1. AD ABSURDUM
A NEW BRISTOL PHILOSOPHY MAGAZINE
Winter 2011 Edition
What is Philosophy?
Crunch: the Hay-on-Wye
Philosophy Festival
The Innocence Project
Sorbonne’s Marketing
Euro-Guilt
In Conversation with:
Finn Spicer
2. Editor’s letter
Winter 2011
Who last checked that the world isn’t balanced on a
tower of infinite turtles?
Accepting certain propositions can lead to absurd
results. Accepting that philosophy is, according to
Stephen Hawking, a ‘dead art’ would also be absurd.
Both Bristol and UWE have thriving philosophy
departments with at least enough thinking going on in
them to fill the first edition of a new Bristol-based
philosophy magazine. We hope there’ll be more.
From Foucault to the philosophy of cycling, Nozick
and the Sorbonne, we aim to cater for a variety of
tastes and encourage everyone, whether philosophy
students or not, to get involved and contribute.
Contact us at:
bris.adabsurdum@gmail.com
Editor-in-Chief
Vanessa Lucas
The Editorial Team
Simon Docherty, Thomas Galley, Vanessa Lucas, Elizabeth
Watkins, James Wilson
Cover art
Elizabeth Watkins,
Illustrations
Kathy Cox
Designed by
James Wilson
Printed by
University of Bristol Print Services
Contents
1 What is Philosophy?
Richard Pettigrew confronts a troublesome
question.
2 Philosophy for everyone
A review of the annual Hay-on-Wye art and
philosophy festival ‘Crunch’
3 The Innocence Project
4 Property is theft
6 The unfinished novel
Shelter from the analytical rigours of logic and
unleash your imagination with a short piece of
creative writing.
6
Sorbonne’s marketing
Why the philosophical golden era of the
Sorbonne has long since passed
7 Paradox: The Bridge
A bit of a puzzler…
8 In conversation with: Finn Spicer
Inside the mind of a Philosophy Lecturer
9 Euro-Guilt: The Repression of
Universalism
11 News & A Riddle
12 Alumni interview
Community Offier, Max Wakefield
3. AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
1
WELVE years ago, I started reading
for a joint degree in maths and
philosophy. I have been doing philosophy
ever since. But, until recently, I haven’t
felt comfortable answering the inevitable
question: What exactly do you do? This
is particularly embarrassing since this
question is itself philosophical.
Nonetheless, until I was asked to say
something about this at a public event a
couple of weeks ago, I didn’t have a good
answer. Now I think I do.
Philosophy, it seems to me, has two
distinctive features: the questions it asks
and the way it goes about searching for
answers. Let’s begin with the questions.
In one sense, they are the intellectual
leftovers; the questions that nobody else
takes the time to ask; the questions to
which a scientist or a musicologist or just
an ordinary person assumes an answer in
order to go about the rest of her
business.
A scientist uses a particular
methodology in order to design her
experiment, carry it out, and interpret
the data. The philosopher asks whether
that methodology really justifies the
conclusions she draws. Another scientist
may accept a theory that is stated almost
entirely using a mathematical formalism
or using novel and alien concepts. The
philosopher seeks an interpretation of
this formalism and these concepts; he
tries to understand what exactly the
theory says about the world.
A musicologist analyses a symphony
or a sonata. The philosopher asks exactly
what a symphony or a sonata is: does it
exist over and above its particular
performances, recordings, and printed
scores? And are there objective facts
about the relative aesthetic merits of
Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 9 that the critic may seek to
unearth? If there are, how do we
unearth them?
An ordinary person typically believes
that the world is the way it is
independently of how he or anyone else
thinks about it; he thinks that the objects
he takes himself to see and touch really
exist and would have whatever properties
they have whether or not he or anyone
else believed they did. He perhaps
doesn’t even notice that this is an
assumption; he may never have
formulated it explicitly and may never
have entertained the possibility that it is
false. The philosopher does all of this:
she formulates the assumption, considers
alternatives, and asks whether the
ordinary person has good reason to
favour the assumption he does.
So philosophy is a subject that
searches in the gaps left by other
intellectual pursuits. It is concerned with
the assumptions that we typically make
in order to get started in other subjects or
in our daily lives. What, then, about the
way in which it seeks answers to these
questions? This is a difficult question and
one to which philosophers have only
recently awoken. The problem is this: If
it is philosophy’s job to question the
methodologies of other subjects and
other pursuits, it cannot use any of those
methodologies itself. What methodology
is then left for philosophy to use?
Some respond to this challenge by
denying that philosophy questions all
methodologies: there is a scientific
methodology, these philosophers claim,
that is beyond question; it is this that
philosophy should adopt. This position
is called naturalism. On the other hand,
there are those that see a distinctive
methodology for philosophy: there are
modes of a priori reasoning, these
philosophers claim, that are beyond
question and yet are strong enough to
support interesting answers to
philosophical questions. One might call
this position rationalism.
Until recently, these different
methodologies were simply assumed by
different philosophers as they sought
answers to the questions that exercised
them. But today the very question of
which is the correct methodology for
philosophy has itself become a
philosophical question. Thus, the
questions of philosophy are not simply
the leftovers of other intellectual
pursuits; they are sometimes the leftovers
of earlier philosophical pursuits.
Richard Pettigrew is a Lecturer at the
Philosophy Department of the University of
Bristol.
T
What is
Philosophy? by Richard Pettigrew
4. 2
AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
HEN the U.K festival season is
practically over and the winter
blues set in what is there to do to rouse
you from autumnal lethargy? Well, head
over to Crunch, the art and philosophy
festival held annually in Hay-on-Wye. It's
a chance to escape the everyday and get
your cerebral cortex working, and
features philosophers, critics, writers,
broadcasters, artists and film-makers
debating around a central theme.
Held in the middle of November, this
year's theme was 'Awake in the
Universe'. It explored whether art and
creativity can help us capture what it is
to be human; whether art can lift us
beyond our current state to something
more, to a new moral imagination, for
instance. It discussed the place of art in
society and the issues the contemporary
art world faces, be it cuts in funding or
elitist politics and power. The event
draws a wide-range of international
speakers. Guests this year included co-
director of exhibitions at the Serpentine
G a l l e r y H a n s - U l r i c h O b r i s t ,
psychoanalyst and artist Bracha Ettinger,
novelist and poet Mark Haddon, and
neuroscientist Semir Zeki. There were
also a whole host of other speakers,
musicians and art exhibitions.
So who actually goes to this? Does it
not sound as if you need to be
submerged in the art world to grasp what
the heck's going on? Not at all. Speaking
to those around me, some were artists or
research students, some were just
attracted by the big names on show, but
most people were the general public with
an interest in philosophy. And this can
only be a good thing.
Crunch offers a place dedicated, much
like Athens in Plato's day, to providing
discussion of pertinent and timeless
questions. The need (yes, I said need) for
such an event is shown in the festival’s
growing popularity. Since the first
Crunch Festival three years ago, the
number of events has doubled and it has
five times the number of venues.
