New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

On being a Celebrity Philosopher

Reflect that nothing except the soul is worthy of wonder; for the soul, if it be great, naught is great.—Seneca, Letter 8.

Over half a decade ago I invited Peter Sloterdijk to a workshop; twenty-four days later, I inquired if the invite was received. I went ahead and planned the workshop without him. Not long before the workshop I heard from his 'assistent,' who was volunteered by Herr Prof. Dr. Sloterdijk to take his place. I felt bad for the 'assistent,' who confessed to having lack of time to prepare. I declined to put him on the program. But I did ask him to convey to Prof. Sloterdijk the thought that "he needs to realize this is no way to treat a colleague who (for example) may write his obituary one day."* (Not nice, admittedly, but it captured my outrage.) Much to my surprise, Sloterdijk answered the following week that there must have been a confusion because he had already written me a letter to inform me of his absence. After a round of apologies, we left it at that.**

By 'celebrity philosopher' I mean to convey a philosopher whose name is familiar beyond her own academic milieu; possibly her ideas and works are discussed not just in professional venues, but also in a wider context. So, I am not talking about somebody who offers a 'philosophy' to media-stars nor does a 'celebrity philosopher' have to possess mass fame. In our day, my old teachers, Daniel Dennett and Martha Nussbaum are paradigmatic celebrity philosophers. When I label somebody a ‘celebrity philosopher’ I do not intend to convey a judgment of quality one way or another.

On the State of Greek Universities

[I am grateful to Vasso Kindi for accepting our invitation to contribute her reflections after The Guardian reported that austerity measures pushed the University of Athens to suspend operations.—ES]

Greek Universities suffer from nepotism, political patronage, inertia, and structures that breed favoritism and unaccountability. They are in desperate need of reform independently of the current financial crisis. Moreover, most Greek graduates were, until recently, channeled to the public sector where they were hired merely by only showing their Universities degrees. This meant that, for a great number of students, learning mattered less than obtaining the degree itself. 

The University of Athens (UoA) is currently shut down because there is a strike of the administrative staff. They are protesting against plans, required by the memorandum signed by the Greek government and its creditors, to reduce 12,500 employees of the public sector by the end of 2013. The universities, which are all state-owned, will lose 1349 members of their administrative personnel and the UoA 498 out of 1375. Those who are on strike have prohibited access to all university buildings. We cannot have classes, exams, register new students. We cannot even go to our offices.

Toland on Spinoza and Newton

There is a new edition of Toland's (1704) Letters to Serena, edited by Ian Laesk. It is the first modern, English language edition. (I have not read it yet.) In order to celebrate this great news, I want to point to one non-trivial, generally overlooked feature that helps to explain the enduring significance of Toland's Letters (for other features, recall here, here, here, and here). 

The official aim of the fourth (out of five) of Toland’s rhetorically complex Letters is to show that Spinoza’s “system is without foundation.” While there may be “incidental truths” to be found in Spinoza’s system, it is “false” (Letter 4.4, p. 135 [I quote by letter, paragraph, and page-number). In particular, throughout the fourth letter, Toland echoes Henry More’s criticisms of Spinoza[or so I claim] and argues that Spinoza’s account of motion and its relationship to matter is confused.  Toland claims this criticism sets up his own positive argument, to be offered in the fifth letter that matter is “necessarily active as well as extended.” (Letter 4.17, 161; repeated in Letter 5.1, 164). In particular, he praises those mathematicians, which

“compute the quantities and proportions of motion, as they observe bodies to act on one another , without troubling themselves about the physical reasons of what every person allows, being a thing which does not always concern them, and which they leave to the philosophers to explain.” (Letter 5.9, 177).

To this claim Toland attaches without comment a quote in Latin from the scholium to proposition XI of Newton’s Principia.  An innocent reader could not avoid thinking that Newton endorses Toland’s stance.

On viewing and participating in pleasing cruelty

He may say with Parmenides, who, upon reading a philosophical discourse before a public assembly at Athens, and observing, that, except Plato, the whole company had left him, continued, notwithstanding, to read on, and said that Plato alone was audience enough for him.--Adam Smith

The English Bill of Rights (1689) expressly forbids ""cruel and unusual" punishment, and this found its way into the U.S. Constitution. One important, enduring argument against such punishment -- and many other forms of cruelty that may not, in fact, constitute 'punishment' -- can be found in Seneca's Letter 7: viewing and otherwise participating in the degradation and cruelty of others, even in the context of justified punishment  [ille meruit ut hoc pateretur], can harm not just the victims or punished, but perpetrators and spectators alike. This is especially so if the cruelty produces pleasure as it is likely to do at public spectacles [spectaculo]* because then this pleasure makes our soul receptive; a desire for more cruelty creeps up on us  [per voluptatem facilius vitia subrepunt].

Seneca's particular target is the institution of aestheticized, public spectacles of cruelty and inhumanity [crudelior et inhumanior].** He emphasizes the significance of audience participation [spectatoribus suis obiciuntur]. He reorients and subtly transforms Plato's arguments for censorship of the arts to focus on the more pernicious institutions that indirectly teach people to celebrate cruelty. Seneca's argument applies to a lot of issues that we are not likely to consider primarily in terms of political speech: mass sporting events; war coverage; disaster tourism, and any form of entertainment that rely on the pleasures derived from exposure to the suffering of others. (This is not to deny that the targets of Seneca's argument can overlap with Plato's, and that his argument is indebted to Plato's moral psychology.)