Does Philosophy Still Matter? | The New School

good evening my name is Michael Schober Dean of the New School for Social Research also known as the Graduate faculty of political and social science I'm delighted to welcome you to the new school which couldn't be a more fitting venue for this evening's panel for any of you who are new to us the new school is an educational and cultural venue like no other it was founded in 1919 by dissident scholars from uptown Columbia who were unwilling to sign loyalty oaths in the first world war among other complaints they wanted to create an educational experience exactly unlike that at the old school to connect the intellectual and artistic worlds with the general public this evenings event fits beautifully into that founding mission it also fits beautifully into another of the university's historic moments when the new school's president Alvin Johnson spearheaded an effort in 1933 to rescue German and Austrian scholars who were in danger under National Socialism the university in exile which he founded which soon became the Graduate Faculty of political and social science became a haven for rigorous thinkers who connect the social the political and the philosophical and who are committed to thinking across disciplinary boundaries and in ways that connect with the most important concerns of the day let me now introduce you to a modern-day inheritor of that tradition professor James Miller whose most recent book examined lives from Socrates to Nietzsche is the inspiration for this evenings panel James Miller is chair of Liberal Studies and professor of politics at the New School for Social Research he's the author of five other notable and celebrated books on a wide variety of topics flowers in the dustbin the rise of rock'n'roll in 1947 to 1977 the passion of Michel Foucault democracy is in the streets from Port Huron to the Seas of Chicago an account of the American student movement of the 1960s Rousseau dreamer of democracy a study of the origins of modern democracy and history and human existence from Marx to merleau-ponty an analysis of Marx in the French existentialist beyond this quite remarkable set of works Jim has an extraordinary record of academic and popular including being the original editor of The Rolling Stone illustrated history of rock and roll book reviewer and pop music critic at Newsweek between 1981 and 1990 and author of a well known lingua franca essay called is bad writing necessary George Orwell Theodor Adorno in the politics of language for eight years he served as editor of Daedalus the journal II the American Academy of Arts and Sciences I am honored to count Jim as a colleague as well as a friend Jim Miller Thank You Michael it's a great honor to have you as my Dean and also as a dear friend I also want to thank the audience all of you for coming out on a terrible night in which some forecasts were calling for golf ball-sized ice pellets so that you braved the elements for a panel and philosophy is awesome thank you I'd like to start by explaining why I invited everyone else that's on this panel we all try I think to popularize philosophy that is to make philosophy interesting and relevant to people who are not themselves philosophers but we all do this in somewhat different ways and I can describe how I think best by introducing the panelists in alphabetical order my colleague Simon Critchley is chair of the philosophy department here at the New School for Social Research he's written 13 books over the past two decades from the ethics of deconstruction in 1993 to the faith of the faithless which is coming out this year though he has a special interest in modern continental philosophy he's written on a wide variety of topics most recently on ethics and political theory the relation between philosophy and poetry and the nature of humor at present he's working on Rousseau Heidegger it'san Becket pessoa and levy nose simon is especially relevant for this panel because of his efforts to write about philosophy with a light touch above all in his delightfully morbid book of dead philosophers from 2008 Critchley has also demonstrated that there is a continuing interest in philosophy today by moderating and online philosophy blog the stone for the New York Times that has turned out to be astonishingly popular I think far beyond probably what you expected when you began it Anthony Gottlieb is a visiting scholar currently at New York University and he's taught as well at the new school a class we titled on nothing in fact he was on the staff of the economist for over 20 years in that magazines executive editor from 1997 to 2006 although Anthony once told an interviewer that he entered journalism quote by accident as a distraction from academic philosophy which he studied at Cambridge University philosophy has nonetheless remained a non academic passion for him in 2001 Gottlieb published the dream of reason the first in a projected three-volume history of philosophy aimed at non specialists in recent years Gottlieb's essays on philosophers and philosophical topics have appeared in The New Yorker the New York Times Book Review The Wall Street Journal and online at more intelligent life calm our youngest panelist Astra Taylor is a writer a documentary filmmaker and a prodigiously gifted polymath in 2005 she helped form the production company hidden driver in order to produce feature-length and short form documentaries with a focus on intellectual cultural and political affairs the company has since produced short videos for the Nation magazine Art Review magazine the Museum of Modern Art the Venice Biennale among other clients but Astra is best known for two feature-length documentaries Z Zak about the Slovenian philosopher Slav Aziz AK from 2005 and examined life from 2008 this last film offered peripatetic profiles of a number of well-known contemporary philosophers from Judith Butler and Martha Nussbaum to Peter Singer and Cornel West I've known Astra for years she's a graduate of the new school and she has been preoccupied with philosophy and social change and how philosophers can engage constructively with the larger world for as long as I've known her and then there is Cornel West for 20 years one of America's most prominent public intellectuals his writing speaking and teaching weave together the traditions of the black Baptist Church progressive politics and rhythm and blues and jazz he's best known for his classic book race matters published in 1993 see well democracy matters and a memoir he published last year brother West living and loving out loud he's also published important monographs on Marxism and ethics and on the pragmatic strain in American philosophy more than anybody else on our panel West is a multimedia phenomenon someone who's brought his philosophy to life in America's living rooms and multiplexes he appears frequently on television on the Bill Maher show The Colbert Report CNN and c-span he can be heard weekly on Tavis Smiley's radio program and on the smiley and west radio show that debuted last October he made his film debut in the matrix and has appeared in over 25 other films and documentaries since then a devoted recording artist he's released spoken word and hip hop albums and collaborated with musicians as different as Prince Terence Blanchard and the late gerald levert last but not least I'm really envious of this accomplishment a characteristic quote from West was featured on the Starbucks collector's coffee cup series the way I see it specifically on collectors cup number 284 quote you can't lead the people if you don't love the people you can't save the people if you don't serve the people so before going on I want to thank all of you Simon Anthony Astra and of course brother West for being here tonight thank you okay so our question tonight does philosophy still mattered Anthony Gottlieb suggested I take a snap poll of the audience we live in a Democratic Society seemed like a good idea so as of this moment how many of you in the audience think the answer the question does philosophy still matter the answer is no raise your hands yeah it's very good very good I think we how many think instead the answer to the question does philosophy still matter is yes raise your hands yeah that's it we can go home now you know it's bad out there so seriously it seems to me that given the overwhelming response that this event received in terms of RSVPs and given the coverage the New York Times Book Review gave last Sunday essentially turned over a whole issue to themes of philosophy with essays on philosophy and literature by James Ryerson and a couple of book reviews it's obvious that there is something in the air the stone is another example that suggests philosophy does still matter and that then raises the question what kind of philosophy matters how should we define philosophy and how does any specific form of philosophy come to matter how does it matter to someone another question I think that's raised by this panel in particular is what is gained and what if anything is lost when someone tries to make philosophy relevant to non specialists to people who aren't philosophers these aren't the only questions worth exploring tonight here are a few others I'd like to suggest at the outset one if like Plato we define philosophy as a quest for wisdom that may prove unending and perhaps may yield no positive certain results then what is the search for wisdom really good for to what is the relation of reason to faith of philosophy to religion and how does the search for wisdom relate to the most exacting forms of rigorous inquiry in what we today would call science is philosophy best pursued in private or in public what are its implications if any for statecraft or for the conduct of a citizen and democratic