science.
An example used by the theologian
John F. Haught can demonstrate how
religious statements operate at a deeper
level than just explaining facts. Imagine
that several people have witnessed a car
going down a street. Even in explaining
what happened, each witness can give a
quite different answer to the question,
‘Why was the car with Bill in it going
down the road?’ Such answers include:
• Because the spark plugs were igniting
the gasoline-air mixture, thus forcing the
pistons in the internal combustion
engine to move, turning the drive-shaft.
• Because Bill was driving to the drug
store to get some medicine for his mother.
• Because Bill cared about his mother,
even though he had been angry with her
in the past, and even though he was
frightened by her being so ill; but he
didn’t want her to die.
• Because love is so powerful it can
sometimes cast out anger and fear.
Notice that each statement provides
an explanation composed of facts. But
now imagine that we go a step beyond
the last witness’s answer to make an ulti-
mate assertion by saying, ‘Love is ulti-
mately more powerful than anger and
fear.’ Such an assertion goes beyond our
direct knowledge of the facts; for how
could I know about all situations, past and
present, measure the amount of love in
each, and know about their ultimate out-
comes? But we might recognize such an
ultimate assertion as being the kind that
religious believers sometimes make in
talking about God as the Ultimate. In
doing so, believers are not just explaining
facts, but are also expressing a value judg-
ment about what they consider to be the
highest value. Such a value-statement lies
even further beyond the reach of Ock-
ham’s razor than the explanations of facts
that Glass and McCartney deal with.
BRUCE YAEGER
HOUSTON, TX
DEAR EDITOR: In the article ‘Science,
Ockham’s Razor & God’ in Issue 115, the
authors have attempted to show why using
science and Ockham’s Razor to explain
God away is very unlikely to be successful.
Lately I have also come up with some new
ideas about omnipotence paradoxes to
support their argument. The most well-
known omnipotence paradox is the so-
called ‘Paradox of the Stone’: Can God
create a stone that he cannot lift? If God
cannot create such a stone, he is not
omnipotent. If God can create such a
stone, he is also not omnipotent, because
he cannot lift it. So no matter whether an
omnipotent God can or cannot create
such a stone, he is not omnipotent. Many
people use this paradox to argue that the
concept of omnipotence is incoherent. But
I have thought of some arguments to
refute this paradox. John asks God, ‘Can
you create a stone that you cannot lift?’
and God answers, ‘I can lift a stone with an
infinite weight. So logically there cannot
be any stones in the world that I cannot
lift.’ The paradox is like asking someone
who can lift any stones under 10 kg to cre-
ate a stone with a weight under 10 kg that
he cannot lift. The response is the such a
stone logically cannot exist. So the paradox
of the stone becomes meaningless.
The paradox can also be refuted from
another perspective. Most people may
believe that ‘being able to lift the stone’
and ‘being unable to lift the stone’ are
February/March 2017 l Philosophy Now 43
Letters
mutually exclusive. Is that true? No.
Peter is very clever and got A grades for
all his past examinations. His friend,
David asks him, ‘Can you get an A grade
for the examination tomorrow?’ Peter
replies, ‘I can and I cannot.’ David asks,
‘What do you mean?’ and Peter answers,
‘If I study tonight, I can get an A grade
tomorrow. If I don’t study tonight, I
cannot get an A grade tomorrow.’ The
same argument can be applied to the
paradox of the stone. God can willfully
choose whether he is ‘able to lift the
stone’ or ‘unable to lift the stone’. These
two situations can therefore co-exist, and
need not be mutually exclusive.
I do not have any religious faith, but I
hope these arguments can help in resolv-
ing omnipotence paradoxes.
ERNEST L.Y. FUNG
HONG KONG
All Hail the Haiku
DEAR EDITOR: Congratulations on intro-
ducing the haiku column! As a daily
haikuist, I commend the exercise for
reflections on the sublime and the ridicu-
lous. The syllabic restriction imposes a
discipline that can help get to the heart of
an issue (although, more often than not,
the trite, pretentious or the vacuous
emerge). Possibly it’s worth inviting the
readership to contribute, so that you can
dot them through the text. [Feel free to
submit philosophical haiku to us, Ed.] As
someone whose initial degree was in
Physics (or ‘Natural Philosophy’ as Glas-
gow University styled it in those distant
days) I was also delighted with the recent
science and philosophy theme (Issue 114).
In my retirement I took up writing poetry
to tackle the aversion to it I developed at
about sixteen when the world’s most bor-
ing teacher spent a term on Paradise Lost
and The Deserted Village. So, here is an
offering which deals with all that:
I was Schrödinger’s cat’s muse
that summer
when I might have been
John Cage perhaps.
I posted a blank card
with no message, no stamp
unaddressed, unsigned
or maybe not.
Sorting it
will be a matter
of life or death.
ALASDAIR MACDONALD
GLASGOW

Books
On Bowie
by Simon Critchley
WHEN I STARTED MY
Philosophy degree in
1983, if someone asked me
what music I liked, my
proselytizing reply was “Bowie, Bowie, and
Bowie!” Over the years little has changed.
From this the reader may discern that I have
a certain amount in common with the
philosopher and Bowie fan Simon Critch-
ley, author of On Bowie, a short, personal and
penetrating book on this pre-eminent artist
and song-writing phenomenon. David
Bowie – born David Jones – sadly died a year
ago, aged 69, still at the very top of his game.
In twenty-five concise essays Critchley takes
us on a journey from his own reaction to first
seeing Bowie on TV in 1972 to his reaction
to Bowie’s death. During this journey he’s
essentially asking, what is it about this artist,
his personas, and his work, that manages to
have such a hold over so many? Of course,
quite early on there was the gender-bend-
ing, the outlandish appearance, the youth-
antheming; but there must be more to it than
that. And Critchley, as a philosopher, is well
placed to probe this further.
Philosophy & Art
Bowie evidently had some sort of relation-
ship with philosophy, which fed strongly
into his craft. I’m not saying that Bowie was
a philosopher in the conventional sense,
only that he had a certain depth and breadth,
and a visceral reaction to the broader philo-
sophical landscape. This included aspects of
aesthetics, of course, but also involved
exploring contemporary issues of the human
condition and the blasted terrain of modern
spirituality.
Bowie also maintained a lifelong interest
in the visual arts. Clearly he saw himself
more as an artist in the theatrical or fine-art
mould than as a conventional rock star. In
comparison to the visual arts, most popular
music tends to be terribly constrained. But
for anyone with a foot in both camps it must
seem perfectly natural to try and get some of
the freedom of the former into the latter; in
other words, to turn pop music into a flexi-
44 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
Daryn Green looks, listens, and thinks about the art and
philosophy of David Bowie, whilst Alan Brody thinks
about freedom and responsibility with Lars Svendsen.
ble and reflexive art form. With Bowie, as
with Andy Warhol, there is the sense that
literally anything is potentially useable for
the artist, and that any censorship is to be on
the artist’s own terms. But the question
remains: how did Bowie, more than any
other rock star (in both my and Critchley’s
view), and with commercial success, manage
to so consistently transcend the mundane?
Critchley talks about Bowie’s repeated
use of Warhol’s aesthetic – the sense of an
ironic self-awareness for both artist and
audience, born of repeated inauthenticity,
that is facilitated using obvious fictions and
characters, the use of fictions within fictions,
and the exposure of artifice. Bowie’s lyrics
often display his sense of being inside his
own movie, or reveal himself as the writer.