Don't imagine that it’s a sprawling
mess covering muddy fields. The festival
is centred around the Globe at Hay, with
both indoor and outdoor venues. It is
small, intimate and lovely. There are
yurts in which talks are held, a stage tent
where bands perform throughout the day
and night and mulled wine can be
consumed in baroque surroundings. At
night, lights are strung through the tents
and trees, transforming it into a
bohemian haven. A new and innovative
feature of the festival was the 'Platform'.
Here, anyone could have their say on
issues raised by the talks or bring their
own challenges for everyone to hear. It
offers a chance for real involvement with
the material presented at the festival, and
the question/answer format after each
talk allowed the audience to ask direct
questions to each speaker.
The highlight was the novelist Mark
Haddon. He gave a moving and brilliant
performance, discussing the conflict
between poetic and rational thought and
the nature of art. Raymond Tallis was
another treat. Alongside Julian Spalding,
Tallis presented their new theory of art
and the nature of artistic freedom,
discussed how art is useful and valuable,
and the problems of consciousness.
Without a doubt, the most controversial
speaker was Jake Chapman. Chapman
had his own views on his art but was
unprepared to say what they were. In his
half-hearted discussions with other
speakers, his answers were contradictory
but he did provoke the most reaction
from audience members.
Ultimately, this is what it's all about:
different perspectives and experiences
being opened up and laid bare for
everyone to think over and discuss.
Although it's impossible to attend all the
talks, they are brief insights into a
different way of thinking and acting.
They are an introduction to a wide
variety of today’s main veins of thought
and creativity, from which you can then
go and find out more. This is exactly
what society needs.
The Institute of Art and Ideas has
their own TV channel where you can
watch talks, debates and live sessions
from this year's and previous years
festivals at: http://iai.tv.
Ellie Harper
MA in European Philosophy, UWE
W
Philosophy
everyonefor
Ellie Harper reviews ‘Crunch’, the annual Hay-on-Wye art and philosophy festival
5. AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
3
The Innocence
OUNDED in 2003, the Innocence
Project is an international litigation
and public policy organization designed
to exonerate the wrongfully convicted.
Using DNA evidence and criminal
reform legislation the project aims to
prevent further instances of invalid or
improper forensic science, forced
confessions, government misconduct or
bad legal advice. In 2005 the University
of Bristol became home to the first UK
base of the Innocent Project, a
foundation conceived in the US but now
active across Canada, Australia and the
UK. Conducted on an entirely pro bono
basis the INUK (Innocence Network
UK) has over 30 active projects ongoing,
engaging law students in community
activism.
This initiative questions the laws we
rely upon to govern and regulate our
behaviour, often in response to changing
legislature post 9-11. We believe that if
someone commits an act that is hateful
or harmful to an individual or a society
then they should be punished. To what
extent this punishment extends can differ
greatly around the world. A distinction
between corrective and retributive justice
often seems to underlie this difference:
corrective justice requires an individual
to repair a wrong where retributive
justice requires said individual to suffer.
In the words of Kant, an advocate of
retributive justice, there exists a
“principle of equality” which must be
obeyed, and if it is not then the
individual who has moved the “pointer
of the scale of justice” deserves to suffer
from that same act he has performed, in
order to balance this scale. As such, his
principle is grounded in the theory of
retribution. But how can one engage in
an act of moral retribution if there is any
doubt at all of the culpability of the
individual in question? Can we in fact
enact any laws of justice if we do not
have in place similarly strict laws
governing the procurement of evidence,
provision of legal aid and appointment
of judge and jury?
In October 1975 three young men
and a woman between the ages of 17
and 25 were convicted of murder and
sentenced to life imprisonment, following
the Guildford and Woolwich bombings
in Northern Ireland. All four defendants
had confessed to the bombing. In 1989,
having served 14 years in jail for their
‘crimes’, an enquiry was launched into
the investigation that had sentenced
them. Police interview notes changed by
hand after the fact, accusations of
intimidation, torture and threats against
defendants’ families were revealed and
recent changes to terrorism laws had
meant that the defendants were
subjected to questioning for a week,
instead of the usual 48 hours. An appeal
was granted and under the advocacy of
a human rights solicitor the conviction
was reversed and The Four, as they
became known, were released. A further
report revealed improprieties in the
handling of scientific evidence and an
undisclosed witness defence statement.
The Four were innocent.
Kant’s theory of justice rules out the
punishment of innocents, theoretically,
but in reality it is near impossible in
either the corrective or the retributive
cases of justice to have complete and
unquestionable, non-circumstantial
evidence proving the guilt of an
individual. Even if this were possible the
prescribed sentence is a result of the
subjective and often intuitive decision of
a judge. In a justice system that still relies
upon archaic principles, has little to no
regulation and often leaves sentencing in
the hands of a jury of ‘regular
individuals’ – who have absolutely no
understanding of the legal system or
obligation to act apathetically - it is no
surprise that the Innocence Project
continues to grow and grow. Over
30,000 wrongful convictions were
overturned between 1998 and 1999. For
individuals like Neil Hurley, serving a life
sentence for the murder of his wife
despite no physical evidence, and the
disregard of an individual seen on the
day of the murder with clothing covered
in blood, the project is vital for the
evolution and progression of the concept
of Justice. The recent rejection of an
appeal to the Royal Courts of Justice on
another case struck a harsh blow to the
work of the project, but their efforts
remain more important than ever.
As science and technology improve
and our ability to detect and process
DNA samples increases it is all the more
important to reenforce the necessity to
prove guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.
We must continue to protect Ei incumbit
probatio qui dicit, non qui negat –
innocence until proven guilty – and
ensure that the burden of proof remains
with the prosecution and not the
defendant. Not to do so leads to a society
in which the lives of innocent individuals
are irreparably damaged and the respect
and confidence in the justice system is
gradually disintegrated. We must heed
the Kantian necessity for objectivity in
justice and look to science and
technology, rather than human
supposition, for our convictions.
Naomi Prashker
4th-year French and Philosophy
University of Bristol
Project by Naomi Prashker
F
How can one engage in an act of moral retribution if there is any doubt at all of the culpability
of the individual in question? Bristol is home to one organisation dedicated to ensuring the
burden of proof remains with the prosecution and not the defendant.
6. 4
AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
O S T p e o p l e h a v e h e a r d
Proudhon’s famous statement
‘Property is theft!’ but have never given
it a second thought. In this essay I will
briefly show why the main attempts at
justifying individual private property (in
land) are flawed, and then I will propose
an alternative system of property which
avoids these weaknesses.
The main arguments for property in
land (or ‘real property’) are from John
Locke and Robert Nozick. Locke’s
argument, set out by Christman (1986,
Pg. 160) and modified by Colin Farrelly
(An Introduction to Contemporary
Political Theory, Sage Publications,
2003) goes like this:
1. Every man has a property in his
own person.
2. Therefore, every man has also a
property right 'in the labour of his
body and the work of his hands'.
So,
3. If he removes some object out of
its natural state by mixing his
labour with it.
And
4. There is 'enough and as good left
in common for others'.
And
5.
The object or objects do not
exceed 'as much as anyone can
make use of… before it spoils'.
Then,
6. A person has thereby 'fixed [a]
property in them'.