society for should philosophy aim to edify and inspire or primarily to disturb and disquiet or somehow both or somehow both simultaneously I don't think hard to imagine how that would work five and this is my most narrow question because it's something that arises out of my new book and some reviewers have commented on it so I just want to put it out there is the Socratic ambition as it appears in Plato which I take to be one of the core foundations of the philosophical tradition in the West is the Socratic ambition that is to say embodying a life of perfect integrity by exemplifying a rational unity of thought and action really worthwhile by rational unity I mean that a person is able to articulate a set of provisional beliefs about the best way to live that is consistent and reasonable and also that one's conduct is invariably consistent with these beliefs is such perfect integrity even feasible in practice is struggling to attain such a tegrity worthwhile even if perfect integrity is impossible I'll end these introductory comments by giving my own short answers to three of my own questions just to get the conversation started one philosophy I would define as a quest not a body of authoritative knowledge the search for wisdom implies that one doesn't yet have wisdom - despite the example of Socrates I do not believe that a rational unity of thought and action is feasible in Prak for most human beings and perhaps for any human being Bertrand Russell once put it this way quote most people would rather die than think and most people do 3i nevertheless think that the Socratic ambition is worthwhile even if examining one's life seriously seems now to entail an unending quest with no firm goal and no certain reward to be honest I personally can't think of a more interesting way to live speaking for myself our format tonight's very informal I've asked the panelists to act as if we were all at a classical symposium although we left our bottle of wine backstage we're gonna try to have an actual conversation spontaneously product is needed by our moderator before he invites comments and questions from the floor so let me finally introduce our moderator tonight Louis H Lapham is an American writer who has become something of an American institution he was the editor of Harper's monthly magazine most of the time from 1976 until 2006 with the hiatus of a couple of years his essays have appeared over the years in Vanity Fair fortune the a literary magazine National Review the Weekly Standard the Wall Street Journal your very promiscuous and where you publish his fourteen books ranged from money and class in America in 1988 to pretensions to Empire notes on the criminal folly of the Bush administration in 2006 he wrote the American ruling class a documentary film aired on the Sundance Channel in 2007 a former host of the PBS series bookmark he currently hosts the world in time for Bloomberg radio upon leaving Harper's he promptly launched an audacious new publishing venture lap ins quarterly that is meant to reprint the best that has been thought and written on everything from sex to money so that it may bring some light to her benighted contemporary culture mr. Lamba I'm happy to be here in such August coming I can't think of a better way to start except to start asking the panel the first of your questions what is the search for wisdom really good for and I guess we could I'll start with you Anthony and move around the the table and hope for the best - that one is speak into the microphone young man okay can you hear me now there are answers to that which have to do with the benefits that the search for wisdom has on other people apart from the searcher though extent to which you can help Society and there are the effects on the individual the the effects on society I I suppose I would think this think that philosophy is of great benefit to almost every other discipline or is of potentially great benefit to almost every other discipline and although I don't think anyone has ever attempted to try to count the number of philosophical problems my firm impression is that it's on the increase that we have a particularly large number of philosophical problems so you you would be a teacher of philosopher Kings a teacher philosopher Kings yeah um to some extent but I would say also philosophers scientists philosopher politicians philosopher writers so it's not a good it could be handed to people rather than a personal narrow yes by helping to teach them how to think consistently about the most difficult question so you're a public servant well that was one half of my said I think it's also a great benefit to the person who does it themselves okay Astra um they're repeating the question what is what is the search for wisdom really good for what is the search for wisdom really good for that it seems to me like the wrong question because it doesn't seem to be good for much when you mentioned the idea of philosopher Kings I just thought that sounds like a terrible idea one thing I would never do is ask a philosopher for life advice but I do think that it offers a sort of unappreciated pleasure and I suppose that's one thing in my work that I'm trying to show is that the I'm more in line with the idea not of philosophy as consolation but philosophy is something that's unsettling that throws up that challenges the tyranny of common sense I guess as has been said by think Bertrand Russell so is that really maybe that's an Indian in itself but I'm not I'm not sure that there's a utility or measurable utility that it comes from it so good does it teach you how to live or why you have to die I mean what could it mean where's the money in it where's the money that's precisely it there's no money in it there's no utility a lot of frustration with philosophy is why philosophy it goes over the same questions these intractable quiet questions over and over and over and over maybe one thing it can do is help you accept the fact that there are certain things that have no answer and yet you have to wrestle with them then the less good that good doesn't quite seem like the right word to me Cornell well first I wanted to just congratulate brother James Miller on his recent book that's how philosophy begins I think philosophy ought to begin with a note of gratitude and a note of their note of wonder and a note of radical finer tude and all the faults and foibles that we have but we move forward nevertheless that for me on a very personal note what Nietzsche said at Montaigne the very fact that this man wrote truly augments the joy of living on this earth I like that that's what philosophy had done for me that I'm only here a short time when were vanishing creatures just like everybody else in this room and one day they'll be long gone and the fact that we try to find some joy in the short time that were here so when I replayed on when I read Hume when I read Whitehead when I read Rorty when I read do it I actually have unadulterated joy even though I disagree with each and every one of them at the same time though I must be honest because I here I take very seriously lines 607 b5 of booked in the Plato's Republic talks about a traditional quarrel between philosophy and poetry for me philosophy must not just go to school with poets but come to terms with the very conditions of its possibility in the West which is poetry and nopales which is myth and politics and that's what Socrates begins as a construct in Plato's texts the first time we get a philosophical discourse Plato is using Socrates to displace Homer the displaced the poets in they're wrestling with Paideia wrestling with conceptions of Education and in all honesty I don't know what philosopher most of my my calling as a thinker as a dramatic lover of wisdom has been trying to find a philosophic analog to check off to Shakespeare to Beethoven in Coltrane I have yet to find one that I gain much more joy in the poets and the musicians than I do to philosophers owing to the fact that they have been so tied to a certain kind of confidence and optimism that I do not share at all so you Hume and Vik and Stein are candidates but they're still lower tiers on the Dean's List but Shakespeare Beethoven Beckett check off Kafka that's me so Cornel so from your point of view philosophy is an art not a science well no I think philosophy must go to school science I think we need a philosophy of quantum mechanics we need a philosopher it makes philosophy to make sense of quarks and dark and dark energy and so forth in the modern world we don't want to be monopolistic and think that philosophy only goes to school with science that I come out of a humanistic tradition that says that in the end the poets as well as the new secular priests to it which are the physicists since Newton since Sir Isaac Ondine Stein those who tell us what the nature of reality is we go to the physicist to tell us they have a crucial role but they must not in any way become so monopolistic that they downplay the poets and musicians the choreographers the dancers those of us trying to make sense out of living can you bear to read a philosopher who can't write well oh sure I mentioned John Dewey I love do it but he's no William James we know that he doesn't well at all all right Simon what is the quest for wisdom good for for nothing it's some of no utility there's no practical utility philosophers and not policy makers philosophers or not it's not reducible to the business of policy because it doesn't make you healthier wealthier or anything in that sense it's useless and Socrates was killed for engaging in that but let's remind ourselves what we're talking about we're talking about wait a minute Simon why then do all but six people in this auditorium raise their hands and say philosophy matters what philosophy