Critchley also covers Bowie’s conversion, via
William Burroughs, to Brion Gysin’s cut-up
technique – literally the cutting up and rear-
ranging of passages of text to create lyrics or
musical ideas. Bowie was terrifically success-
ful with this technique.
But Bowie’s ability to excel didn’t just
stem from applying art theories and tech-
niques. One of Bowie’s many tools Critch-
ley identifies is his use of notions of personal
identity. Most people, and most song lyrics,
assume that identity has a natural narrative
unity. Bowie played with ideas that are more
sophisticated and liberating and, claims
Critchley, more in line with his own view of
identity being “at best a sequence of episodic
blips.” This is said in connection with David
Hume’s idea of the self as being a discon-
nected bundle of perceptions, and with a
belief, such as Simone Weil’s, in “decreative
writing that moves through spirals of ever-
ascending negations before reaching ...
nothing.”
Disconnection & Exploration
Once these major influences, tools, and
objectives are looked at together, one starts
to see some obvious marriages between
them, especially (as Critchley notes) that the
Gysin cut-up technique and Warholian
irony blend perfectly with Bowie’s oblique
strategies in tackling notions of fragmented
identity and fragmented lives. Bowie
famously had a tendency to quickly change
styles through a process of “inhabitation,
imitation, perfection and destruction”
(Critchley likens this to Gustav Metzger’s
idea of auto-destructive art). Critchley
explores how all these strategies relate to the
media-dominated speed, unreality, contin-
gency, even absurdity, of life today and to
the transience of experience.
Critchley also writes at length about
Bowie’s strong interest in religious ideas.
Whilst Bowie had very strong spiritual lean-
ings, he was deeply critical of organised reli-
gion, perhaps of Christianity most of all. It
is perhaps not surprising that he had a life-
long interest in Buddhism. Critchley notes
how often the word ‘nothing’ appears in
Bowie’s lyrics;. This tends not to involve the
usual meaning (complete negation) but to
lean more towards a “restless nothing shaped
by... our fearful sickness unto death” or
something like the Buddhist notion of a self-
less meditative state on the path to enlight-
enment, which within Bowie became
“mobile and massively creative.”
The brevity of this book belies its scope.
Critchley covers various of Bowie’s themes:
mortality, transformation, transcendence,
humour, utopias, dystopias, madness, alien-
ation, Nietzschean sensibility, imaginary
pasts and futures, Hamletesque characters
and reflections, fear of isolation, yearning
for love or connection. He talks of how
Bowie permits a “deworlding of the world”
where we acknowledge disconnections in
order to see things afresh.
The highlight of the book for me was the
notion that “authenticity is the curse of
music from which we need to cure
ourselves.” I think Critchley’s really on to
something here, at least as far as popular
music is concerned. Although he writes in a
non-technical manner, I think he’s driving
at ideas of cultural authenticity from exis-
tentialism and aesthetics, as relating to
notions of street credibility and of authen-
ticity of expression – of an artist being faith-
ful to himself by portraying situations or
emotions realistically. There is much good
music that does comply with these notions
of authenticity. However, by allowing
himself a “variety of identities” placed in a
“confection of illusion… at the service of a
Book Reviews

felt... truth” Bowie managed to produce art
that responds not just to who and where we
are, but also, and especially, to our yearnings
for imaginary, sociological, and theatrical
exploration. These yearnings are for
personal reinvention that can save us from
suburban boredom – or even “save us from
ourselves, from the banal fact of being in the
world.” In any case, for many of us, such
yearnings are just as much a part of who we
are as the more mundane facts about us. In
Book Reviews
David Bowie
portrait by
Gail Campbell
2017
this sense Bowie’s art could be seen as a rarer,
more sophisticated form of authenticity,
which shows the simpler form of mundane,
factual authenticity to be merely an artistic
limitation. To paraphrase Critchley, a true
artist requires sufficient elbow room to work
their material, so as to produce a more inter-
esting level of authenticity – as Bowie
himself repeatedly demonstrated.
I was glad that Critchley also covered
Bowie’s extraordinary artistic discipline – his
Books
determined way of surviving at the top; and
also how his “music is felt in the… muscu-
lature of the body” – which hints at Bowie’s
tremendous skill with mood, timbre, and
rhythm. But I would have taken the analysis
of his art a little further. In my view Bowie
was not just different; he was also often, and
in so many ways, conventionally good; or I
might say, conventionally better. His attitude
to researching a theme; or his ability to
collaborate effectively; or the quality of the
acting in his singing; or his ability, lyrically
and musically, to form structures at once so
sophisticated and yet so accessible – none of
these are unconventional attributes as such.
It was therefore a killer combination of
convention and idiosyncracy that made
Bowie the Exocet missile of his profession.
Omnidirectional Bombardment
So how did Bowie manage to so consistently
transcend the mundane? Critchley answers
this question in a cumulative, integrated and
sophisticated way, but the answer is also
worth stating more bluntly. In essence, and
quite at variance with the notion of laid-back
cool so often adopted by artists, and often by
Bowie himself, he excelled through a canny
combination of raw talent, wild imagination,
cross-fertilisation, wise collaboration, fero-
cious ambition, enthusiasm, dedication, art
theory and techniques, open-ended curios-
ity, restless experimentalism, artistic fear-
lessness, unsentimental productivity, global
art and culture, philosophy and spirituality,
esotericism, science fiction, future nostalgia,
and more besides. Bowie basically chucked
everything but the kitchen sink at his art!
Under this omnidirectional bombardment,
mundanity was all but buried.
I would recommend this book to all
Bowie fans with intellectual leanings who
seek a deeper understanding of how Bowie
managed to weave his magic, for Critchley
here has done much of the spade-work anal-
ysis that people like me always meant to do
but somehow never quite got round to. It’s
short, readable and a worthy take on a great
artist who by comparison with other musi-
cians was both fascinatingly different and
often the same but better – and thus overall
much, much better.
© DARYN GREEN 2017
Daryn Green is a carer, and also works as a
supply teacher in North London.
• On Bowie, by Simon Critchley, Serpent’s Tail,
2016, £6.99, 192pp, ISBN: 1781257450.
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 45
 Books
A Philosophy of Freedom
by Lars Svendsen
FOLLOWING AN OPERATION
to remove part of his
temporal lobe, and further temporal lobe
surgery to control seizures, Walter B.
developed numerous compulsive behaviors
incompatible with how he had preferred to
behave. A ravenous appetite and long rages
became the norm. Both starting and
stopping activities became difficult.
Sometimes he was easily distracted, and
sometimes he got stuck in a simple activity
for eight or nine hours. Deeply ashamed,
he kept some of his behaviors secret – until
they led to his arrest for violating the law.
He felt relieved to no longer keep them
secret, and now reached out to his doctor
for medication that would allow him to
stop his compulsive actions, and he conse-
quently returned to his old loving, com-
passionate self. However, Walter still faced
prosecution for the unlawful behavior.
During the trial, his neurologists
explained that Walter had Klüver-Bucy
syndrome – a neurological condition that
manifested itself in those unlawful acts.
The prosecution claimed in response that
since Walter did not engage in illegal
activity at work, he therefore had some
control over his condition, and during
such a period of self-control could have
asked his doctors for help in stopping his
compulsive behaviors. Judged as culpable
for failing to do that, Walter was sen-
tenced to prison for twenty-six months,
subsequent home confinement for twenty-
five months, and five years of supervision
after that. Such is the case of Walter B., as
reported by Oliver Sacks in his essay
‘Urge’ in the New York Review of Books of
September 24, 2015.