Line 4 suffers from an infinite regress as
highlighted by Robert Nozick (Anarchy,
State and Utopia, 1974, Pg. 176). Say a
person Z is the first person for whom
there is not 'enough and as good' left for
him to appropriate land. Thus person Y,
who last appropriated before him, did
not leave enough for him to appropriate
and so Y's appropriation disobeyed rule
4. This means that X, who appropriated
just before Y was also in the wrong since
he left Y unable to appropriate; and so
on all the way back to A, the first person
to appropriate. In response to this
problem Nozick replaces line 4 with a
proviso that you may not appropriate if
it 'worsens the situation of others'. He
then says that even if appropriating land
means that no-one else can appropriate
land their situation isn't necessarily
'worsened' because the whole system
of real property benefits everyone
overall. Appropriating land and
cultivating it to sell food to those who
don’t own land could be beneficial.
Nozick lists a few specific ways that the
institution of real property benefits
everyone. They are as follows:
p. It increases productivity and profit
for the society.
q. It safeguards future trade because
people choose to hold product back
for future markets to make more
profit.
r. It allows experimentation and
entrepreneurship because property
is in many different hands
providing healthy competition.
s. It provides alternate employment
due to the broad base of
proprietors.
I do not consider these benefits a
convincing justification for real property.
Firstly when Nozick refers to 'worsening'
the situation of others he is referring
only to material gains and losses. He
does not take into account that
someone’s appropriation of land could
worsen my situation emotionally or
spiritually in a way that outweighs
increased productivity. Furthermore he
is referring to a net average increase in
benefit, it’s hard to see how the private
property system is working for people
who are born without, for example,
access to clean water (1 in 8 according to
UNICEF). Average gain for a portion of
society doesn’t justify appropriating land
from another portion (the majority I
might add).
Regarding r and s, these points rely on
property remaining in many hands. Karl
Marx argued that property will
necessarily cluster into larger and larger
estates. This is because large estates have
advantages over smaller ones, "only the
big estates can produce food such as
cattle etc." (Marx, Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844) and
thus they can set monopoly prices on
these commodities. Also "big landed
property accumulates to itself the
interest on the capital which the tenant
farmer has employed to improve the
land" where proprietor farmers have to
employ their own capital improving the
land and so do not get that profit at all
(Marx, 1844). Finally the "ordinary
market price of land... depends
everywhere upon the... rate of
interest" (Adam Smith, 1776) and the
rate of interest according to Smith must
always fall to a minimum thus ruining
the small landlord, who cannot make
enough from rent. With property
clustered in large estates points r and s
no longer apply.
So is real property unjustified? At this
point any realist will point out that we
cannot do without private property. This
may appear to leave us cornered, but
there is one major stone left unturned;
as John Exdell points out Nozick only
compares the outcomes of leaving the
land un-owned or it being owned by an
appropriator A. He doesn't consider
what would happen if it was owned by B
or C or even if it was owned by some
community or body of people. It is this
latter possibility that I will now consider.
An Alternative to Real Property?
Disclaimer: This is not a manifesto for
implementing a new system of property,
which would raise problems to do with
seizing privately owned land. The idea is
to imagine what it would be like if this
was the property system that had arisen
instead of the one currently in place.
I propose that all land should be
PROPERTY is THEFT
Building on arguments from Locke and Nozick, Jeremy Stopes proposes an
economically desirable alternative to current property system.
M
7. AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
5
owned communally by the citizens of the
state and held in trust by the
government. Individuals are then free to
lease the land from the government. The
value of the lease is determined on the
open market by auction or some similar
method. Once someone begins a lease
they have complete security of tenure
and can live there, undisturbed, for as
long as they like (assuming they keep
paying). They may end their lease
whenever they choose and when they do
so it will be re-leased on the open
market. A dividend to the value of the
new lease value minus the old lease value
will be paid to the previous leaseholder
for X number of months. Where X is to
be varied by the government according
to how prudent it is to encourage
building at that time (much like the Bank
of England Base Rate). This system
encourages the improvement and
maintenance of houses by the tenants to
maximise their value and even for new
building projects since the lease on a field
is immeasurably lower than for a house.
Before explaining why this system is
economically desirable I will first outline
a few other advantages. Due to the
collection of leases the government will
have enough money for infrastructure
and welfare making it unlikely that the
government will need to collect taxes.
This is an advantage because most
people dislike taxation; it doesn't seem
fair for them to pay more money towards
the state just because they earn more,
when they probably use the state's
facilities no more than the next person.
This contrasts with paying more for a
lease; one pays more for the lease
because it's a better house/factory you,
which seems naturally fair.
Another huge benefit of this system is
that it shares the nation's resources fairly,
but in a way which harnesses the spirit of
competitive free trade and which is
economically efficient and suits man’s
nature. Our country is filled with
resources: metals, oil, agricultural land,
prime business land, prime housing land,
fishing waters etc. The benefits of these
resources are currently received by
whoever owns the land. In some states
the government has taken control of
these resources, mismanaged them in
bureaucratic, inefficient ways then given
the people what profit is left over. In my
system no redistribution is attempted, no
control is taken of the economy. Rather
the lease value, as determined on the
open market, of a property with resource
value (e.g. a mine) will naturally be as high
as it can be while still allowing a fair
profit. Thus the leases across the country
will reflect all the underlying resource
value of the whole country. All this
resource value will be absorbed by the
government and spent on public good
(infrastructure and welfare). Thus
through health-care, roads etc. each and
every citizen can share in the resources of
our country.
Why this system is more economically
efficient:
w. Capital does not like to do nothing,
it will be invested in some way.
x. It can be invested either in the
materials and means of production,
or in property.
y. When invested in the materials and
means of production it will facilitate
more production than was
happening before.
z. When invested in property (other
than improving property which is a
form of production) it will not
facilitate production.
z needs to be explained slightly. If I
invest in a factory and employ workers to
work there they will make things of
value. If I do work on a house it will be
worth more. If however I buy a house
and rent it out for more than the interest
on the capital, and then sell it 10 years
later for 3 times its initial cost I have not
added any value to the world whatsoever.
Given a fixed amount of capital it is
more efficient to invest in means and
materials than in property. With the
system outlined above there will be no
such thing as investment in property
(other than in improving property which
is really a type of production using
means and materials). Assuming the
same amount of investment capital in
the nation but with no possibility of
investing in property, there will
necessarily be more investment in means
and materials and greater productivity for
the nation.
Furthermore as I said above tax could
be removed or at the very least
significantly reduced. This would
improve economic efficiency as follows:
Value Added Tax: Tax on the value of
goods means the seller takes less than the
buyer pays, thus goods that could be
produced profitably by the buyer at a
price acceptable to the seller do not get
produced because the price is too high
for the seller, or the profit too low for the
buyer. This reduces productivity.
Income Tax: Tax on income means that
instead of paying a minimum wage
(enough for a worker to live on) the
employer must pay for him to subsist
and for him to pay tax. The employer
therefore employs less people meaning
that less is produced.