does is let's just go back to what Cornell was talking about we have three people Socrates and two of Plato's brothers in the Republic who wander out of the Agora on the road to Piraeus and they begin to ask a series of questions about the nature of justice so what philosophy does philosophy is three three people in that in that context three people leaving the city and dreaming of another another city in speech dreaming of another way of ordering Society so did that and that's why Socrates was was killed because he showed impiety towards the gods of the city and he corrupted the youth the task of philosophy is impiety and corruption that's that's what we're doing and and and it's it's rock music eat well there can be worry that's what rock music used to be maybe in a previous generation as Jim so eloquently shows in flowers in the dustbin presumably well yeah but nobody but no buts philosophy is something that cuts a diagonal through common sense as actually it cuts a diagonal through doxa through opinion so whatever we take to be the opinion about justice or truth or love or happiness philosophy will contest that and raise a question for which there's no obvious answer and what we are given as Socrates puts it in that passage from Republic that Cornell was alluding to is provide what is called Ingram Methodists but that means a way it's a way not a rigorous as it were not a scientific method but a path of thinking that one can walk along and if you follow that path if you're seduced by the temptations that the different philosophers can offer you whether then part of the what a philosophical education is about is learning to be seduced by temptations that are in internally coherent but inconsistent between each other right one can believe the Spinoza is true and that Descartes is true and you know they can't both be true so it requires a sort of gymnastics of thoughts at that level that's very important and it allows you to contest what is taken for granted what passes for common sense for me that's the so and that's that's what I mean I'm going to get to - Miller you know who is really the the Plato in this in this in this symposium but the but in other words it could you say that it was a getting to know your own mind and taking joy in your own mind is that a fair no absolutely absolutely not I think none of that philosophy philosophy is not an activity that's done alone philosophy from the beginning is a shared enterprise that takes place in and as dialog it's two people or more than two people so the identification of philosophy with introspection or internal or contemplation I think is is questionable philosophy is and the philosophical schools in Athens began as groups collectives on the edge of the city that were designed to teach originally the doctrines of Socrates are so so for me it's a it's a group activity philosophy is something you do collectively I don't want to try to draw together here because it seems to me as we've gone around the table there are a lot of implicit or explicit contradictions and how the answers have come and I sort of hear you Simon saying that you welcome a pluralism of incommensurable options of understanding because it produces anarchy and shakes any kind of certitude the backdrop it seems to me to my book is the state of philosophy as an academic discipline which I want to refer to briefly because I think that Anthony when he began the kind of answer he gave about how it helps clarify thinking in applied disciplines would be the standard understanding of philosophy today not anything that that brother West has said or Simon has said there was a recent historian of logical positivism Scot Soames who writes of analytic philosophy quote it has become an aggregate of related but semi independent investigations very much like other active disciplines gone are the days of large central figures whose work is accessible and relevant to as well as read by all philosophers philosophy has become a highly organized discipline done by specialists primarily for other specialists and there's this model that's out there philosophy as divided into these very rigorous subfields of logic semantics ethics in there many applied forms of philosophy but I think that for many of us who hark back to Plato what drew certainly me to philosophy is the Platonic dialogues which are themselves a form of poetry and which the philosopher is portrayed in a form of fiction in these dialogues striving for some kind of integration and cohesion and eventually some kind of transcendence a sense that this isn't all we have we struggle to understand this world but there are mysteries that are sacred and unfathomable that we want to open ourselves to this is the part of philosophy that is very close to religion even mysticism and it's as if in the anglo-american Academy it's been banished it's like to somebody like Scott Psalms at Princeton he's so you know very good historian of analytic philosophy but it's like some of what we're talking about I'm sure he would just think is complete rubbish so it raises the question what is philosophy well I mean then you've got to take that up with Anthony because you're saying it's it's personal enlightenment and Anthony is saying it's a public good I mean so you know I mean you're going to defend I hope the the notion of the academic discipline so and a body of certified thought right he's expecting you to defend academic philosophy which you fled from so how that's supposed to work I'm not quite sure but I mean Jim has just said that it's a personal revelation right well I the kind of philosophy that attracted me which is not the only kind of philosophy is that and I just want to recognize that we have many different implicit definitions of philosophy that have already been referred to in the course of just going around the table and so I'd like us perhaps it'd be useful to clarify what some of the differences there and I think Anthony you do work with a different background set of assumptions about what counts as philosophy we were in a classroom once in the course on nothing and I told him he had to teach Heidegger and so he taught Heidegger and he walked in and he said this is completely beyond comprehension and I said but wait a minute the first paragraph Heidegger says everybody will say this is completely beyond comprehension so what do you say about that but so it's that good yeah yes I think I don't think Heidegger gets off the hook there that easily I I think that there are many kinds of philosophy and I'm interested in quite a few of them I think it definitely a mistake to try and settle on one narrow definition a philosophy one of the reasons I like it is that it has several branches several ways of doing it the two extremes I suppose are academic philosophy as it's practiced now especially in the english-speaking world and the search for spiritual enlightenment those are sort of two opposite extremes and then there's all sorts of stuff in the middle defence of academic philosophy even given its severe limitations and what I mean by that is this that you know I was blessed to to actually study with six of the philosophic genius as an academic philosophy Nelson Goodman WB Quine John Rawls Robert Nozick Stanley Cavell and Hilary Putnam never before in the history of academic philosophy have you at a collection of philosophic geniuses Harvard had Santa Yana and James androids but they were greater public figures but they didn't have the same philosophical acumen that those six that I mentioned now all of them for the most part reach the conclusion that the basic assumptions and of most of logical positivism most analytical philosophy erratically call into question and they'd already made the move before Rory popularized it in its own way now what does that mean that means that we live in an Alexandrian age highly professionalized specialized commodified bureaucratize rationalized and therefore any sense of speculation any sense of poetic vision any sense of prophetic witness is pushed to the margin well I quite unabashedly even given the joys I received studying with those brothers and then we're all brothers because it's still very much a patriarchal affair we've got Martha Nussbaum and Judith Butler some other Giants who are women but it's still very deeply patriarchal but what happens is what they push through the margin speculation poetry prophetic witness utopian interruption wrestling with suffering structures of domination imperialism colonialism all the things that are probably most important about modern life that need to be wrestled with are pushed to the periphery and what is zero in on are these fascinating professional illogical philosophic questions that could take three lifetimes to wrestle with and it's a lot of fun it is I mean there's a word to be said for intellectual hedonism it it's a lot of fun and so I think what we have to do is it Jacobian fashion right I mean you just hang loose you know you say hey this is fascinating but the frameworks too narrow for me and turns my own calling this is Cornell was was Christ's a philosopher Jesus [Laughter] philosophies for we mortals vanishing creatures not the ones who bounce back on the third day is is it philosophers supposed to be an inspirational figure this whole question of who's in and who's out really gets to the anxiety that's even in the question does philosophy still matter right there's an uncertainty there like does what we do matter and why is that why is philosophy plagued by self-doubt and I think that part of that is because professional philosophers have done so much to build this wall and define inside and outside now there are many academic disciplines you know if you study if you studied to be an economist you can get have a professor in that field there