In A Philosophy of Freedom, Lars
Svendsen, a professor in the Department
of Philosophy at the University of Bergen,
Norway, is concerned with understanding
the notion of freedom as it applies to
autonomy, or free will, and in explaining
its role in shaping a society loyal to pro-
tecting freedom. I want to here present
Svendsen’s notion of autonomy, then elu-
cidate it through evaluating the verdict in
the Walter B. case (although Svendsen
does not discuss this case, I believe it is
consistent with his philosophy). I’ll look at
the role Svendsen believes autonomy
should have in creating a society. Lastly, I
raise some objections to Svendsen’s philos-
ophy of freedom.
46 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
Freedom & Determinism
Svendsen asks how free choice can exist if
we understand the universe merely in
terms of physical causes. If a choice results
from causes powerful enough to bring
about only one result, viz, the choice that
occurred, this means that the so-called
‘choice’ is determined. For Svendsen this
means that given that particular set of prior
causes, one could not have done otherwise.
Few people would hold an individual
morally or legally responsible if his psy-
chotic personality and actions were caused
by a large brain tumor that prevented him
from thinking and acting otherwise (p.50).
In a similar way, Svensen argues, a deter-
ministic universe where we couldn’t have
done other than what we did thereby
apparently eliminates moral responsibility,
and so, guilt. In other words, for us to be
moral agents as traditionally understood,
we must apparently believe in some indeter-
ministic variety of choice, where we have a
real ability to choose in one or another
way. In a deterministic universe, an alterna-
tive reason for acting could have come up
only if there had been different conditions
up to the moment of choice. But according
to indeterminism, when exercising our
choice, we might have chosen differently
even under those same conditions. With
indeterminism we are not completely
restricted to what we actually chose to
think or do by external factors – by neuro-
logical damage, for instance.
Svendsen is an indeterminist. Given
indeterminism, a free agent has the “ability
to make a free choice executing and con-
trolling actions based on reasons” (p.77).
And even though one does not choose one’s
reasons from a psychological blank slate,
one’s reasons for acting nevertheless explain
one’s behavior, and therefore allow moral
responsibility for it. That is to say, an
autonomous agent is responsible for their
ongoing choices, character, and actions,
because their reasons, and eventually their
character traits, reflect what that agent
authentically endorses by their choices.
Moreover, the agent has the ability to
reflect upon their reasons and character
traits, and by exercising their choice,
change them (p.78).
Walter B.: Criminal or Not?
To understand Svendsen’s position, let us
evaluate the verdict on the Walter B. case in
light of his claims.
Walter B. had a pathological condition
causing him to lose control over aspects of
his behavior. Svendsen agrees that free
choice might be undermined by a patho-
logical condition (p.68). But Walter is
charged with failing to manage his patho-
logical condition by not accessing a doctor
when that was possible for him. Should he
be judged as culpable?
We might think that his shame was
more than he could manage, even to the
extent of not allowing him to consult a doc-
tor, and that the shame is part of his having
become mentally ill because of the brain
surgery. Having a severe mental illness
causing bizarre delusions might mean that a
person becomes like a child, lacking ade-
quate capability for understanding the
world, and so “falls below the limits for
minimal autonomy” (p.87). However, if
someone is a drug user, or mentally ill, but
while in a ‘normal’, lucid state, uses drugs
or chooses to avoid their needed medica-
tion, thereby undermining their capacity to
act responsibly, and subsequently causes
harm to another, that person is still respon-
sible for those actions resulting from their
choice while in the lucid state (p.74).
Svendsen tells us that he had a bad tem-
per until he no longer wished to be like
that, and changed that character trait after
he began to work on himself (p.83). Since,
like him, people can reflect on their behav-
ior, know what they are doing, think of bet-
ter alternatives, and change not only what
they were doing, but their character, then
arguably Walter should similarily have
worked on himself by getting the appropri-
ate help. And it appears that Walter’s exer-
cise of self-control at work constituted a
‘normal’ period, during which he did have
the ability to ask for help.
Autonomy, Rights & Politics
Being free to follow what we care about is
a significant part of what makes life mean-
ingful (Ch.13); and that’s why freedom of
choice is “a good of higher order than
most of the other goods” (p.97).
So what about the political conditions
necessary for the exercise of our autono-
my? For Svendsen, protecting autonomy
and our morality-based way of life depends
on the implementation and maintenance of
institutional conditions that support a lib-
eral democracy – in other words, on politi-
cal liberalism (p.94).
Political liberalism seeks to limit state
power to what its citizens democratically
support, while protecting the “individual
rights against violations from other indi-
viduals, groups and, for that matter, the
state itself” (p.95). It “insists that the indi-
vidual take precedence over the group,
Book Reviews
PLEASE VISIT WWW.STEVELILLIE.BIZ
CHOICE & CHANCE © STEVE LILLIE 2017
because individual rights are inalienable
and establish a space for the individual to
determine his own life course” (p.168).
What then are these basic freedom-sup-
porting universal rights? In summary, they
consist of rights to: security from physical
harm and illegal imprisonment; legal
equality; privacy; freedom of expression
and religion; own property; democratic
participation; freedom of assembly; a mini-
mum standard of education, having the
opportunity to develop one’s abilities;
nutrition, shelter, and health; and to deter-
mine for oneself what gives life meaning
without paternalistic interference. All these
basic rights “are individually designed to
promote autonomy” (p.171), and for
Svendsen are necessary for the proper
operation of free choice.
Responsibility, Luck & Compassion
Unfortunately, Svendsen does not seem to
appreciate how much chance has implica-
Book Reviews
tions undermining his position. For exam-
ple, we can say that it was only by chance,
or perhaps by bad luck, that Walter never
experienced the processes or influences that
would have provided him with what he
would have needed to manifest his preferred
values, until it was too late. The operations
of chance didn’t provide him psychological-
ly with what he needed to engage in work-
ing more effectively to control his shame,
for instance. However, this factor of chance
or luck means that we cannot simply or
blithely assess Walter as a morally deficient
criminal, rather than, say, an unlucky per-
son of good character unfortunately unable
to effectively control himself.
The factor of chance or luck obscures
the moral situation of human beings who
are subject to the vagaries of the universe,
despite their goodness. Furthermore, if
society ignores the operation of luck, those
in society who are less well-off can become
regarded by the more fortunate as only hav-
Books
ing themselves to blame – because they
didn’t try harder, for example. Or, if they’re
not seen as blameworthy, they are never-
theless only entitled to minimal care.
Consequently, extreme inequality can
result, with no moral objection being pre-
sented to people increasing their advan-
tages. So although Svendsen has given us a
wealth of useful distinctions, arguments,
and challenges to philosophical positions
that anyone interested in free will would do
well to grapple with, his philosophy of free-
dom has also given us a moral and political
system whose intricate philosophical com-
ponents can be used to build a compassion
extractor, in the name of morality.
© DR ALAN BRODY 2017
Alan Brody has a PhD in philosophy and is a
licensed psychotherapist and addiction specialist
living in Santa Fe.
• A Philosophy of Freedom, by Lars Svendsen, Reak-
tion Books, 2014, 288pp, £25 hb, ISBN: 1780233701
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 47

Films
T
wo trends from twentieth century
French philosophy have been
major influences on cinema: exis-
tentialism and postmodernism. Sofia
Coppola’s 2003 film Lost In Translation
reflects both. It explores what might be
called a warm Platonic love, as depicted in
the relationship between Bob (Bill Murray)
and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), set
against the background of Tokyo.