Removing these two tax burdens is good
for efficiency. It may be argued that tax
has just been moved not removed. That's
wrong. The two taxes above discourage
productivity. The lease does not. Paying
a lease fee is entirely comparable to
paying rent on the open market; all other
variables being equal leases will come to
exactly what rents come to at present so
businesses will be no worse off. Also, taxing
land is recognised as more efficient than
taxing income or value; the Nobel Prize
winning economist William Vickrey says
"replacing [almost all other taxes] with
taxes on site values, would substantially
improve the economic efficiency of the
jurisdiction". As for landlords they would
have the same amount of capital but
instead of investing it in property and
reaping rent they would invest it in
business and make a similar return but to
the greater benefit of the economy.
Conclusion
Private ownership of goods is natural
and just. Private ownership of land is
unjust; attempts to justify it fail. Thus far
most thinkers, philosophers or otherwise,
have ignored this obvious fact because
there appears to be no alternative to real
property that takes proper account of
h u m a n n a t u r e a n d w h i c h i s
economically efficient. In this essay I've
proposed one such alternative. Perhaps
now people can join Proudhon in
proclaiming ‘property is theft!’
Jeremy Stopes, 4th-year Russian and
Philosophy, University of Bristol
8. 6
AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
“Forgotten how to play”
E are alone now for the ninth
hour. Haven’t said a word since
you spat out some dust and tried to
scrape the dry hollow of your mouth
clean. Probably wasn’t even a word...was
it? I saw your tongue soften for a minute
but I didn’t risk it, if I’d responded you
might not have spoken. If only I knew
what you were thinking.
“Send them to the sand pit!” they
said, that’ll teach them. I don’t know why
we have to be in a cave as well as a
sandpit....the enlightenment metaphor
strikes a dull note with me. Forty-two
years of age and I’ve been sent to play as
therapy. They explained the concept to
me, but it seems a little risky. It’s not that
it’s safer in my head it’s just that I have
more fun alone up there. Anyway, we
can’t get out until we play...I’d fake it but
I have no idea what we must do or say to
look like we are playing; I have no
intention of making the first move.
Flies are landing on your eyebrows,
how funny...perhaps they were sent to
help, little bastions of dirt and freedom
having their way with your sweaty brow.
I name one Ferdinand, one Izembard
and one Pascal, they are probably all
females but I’m trying to find company
and do not want to isolate myself
unnecessarily through gender when the
species divide is already problematic. I
call them over silently but they seem to
like you more. “The unspeakable in
pursuit of the inedible”, a Wilde quote
comes to me. I reverse it...at least I can
still make myself laugh. Do people laugh
when they are playing? Wilted, defeated
trouser leg clinging to unused muscle...I
remember my frustration. If stress is
unhealthy, and if “play” is now causing
me to be stressed then their therapy
really isn’t well thought out is it, so
ignorant...so very ignorant.
Izembard has shown his true
brilliance and has broken allegiance,
flying solo across the expanse of sand,
the unbridgeable divide. He lands noisily
on my forearm. I look over to see
whether your eyes have followed the
betrayal my mastery has induced but you
appear to be paralysed with resentment,
eyes pummelling the wall with bitterness,
prickling with heat. My eyes pummel the
camera in the corner, the one that will
hopefully bear witness to us “playing”
happily together at some point and grant
us freedom. I wonder whether they
would have invested in planting
microscopic cameras into the eyes of
bluebottles in order to better capture the
moment. It’s possible...with the mindless
obsession with the benefits of “play”
these morons have developed.
“A sacred thing of folk lore...most
common in humans under the age of
12”, a simple dictionary entry and yet
the cause of this suffocating experience,
the most impotent I’ve felt in years. I
know for a fact you’re feeling impotent
too, that’s why we haven’t spoken for so
long, each one afraid of becoming
vulnerable in the presence of an
unknown objective.
The flies have united again, and
move as one ever changing organism,
colliding in mid air. Ferdinand appears
not to know which direction he wants to
go, he’ll never be a success. I wonder if I
told you their names would that help us
to play? Maybe you’ve got your own
names for them and you’d take it as an
aggressive move to conquer territory, an
attack.
Movement... you’ve closed your eyes
and your lips are forming numbers, in
the right order I see, clever you. Between
eight and nine...I feel like something is
going to happen...like somehow you’ve
found the answer and Pascal will come
and whisper it to me and then we’ll set
about “playing”, conquering the elusive
bastard.
All you do is breath out heavily,
paralysed with anger again within
seconds. I remember actually, they’d said
it should happen spontaneously,
instinctively...it wouldn’t start with a
number sequence then would it. What to
do whilst I wait?
Vanessa Lucas
4th-year French and Philosophy, University of
Bristol
W
the Unfinished novel…
E wore a velvet jacket and old-
fashioned chinos, nodding after
the lecturer’s every word, as if all that
was happening in this Sorbonne lecture
room confirmed his preconceptions of
the place. He suddenly raised his hand
and asked a question. If he hadn't done
it, one might have thought that he was a
pretentious student, that kind of Parisian
who always acts as if they were on a
stage. But his question forbade all
misinterpretation, not because of the
philosophical point discussed, but in
reason of his Quebecois accent. His
clothes, his manners, everything became
extremely obvious: he was a tourist who
thought that the Sorbonne which he was
experiencing was the same as the
Sorbonne of the sixties. He certainly
thought that the lecturer was a kind of
Raymond Aron, or a kind of Foucault,
the intellectuals who created what it is
commonly called the "French exception".
Perhaps he also had some relatives who
went to France during this period and,
fascinated, related to him during his
childhood and beyond the fantastic
experience that it had been.
Unfortunately, his tourist guide is no
longer relevant. The Sorbonne is an
Sorbonne's marketing by Gabriel Perez
H
A student from the great French institute that gave us Deleuze and De Beauvoir explains why the
philosophical golden era of the Sorbonne has long since passed.
From Camus to Kierkegaard, fiction has played its part in our philosophical development. We invite you to shelter
from the analytical rigours of logic and unleash your imagination with a short piece of creative writing.
9. AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
7
OCRATES arrives at a bridge guarded
by a powerful lord, Plato, and begs to
be allowed to cross.
Plato says:
“I swear that if the next utterance you make is
true I shall let you cross, but if it is false I shall
throw you in the water.”
Socrates replies:
“You are going to throw me in the water.”
--
If Plato does not throw him in the
water, Socrates has spoken falsely and
should be thrown in; but if he is thrown
in, Socrates has spoken truly and should
not be thrown in." This is Buridan’s
seventeenth sophism.
You would expect that the only
difficulty that Plato might have in
fulfilling his oath would be in knowing
whether Socrates’ utterance was true or
not. But Socrates subtly manages to
frustrate him.
Many philosophers, following
Aristotle, have denied that future
contingent propositions have a truth
value. If this view were right, Socrates’
utterance would not be true, since it is an
utterance about something that may or
may not happen in the future. But it
would not be false either. However,
Aristotle’s view confuses truth with
knowledge or predetermination. To say
that it is true that Socrates will be thrown
in the water is not to say that anyone yet
knows whether he will or that it is
already determined whether he will. Its
truth or falsity depends on what Plato is
going to do.
Is it logically impossible for Plato to
fulfil his oath in the circumstances? “He
has no obligation to keep it at all, simply
because he cannot do so,” Buridan
concludes, reasonably enough.