are professionals or journalism schools there are journalists there are women's studies departments and there are women there are art schools and there is there are artists right English departments and authors philosophers do not let there be any philosophers outside of the university and what does it done is sort of secure their professional value but it's also stifled the practice of philosophy it's deprived it of a certain lifeblood I think that it's the love of knowledge has been bit sort of smothered by the love of these philosophers who want are very afraid of sort of letting go because you know and even within the sort of official areas well you know where you ask the the leading philosophers well what is lost me they'll still invoke these sort of grandiose this grandiose enterprise you know it's a love of reason it's it's to you know answer the big questions in life it's thinking logically it's critical thinking these are things that we go well anyone should be able to do this but then they go no you're not a real philosopher you're just you know dabbling with pseudo problems over there so I think there's I think this has to be acknowledged right that there's been a lot of energy devoted to establishing in and out and this has reified philosophy as a professional pursuit but also deprived it of this of energy and urgency and deprived people of this approach when we say philosophy - II just wanna say there's a latent aspect and a blatant aspect right there is the philosophy that is all around us in our environment there are unknown knowns as you Jack would say our unconscious precept precept positions the idea is we don't know we have right and there's also the ideas built into the environment built into our social structures that's the latent the latent philosophy and we need active philosophy to be able to address that to be able to talk about these things so I think when we say to people what you're not a philosopher that means you can't do that you can't do that legitimately and that's why philosophies then anxious well does it still matter well maybe it would if you would let go a little bit told to me about someone that got a professorship in Australia on the basis of a series of publications which in prominent journals after this person and these things were being published in order to get a professorship once that person that got the professorship he began to withdraw the papers from the various periodicals he was asked why did you do this he says because you must make yourself as small a target as possible right now that's one approach to philosophy and target making yourself as small yeah but but who's shooting at him I mean I mean like who cares to shoot well no but no the Brando that no but I'm I'm against this sighs this is an idea of what I call technically a philosophy of constipation right so where you as it were you hang on to a little bolus of something the years and years and years that eventually you squeeze it out and in a prominent journal and that's theme that's one approach to philosophy which is about the avoidance of falsehood at all costs so the worst thing to be exposed to as a philosopher is falsehood people will laugh at you the other approach is that philosophy should be a pursuit of truth and that takes us from constipation to diarrhea which would be the the the another way of because some like Hegel will say the true is the whole right so the philosophy philosophy and philosophy is it's time comprehended in thoughts so nothing should be alien to philosophy which means you've got to throw the stuff everywhere at the wall and some of it sticks and star bit.trip Stalin so you're gonna make a moment Simon you know continuing this metaphor what is the difference between truth and wisdom depends on the conception the truth I mean you follow what I like Adorno probably a static conception of truth has to do with how to live and wisdom is fundamentally about how to live which is to say how to learn how to die why you live in order to be able to live a life of integrity for example the guy who withdraws his his pieces I'm in deep solidarity with him if he does it in the name of intellectual conscious intellectual integrity that's what we love about Nietzsche nature may have had trouble learning how to love which is a problem for many philosophers yeah not just love wisdom but love people but but if it's sheer it'll echo integrity intellectual conscience I'm with that if it's a matter of just professional game playing I don't respect that it depends on what his motives are what what he understands himself to be doing and that but wisdom fundamentally is about how do we make our way from womb to tomb unless y'all for cremation and that's a that's a serious question for everybody truth there's logical conceptions of truth and I'm with a door known as record in a door no of course it's inseparable from Jerusalem Judaism condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak that's the door know what I think it is negative dialectics you can set right now of the more revolution of a people that say to be human is to wrestle with suffering and your integrity is defined to the degree to which the quality of your service to orphan Widow fatherless motherless poor working-class and so on but that was a major move in history of the species now you can dress that up in philosophically more rigorous language but that's what door knows conception of truth it relates to that tradition there's a lot of other traditions I'm talking about true quite different what I want to do though is go back to the diarrhoea option and because another conception of truth is in the New Testament I am the truth in the way so I think that yeah in other words though I want to just pause for a moment about the question of the notion of philosophy is something akin to a spiritual quest yes because I think part of the recurrent and even the recent interest in philosophy which makes many analytic philosophers profoundly uncomfortable is that it it's in a continuum with this conception I think this is a very American feature of philosophy going back to Emerson and you know it seems to me it's something that I'm not quite sure what we should say about it I don't know about you Simon or you Cornell but you know when I look at some of the comments that I'm getting on blogs that are about my book I'm struck by how many of these people are their religious people they're on a spiritual quest they want meaning in life that's what they think philosophy is you know it reminds me of the world of Augustan and which philosophy was on a continuum with Mauna Kea nism and Christianity and it was one form of life that was available in which reason played an important role but it didn't exclude revelation it did not exclude mystery and you know simply to call it diarrhea is it seems to me not quite to do justice to that tradition indeed [Laughter] philosophy is me Mike this is this is a view there are different views now my view philosophy begins in religious disappointment philosophy begins when a belief in God or a God equivalent has broken down and the questioning the awful anxious disquieting questioning about questions of spirituality and the rest the meaning of life that passes from religion to - - philosophy that's the way I want to understand whatever we think about is the modern philosophical project what I noticed in your book Jim wishes our question to you an interesting question you begin and end the book with a reference to your Protestant upbringing and because in many ways what's behind examine lives is the idea that there could be an integrity of life and thought right an idea of authenticity and you you confess that I mean what was motivating that was both you know your activism in the 60s but also this may be a religious background I wonder about that I wonder about that I wonder whether that ideal should be I mean if you seek you will you find well you end the book by invoking your religious background again and then in a much more skeptical mode saying well perhaps this is a what'd you quote Montaigne the fall of a fast I forget what the coast a shares fool of the forest the question you raised in the book is that's the question is there in if philosophy is the examined life and that could be in the person of Socrates and those that succeed him yeah a unity of life and thought well is that an enterprise that's placed assumes the way I would put it Simon is there we've got a religious question I the way you phrased it that philosophy begins with religious disappointment is to sever those two categories as if whereas I think they're both often simultaneously in play and in ways that are constructive and also very very disquieting and actually if they'd been the introduction to my book I posed a bunch of questions some of which I just posed tonight and then I end by saying if we seek shall we find which of course is a biblical reference I think by the end of the book which is disturbed a lot of the early reviewers of it my answer is probably not so that's a foreman well Jim on that point I mean your book is 12 the lives of 12 philosophers of the 12 how many found well one of the other peculiarities the philosophical tradition the fact it's a scandal that philosophy has never quite come to terms with is how much of the first canonic philosophers are creatures of legend and myth so Socrates according to the myth found didn't really I don't know and did it seems to me there people in my book who achieved a certain equanimity they they felt that they could feel at one with who they were so that mountain strikes me as impersonal as that and is that because he had a better philosophy or a better temperament and he was lucky with his temperament I inclined to the he was lucky with his temperament