There is relatively little dialogue
throughout the film, but its beauty is in
how much is conveyed non-verbally, not
only through body language, but via cine-
matography, lighting, editing, and the
soundtrack. Lost in Translation sums up the
feeling of looking for your place in a world
in which you do not automatically belong.
Coppola’s subtlety in depicting an elusive
connection that transgresses the usual cat-
egories of what a relationship might look
like allows viewers to easily follow the
story of Bob and Charlotte, existential
characters seeking authenticity and recog-
nition in the eyes of the Other, as they find
themselves dislocated in Japan. Their exis-
tential angst is reflected in the bright,
flashing lights of a city that feels foreign to
the two Americans. Yet at the same time,
48 Philosophy Now l February/March 2017
Lost In Translation
Laura D’Olimpio gazes thoughtfully at a
postmodern existential Platonic romance.
they carry this feeling of isolation around
within them as they walk the muzak-
infused corridors of the hotel in which
they are confined, sleepless and in search
of some kind of meaning.
This meaning is not forthcoming from
external sources. Neither speak the lan-
guage, and the scenes of traditional Japan –
flower arranging, attending a shrine,
watching a geisha walk past – are as mysti-
cal to Charlotte as the self-help audio
recording she’s listening to in search of her
‘destiny’ while she absent-mindedly
smokes the occasional cigarette.
Convergence
Charlotte has been married for a couple of
years to John (Giovanni Ribisi), a photogra-
pher whose work has led him to Japan. A
recent philosophy graduate with no idea
what she wants to do with her life, she tags
along with him for a holiday, and while he
works she spends her time seeing the sights
of the city and staring moodily out of the
hotel windows over the unfamiliar cityscape.
Bob is not faring much better. An aging
actor, he has been married for about a
decade, and has a couple of children whose
birthdays he tends to forget. Just as Bob is
“Lost In Translation sums
up the feeling of looking
for your place in a world
in which you do not
automatically belong.”
reaching a midlife crisis he ventures to Japan
to shoot a whiskey commercial, with the sole
intention of making his money then return-
ing home. His plans begin to alter when he
starts to get to know Charlotte.
The two first see each other in an eleva-
tor, that perfect symbol of transitory space.
This initial contact is visually framed by
the many others who are also crowded into
the elevator, strangers going about their
daily business. And thus the Other is
acknowledged and a relationship born.
Their fleeting glimmer of recognition is
recounted later, once they have grown
close. “Did I scowl at you?” Charlotte asks.
“No,” Bob replies, “you smiled.”
Existential Drift
This postmodern romance is imbued with
the kind of existentialism developed by
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Writing in mid-twentieth-century Paris,
Sartre and de Beauvoir insisted that there is
no predetermined essential self for us to
‘discover’, and no preordained purpose to
our lives either. Rather, we are each free to
create our lives as we wish, according to
values we ourselves choose. As we con-
struct ourselves to be who we desire to be,
LOST IN TRANSLATION IMAGE © AMERICAN ZOETROPE/TOHOKUSHINSHA FILM 2003
we are also burdened by our responsibility
for the choices we make. The incredible
weight of such freedom is ignored by most
people, who choose to blame the course of
their lives on external factors rather than
facing up to the fact that one chooses who
one becomes.
We see the burden of freedom weigh-
ing on Bob and Charlotte at different
moments. Despite all the new sights and
sounds, a sense of isolation pervades their
experiences, and echoes how each feel in
their lives generally. Charlotte admits she
feels lost. Bob cannot seem to find any joy
in all the shiny new technology at his dis-
posal, nor in being recognised, or pho-
tographed, nor in any of the other playful
delights he’s offered that could occupy his
time. The sense of purposelessness that
pervades their existence is however
replaced by a sense of connection and love,
which emerges from their interactions
with one another. It is only when they are
together that we see them start to smile, to
soften, and to have fun.
The Gaze
Despite the differences between them –
Bob is a successful and now retired movie
star, Charlotte a drifting graduate and
aspiring writer – Bob and Charlotte get
one another. This connection means that
they see one another in a way that is miss-
ing from their primary relationships with
their respective spouses. As they gaze at
one another, they recognise their own
reflections as seen by the Other, and slowly
begin to be able to see themselves sympa-
thetically through the eyes of the Beloved.
The role of the Gaze is of relevance
here. The film commences with a stereo-
typical male gaze, of Charlotte’s rear
enclosed in pink panties as she lies on the
bed in her hotel room, facing away from the
viewer. We as Subjects are invited to con-
sider the aesthetics of the female body as an
Object to be looked at and enjoyed by a
heteronormative male eye. Yet this gaze is
interrupted as the film plays out, since
Charlotte is neither sexualised nor por-
trayed as a submissive object; rather, she is a
fleshed-out character with her own mus-
ings, desires, and agency. She is later
depicted in the same panties in her hotel
room with her husband, but what is
remarkable is how mundane the scene is.
She stubs her toe, and playfully asks John if
he really has to go; but we do not see her
objectified or sexualised by his gaze. In fact,
he seems immune to her charms to a large
degree, distracted by his career as an up-
and-coming hot-shot photographer.
Meanwhile, Bob’s meets Charlotte in
the hotel bar, where they bond over their
jet lag and insomnia. They then bump into
one another a few times inside the hotel,
and later decide to venture into the city.
The time they spend isolated is gradually
replaced by their shared adventures as
their relationship grows quickly over the
course of the week. They willingly unite as
two free individuals who, in a moment in
time, in a particular place, feel a kinship
that resonates across the social spaces that
separate them. They have in common that
they are American and bored and lonely.
But this is a cynical reading of the film:
they also recognise in one another the
desire for meaning and a sense that it is up
to them as individuals to define their lives.
The weight of this responsibility is obvi-
ously heavy as they look for signs and clues
as to where they should be, or that they
are in the right place at the right time. It is
only when they’re sharing experiences
together that a feeling of ‘rightness’ and
the associated peace manifests.
Not that the rightness of them together
existentially means that they should be
together romantically. Bob and Charlotte
have both made prior commitments, and
are clear about the confines and bound-
aries of those relationships and the lives
they live back home. But this shared,
secret world that neither of them fully
understand is real too. In fact, in many
ways, it is the most real world, as it
becomes the space where they are authen-
tic, not only with one another, but with
themselves. They are able to be listened
to, heard, and use this reflection of them-
selves to recall who they are. Often, not
even words are required for them to com-
municate with one another. They sing
karaoke; they sit and smoke a cigarette;
they watch TV and drink saké; they fall
asleep side by side on the bed, his hand
resting on her foot. Whether or not this
relationship is an ‘emotional affair’ and as
such a betrayal of their marital relation-
ships is almost beside the point. The diffi-
culty they might have in articulating what
they are to one another is to the point.
After they have become close, Bob ends up
having a one night stand with a jazz singer
from the hotel, and this tryst leaves him
emotionally cold and instantly full of
regret. Strangely, this act seems to be
more of a betrayal of Charlotte than of
Bob’s wife, although ironically, his wife
would undoubtedly be more upset by the
sexual infidelity than by his growing
Films
friendship with Charlotte. Obviously, she
will not be told about either.
Orientalism & Secrets
The film has been accused of being racist,
laughing at the Japanese people and culture
rather than with them, mocking their
shortness, their swapping of ls and rs, their
‘helpful’ technology that’s difficult to con-
trol, and their mimicry of the forms of
American culture, as skinny Japanese teens
play video games dressed up as rock stars.
In response, Coppola protests that her
script was based on her experiences in
Japan when she was in her twenties and that
she loves Japan, its people and culture, and
had no intention of mocking them.
