Good overview of John Rawls’ methods and philosophy. “Many of us feel that our societies are a little – or even plain totally – ‘unfair’. But we have a hard time explaining our sense of injustice to the powers that be in a way that sounds rational and without personal pique or bitterness. That’s why we need John Rawls (1921-2002), a twentieth-century American philosopher who provides us with a failproof model for identifying what truly might be unfair – and how we might gather support for fixing things.”
Ethics
Full disclosure
Do individuals have a right for their medical records to remain private after death, or can public interest prevail? Do their family members have a right to privacy? Your great grandmother had a lobotomy. You don’t know this because your family buried this bit of your family’s history. Is it morally permitted for a writer to mention your great grandmother by name in a book he is writing about the history of lobotomy? Jack El-Hai, the author of a book about lobotomy, claims it is.
Philosophy … as relevant as the iPhone
Using three philosophers as examples, Nicholas Kristof explains we cannot dismiss the humanities. “These three philosophers influence the way I think about politics, immigration, inequality; they even affect what I eat. It’s also worth pointing out that these three philosophers are recent ones. To adapt to a changing world, we need new software for our cellphones; we also need new ideas. The same goes for literature, for architecture, languages and theology.”
Plato and football
Should we teach Plato in gym class? Yes, according to Mark Edmundson. “We’ve got to entertain the idea that the hunger for glory and even for supremacy is part of every individual. In some people it’s nearly as strong as the hunger for food. All of us, but athletes and warriors in particular, have to understand how to deal with that hunger. As Plato told us, the spirit needs education just as much as the mind.”
Psychologists investigate the Socratic method?
Confusion may be better for learning than clarity. Why do philosophers have to disagree with everything that anyone says? Whatever their motivation, one result is that the Socratic method of generating confusion is better for learning. As this article explains …
“Common wisdom holds that confusion should be avoided during learning and rapidly resolved if and when it arises,” wrote a team of researchers in a paper published earlier this year. While this might be true when it comes to superficial tasks such as memorizing facts and figures, “Confusion is likely to promote learning at deeper levels of comprehension under appropriate conditions.”
In other words: If teachers want students to learn the really important stuff, like comprehending difficult texts and modeling complex systems, they should put their students in confusing situations.
Kant confusion
Michael Rosen’s review of Onora O’Neill’s new book on Kantian ethics is a very nice introduction to Kant’s ethics, including some of the difficulties in interpreting and applying Kantian ethics. “In the extended chess tournament of the secondary literature [about Kant’s ethics], almost every conceivable analysis of the Groundwork has been tried out over the past two centuries, yet all have been found wanting in some way or other.”
Know thy selfie
Philosopher Simon Blackburn thinks Narcissus would be busy on Instagram. “Can we have a virtuous sense of worth without the vanity of self-love?”
What is wisdom?
… and what does it have to do with philosophy, which is supposed to be “the love of wisdom”? The Sage and the Shrink (Julian Baggini and Antonia Macaro) say: “Being wise is about knowing what’s important; having sufficient insight into how we and others tick; having a handle on negative moods and emotions instead of being controlled by them; having an attitude of curiosity and a love of learning; understanding we’re all in the same boat and therefore being compassionate towards ourselves and others.”
Trapped in time
William Boyd on how mortality shapes our existence. “I am convinced that what makes our species unique among the fauna of this small planet circling its insignificant star is that we know we are trapped in time, caught briefly between these two eternities of darkness, the prenatal darkness and the posthumous one.” And yet, the philosopher might reply, do we have any good idea whether time is real or an illusion? Either way, however, Boyd’s answer to what we should do in view of our mortality is not bad advice: love and be loved.
An Oxford philosopher thinks he can distill all morality into a formula
He is not the first philosopher to think so, but he “is thought by many to be the most original moral philosopher in the English-speaking world.” Larissa Macfarquhar’s profile of Derek Parfit.
(Until July 21, only subscribers had access to this article on The New Yorker‘s website. It may go back behind the paywall when the magazine sets up a “metered paywall” in Fall 2014.)
Socratically Speaking 