because he was someone who I think had he was very even-keeled I think that was enormous and what also yeah but no but if if both of those figures had the illnesses of Giacomo Leopardi yeah they wouldn't be satisfied they don't a lot of this has to do with luck no chance they didn't have migraines every day they didn't have her right wrestling with TB but 26 the way check off one so what a lot of it just has to do with was with circumstance well which they have no control but I mean what I want to say a quick word about both Simon no cuz we've had a wonderful debate about this just right here in this institution this year and a half ago cuz I was on my way to new school and I was in the car with sister Astra in a movie but but I loved his is his bonus about this notion of disappointment because I would want to argue that that's a modern bias rooted in a romantic view of the world in which you're so hungry for wholeness and harmony and if you don't get it you're locked in alienation and disappointment and disenchantment that's nothing wrong with being romantic adjust it you know one two up moving it I'm a blues man so I have a different axiom actually move in terms of not looking up disappointment is a constant companion all the time it's not something to be preoccupied with it's something to wrestle with the way Jacob rustles with angels of death and 37 take 30 second chapter of Genesis it's always already there sorrow is a constant companion for a blues man like me it's always already that's check off that's Beckett it's not to be you know some preoccupation we have in order to then move toward philosophy right I mean to be human is to be shattered and in Gerda's language shuddering all the time it's not a question of hoping for some hold as disappointments it's indignant philosophize come out of the womb oh we in space and time is what Beckett called the mess right yeah he wants to replace Heidegger's talk about being with the mess and you and I were talking about Bootsy Collins we replace it with default I want to defend Simon a bit though on this disappointment thing and take it out of religiosity and move it you can have secular disappointment too I think what moved me towards philosophy was this revelation that I couldn't logically argue everyone into being vegetarians I just thought I figured this out I will present my arguments as clearly as possible everyone will agree with me so for me it's less about a search for some answer than this obsession with the fact that there are different ways of viewing the world there are different schemas that people embrace different attitudes people have and there's nothing more pleasurable than reading a philosopher I totally disagree with in finding this amazing new perception I also want to take us back to this idea of authenticity because that's a powerful idea and for me as a documentary filmmaker there are a few ways to clue into authenticity and a character for example right to show them looking like they've forgotten there's a camera so we think about the anticipate some one brushing their teeth they're like drooling you know or walking around in their underwear and I wanted to pose this challenge to my community which is what if authenticity is actually what you think in the world do you want to live in and not how you engage with the world as it is and so for me it's not so much about intellectual coherence you know like me proving oh these philosophers don't you see to lose lives on the thousand plateau every minute of every day it's amazing you know well with that that's what I wanted as a teeny you know when I was actually happy Jim didn't call me out but I was like you know a teenager because I wanted this so I wanted my philosophers to live their ideas we admitted you to the school like the 16 year old and George's she wants to be now but no I think what did this you know what you think as an authentic mode I think that's something that is maybe taken for granted and philosophical discourse but is an interesting challenge to documentary film to this world of reality TV I want to say something this is not exactly authenticity I think in the way Simon was talking about it but I think one of the things it's sort of a small quiet moment in the Platonic dialogues but one of the things and it appears in the Republic but in more than one dialogue but the character Socrates often basically entreats people is to say what they actually believe you need to be sincere and the the sense that philosophy as a collective venture in any form that that Plato would have understood depends on this sense that you say what you truly think and try to clarify it rather than pretend they're smarter I mean you know going to graduate school it's not just philosophy it's often just hiding what you don't know trying to you know put up a shield and so forth this isn't exactly authenticity but it is something about that sincere and earnest of several of reviewers have said you know I'm very earnest but I think to do philosophy you have to be serious in that way it's you can have fun but there's something on I wanna at its core that I think is constantly in sort of danger of slipping through the cracks particularly with all the postmodern French you know frou-frou philosophy earnestly frou-frou I think have something to say but I think remember these schools have something to say it's just that none of them get it right because we're fallible its we have to be honest about that but I do think that in our Alexandrian age market driven obsessed with celebrity and connectivity through technology the obsession is visibility if only for 15 minutes and and what that means though is that people will be visible almost in any way now for the chattering classes to be visible and to be viewed as the smartest person in the room as orgiastic because that's fundamentally what they've been taught since they were small we want you to be the smartest SAT Harvard Yale so and so on to the establishment become well-adjusted injustice well for me that's spiritually empty that's substantially vacuous because smartness is just a form of idolatry yeah I want to know who's the most courageous to raise certain unsettling questions who's the most courageous to sacrifice for something bigger than them who's the most courageous to be connected to the best that who came before but in our Alexandrian age market-driven the smartness has become almost the fetish in the same way our commodities became a fetish in the way you know great Karl Marx talked about it and that's one of the roles of a lover of wisdom a dramatic lover of wisdom is say look how shallow empty plastic this really is that's the tradition from Jerusalem nod or no I'm not saying other traditional habit a monopoly on it but if you're concerned about a certain way of being human that's connected to human suffering that's what you're keeping track of that's why the critical that's what that's what critical theory is very important that's why feminism Marxism and so on for this is not PC schools of thought these are serious ways of engaging the world who love wisdom who's trying to keep track of forms of idolatry and fetishism and so forth and that's very unpopular these days given an empire in decline grabbing for straws giving a professional class that is less and less courageous less and less sacrificial more narcissistic more hedonistic and our young people hungry and wondering what the hell is going on are we living at the beginning of the end of the civilization that we were born in well I'm not on that upbeat note the time has come to take questions from the audience and I am assuming there are a lot of grabbers for straws in present in this room so if they will go to the microphones and then direct the question when you ask the question directed to a particular person on the panel I'm wondering if the question you know this philosophy still matter seems really historically constructive like what makes the think that it quote you know once did matter I was relevant right and why are we so anxious like immediately right now like that it is something we have to answer this question I guess Simon why don't know I didn't I didn't pose the question for the the symposium but the answer this because you know I'll let you off the hook my agent came up with this as a title all right I had all these other titles and man they're really boring him he said we're in an Alexandrian age and so I'm not really certain it's the most prospectus question to be honest and I don't think we should saddle science you said about the on the one hand you have a professional academic philosophy on the other hand you have a spiritual quest for meaning which is being fed by varieties of New Age New Age belief in philosophy which should occupy some middle ground between those two is not occupying that terrain has it occupied that terrain before I guess it has occupied that terrain before in the interstices of history here and there in its high moments and and there are there are moments in the history of philosophy for your recent moments in the history of philosophy after the First World War which unleashed an extraordinary renewal of interest in philosophy and people like Lou catch hydreigon Rosen spigen and others in the Second World War as well there's a connection with you philosophy in war here which we might want to think about but you know I I think it's the the issue that I mean this is something that we did in when we this experiment of the stone is that you know we you know we we thought we were gonna get we were surprised at how much interest we've got we got with 32 people red onion we got more people than that a few people read the thing and and what was interesting was two things that the the number of page views which was like 6 million