--
Reprinted from Paradoxes from A to Z,
Michael Clark.
Further reading: John Buridan on Self-
Reference, ed. And trans. G.E Hughes,
Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Paradox: The Bridge
S
institution slowly dying, in a quiet and
outlandish silence. For a long time, the
Sorbonne used to epitomize the promises
of a true meritocracy and a rational
society. It was the true means to realise
the revolutionary project: a virtuous
society where affluence would lead to the
emancipation of individual consciences.
Numerous thinkers made the possibility
of this project believable and their
prestige still influences imaginations
abroad. But the world doesn’t believe in
this project anymore. The French motto,
"Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité", is still
written on the front of every public
building, but the words just hide an
impotent institution and no one seems to
be affected by a great sorrow. A new
model of the transmission of knowledge
is replacing, step by step, the Republican
ideology.
This new model, as everyone knows,
is the model of the US university:
addressing its knowledge to a minority,
producing Nobel Prizes, and ranking
well in the Shanghai index to attract the
best students or, at least, the wealthiest.
I shall not make a critique of this
model. But I shall explain in which sense
this new model puts an end to what was,
to a certain extent, the cause and the
origin of Sorbonne's prestige.
As has already been said, education
used to constitute the best means to a
rational society, that is to say, a society
where individuals are able to adopt a
global viewpoint and not a selfish one.
Therefore, the university was a way of
favouring the understanding of a
common good, and thus lead to a more
understanding society. This can be called
the ideological dimension of the
Sorbonne. An educated society is a
society able to discuss and define what is
good beyond personal interest. What will
replace this view? Can we be oblivious of
this question when the far right Front
National is very high in the polls?
Moreover, since the Affaire Dreyfus,
the public role of the lecturer is to be
counter-establishment, viz, to tell the
truth to those in power in the name of
the oppressed people. The authority
which the lecturer claims comes from his
ethics as a researcher. Researching a
scientific truth in his field allows him to
intervene in the public space as an
arbiter. But today at the Sorbonne, who
would dare say the truth to a power that
can fire you? Can we be sure that the
lecturer, or more precisely, the
"intellectual", won't be the one to say the
truth to the oppressed people in the
name of the powerful?
A last dimension is about to be lost:
the spiritual dimension. A secular society
is not an atheistic society, and as we
know, science hasn't yet told us the
mysteries of the world. Thus, it
encumbers to thinkers to encourage
people to question themselves as well as
providing some kind of bearings. In a
university where knowledge becomes a
good that can be sold, aren't they
b r i n g i n g a b o u t t h e s p i r i t u a l
impoverishment of society?
Perhaps in two thousand years, we
will remember the Paris of the XXth
century as we remember today the
Athens of the Vth century BC. There
was the Academy. There was the
Sorbonne. The prestige still lives in
memories, but the (hi)story is over.
Gabriel Perez is a visiting student from the
Sorbonne (Paris IV), MA Philosophy,
University of Bristol.
10. 8
AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
Finn Spicer is a Lecturer in Philosophy
and current Head of Education at the
University of Bristol. His philosophical
interests include epistemology and the
philosophy of mind. In an exclusive
interview, he confesses to sadistic cycling
habits, reveals his student pet hates and
suggests a new way to fund higher
education…
When did you feel your first
philosophical stirrings?
Unlike most of the UCAS applicants, I
didn’t know I wanted to do Philosophy
by the age of two. I was supposed to read
Maths at Cambridge but I suffered the
typical blow of sharing tutorials with
someone far cleverer than me and
became a little disenchanted with it. I’d
really got into Locke’s Human
Understanding at school, in which he
argues for no innate ideas so I asked to
switch to Philosophy and luckily they let
me. I still try to do one maths problem a
day.
What attracted you to
Epistemology?
I started writing my MPhil paper
focusing on the Philosophy of Maths but
once I’d finished writing, I realised I was
actually talking about epistemology.
That’s when I worked out what I was
interested in. My PhD was on the
epistemology of mental states.
Have you ever leant towards
scepticism?
I remember sitting in the audience of a
lecture on the existence of numbers at
Cambridge and a girl put her hand up
and, holding back tears in a breathless,
dramatic voice said, ‘You’re talking
about the existence of numbers, but I’m
worried about everything! How can I
know that you’re here, or that this room’s
here and.....’ She ran from the room
crying and I thought it was so pathetic
that in that moment my sceptical
concerns vanished forever.
Which philosopher has had the
most impact on your life?
Many members of the department have
a secret shame, which is that at some
point in their lives they were
Wittgenstein enthusiasts. When I was an
undergraduate I devoured Wittgenstein,
I thought he was so profound and he had
a huge influence on me becoming a
philosopher. Now I have no time for him
whatsoever. Perversely, Hume is my
philosophical hero but he’s had very little
impact on my life. For a while Peter
Unger’s Living High and Letting Die made
me think twice about choosing to go out
for dinner when you could donate the
money to Unicef.
What would you have been, if you
hadn’t become a lecturer?
A maths teacher. I was a maths teacher
for four years before I did my PhD.
When did you last play your piano?
About a year and a half ago. I took up
piano as a form of physiotherapy after
breaking both my arms as an
undergraduate in a mountain-biking
accident. They said it would be good for
my tendons so I learnt the Aria from
Bach’s Goldberg Variations and that’s
what I used to play afterhours at No.9.
What’s your favourite music to
philosophise to?
Easy! As an undergraduate I worked
almost exclusively to Bach. Now I listen
to Schubert and Beethoven a lot and I’m
lucky enough to have a wife who plays
both on the piano at home.
No contemporary tastes?
Not really. I once attended spinning
classes in London, Kyle Minogue has a
great beat to cycle to. Other than that I
have a cycling compilation of strange,
West- African drum music.
You’re a keen cyclist, do some of
your most profound philosophical
insights occur whilst you’re on the
saddle?
No, I have no inspiration when I’m
cycling. I’m usually focusing on how
much my legs are hurting. I think if
you’re not doing it partly for the suffering
then you’re not a real cyclist.
There are rumours you’re looking
into the philosophy of cycling.
What’s the theory?
Well it’s to do with the ethics of
competitive cycling. A lot of tactical
thinking and effort goes into making sure
no one gets a free ride in your slip-
stream; in essence you have to make
them suffer and in no other part of my
life do I become excited about making
other people suffer but in cycling …I do.
So, should I feel guilty about deriving
pleasure from inflicting intense suffering
on others during a race?
But your ultimate goal isn’t making
them suffer?
No, the ultimate goal is winning. But
does that justify the means? There’s also
a lot of game-theory and deception
involved. You make them believe you’re
an ally by riding in front, lull them into a
false sense of security and then double-
cross them.
Do you dislike bumping into
students at the pub?
No, I like it. One of the reasons I work
here is that I get a buzz out of talking to
young people. But I don’t go to the pub
very much, I’m paying off my mortgage.
Will Philosophy survive austerity?
I suspect the Sciences will be rich and
the Arts will be poor but Philosophy will
be okay because it can offer something to
the scientists. We’ll be able to support the
people that want to study Single
Honours Philosophy by teaching little
bits of philosophy to medics and
scientists.