Coppola’s vision of Japan is indeed like that
of Bob and Charlotte’s – from the outside,
looking in from the West.
Though in many ways an existentialist
film, Lost in Translation also reflects post-
modernism – starting with its title and the
suggestion it carries of isolated, disjointed
perspectives. And as many postmodern films
do, this one ultimately leaves it up to the
viewer to decide. You may decide if the
Japan depicted is a place you wish to visit, or
not. You may decide if Bob and Charlotte
are moral, or not, if they will ever see one
another again, and whether their respective
marriages will last. Ultimately, you must
even decide what Bob’s last words to
Charlotte are, since the ad-libbed whisper
by Bob into Charlotte’s ear remains a mys-
tery to this day, even to Coppola. This is fit-
ting, as no-one else ever truly knows what
goes on inside a relationship, what two peo-
ple truly mean to one another. That is
sacred knowledge for those two alone. Each
connection is created by free individuals
who themselves imbue those relationships
with meaning. This is the mandate of a
world without fixed essences.
© DR LAURA D’OLIMPIO 2017
Laura D’Olimpio is a Senior Lecturer in Philos-
ophy at the University of Notre Dame Australia,
a regular contributor to The Conversation and
ABC Radio’s Philosopher’s Zone, Chairperson
for the Federation of Australasian Philosophy in
Schools Associations, and co-editor of the open
access Journal of Philosophy in Schools.
February/March 2017 l Philosophy Now 49

T allis
in
Wonderland
I
mmanuel Kant (1724-1804) has had
scarcely a walk-on part in this column.
This is a serious omission: the Sage of
Königsberg has a position in European phi-
losophy similar to that occupied by Johann
Sebastian Bach in Western classical music.
Like Bach, Kant in some sense gathered up
all that came before him and has been a deci-
sive influence on all that followed him.
His work has been an important presence
in my life since my teens. My paperback
copy of the classic Kemp Smith translation
of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), pur-
chased in the late Sixties, shows signs of
intense study. Much sellotape has been
applied to the cover, the spine is wizened by
cracks, and every page bears biro marks of
intense attention – underlinings and
marginal notes and explanations to self.
Reading the Critique was clearly an impor-
tant experience to me, though, disturbingly,
I remember nothing of it.
Over the subsequent half-century, other
writers have prompted me to engage indi-
rectly with the Critique. Highlights include
P.F. Strawson’s famous response The Bounds
of Sense (1966), Quentin Meillassoux’ pene-
trating analysis After Finitude (2008), where
Kant is rejected for his ‘correlationist’
50 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
An Overdue Appearance
of Immanuel Kant
Raymond Tallis introduces a giant of philosophy
to Wonderland.
refusal to separate objective reality from
subjective experience, and Sebastian Gard-
ner’s engrossing, closely-argued Guide to
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1999), which
I have just finished.
The latter made clear something that
may justify Kant’s virtual absence from
Wonderland. His thought is not only sub-
tle, complex, and profound, but also densely
interconnected. His arguments about the
nature of reality and the limitations of our
access to it, about the self and its freedom,
about ethics, and about political philosophy,
are all of a piece. You cannot fully under-
stand any part of the mature Kant, without
engaging with the whole. Not a philosopher
to be trifled with, then, in a column of 1,800
words.
Even so, I cannot resist sharing some
thoughts I have had recently, provoked in
part by a conversation with Sebastian Gard-
ner that led me to his Guide. It took place
mostly at Venice Airport, and it is a miracle
that we did not miss our plane. Our dialogue
is still ongoing, and I will focus only on the
question that has prompted it because I
haven’t fully digested Sebastian’s responses,
and would almost certainly misrepresent
them if I attempted a summary.
Immanuel Kant,
the Sage of
Königsberg
Kant’s World
Anyone who knows anything about Kant
knows that his central idea is that the mind
structures our experiences. And since (he
argues) all our knowledge begins from expe-
rience, the world we take account of in our
lives is also shaped by the mind. We do not
have access to ‘things-in-themselves’ –
denizens of what he calls the ‘noumenal’
realm – reality as it is independent of our
experience of it. We have access only to
what he called the ‘phenomenal’ world of
our experience. Still, we know that there
must be things-in-themselves providing the
ultimate ground of our experiences, under-
pinning them. By proclaiming the existence
of this underlying reality, Kant distanced his
‘transcendental’ idealism from the straight
idealism of Berkeley, for whom the world
consists simply of perceptions and per-
ceivers. (Berkeley’s ideas were superbly
summarised by Hugh Hunter in ‘Berkeley’s
Suitcase’ in last issue’s Philosophy Now.)
There is much that is intuitively attractive
in Kant’s arguments. It is obvious that we are
not just passive recipients of what is ‘out
there’, transparent lenses through which
reality passes en route to a mind that is effec-
tively a plane mirror. And his argument that
what is really real may be entirely unlike the
deliverances of ordinary experience is hardly
shocking to anyone accustomed to the
world-picture of physics, according to which
what is out there is profoundly different
from anything we would recognise from
daily life. Even so, Kant reaches some
strange, indeed outrageous, conclusions,
based on his view of the degree to which the
mind shapes its own experiences. The shap-
ing activity works at two levels: the imposi-
tion on our sensations of what he calls ‘the
forms of sensible intuition’ to make them
into representations of external objects; and
the imposition of the so-called ‘categories’ of
understanding on our experiences.
His boldest claim is that space and time
are neither substances in themselves nor a
set of relations between pre-existing
objects, but are the forms of sensible intu-
ition. This means that it is courtesy of the
mind that sensory experiences are referred
to, or are representations of, enduring
objects ‘out there’ located in a unified space
and connected by a temporal order. In short,
space and time are in the mind.
Almost as bold is his choice of categories,
or ‘pure concepts of the understanding’.
They’re a varied collection of items; but
perhaps the most eye-catching is causality.
Kant reported having been woken out of his
‘dogmatic slumber’ by David Hume’s attack
on metaphysics, but more specifically by
Hume’s critique of the notion of causal
necessity as the cement of the universe. For
Hume, causal connections are not intrinsic
relationships between material events, but
generated by the mind’s capacity for making
associations between experiences. This
capacity leads us to infer from the fact that
A has always been seen to be followed by B
that A must always be followed by B, and this
because A has the causal power to bring
about B. Kant agreed with Hume that cau-
sation was not inherent in an extra-mental
world, but felt that Hume had not gone far
enough. It was not only the putative causal
relationship between A and B, but also their
location and spatial and temporal relations,
that were constructed by the mind.
More (seemingly) outrageous conclu-
sions follow. What appear to be indepen-
dently-constituted external objects, with a
multitude of properties and enduring over
time – and, indeed, the unity of the world
itself – all require “the synthetic power of
the mind.” This power is manifest in “the
unity of apperception,” which we might see
as the binding of an individual’s perceptions
of the world into a single coherent picture.
This, says Kant, is underwritten by the ‘I
think’ that accompanies all our perceptions.
This line of thought took him to his most
startling conclusion: that “the synthetic
power of the mind is the lawgiver of nature.”
It would be foolish to mock this last asser-
tion by asking whether, say, the General
Theory of Relativity was arrived at by collec-
tive introspection. This would not do justice
to what is admirable in Kant; namely the
depth at which he addressed questions such as
‘How can I know what is outside of myself?’
The bankruptcy of the favourite contempo-
rary answer - that we know the world outside
us because it is represented inside us by neu-
ral activity triggered by what is outside of us
– should warn us against condescension. And
there are many other reasons for taking
Kant’s ideas seriously enough to challenge
their implications. Let me focus on one that
has been preoccupying me.