awesome that's crazy amount of people read this thing and the disapproval in the profession that they should be taking place people horrified that philosophy there's a philosophy you'd think I'd think that people philosophers might be pleased that there be philosophy common New York Times they're horrified horrified is the worst conceivable thing it's a nightmare well it should be then that was the olive oil should be their money guess that the basic the basic argument I make is that high quality calories but high quality kind of the so um you know there is there is a gap which there is a role that philosophers should be fulfilling which isn't being fulfill philosophers are not doing their job as they as they should be and so I think there the question is personal anyway but just one question about relation between war and philosophers yeah the connection between the catastrophic the calamitous and the monstrous you know when it has a major presence in the culture and civilization people begin to ask fundamental questions and all of a sudden you get to flourishing of not just philosophers but people raising philosophical questions mm-hmm now for people who live everyday in the catastrophic they got to fill us up with questions in various forms maybe not professional philosophy but in music dialogue and barbershops the catastrophic is always already there that's where it is it be a blues person you're always dealing with the catastrophic everything Jim your comment that it's philosophers who are you asking the question of it's a comment for Jim that I'm going to turn it to a strop because I want asked his responses which Jim said they you had said the you know it's the happiness of his philosophers circumstantial and it seems I was like hit by the pessimism of that and so my question to Astra is in terms of the you you've met a lot of philosophers and aside from anybody in this room who have you been inspired by by and however whatever it was it about them that inspired you whether it was their mind or whether was their life but I'm just curious because I'm not willing to go down the route of it's just circumstance Oh deeply inspired and I think one one aspect is it happy has been frightening not not so much that wasn't what I was going for but rather inspired sometimes by the patient certain people had to tread over the same questions over and over so that they could speak to people who weren't already initiated and this was a sort of incredible gift I thought to people to say you know I'll meet you where you are and I will talk to you like you're an intelligent human being and you know invite you into this kind of thinking and you know yeah that's not a recipe for happiness but I think there's a depth of connection there that I found really I found it very valuable so the people that I ended up filming with and that I've communicated with I think are committed to doing that to again it's not about authenticity but what they do is they bring they bring their struggle into the public sphere and I think that's more what more I think that's what we gain philosophy to do it's like I don't actually know how to live in perfect integration with my mind or my values what would that really mean you know you wouldn't be human but I'll struggle in public and I think there's something really worthy about that question over here Mike I guess I'll direct this question to Anthony since you were with the Economist because I think philosophy matters a great deal right now but the kind of philosophy that has mattered has been masquerading as something else and it's been operating in economics departments throughout the country and it's a very market driven ugly scary kind of philosophy and The Fountainhead is flying off the shelves right now and how do you in philosophy departments or in the humanities mount a challenge to that philosophical thinking and I'm more aware of problem in science and economics now there there is a lot of good popular philosophical writing about economics and all sorts of places that take someone I think you're alluding to aim round and other eccentric theories so I don't think there I don't think there's any great intellectual problem about how you take on things like that it's done it's done in the norm it's done in the normal way but it helps if people say in economics departments have some respect for philosophers it helps if people if scientists have some respect for philosophers they will then read the good and informed critiques of their work because some people just won't touch anything that's by philosopher that's very unfortunate I think but again it just doesn't work to say that's not good philosophy which is everybody's response to an R and and you know she made it her mission to bring her philosophy to the people and it was very successful and she did it through novels through fiction yeah and it astonishes some of us my grandmother is an Objectivist that this is taken seriously but to say it's just not good philosophy doesn't cut it people have to figure out a way to invite people into other ways of thinking about the world and their relationships other people and success and all these things I think they're the difference between bad philosophy being part of a cult on the margins as opposed to alan greenspan and company carrying the texts around having tremendous power and affecting millions of people all around the world sort of as issues of power here this is a structures and institutions and the ways in which neoliberal and neoconservative models and economics has become hegemonic inseparable from greed driven policies on Wall Street greed driven policies of corporate elites with the weakening of unions and demonizing of unions public unions and so forth and so on so we have to tell a larger story beyond just good philosophy bad philosophy and so forth and so on and that's still very important I don't want to downplay the degree to which if it's unconvincing and so forth needs to be acknowledged but the operations of power are always already there and we didn't need Michele Foucault to tell us that people who were victimized by it every day already knew it it's just incredibly reflecting the way in which Foucault and Marx and a host of others do but if we're gonna tell that larger story about ain't Rand is not just a book it's who reads that book and how they gain access to tremendous amounts of power and resources and status and then how intellectuals who's supposed to be so critical capitulate to these lives until catastrophe hits and then they take no responsibility at all you say to me that's what's down that make that death that's the worst kind of thing for a younger generation when they looking at elections to say oh you all gangsters like all but also I just read an article that banks are giving big multi-million dollar grants to universities on the content the contingency is they have to teach courses online Rand in their philosophy department so but so it's coming to a university near you I've been teaching white supremacist for a long time you critically engage the system yeah that's actually a great cover the point about being convincing I wanted to ask well I'm supposed to direct can I pick two yeah sure Cornell if make them short Cornell and Simon no no two people respond okay just was what is for you the role between on your conceptions of philosophy what is the role of argumentation of being convincing and how does that relate to rhetoric and writing style because one part of the battle between poetry and philosophy right it isn't poetry exactly its rhetoric its other ways of being convincing and one way that we cut off the philosophical from other discourses is a particular way usually framed in terms of reason but maybe not necessarily right away a mode of argumentation whether that's done in the super technical logic chopping way of the analytic philosophy that everybody hates or in the more discursive way of Hume and the Platonic dialogues and Descartes right what's the role of of that part of philosophy the the argumentative aspect I don't think you could draw a clear line between the argumentative and the rhetorical I think philosophy is an activity we go back to Socrates begins with the threat of rhetoric right the threat of the street the threat that if you pay people money to teach you how to speak it will persuade make a legal case in your day in court and win your case philosophy begins with a rhetoric against rhetoric right so this this dramatic extraordinary dramatic situation the Republic the competitors courses are sophistry and tragedy and tragic tragic poet treatment and Homeric epic as well so philosophy you cannot isolate argument from rhetoric and from persuasion there is a certain idealization of argumentation within certain traditions of philosophy that believes that you can as it were operate on the basis of a pure idea of rigor I think that's that's also a rhetorical strategy based on a sudden as it was idea that philosophy can imitate the sciences which it can't and in my view shouldn't so I think you can throw a good clear alignment do you have a word Cornel day I would want to say that certainly the triumph or the promise of the triumph of persuasion over force sits at the center of the philosophic tradition that goes back to Athens and I think white hits to great works science and modern world as well as adventures of ideas are the two great monuments to affirm this tradition and he understands that persuasion comes in a number of different forms as logical argumentation there's poetic compelling language there's a whole host of ways in which people are persuasive going back to Jesus was persuasive not because of the arguments he spoke in parables well parabolic language is very important Kafka is persuasive to me he's