I think we’re going to be more focused
on answering the demands of students,
and I think that’s going to be a good
thing. But it’s not a good thing that the
wealthy will be the most likely to benefit.
You’ve been known to defend the
£9,000 fee tariff: Devil’s advocate or
genuine belief?
Devil’s advocate. What I really think is
that there should be a tax on all
graduates, even me. It would help to
avoid the time delay; today’s graduates
won’t pay back the cost of their
education for another 30-40 years. Tax
all graduates and you’d immediately
have some capital pouring in from all
those 30-50 year olds who have
benefitted from university education.
The older generations could go on
paying it for the rest of their working
lives and the youth of today wouldn’t
have to bare so much of the burden. But
it’ll never happen. No one likes paying
taxes and governments don’t like
introducing them.
Do you worry for the graduates of
today?
Bristol graduates are resourceful,
personable people; they’ll be fine. I look
around at people in well-paid jobs and
think, ‘one of my undergraduates would
be much better at that.’
In conversation with... Finn Spicer
11. AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
9
Is teaching or research more
important to you?
I’m Head of Education so I don’t get to
teach very much this year, and I’m
missing it. When I walk past someone
giving a lecture, I’m envious. When I
walk past someone sitting at their
computer… I’m not.
What are you currently working
on?
I’ve still got a bit of work to do on
Jackson’s Mary Thought experiment.
There’s going to be a change in the way
we think about epistemology, how to
organise belief and reasoning to be
optimal in arriving at truths about the
world, I think the perspective is going to
widen to include rearranging the world
so that it fits with your reasoning.
Whose ideas from the Bristol
philosophy department will be
celebrated as seminal a hundred
years from now?
I’m sometimes jealous of Leon Horsten
because he just proves things and the
proof stays out there. My guess is Samir
Okasha though.
Does academic philosophy breed
eccentricity in your experience?
We don’t have many eccentrics in the
Philosophy department. We’re slightly
weird, but by the standards of most
philosophy departments in the country
we’re pretty normal. We don’t hide in
filth ridden rooms for weeks on end.
It is important to remember we’re on
public exhibition for taking thinking very
seriously and believing in a society which
allows people to do this for a living. I
think it is important to create a certain
image and encourage that seriousness
about thinking in students, even if that
means James and I being particularly
pedantic about something that might not
actually matter.
In 2007 you wrote an article
entitled, ‘Are there any conceptual
truths about knowledge?’ For those
of us that haven’t read the article,
are there any?
No, not even knowledge implies belief is a
conceptual truth about knowledge.
How much would A.C Grayling
have to pay you to go and teach at
his private college?
I’d never live in London. Perhaps I’d
think about it if it was in a large country
house near Bristol. I’m not going to start
criticising the people that go to work for
him, maybe they’re giving half of their
earnings to Unicef.
Do you have any pet-hates in
student essays?
Yes, people starting paragraphs with,
‘This’…I mean what is ‘This’ referring
to? It means you have to trawl back to
when they made their last point.
Aristotle or Plato?
Aristotle
Is it difficult being the only blond
in the department?
Yes, it’s very hard. On the plus side it’s a
useful example of property instantiation.
Do you have any advice for
students?
Don’t hold back. Never again will
anybody collect a remarkable group of
people, of the same age, who are
interested in the same thing together in
the same place, with so much time on
their hands. Make the most of it.
UROPEANS are well versed in guilt.
T h e Ju d e o - C h r i s t i a n my t h
introduced original sin, which binds each
of us in the belts and straps of Isaac,
begging repentance for the crimes of our
fathers - of which, real or imaginary,
there is no shortage. Self criticism is
healthy; a virtue which arrests dogma.
But self-flagellation can become a
tyranny; it prevents us from extending
opprobrium to others when they deserve
it, and allows us to turn all evil back
upon ourselves. Simultaneously, it deters
us from reaching out to victims of
oppression abroad, as we inhabit the
suspicion that universal values are really
just Western prejudices. This is a moral
argument. If we wish to encourage
flourishing for ourselves and others, we
must renounce the masochism which
cripples our will to reason sensibly about
right and wrong, and vindicates
fecklessness.
In November, Azerbaijani writer
Rafiq Tagi was murdered by an Islamist
who may or may not have been
employed by the Iranian government.
Either way, he was in their service.
Ayatollah Lankarani proclaimed a fatwa
against Tagi after he had described Islam
as the “primary fetter” upon Middle
Eastern development, democracy, and
peace. That was in 2007. Not long
before he was stabbed, he had written an
article criticising the Iranian regime. To
compound the conspiracy, Tagi seemed
to be recovering in hospital before his
condition rapidly deteriorated and he
died, advancing the possibility that he
may have been poisoned. Unlike the
Iranian plot to hire Mexicans to murder
Saudi diplomats in Washington, Tagi’s
death passed without comment in Britain
- bar Nick Cohen’s excellent article in
the Observer. Cohen derides the British
press who rejected the story when
another Azerbaijani writer, Emin Milli,
alerted them to it. He suggests, and I
offer some compounding examples in
this essay, that “Europe is not [a] brave
continent,” but one which is more
concerned with defending itself against
charges of orientalism, or neo-
conservatism than it is in standing up for
the oppressed in the face of religious
fanaticism.
It is of little surprise that Edward
Said’s Orientalism has been not only a
huge seller in Europe, but an enduring
source of inspiration on so many
university campuses. Said declares that,
in so far as they talk about the Orient, it
is “correct to say all Europeans are
racists.” Europeans, it seems, suffer from
a racist disposition because some
Occident countries once colonised parts
of the East. Works like Said’s appeal to
so many Europeans, I argue, as a result
of this faulty reasoning. Slavery,
colonialism, and the totalitarianisms of
the twentieth century are shameful
episodes, but the West did not create the
first two - and actually played a leading
role in exorcising them. Moreover,
Europeans fought courageously against
Nazism, and reached out to support
democratisation in the states of the old
Soviet Bloc. Guilt becomes relativism; it
Euro-Guilt: The Repression of Universalism
E
Is the western world guilty of moral relativism generated by an obscure, masochistic tendency
buried deep within the post-colonialist mentality? You decide.
12. 10
AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
instills in us the feeling that it is
imperialistic to engage in dialogue with
other parts of the world. The fear of
passing judgment on what post-
modernists refer to awkwardly as “the
other” leads to criminal self-deception
about the plight of the victims of malign
movements abroad.
The germ of masochism engenders
the fantasies of the romantic; the
corollary to self-abasement is the
exaltation of this “other.” Michael
Foucault’s version of Third-worldism led
him to Iran in 1979, where he heralded
the rise of political Islam. It was the
totality of the religion that attracted him:
“Islam [ ] is not just a religion, but an
entire way of life.” An Islamist
movement, he hoped, could be “much
stronger than those with a Marxist,
Leninist, or Maoist character.” For
dissenters to his and Khomeini’s vision,
he had a relativist riposte - curious
alongside the certainty he was attracted
by - Islamism was “a different regime of
truth,” it couldn’t possibly be analysed by
Western standards. He had predicated in
relativism a mandate to proselytise for
strict absolutism! Foucault shared with
Michael Aflaq and Sayyid Qutb the wish
to turn the tide against the hubristic
humanism of the Enlightenment: Islam
could “become a gigantic powder keg, at
the level of hundreds of millions of
men.” What but a wish to see total
reparation for not just the transgressions
of the West, but the successes of
civilisation, could possibly unite a
reactionary theocrat (Khomeini) and a
French, leftist intellectual?
