Innehållsförteckning för Issue 41 - September/November 2023 från New Philosopher

As a student of philology at the University of Leipzig in the 1860s, Friedrich Nietzsche found a copy of Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation in an antiquarian shop. Nietzsche was an instant disciple. “I belong to the readers of Schopenhauer,” Nietzsche notes, “who after they have read the first page of him know with certainty that they will read all his pages, and that they will listen to every word that he has said.” Committing to Schopenhauer’s doctrine can be a sobering experience. Often regarded as the philosopher of pessimism (“Life must be some kind of mistake,” wrote Schopenhauer in Studies in Pessimism), he was keenly aware of some undercurrent of dissatisfaction within him that kept happiness at bay. Schopenhauer labelled this undercurrent – which may be…

There’s a type of person who will tell you that life is a war, or at least, that we should approach it as if it were. Maybe you know such a person. Maybe they’re some sort of military-styled weekend warrior who buys anything with the word ‘tactical’ on it. Maybe they’re a real estate agent who spends a bit too much time at the gym and identifies a little too much with Hollywood’s version of the Spartans. Maybe they’re an influencer aiming to sell you their secrets for ‘success’ in business or romance. Maybe they’re a parent who’s constantly giving their children pep talks about the need to be the best and leave the other kids in their wake, whether in sports or in smarts. Whatever the arena, these ‘life…

If you’re lucky enough to have several million dollars more than you need, what should you do with this money? One answer is that you should do whatever you want, at least within the bounds of legality: it’s your money, and nobody has the right to tell you how to spend it. Another is that you should try to do as much good as possible by, say, donating it to a charity that will use it to remedy a great deal of suffering. Another is that you should act in accordance with the duties you owe to your family, your neighbourhood, or your place of worship. Yet another is that you should invest it in order to make more money, enabling you to do even more good down the line.…

The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea overThe edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glideSlowly into another day; slowly the roverVessel of darkness takes the rising tide. I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confrontingMe who am issued amazed from the darkness, strippedAnd quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from hauntingThe night unsounded whereon our days are shipped. Feeling myself undawning, the day’s light playing upon me,I who am substance of shadow, I all compactOf the stuff of the night, finding myself all wronglyAmong the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked. I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;And what do I care though the very stones should…

Philosophers can sometimes appear particularly antagonistic. Go to a philosophy talk or conference and listen to someone presenting their view. That’s usually followed by a series of questions, many of which seem to be trying to undermine what they’ve just heard.` It’s rare to hear someone say, “That was brilliant. You are absolutely right. I agree with everything you said.” Sometimes the questions are asked in an aggressive way, and the responses can be hard-hitting too. Usually the philosophers take this on the chin. It’s what they expect and seek. They’re looking for philosophical conflict. They don’t want a room full of people nodding appreciatively. Scholars from other disciplines, though, may find this rude and annoying. “How can philosophers be so mean to one another? Surely they should be more…

Steven C. Skultety is Chair of Philosophy and Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at The University of Mississippi, and Director of the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom. Skultety’s research focuses on the way ancient philosophers understood human beings who were at odds with one another. Currently his work concentrates on Aristotle’s political philosophy, but his long-term goal is to produce work that will track arguments about interpersonal conflict from the Presocratics to the Stoics. Outside of ancient philosophy, his research interests include virtue theory, republicanism, as well as democratic theory. His books include Conflict in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy and Aristotle’s Politics, Critical Essays (with Richard Kraut). Zan Boag: I read that you became interested in the notion of conflict when…

As much as there has been moral and social progress throughout the last few decades, there have also been setbacks. Many around the world are victims of oppression. They are on the receiving end of exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, violence, and cultural imperialism. When we celebrate a victory in one domain (e.g., racial progress), we soon witness defeat in another (e.g., gender equality). Power is at the heart of debates happening in the United States around book bans, revisionist history, and the censoring of curricula that address the lived realities of people from marginalised communities. Many are afraid for power to be examined and thus challenged. It is one thing to struggle and conflict with an outside group seeking to oppress you. But what happens when there is a clash between…

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Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel His father's boot Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now. Blood from the gash on his head – which was his father's first effort – is trickling across his face. Add to this, his left eye is blinded; but if he squints sideways, with his right eye he can see that the stitching of his father's boot is unravelling. The twine has sprung clear of the leather, and a hard knot in it has caught his eyebrow and opened another cut. "So now get up!" Walter is roaring down at…