a parabolic writer he's not a logical writer there's different ways of persuading people you see but it's this hope of persuasion of a fourth that's why the attack on threesome because he is so central my does not make right let's engage in some forms of persuasion now that doesn't mean persuasion is going to be effective he knows it makes his point philosophic spacian you don't pour spores push Peter against the wall out of logical coercion because there's different wiggle spaces and ways in which people can get around it but in the end we're about persuasion rather than force because force is basically about you know just again gangster activity it's about crushing and philosophy begins what pi fell it begins with Plato's Tamia's this is what the cosmology is about right persuasion pushing back force and the promise of that which is maybe an empty promise but it's still a leap of faith that philosophers make I just want to add briefly something that you said Simon about the rhetorical critique criticism of rhetoric is that philosophy is a specific form of persuasion yes yeah and that obviously Plato's apology the speech that's given to Socrates is a masterpiece of rhetoric but it's very clear specifically in that monologue it's not a dialogue that Socrates is not a professional debater he's not somebody who's just trying to make a argument for something he doesn't truly believe in what matters is that it's persuasion based on what you sincerely and earnestly believe and you know the suspicions of this office is like they're a debating Club and they basically prop up arguments they don't in fact sincerely take question over here my question is for dr. Miller my name is Alex Kelly I wanna start by saying I agree with dr. West that I've appreciated what the work that you've done for us with this book I was struck by the end the end of the book the last in the last sentence if I've understood it correctly you say that's for the thinking person there's no firm goal and no certain reward in life that we're sort of doomed to this life of contemplative labor and unimpeachable desire for something certain my question is that well you've just you've given us this book where you draw out these twelve exemplary lives and I'm wondering if you're really saying that we've learned nothing essential about human nature or the world over the course of this work at the end what I was trying to say is that I don't think I think it's a mistake I learned a lot by writing the book and what I learned among other things is who what is the deep genealogy of where I got my obsession with introspection and self-examination and that was something that was intrinsically interesting to me to discover what I don't think you can take away from these kinds of characters is to look to any one of them and to say aha there's the answer and if I would live my life the way they live their life then I just didn't I wanted to not make that possible and it's very hard I mean Emerson and Nietzsche were sooo you know incredible in their rhetoric of sort of stopping you in your tracks when you think that you are going to emulate them by saying no no be yourself and I wanted to say that to me the the idea of an unending quest no firm goal and no certain the reward I don't think you can promise that you'll have happiness or tranquility you might have moments of joy I do believe it actually it's a large measure of luck what temperament you've been given when Bernard Williams talks about moral luck I think he's right and people were angry with that Aristotle says something similar about the role of luck in the capacity to lead a happy or a good life but as I said earlier I just I feel as if this is inescapably part of my conception of self that was engraved in me at such a young age I can't think my way out of it and therefore it's a fate and I find it endlessly interesting even though it doesn't yield any kind of very you know there's there's no fortune cookie moral of the story I can hand out at the end and that wasn't the point of the book the point of the book was to sort of move in cross-purposes where if you think what you want is happiness or meaning in life you know you probably won't find it here but my god what an amazing Odyssey and saga and isn't it amazing that people could have lived such lives and it it thrills me and it's reeled me to write it even though on some kind of intellectual level I couldn't say you know here is you know the take-home message you know in that sense I just felt I couldn't write an edifying book I mean my book was published the same day as all things shining by a facin and Sean Kelly and you know they actually it's a commits the opposite kind of book it's like we live in a world without meaning it's nihilistic but if you want to grasp some sense of collective sacred experience go to sporting events and with or with all due respect Jim they're making fortune cookies I mean you're still standing lit no I'm standing to pay my respect later I would love to and I think one way in which you've all validated philosophy this evening that hasn't come up is you've evinced that philosophy is this extraordinary dialogue that takes place across time space cultural barriers linguistic barriers you've alluded to people who wrote in German in French and Italian in Hebrew in any number of languages and the question that I have for you it's not a philosophical question it's a factual question to what extent our English speaking philosophers within the english-speaking world today actively engaged with philosophers contemporaries not French obviously the French thing we can bracket you've alluded to that let's say German Norwegian Chinese Japanese practicing philosophers that do not write in English to what extent is English speaking philosophy continuing to engage with their contemporaries in other linguistic traditions and cultural decisions it's a question that's changing as we a me when Cornell talks about an Alexandrian age one of the features of the Alexandrian age was the Greek became the common language of the Mediterranean so if we think of Greece as this land Greece with this culture which is at the center of Europe the birth of European civilization you wish missed the point in Greek was this lingua franca which spread out geographically across the world English is a bit like that so the question so for you know for I I learn languages as a student because you couldn't read the books because they weren't translated so you had to read French in German just to find out what these interesting things were that's changed in a generation that's changed so the I mean there are real questions about me that the question about comparative philosophy is a huge question you know there's comparative literature we know what that is what is comparative philosophy in the level of historiography philosophers are very naive we assume there's this thing that begins in Athens and ends Nietzsche or hiding or whatever they suffer and it goes sort of Athens to Germany to somewhere like that we need a much more complicated historiographical picture Augustine was African right the question another question I have for Jim's book is which is something which you know they're all blokes right twelve blokes in the book and that there's a you know there's a desert there's a reason they thought you would like this lavish philosophy well no there's there's something again it's a question of for example in 1690 in 1690 there was a book written in foreign in Latin in Paris called historia Moliere 'm Phil safar I'm a history of women philosophers which construct which which found identified 65 women philosophers in antiquity and the Middle Ages some of whom were there's evidence for Hypatia hip Archaea some whom there's no evidence for at all but the point of the anecdote is that that we need another historiography of the discipline so philosophers very bad at that we accept a certain standard picture of history this is the way things worked out it's called the West and that is to miss the point right and I saw that that that wasn't questioned ok yeah this is a question I guess adjust to Jim but picked up on this theme which has been asked in some ways but it has to do with the question of should there be any relationship between a person's velocity and the way in which they live their lives you know reading through Jim's book Jim as you've said you know in Socrates case looks like he in some ways embodied his philosophies but Socrates rhythm there's a mythical character Montaigne seemed to be relatively happy but you know those were his his genes but the you know the whole issue of you know should we look for any sense of there being some consistency between a person's philosophy in the way in which they live their lives doesn't matter if Heidegger was a Nazi is important is it important to find evidence or some link between his philosophy and you know the fact that he was a Nazi etcetera etcetera well it seems to me that it all depends on the philosopher you know willard van orman quine actually wrote an autobiography which i didn't think was particularly interesting it's not relevant to his major epistemological this time of my life I mean God blessed about but you know if somebody presents themselves as a as a cynosure of virtue as Rousseau did in the 18th century well then I'm sorry you know it's fair game to find out I mean Voltaire did it in a kind of horrible and nasty and cruel way but how you live your life you know the hypocrisy becomes relevant so some of the people in my book really did try and struggle to to be integrated personalities and to present to others to readers and those who followed them an example to be emulated and followed and for a philosopher like that this would be true of Seneca be true of Augusta you