And a distinguished British journalist:
Robert Fisk responded to a belated papal
apology for the Holy See’s collusion with
Hitler by questioning whether the
Church should only be requesting
forgiveness from the Jews. But he didn’t
have the Rwandans, put to death in
Catholic churches, in mind, nor the
worldwide victims of Priestly sexual
abuse. Fisk wanted the Catholic Church
to apologise to Muslims for the Iraq War.
It was a strange request to make
considering the Vatican played no part in
the Second Gulf War, it had opposed it
actually. Something Fisk obviously didn’t
feel merited his condemnation was the
Holy See’s red carpet treatment of
Saddam’s deputy, Tariq Aziz.
And what was the natural European
response to September 11, 2001? George
Galloway articulated this: the West got
what it had coming, “the planes didn’t
emerge out of a clear blue sky, but from
a swamp of hatred created by the West.”
The argument goes: Mohammad Atta
was driven to murder and suicide by US
policy towards Palestine. You won’t find
this explanation in anything Atta wrote
himself. Perhaps we can refer back to
Foucault - “Islam is an entire way of
life.” Might Jihadists negate themselves
to claim affirmation in its totality? It
seems more likely. But the masochist can
ignore the totalitarian cult of death if he
can find a reason to blame himself. Ken
Livingstone, Mayor of London at the
time, blamed the 7/7 attacks on Blair’s
foreign policy. Yet the bin Ladenists have
never stopped talking about loving death
as their enemies love life, a shibboleth
one might recognise from one of
Conrad’s anarchists; the solution, rooted
in Christianity, to what Camus called the
absurd.
The Obscurantism of the Masochist
The masochist is the one who has
truly inherited the colonialist discourse
that exercises his revulsion at his own
society. His compassion and his
contempt, to borrow a theme from
Pascal Bruckner, are at once the same
thing. “We are still the masters of the
world,” writes a French teacher in Le
Monde, during the Mohammad cartoon
controversy, “and we seem to have
forgotten the sensitivities of those who
are not.” Europe is still master of the
world! It’s not the frail coward who
shudders at the thought of ending
genocide on its own territory;
admonishing in feigned vanity the
estranged cousin it will return to,
cowering in its abjection, pleading that
its paradise be saved.
Is there not a note of disdainful
condescension in the French teacher’s
voice; A suggestion that history compels
one to treat Muslims like infants, that an
Algerian cannot have his faith subjected
to a gentle satire in a Danish newspaper?
France once ruled Algeria and Denmark
is subsumed in that guilt by its European
association; a guilt which tacitly implies
superiority - augmenting the influence of
a nation that never had an empire, along
with the burden of shame it must
acknowledge for standing up to
censorious theocrats.
Masochism is a great scourge of
humanity. In blaming oneself, or one’s
culture for all the misfortunes of other
cultures one has to keep one eye closed.
And this then encourages the fecklessness
to which I earlier referred. No one thinks
they have the right to assert that the
rights which are given them by fortune
could apply to those who don’t share in
that fortune. Relativism is indifference. It
gives rise to the post-modern brigade,
with their unreadable prose, their
rejection that anyone can discover truths
of any kind, and, ultimately, their
assertion that it is imperialistic to say
anything critical about the transgressions
of any cultures outside the West. Rather
than a progressive promotion of the
values to which we owe our freedom,
theorists make serious attempts to justify
‘dowry murder’ - Nick Cohen gives
examples (Uma Narayan and Azfar
Hussain) in his book, What’s Left? - or
multiculturalists advocate separate courts
for immigrant ‘communities’ (Rowan
Williams, for instance, has proposed
Sharia courts for Muslims). The
bankruptcy of multiculturalism is its
denial of the individual, whose rights are
surmounted by the imaginary rights of a
community.
How can Europeans promote liberty
in the Middle East when they’re so
racked with doubt they oscillate over the
issue of legal equality at home; when
they make comments like this, from
Jacques Chirac: “Arab leaders sometimes
use methods that differ from ours. But I
refuse to judge political systems by the
yardstick of our traditions in the name of
some sort of ethnocentrism. Moreover, I
must say that a multiparty system does
not seem to me necessarily desirable in
developing countries”?
Perhaps the most concerning of the
guilty European’s tendencies is the urge
to equate criticism of religion with
racism. Islamophobia, a word which
originated among Iranian mullahs
wishing to denigrate feminists, the
offence for which Salman Rushdie was
condemned to death, confuses the
criticism of a religion with anti-Muslim
bigotry. It’s mystifying that such an
amalgam can pass so seamlessly into the
discourse of secular Europeans,
especially considering the omnipresence
of bigotry in the holy books of the
revered monotheisms. I echo the
sentiments of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and
others: “that our century be one of
Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.”
Oscar Clarke
3rd year Philosophy at UWE
13. AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
11
News
Accolades
An article co-written by Dr Richard
Pettigrew, British Academy Research
Fellow in Bristol’s Department of
Philosophy, has been chosen by the
Philosopher’s Annual as one of the ten
best articles published in 2010.
The article, entitled ‘An Objective
Justification of Bayesianism II: The
C o n s e q u e n c e s o f M i n i m i z i n g
Inacurracy', was written with Hannes
Leitgeb and appeared in Philosophy of
Science, vol. 77, no. 2, in April 2010.
Dr Pettigrew explained the thinking
behind the article: "Suppose that I know
that a die will be rolled; and suppose that
I believe that it will land on three more
strongly than I believe that it will land on
an odd number. We would say that I am
irrational. But why? In this article, we
sought to answer this and other questions
about how our degrees of beliefs ought
to relate to one another. We argued that
people whose degrees of beliefs do not
relate to one another in the prescribed
ways can expect themselves to have less
accurate beliefs than those whose degrees
of beliefs do".
The Philosopher’s Annual aims to select
the ten best articles published in
philosophy each year (something it
acknowledges is "as simple to state as it is
admittedly impossible to fulfil"), and is
available online.
Philosophy Library Now Open
A new idyll has been created for Bristol
philosophy students. You can now find a
vast range of philosophy books, a
‘slackers corner’ filled with some rather
poor quality fiction to distract you and a
desk on which you can work when other
libraries are over-crowded by worker
ants/ coffee drinkers.
Location: Ground floor, 43 Woodland
Road
Opening hours: 12-2pm every weekday
Staff: Helpful, friendly and generally
bored PhD students
Borrowing: Long term unless recalled
Details and Catalogue: http://
www.kitpatrick.com/philosophy-library
Expansion of the Department
Finn Spicer: “For a long time Bristol has
wanted to expand, given that we get a
huge number of well-qualified applicants
most of whom we have to turn away. In
previous years this was a result of the
numbers being capped by central
government, but one of the effects of
recent changes to the way universities are
funded is that the cap has been removed
for applicants with AAB or above at A2
level. We are now in a position to offer a
limited number of additional places to
read philosophy.