A Critique of The Critique
Kant argued that pure sensations without
concepts (that is, without the categories of
the understanding) are ‘blind’, and that con-
cepts without sensory content – products of
the pure operation of the intellect – are
‘empty’. There’s consequently nothing to
be said about the things-in-themselves,
independent of our sensations of them, since
they can be thought about only through the
pure intellect. Nevertheless – and this is a
key concession, and a source of vulnerabil-
ity for Kant’s system – the noumenal realm
must be the ultimate ground of experiences,
of the phenomenal world we know and live
in. If there were no such ground, we would
be back with Berkeleian idealism. But what
exactly do noumena do? Clearly the noume-
nal realm cannot cause the contents of the
phenomenal realm, because causation
belongs exclusively to the phenomenal
realm, being one of the categories of the
understanding that shape our experienced
world. Is there any other sense in which the
phenomena are underpinned, or somehow
justified, by the noumena? Given that the
latter share none of the properties of the
phenomenal realm, not even fundamental
ones such as location in space and time, it is
difficult to see what work the thing-in-itself
does. In what respect does it determine, or
constrain, experience?
The question comes into even sharper
focus if we think about space and time and
ask whether the Kantian mind can be an
individual consciousness, or must be mind-
in-general. My world is characterised by
objects that are present to me; some near at
hand and others that are remote. Other
objects lie beyond my experience. Your
world has different contents. What explains
my experiencing the desk on which I am
writing, and not experiencing the Battle of
Hastings or a rock on the far side of the
Moon? It can’t be something imposed by my
individual mind, for we are asking what
makes my mind individual. So there must be
extra-mental, indeed extra-experiential,
grounds for my experiencing my desk and
not the Battle of Hastings, and indeed,
underpinning the difference between a true
experience and an hallucination, or an expe-
rience and the mere idea of an experience.
The difference must be due, at least chiefly,
to where my body is. But since to Kant my
body, being an object located in space and
time, is not a native of the noumenal realm,
it cannot play any part in grounding my
experiences and explaining why I experience
this rather than that. If, on the other hand,
we think of spatio-temporal location as a
T allis
in
Wonderland
function of mind-in-general rather than of
individual consciousnesses, there is no basis
for the allocation of distinct phenomenal
worlds to individual subjects, and for the
privileging of certain items to be experi-
enced. There seem to be no grounds for the
desk at which I am working being located
near to me but distant from you, and even
more distant from William the Conqueror.
Mind-in-general is not anchored in any
(particular) where.
It is starting to look as if the noumenal
realm is not only unknowable but feature-
less, and not only featureless but function-
less. This may not be altogether surprising,
given that Kant’s starting point is that all our
knowledge comes from experience, which,
by definition, is phenomenal. This implies
that we can’t get to know the reality under-
pinning our experience, even less the means
by which it underpins it. We cannot get past
our experience to have empirical knowledge
of what lies beyond it. (This is a message lost
on those who think they can point to brain
activity to completely explain experience, or
who look to the general properties of matter
to understand the totality of things, includ-
ing ourselves who do the understanding.)
Kant’s mind-bogglingly complex argu-
ments are a way of saying how, while we are
not imprisoned by our experiences, we can-
not get outside of them because they are that
in virtue of which there is ‘outside’. And his
Critique reminds us that reason can point to
places where there is nothing that can be
known, and nevertheless can raise questions
that will fruitfully disturb us without oblig-
ing us, or philosophy, to answer them.
If I have recently understood this more
clearly, it is thanks to Sebastian Gardner’s
Guide and our still-ongoing discussion. I
intend to return to that tattered paperback.
Kant may not have made his last appearance
in Wonderland.
© PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2017
Raymond Tallis’s latest book The Mystery of
Being Human: God, Freedom and the
NHS was published in September. His website
is raymondtallis.com
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 51
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February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 53

 A Conversation With
Simone Weil
Elisabetta Rombi talks social justice and love with the revolutionary philosopher.
S
imone Weil was one of the most remarkable thinkers of
the past century: a philosopher, a mystic, and a political
activist. Born in France in 1909, she grew up with a Chris-
tian outlook even though her parents were Jewish agnostics and
her brother André a mathematician.
She was above all an outsider. Critical of institutions, she stated
that “the task of the intellect requires complete freedom.” She
never joined any party or church. She argued against Trotsky in
print and in person, saying that elite communist bureaucrats could
be as oppressive as the worst capitalists, and was one of the rare
few who held her own with the Red Army founder. She came
into contact not only with Plato and Kant, but also with Eastern
culture, including the Bhagavad Gita, and learned Sanskrit as well
as Greek. She taught philosophy at a secondary school for girls,
considering school a political place, where one comes into con-
tact with all social classes. She tried to offer her pupils “the nec-
essary tools not to become victims of propaganda.” On leave from
teaching, she worked in a factory to understand the workers’ con-
dition. Although she professed herself a pacifist, she fought in
the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. She died in 1943,
when she was only thirty-four. Her most famous works were pub-
lished posthumously.
Weil’s philosophy is difficult to grasp since it’s expressed in
fragmentary way, but her deep engagement with the theory and
practice of caritas (charity/love) in all its myriad forms func-
tioned as a unifying force in her life and thought. Some of the
other key concepts of her philosophy are good and evil, grav-
ity, the void, grace, beauty, suffering, attention, and waiting for
God. She’s concerned with respect for the individual, society,
one’s roots, work, and dignity, and focused on the oppressed,
on slavery. Today, when hidden forms of slavery are widely
spread, her thought seems extraordinarily up-to-date. Simone
Weil’s deep engagement, in an idiosyncratic, tough-minded way,
with the theory and practice of compassion and generosity, led
Albert Camus to call her “the only great spirit of our times.”
Weil’s words in the following story are taken from her own
books. The dialogue is loosely based on my novel Living Is Not
Enough.
A
t the break of dawn the village is wrapped in silence, a
hamlet on a hill cocooned in sleep. At the edge of the
village I find my bike and ride to our meeting place.
Simone is waiting for me at the crossroads. I can see her tall,
slim silhouette in the distance.
“Revolution,” she says as I arrive, turning to look at me:
“It’s a word for which you kill, you die, you send masses to
their deaths. But it doesn’t have any meaning.”
“It’s a word capable of giving us hope,” I answer.
“What we ask of revolution,” she goes on, “is the end of
social oppression – of slavery. But experience has shown us
that a revolutionary party can seize the bureaucratic and mili-
54 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
tary systems without breaking them. Revolutionary movements
gave us the illusion of power only by destroying the last ves-
tiges of feudalism and establishing capitalism either in the
shape of private enterprise or in the shape of the state, as hap-
pened in Russia.”
“But the revolution in Russia appeared to be a completely
new beginning,” I say.
“Yes, ‘appeared’ to be. The truth is that the privileges the
Party abolished already no longer had any social reality, they
existed only through the exercise of traditions, while the real
powers – I mean the great industry, the police, the army, the
bureaucracy – not only were not destroyed by that revolution,
but thanks to the revolution, they became even more powerful.”
“Is it true that when you were ten you considered yourself a
Bolshevik?”
She smiles at me, amused: “I was born into an open-minded
family.”
“You certainly grew up with a strong sensitivity for social
justice.”
“My brother taught me to read when I was five, at the out-
break of the First World War. Each child adopted a soldier, and
sent him gifts and letters. I soon received my exchange letter
from the front. This destroyed the innocence of my childhood.”