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What is your demon? Pessimism. Useful for scientists and journalists but no fun at all. I fight it and often I win, certainly more than I used to. If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be? Make humans better at thinking over longer time periods and assessing risk. What does it mean to be human? I think it’s to feel a sense of wonder. Some animals can use tools, some clearly have a culture, some appear to have a sense of humour. But I don’t think anything other than a human can feel blown away by being unable to process the size of the universe, or be moved by the beauty of music. What illusion do you suffer from? That I know what I’m talking…

Steven C. Skultety Steven C. Skultety is Chair of Philosophy and Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at The University of Mississippi, and Director of the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom. Skultety’s research focuses on the way ancient philosophers understood human beings who were at odds with one another. His books include Conflict in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy and Aristotle’s Politics, Critical Essays (with Richard Kraut). Zan Boag Zan Boag is Editor-in-Chief of New Philosopher, published in English, Arabic, Korean, and Chinese, and was Editorial Director of the international newsstand magazine Womankind. In 2017 he won the Australasian Association of Philosophy Media Professionals Award and was shortlisted for Editor of the Year in the international Stack Awards. Boag was a judge at the AOI…

In 175 CE, Avidius Cassius proclaimed himself emperor of Rome. It might not have been a problem except that the current emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was still alive. The Senate immediately declared Cassius a public enemy and confiscated his belongings. This was treason, clearly, but why did he do it? Rumour had it that Aurelius was dead, so perhaps Cassius felt compelled to step in. Aurelius’s wife, Faustina, is also said to have urged Cassius to take the throne. If they married, her fourteen-year-old son Commodus would retain his position as next emperor. Aurelius had to choose: kill Cassius or hear him out? Before Cassius became a usurper, he had been a loyal friend to Aurelius. Crude, yes – a heartless killer by all accounts – but a trusted general. Aurelius’s…

The world keeps ending, over and over again. In fact, it’s all becoming a little ho-hum. Nuclear Armageddon, a direct strike by a rogue asteroid, an alien invasion, a never-ending drought, the zombie apocalypse – whatever the cataclysm, the story is the same: the survivors are fighting the same fights as before, between rich and poor, between different races, between insiders and outsiders. The end of the world, at least on screen and on the page, is just another stage – more dramatic to be sure, but fundamentally familiar – on which humanity acts out its endless, internecine conflicts. Is there any way out of this predicament? And what does it say about our times that we collectively struggle to imagine that things might be different? For one thing, it…

/ˈkɑnflɪkt/ noun: 1. a situation in which people, groups or countries disagree strongly or are involved in a serious argument; 2. a violent situation or period of fighting between two countries; 3. a situation in which there are ideas, opinions, feelings or wishes that are opposed to each other; a situation in which it is difficult to choose. Conflict of interest(s): A situation in which somebody has two jobs, aims, roles, etc. and cannot treat both of them equally and fairly at the same time. Origin: Late Middle English: from Latin conflict – ‘struck together, fought’, from the verb confligere, from con – ‘together’ + fligere ‘to strike’; the noun is via Latin conflictus ‘a contest’. Source: Oxford English Dictionary…

The Birds and the Beasts declared war against each other. No compromise was possible, and so they went at it tooth and claw. It is said the quarrel grew out of the persecution the race of Geese suffered at the teeth of the Fox family. The Beasts, too, had cause for fight. The Eagle was constantly pouncing on the Hare, and the Owl dined daily on Mice. It was a terrible battle. Many a Hare and many a Mouse died. Chickens and Geese fell by the score – and the victor always stopped for a feast. Now the Bat family had not openly joined either side. They were a very politic race. So when they saw the Birds getting the better of it, they were Birds for all there was…

It must have been three days after the Barcelona fighting ended that we returned to the front. After the fighting – more particularly after the slanging-match in the newspapers – it was difficult to think about this war in quite the same naively idealistic manner as before. I suppose there is no one who spent more than a few weeks in Spain without being in some degree disillusioned. My mind went back to the newspaper correspondent whom I had met my first day in Barcelona, and who said to me: ‘This war is a racket the same as any other.’ The remark had shocked me deeply, and at that time (December) I do not believe it was true; it was not true even now, in May; but it was becoming…

In considering how dissensions and political revolutions arise, we must first of all ascertain the beginnings and causes of them which affect constitutions generally. They may be said to be three in number; and we have now to give an outline of each. We want to know (1) what is the feeling? (2) what are the motives of those who make them? (3) whence arise political disturbances and quarrels? The universal and chief cause of this revolutionary feeling has been already mentioned; viz., the desire of equality, when men think that they are equal to others who have more than themselves; or, again, the desire of inequality and superiority, when conceiving themselves to be superior they think that they have not more but the same or less than their inferiors;…