UPPOSE you die and awaken in a
room with two doors and one guard
at each door. A voice speaks to you and
tells you that one door leads to eternity
in Heaven and one door leads to an
eternity in Hell. You are allowed to
approach a guard and ask him a question
and only one question that will help you
determine which door to choose since
the doors are unlabeled and you are
unable to look through a door before
entering.
However, you are also told that one of
the guards ALWAYS lies and one
ALWAYS tells the truth, and you cannot
know which one is which.
What question do you ask so that you are
guaranteed to get the door to eternity in
Heaven?
--
S
A Riddle
Answer:You'daskeitherguardwhich
doortheotherguardwilltellyouisthe
doortoHeaven(orHell:aslongasyou
understandwhich)andthenpickthe
otherone.
Cryptic clue: Existentialism
14. 12
AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
After three years of intense pondering,
philosophy graduates must fend for
themselves in the material world. So
where do they end up, and are they still
satisfying their philosophical needs?
Max Wakefield studied Philosophy and
Politics at Bristol University; he now
walks the corridors of power in… the
Student Union. We talk to the dedicated
Community Officer about Foucault,
drugs and high-visibility clothing.
So, a sabbatical role as Community
Officer, you must really love
university?
Max: Do I love the University of Bristol?
No. There are a lot of things wrong with
it. I do love the city of Bristol though.
What made you apply for the job
then?
About 3 months of Gus (now Union
President) nagging me and the inability
to say ‘no’. I was dubious to start with,
but looking at the jobs market it seemed
as beneficial as anything else I could have
done, and now that I’m here I’m fully
committed to the job.
What projects are you working on?
My biggest project is encouraging the
university to put more resources into
facilitating students to do independent
research projects with community
groups. It’s a massively wasted resource.
(The independent research projects
could be dissertation topics for example,
the idea being that both the student and
the community group would benefit from
the research carried out.)
Other projects are the University City
Farm and changing the rent-band system
for first year accommodation.
What do you think about A.C
Grayling’s private philosophy
college?
A PR disaster. For a clever man it was
one of the most spectacularly
miscalculated announcements I’ve ever
seen, but then it’s hard to present it in a
positive way. £18,000 for a year seems
unnecessary and is bound to be
exclusionary, even if they offer a couple
of bursaries every year.
There must be a lot of skills you
acquired whilst studying
philosophy (not politics) that are
now invaluable to you in your
professional role?
(Long pause...) Maybe they’re intangible.
Oh, okay. Argumentative skills, analytic
ability, confidence… Engaging in any
subject that interests you is valuable
really.
Whose philosophy has at the
biggest impact on you?
Nietzsche, definitely. Reading Genealogy of
Morals as part of the Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche course was the most inspiring
thing I did at university. Brilliant, both
prosaically and in terms of philosophical
content. I think that if you go to a
western university to study philosophy
and you don’t cover Nietzsche then you
haven’t been taught properly. If you’ve
got any interest in the history of ideas
then read Nietzsche.
Which philosophical theories most
influence your work as Community
Officer?
Micheal Sandel’s Critique of Liberalism (I
may purely be saying that because he’s a
communitarian...you can decide). Rawls
properly implemented would also be a
positive direction for capitalism to go in.
I’m always bringing them up in
meetings...
What was the title of your extended
essay?
‘Is Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge a
help or a hindrance to emancipator politics?’
Were you happy with how it went?
Well both markers said: ‘Foucault’s a
load of rubbish, but you’ve done your
best with it’. I was happy with that.
Foucault notoriously joined
students in occupying
administration buildings and
fighting with police in May ’68. Is
this something you would
encourage Bristol lecturers to do?
Well we had support from the philosophy
department during the occupation last
year. They sent us a letter and Chris
Bertram came to the teach-in. I think it’d
be great to see Seiriol do battle with a
policeman.
Who do you think would be on the
front line if it came to a battle
against the authorities?
Seiriol and James.
(N.b. We’re not encouraging violence of
any form!)
Foucault also took LSD at Zabriskie
Point in Death Valley National
Park, later calling it the best
experience of his life, but you
wouldn’t encourage that in the
Bristol Philosophy Department
would you?
I think if people have got the right
constitution, then there’s lots of evidence
to suggest it can be a valuable
experience. The psychologist and
philosopher Susan Blakemore, who came
to talk at Bristol said that many of her
intellectual insights had come through
taking mind altering drugs. Wasn’t DNA
structure partly discovered thanks to a
very enlightening trip?
In Discipline and Punishment
Foucault cautions that ‘visibility is
a trap’, what’s he talking about?
I think he’s saying it doesn’t matter if
anyone’s watching you, it’s the
knowledge of your own visibility that
controls you.
I’ve definitely seen you wearing
high-viz gear whilst cycling, are you
deliberately disregarding Foucault?
Actually I do get an inverse feeling of
vulnerability the more visible I am on my
bike. You’d think I’d feel more secure but
in fact there’s just a creeping paranoia
that everybody’s watching you. I
suddenly felt guilty just for adjusting my
seat. Foucault must be right.
If you could change one thing about
how philosophy is taught at Bristol
what would it be?
More contact hours and more seminars;
learning from your peers is invaluable.
What advice would you give an
undergraduate?
There are a lot of other factors that
matter when you come out of University
other than your degree classification.
Extra-curricular activities are just as
important.
Oh… and think about leaving the
country. Austerity measures have just
been extended for another two years. Go
to India.
Alumni interview: Where are they now?
15. AdAbsurdum | Winter 2011
13
Resources
Cambridge collections online:
http://cco.cambridge.org/public_home
Philosophy Podcast and Blog:
http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/
A very promising looking podcast series:
http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/
For out of copyright philosophy ebooks
and pdfs:
http://www.gutenberg.org/
Podcasts from members of the Bristol
philosophy department:
http://philosophyatbristol.blogspot.com
The David Edmunds and Nigel
Warburton double act:
http://www.philosophybites.com/
The online version of the UK’s most
popular philosophy magazine:
http://www.philosophynow.org/
Events
Bristol Philosophy Circle
The Scotchman and His Pack pub, St
Michael's Hill, Bristol.
7.30pm 2nd Monday of each month.
Royal Institute of Philosophy
One-Day Graduate Conference:
THE SELF
February 24th 2012
University of the West of England
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Professor Galen Strawson (University of
Reading)
AD ABSURDUM is published by a
small band of philosophy students at
the University of Bristol. This first issue
has been sponsored by a generous grant
from the Bristol Student Union, for
which we are very grateful. We are also
grateful for the many excellent
contributions we’ve received from our
own Department and from UWE, and
we hope to return to print again in the
Spring.
We’d like the next issue of AD
ABSURDUM to be both bigger and
prettier. For this, we require your
contributions. We invite a range of
philosophical topics and articles
including essays, news, reviews and
commentaries. If you have something
you think we’d be interested in printing,
please get in touch.
Contact us at:
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