“I guess it helped you develop a consciousness of others’
sorrows, which later led you to make unusually generous
choices, such as in the war against Franco in Spain? I know you
were there in theory as a news correspondent, but in actual fact
you’d joined a group of activists.”
“As you certainly also know, everyone else in that group
died. I was safe because of a wound I received from a fire, and
was forced to leave.” We remount our bikes and start peddling,
talking as we ride along.
“It wasn’t the only time you lived out your sympathy for the
working class.”
“If you’re talking about my factory work, it was only normal
to want to have that experience. It didn’t last long, as I was
unwell. But I was to be forever marked by that experience. I was
branded a slave. You may think it’s weird, but my strongest feel-
ing was resignation. I got so used to feeling like a slave that I
would find it normal if somebody had ordered me to get off the
bus and walk. I am not proud to confess this, but I felt the sub-
mission of a beast of burden. It’s the sort of suffering which no
labourer will talk about, for it’s too painful to even think about.”
“Did you get anything positive from the experience?”
“Well, I felt as though I were outside every abstract world,
in contact with real life, side by side with real men and women,
regardless of their being good or evil. They were authentic.”
“Your works say to me that without a vision of real life it’s
impossible to act incisively.”
“Whenever something external prevents us from fulfilling
our wishes, we soon look for imaginary satisfaction. This is loss
WEIL PORTRAIT © WOODROW COWHER 2017 PLEASE VISIT WWW.WOODRAWSPICTURES.COM
of energy. Since we are made unreal by our imagination, which
is a deteriorated form of energy, we badly need to become flesh.”
“You went to Germany in 1932. What struck you most there?”
“At the time, the German working class was the most orga-
nized in Europe. I was struck by their blind faith in Nazism. A
violent hatred towards the establishment attracted them to it,
without them realizing that National Socialism was strong
exactly because it belonged to the class that oppressed them.”
“After that journey you wrote Considerations On The Causes Of
Freedom And Social Oppression. What was the fundamental ques-
tion in that work, would you say?”
“The puzzle I was trying to solve was understanding the
link between social oppression and the improvements man had
been able to reach in regards to his relationship with nature. It’s
as if man cannot free himself from his natural needs without
increasing the burden of social oppression to the same degree,
as if human freedom were balancing on a mysterious scale…”
“How can the down-turn be avoided?”
“I don’t have any recipes, only intuitions. Nothing can
impede man from feeling himself born to freedom. He can
never accept his slavery because he is able to think.”
“Not always! Sometimes he can’t see beyond his slavery.”
“We don’t live in perfect freedom, but we must try to envision
it, so that we may hope to reach a less imperfect freedom. We
can reach for an ideal. The ideal is as unreachable as a dream; but
unlike the dream, it has a relationship with reality. The most
sacred need of our soul is for it to be protected against the power
of falsehood and suggestion. The need for freedom necessi-
tates our protection against propaganda and the power of sug-
gestion. Whatever is going to influence public opinion should
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 55
be submitted to the same guidelines that rule public actions.”
“But now we live in a global society where powerful people
use advertising and propaganda in an overwhelming way. How
can we protect ourselves?”
“Without factories, without weapons, without powerful
mass media, you can do nothing against whoever possesses
them. The weapons of power are oppressive, whereas the
weapons of the weak are useless. And whenever oppressed peo-
ple have gathered to exert some kind of influence – I mean, to
form trade unions or political parties – they’ve reproduced
within themselves all the faults of the regime they wanted to
modify or destroy.”
“Nothing can be done, then?”
“The only chance left would be the constant cooperation of
everyone to devolve power progressively. But that ideal’s
clearly an absurdity! Not even in a dream can you imagine
anything like that in a society based on rivalry and war! It’s
clearly impossible that in such a society centralised power
would start to devolve power. No tyrant in the world can be so
wise. What can be done in such a world?” I’m out of breath,
but Simone goes on: “Nothing! All you can do is try to loosen
the mechanisms that are crushing us, and seize any opportu-
nity to wake up some thought wherever you can. Anything giv-
ing a chance to the individual to enjoy a bit of freedom is
worth being sought out. What can be more generous than a
task that aims to create a future of freedom, overstepping the
limit of one’s existence? Unfortunately, whoever embarks on
such a mission will have to endure condemnation, solitude,
misunderstanding, and the hostility of enemies and friends, all
without any guarantee. No reward is pledged even for the
most generous efforts. Yet none of these reasons will deflect
the will of a steady soul once it has understood what to do.”
“But how can we achieve it?”
56 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
“First we need a critical analysis in various fields to identify
what is right to human beings, and what can be used by the
community as weapons against people. Whoever embarks on
the critical analysis I’m talking about can escape the community
vertigo, and sign a personal pact with the spirit of the universe,
rejecting social idolatry.”
“Here it isn’t difficult to be eager to sign that pact,” I com-
ment. We’re riding beside steep, vertical rocks, beyond which
we can see the transparency of an incredible blue-green sea.
“The real presence of God lives in the beauty of the world.”
Simone’s eyes are lit up. “But beauty is a trap designed to cap-
ture humanity. It’s a trick, an enigma that torments us with sor-
row. We would like to be nourished by it, but we can only look
at it, and even so, only at a distance. The agony of human life is
that eating and looking at things are two different things. Per-
haps all vices, all crimes, are in their essence, usually, or perhaps
always, attempts to devour beauty – attempts to eat what cannot
be eaten but must only be looked at. If in eating fruit Eve was
the first to condemn humanity, then looking at fruit without eat-
ing it should be the deed of salvation.”
“Can you tell me what you mean by ‘passive acceptance, the
action without acting’?”
“Yes. That concept is inspired by Eastern philosophy. It’s
action that springs from a situation, giving voice to it, with
nobody showing off. In other words, you act only because you
are forced to do so – because it’s not possible to do otherwise.”
“I like the idea in your book The Need For Roots, of breaking
up great factories in order to create small factories owned by
their workers.”
“That would be a system which was neither capitalist nor
socialist. Russian Communism did not destroy the proletarian
condition. Rather, it made everyone proletarian!”
“I also like what you wrote on the education of young people
– most of all, your idea of getting beyond the division between
physical labour and intellectual work.”
“Modern culture was born in an environment oriented
towards technology and fragmented into specializations, and so
has been devoid of any contact with the real and the supernat-
ural worlds. Such a culture, deprived of its treasure, has been
used to educate the masses! They try to teach what’s left of this
culture to the unlucky, and to the ones who are most anxious to
learn, just as though they were feeding chickens with seeds.
Amongst all the forms of uprootedness, being uprooted from
culture is the worst, the most alarming.”
“It’s true that your life and thought have been marked by
the search for truth, a constant study where you confronted
difficult books from both the Western and Eastern traditions,
involving various disciplines, and oblivious of contradictions –”
“Our life is in itself an impossibility. Each desire stands in
contradiction to the conditions or consequences related to it.
Each sentence implies its opposite. Every feeling is confused
with the contrary. We are a contradiction because we are crea-
tures – because we are in God and enormously different from
God. The contradiction is our poverty, and the feeling of
poverty is the feeling of truth.”
“I can see a strong connection between your thirst for jus-
tice and truth and your Christianity.”
She stops cycling to look at me directly: “I was raised a
WEIL PORTRAIT © WOODROW COWHER 2017 PLEASE VISIT WWW.WOODRAWSPICTURES.COM
Christian, and I’ve always been faithful to it, so to speak.”
I object, “But your father was an atheist. Even if your family
had Jewish origins, you didn’t have a religious upbringing!”