betcha it matters how they lived their life and that is the older original tradition of philosophy as a way of life which goes into eclipses starting with the rise of modern scientific philosophy which is really the this what I try to do is take the ordinary conventional history of philosophy and flip it around so that it's looking at the losing side of that particular saga so and on what Simon said is true I'm working in the most absolutely you know dead white European male tradition and you could tell different story with the different volume looking at different philosophers but for some philosophers it matters enormous but I think that here is though just quickly I mean the danger is here you can't infer that because somebody is a political thug the way Heidegger was that he's not a philosophic genius - yeah and in fact his work enables and engaging with hurdling for example who was not a political at all he's the opposite of political thug and his wrestling with hurtling makes a difference so that the complexity needs to be acknowledged here because human beings are complicated folk there's no excuses at all Ezra Pound was a political thug that doesn't mean his poetry ought not to be read right and we can go on and on and on but that's easily slide specially in our Alexandrian age just pointing out somebody as a thug you don't have to read them at all and if that were the case wouldn't be too many books in the library we only have time for just two more questions so one there I just wanted to take the question slightly differently does philosophy still matter sitting down a look at the transcript of this whole conversation so far today a hundred years from now if there is a hundred years from now we will be struck by precisely the lack of urgency of the moment specifically global warming the the the sense of coming to the end of time which either whether or not you think it's inevitable is going to happen or certainly a chance that something terrible is on the verge of happening and just philosophy has something to say about that does it still matter is it is there a thing even in academic floss oh you know I don't mean Anglo American but I mean in philosophy classes at the new school and so forth do students walk in the room and say this thing is coming to an end this thing feels like it's coming to an end what of the tradition of Socrates coming forward still matters and and I'm not saying it doesn't but I just what does and is there a sense in the classroom in ethics classrooms in histology classrooms and so forth but that is what desperately needs to be being talked about right now I want to say something that repeat something I said earlier which really has struck me is the extent to which I feel like we live in a time that is analogous to the time Agustin lived in and that was a time in which things were ending a world was crumbling the Empire was going and I think partially why there it turns out to be a surprising popular hunger for what something that looks smells and feels like leather old-fashioned forms of philosophy is this sense of the if it is truly in time into times an apocalyptic moment there is an appeal of certain kinds of forms of philosophy that can rival the appeal of certain forms of religion and I don't think I'm the answer I'm giving you has nothing to do with what gets taught at the philosophy department of the of the new school and I think it really has nothing to do with the mainstream of academic scientific philosophy but I think the hunger that's out there what's happened is is is it sort of overflow and the the barriers that Astro was talking about where you have this kind of sense among professional philosophers only of us get to do this you guys don't know what you're talking about the hunger is so great but you know I don't know if that's really you know a response because of course I don't know do philosophers of anything to say about global warming really you should say usually accused of producing so much what [Laughter] last question yeah all right I mean the agency it means absolutely I mean there is there's an absolute sense of urgency you know and I'm watching very closely and very very carefully what's happening for example itchin is here in Egypt at the moment for and urgency yes but but this is where I agree with our friend jiseok there's also a need to slow down there's a fake urgency there was an ideology of urgency which defines the present right things and the idea at the end times we have we haven't we have a secularized Christian eschatology right which we then sacrifice ourselves to a certain way there's also a need to slow down and to reflect and think and that's what philosophy does and philosophy in its slowness and in its refusal to embrace the fake urgency of the present and to turn backwards this is where say Benjamin is so important the angel of history faces backwards you know I think I think at this point one of the most important things that philosophy can do is to try and dive esther's of this this plague of the future that we live we live under this this this this this pressure of the future what Jim's up to in this book and you know others amongst us are up to is trying to slow things down to cultivate a historical sensibility that is this is an arsenal these are armaments which can be used for critique in the most but so there's also need to slow down absolutely and just just quickly was just quickly because I mean brother Simon's from work I detect a sense of urgency from the very beginning it's definitely good but most importantly we shouldn't confuse a conflate decline would fall or decay with collapse the Empire has been declining for a while it won't fall for a long time the American given is not writing the text right now now what does that mean what that means is that we do need truth tellers we do need analysis of what is going on and the sense of a state of emergency echoes are the nice thesis of benjamine thesis on history but we need critical space because the market-driven conception of time is so intense the stimulation and titillation you can't get space and distance for critical reflection that's Democratic time and Democratic time is being completely evacuated with market time don't have time for grassroots organizing don't have time for critical reflection don't have time for bonds of trust don't have time to keep you sustain your organization well that's that's one of the ways in which the capital civilization reproduces itself and so that needs critical reflection how loves Jesus like that the latest book and that's a rights big books but that's a big book and that's takes time out of your life to read that third thing so you might my instinct is that philosophy is not the right tool for global warming that the left makes a mistake that we're arguing that we it's the quality of our arguments that we if we just get the facts straight who will win people over this is about feeling the facts you know I I think that we actually need I don't think philosophy is the best tool here the information is out there the challenge is making it feel urgent I'm not sure that that's something you do through rational argument even if it's but it might not be it might not have great utility in this struggle last question I said okay thank you speaking to us when you ask well what is philosophy that what comes to mind and then this draws parley on on your answers is that it seems as though it's one of the only fields that requires you as a baseline to look beyond yourself to evaluate life from outside of your own perspective I see one of the main issues in life is that were trapped I only see things the way I see them but life is judged kind of from thirty thousand feet there's billions of people on earth so if you if you look at if you look at philosophy in that way I think asking the question you know this philosophy still matter is is this silly question in that of course it matters of course it matters it's all about the context meaning you know we need to it seems though from philosophy to philosophy to matter we need to show people why different perspectives looking beyond your own self will matter and then in that respect you can apply it to anything in life you could lie to art you could probably do it to to economic isn't what else work I just wanted to know if what you guys what you guys would think about that type of general formulation we're gonna give Jim O or the last word on that one because that touches on the first question he proposed well but I'll give you the last word I mean you've given an actually pretty good answer to in a heartfelt answer and I just sense in the room when you get this number of people gravitating to what could be a rather arid topic that something's afoot and that I suspect that what you've just said you speak for a lot of other people and you know we but we can find out now we'll see if we persuaded anybody because Anthony his he wanted me to start we started with show of hands and now we want to have another show of hands and we all realized out there that we could have made people think philosophy didn't matter after an hour and a half of talking so I'll pose the question again though so if the question is does philosophy still matter how many people now say no [Laughter] you have the majority and on that on a happy note thank you all very much [Applause]

Channel: The New School

Views: 137,145

Keywords: The New School, NYC, Colleges in New York City, Philosophy Major, James Miller, Examined Lives, Simon Critchley, Anthony Gottlieb, Astra Taylor, Cornel West, Lewis H. Lapham, Social Research, Social Research Programs, Does Philosophy Still Matter?, History of Philosophy

Id: RBmlRihA9_s

Length: 91min 51sec (5511 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 01 2011