Have you ever tried to break a habit, or start a new one, only to fail in a moment of weakness? Perhaps you were trying to kick a vice, only to find yourself at the wrong kind of dinner party. Or your ambitions to start writing a novel in the evenings gave way, once again, to scrolling on your phone. Such moments are often followed by a feeling of shame: Why can’t I control myself? That shame suggests a kind of deep conflict between our will, on the one hand, and our weak or sinful human natures on the other. There seems to be a battle, then, between our reason and our feelings or desires. But as the English philosopher JL Austin pointed out, that picture is a little simplistic.…

In one of the most frequently quoted aperçus about marriage, Rainer Maria Rilke exhibited a rare wisdom for someone not yet thirty. He wrote: “A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of is fullest freedom and development.” One might add that togetherness is also a fragile agreement, vulnerable to backtracking and rupture: as social animals, we do not seem especially well-suited to having our freedom and development confined, much less stolen – even if its relinquishment is voluntary. They say it takes two to tango. But it takes two to fight as well: two teams, two countries, two people. And the conflict is exacerbated when there is nowhere…

“The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” — William Ellery Channing “When the special theory of Relativity began to germinate in me, I was visited by all sorts of nervous conflicts...” Albert Einstein “Tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person... but rather tragedy is irresolvable conflict.” Rita Mae Brown “Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.” Eldridge Cleaver “History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics.” B. R. Ambedkar “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” Martin Luther King, Jr “The harder the conflict, the…

If you ever find yourself in need of motivation and turn to positive psychology, self-help books, or the social media account of your nearest personal trainer, I’m certain if you look for more than a few minutes, you’ll come across some version of the sentiment, “Whether you believe you can, or cannot, you’re right.” The one-liner taps into what psychologists call ‘self-efficacy’ – yet another holy grail on the endless quest to helping people change their behaviours for the better. The basic idea is that people who believe they are capable of making meaningful change are significantly more likely to do so. Your self-belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy; and so is your self-doubt. This provides a very different take on the claim that ideas can change the world. It suggests,…

Is ‘conflict’ a theme that you sometimes explore in your art, and if so, what sort of conflict do you like to investigate? Owen Gent: It’s interesting, conflict has never been a word I ascribe to my work, but the more I look at my painting through the lens of conflict, the more I notice it. There’s a lot of exploration into the conflict of self in my work – of uncertainty and being caught between two states or places. I do really enjoy representing conflict between people through figures but this is very rarely done through physical contact and I’d rather use proximity and distance or light and dark to express discord. What conflicts have you experienced in your life – personally, socially, and so forth – that you…

At a recent exhibition of Barbara Licha’s wire sculptures, a gallery visitor who’d been casually viewing Licha’s installations suddenly screamed. The offending work, titled 175 cm Man, was a metal on steel sculpture of a figure inside a rectangular cage. 175 cm Man was inspired by Licha’s friend from London, a ‘man in solitude’, as she describes him in her artist statement, but the visitor saw the work somewhat differently. “He is trapped!” he screamed. “I never did think about it that way,” relays Licha. But on second thoughts, she adds. “Actually, we are trapped in our life one way or another.” When creating the sculpture, Licha was more interested in placing the figure in the cubic shape to represent personal space. This personal space is our moment of being,…

For Plato, a philosophical debate could be compared to an intellectual wrestle, where one may “toy with and trip up an opponent in whatever way one is able”. The philosopher in a debate must both defend and attack, much like a wrestler. As a wrestler himself, it’s not surprising that Plato’s dialogues are peppered with combative metaphors and martial arts imagery such as animal fights, boxing, and battles between the gods. In his work, Wrestling , New York artist Gian Galang, who works with acrylic and spray paint, uses dynamic figures to express energy and movement. “Martial arts is an agreement between both parties to challenge themselves physically and mentally,” he says. Gian, who lived in Hong Kong as a child before moving to New York, sees fighting – including…

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A pregnant friend once asked me: What’s the most challenging aspect of having kids? My own daughter was around a year old at the time: she was sweet and chaotic, all smiles then sudden tears, a rollercoaster of emotions and needs. Yet it wasn’t the dirty nappies or the hard physical labour, the food thrown on the floor or even dealing with sudden onset of tantrums that I found the hardest. It was that every hour of every day had to be accounted for. I was either with my daughter or asking somebody else to be with her: my parents, my husband, a paid nanny. I had to plan meticulously; spontaneity went out the window. Even when she was sleeping, I was not in control of my own time: if…