“Ever since my adolescence I thought we don’t have an
answer to the question of the existence of God. The only way
of avoiding a mistake – which is what should be avoided the
most – was not to ask the question. So I didn’t ask. I neither
affirmed nor denied.”
We leave our bicycles, and walk towards the sea. Our feet
sink in the sand. There is nothing awkward in Simone. On the
contrary, there is elegance in her every gesture. As if she has
sensed my thoughts, she smiles, her large eyes shining. I think
about her, a good-looking woman who has denied herself her
own beauty, all her life hiding behind glasses, baggy dresses, and
hats. She certainly considers vanity a form of idolatry.
Near the rocks that limit the beach there’s a strong scent of
seaweed. Simone is silent for a while, then gazing at the hori-
zon, she says: “The Christian way of life was to me the best
perspective to consider the problems of the world. Since my
childhood I had the notion of charity towards one’s neighbour,
to which I gave the beautiful name ‘Justice’.”
“What’s the relationship between charity and justice, in
your opinion?”
“The Gospels don’t make any distinction between them.
We invented the distinction, and it’s not difficult to see why –
because giving is therefore considered a good deed rather than
a requirement of justice. But only the absolute identification of
justice and love makes compassion and gratitude possible.”
“Yet you refused to become a member of the Church, in
spite of Father Perrin’s invitation.”
February/March 2017 ● Philosophy Now 57
 “I was struck by his helpfulness, but I felt it necessary within
myself to be by myself. There’s a Catholic environment that’s
ready to accept anyone who comes in with warmth. But I did-
n’t want to live in a place where they use the word ‘us’, and be
part of an ‘us’. I didn’t want to feel at home in any community,
wherever it was. But ‘I didn’t want’ would not be the right
words. On the contrary, I would have liked to; it would have
been gratifying. Nevertheless, I felt I wasn’t allowed to do so. I
felt that I was forced to be alone – a foreigner and outcast
wherever I happened to be, in whichever community I was in,
with no exceptions.”
“What do you mean by ‘obeying gravity’?”
“Obeying gravity is the worst sin; it dissolves freedom.
During my frequent headaches I experienced the desire to
make someone else suffer the same pain I was suffering. In
great afflictions, the consequences of gravity are rather ridicu-
lous, and a bit disgusting.”
“What then is the meaning of Christ’s crucifixion to you?”
“Virtue is keeping in ourselves the sorrow that one suffers –
not spreading it around using either actions or imagination. So
maybe one of the possible meanings is that the sorrow, shame,
and death that one doesn’t want to impose on others fall back
on oneself, without one wanting it.”
“Would you say then that God sends us heartache to save
us?” I ask.
“Certainly not. Affliction is evil. But grief can be good. Some
aches make one lose contact with the world, others make one
make contact with it. Nevertheless, God doesn’t make us suffer as
a test: he only allows the natural operation of pain according to
its own mechanism. Otherwise he wouldn’t have withdrawn from
creation to let us be, and so be willing not to be any longer. But
God’s absence is the most extraordinary proof of perfect love. If
one thinks that God could be close to us without destroying the
self, one completely ignores everything about God.”
“But what do we really know about God?”
“About God we know nothing but one thing: God is not
what we are.”
“How can we hold the supernatural in our souls, then?”
“We draw energy daily from everyday life. If this energy
isn’t constantly renewed we lose our strength. Money, profes-
sion, honour, reputation, fame, power, or our beloved are
sources of energy for us. If one of them has penetrated deeply
into our soul, once we’re deprived of it, we die. However,
there is an energy that is transcendental, which comes from
above and penetrates us whenever we wish it to, transforming
into action in our body and soul. This is the bread we should
ask for. And we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of this authentic
nourishment even for one day.”
“Why is this important?” I ask her as we head back to our
bicycles.
“Everything in us is ruled by needs which force us to com-
mit evil, except the energy from above. But you cannot accu-
mulate a supply of it – you must ask for this bread every day.
Whoever asks for bread doesn’t receive stones.”
“You’re reciting Jesus’ prayer: Give us each day our daily bread.”
“Prayer is nothing but attention in its purest form. When I
discovered the intensity, the unlimited tenderness, of the
Greek text of this prayer, I couldn’t help saying it to myself
58 Philosophy Now ● February/March 2017
continuously! It won me over completely. I think it’s impossi-
ble to say the Lord’s prayer, paying full attention to every
word, even just once, without a real change inside you.”
“But the pervading presence of evil in the world is so upset-
ting,” I tell her.
“If there were no evil, you would never renounce this
world,” she answers simply. “Evil is the transfer of the degra-
dation one has within oneself onto others. While suffering, an
innocent person spreads the light of salvation upon the crime
he is victim of: he is the visible image of the innocent God.
The suffering innocent knows the truth about his persecutor,
the criminal doesn’t. The evil that the innocent carries within
belongs to his persecutor, but this evil is no longer emotional.
If evil is the root of mystery, sorrow is the root of knowledge.”
“But why is it so difficult for people to truly discern human
misery?”
“It’s difficult for the rich and powerful because they believe,
in an almost invincible way, that they are worth something. It’s
difficult for the poor because they believe, in an almost invinci-
ble way, that the rich and powerful are worth something.”
“What’s the true grandeur of humanity, then, if there is any?”
“Human grandeur consists of one’s attempt to create one’s
life over and over again – in creating what one has been given,
even in forging what one endures.”
“What then is our strength?”
“Nothing but our thoughts. Not as conscience, opinion; not
in the way idealists claim. Thought is strength when it partici-
pates in material life.”
“As happened in your life…”
“One should accept the idea of being nameless, of being
simply ‘human substance’. One should give up esteem, recog-
nition. This only means being faithful to the truth. We are
human substance. We have no rights. We should strip our-
selves of any decoration, and bare ourselves.”
“What way of thinking can help do this?” We’ve arrived back
at the crossroads.
“Death warns us that we are not gods. It is precisely for this
reason that we find death so painful, until we completely
understand it.”
“To understand it –” I can’t finish the sentence, as Simone
goes on, “As soon as one finds a point of eternity in one’s soul, the
only thing one should do is keep it safe, let it grow, like a seed.”
I accept her words as a personal gift. “Thank you,” I say,
“for your company and for the ride. But finally, may I ask you
something more personal? What do you think of friendship?”
“It’s a virtue,” she answers. Seeing my surprise, she contin-
ues, “One cannot look for friendship, nor can one dream of it
or wish for it. One practices it.”
“How can we recognize true friendship, then?”
“A flawless sign to distinguish it, is not finding any opposi-
tion between friendship and internal solitude.”
Before leaving, she turns towards me, her eyes still shining,
and she shouts out: “There is no greater sin than not being
able to nourish oneself with light!”
© ELISABETTA ROMBI 2017
Elisabetta Rombi is a teacher of English literature, fiction writer and
essayist. Parts of the novel mentioned were performed during the
philosophical festival held in Cagliari in 2015.
 Spinoza
noza
The Ethics
of an Outlaw
IVAN
IV
VAN SEGRÉ
Translated
Translated by David Broder
Broder

9781350016613
Paperback & eBook £21.99

Translated
Translated
l t d into
i t English
E
Eng for the first time
Ivan Segré, celebrated international philosopher
and scholar of the Talmud,
Talmud, reclaims
reclaims Spinoza as a
faithful interpreter
interpreter of the revolutionary
revolutionary potential
contained within the Old d Testament.
Testament.

www
w.bloomsbury
y.com/spinoza17
.com/sp

@BloomsburyPhilo

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