I heard this morning a really wonderful talk by Havi Carel on pandemic phenomenology. Carel uses the phenomenological approach by Heidegger in particular to help us think about how our being in the world, our being around others has changed so drastically.
Some thoughts 1/
Carel uses LA Paul's concept of transformative experience (TE) to argue that the pandemic has collectively changed us, both who we are and what we know. We've become different people. Also this TE is involuntary, we didn't choose to be in a pandemic 2/
In that respect, being in a pandemic is more akin to the transformative effects of illness (which Carel wrote about e.g., here: google.com/books/edition/…
and less like e.g., choosing to have a child, where you can decide to have that particular TE 3/
I am still grappling with the question of what we are learning/have learned from the pandemic. The most obvious thing we've learned is what it's like to live in a pandemic, as Carel points out. You can't truly know what it's like (even e.g., reading accounts of 1918 flu) 4/
Next to that we've also learned more how our society is fractured and not working. I think in many respects comfortably middle-class people often say "society is not working" but they don't really feel it, they don't have the phenomenological sense of what failing states mean 5/
We've also learned the true, deep value of so many things we took for granted, such as being around other people without having to worry about physical proximity. We feel the loss of these things so much more profoundly than e.g., international travel 6/
Here's one non-obvious lesson the pandemic is teaching us, that I've been thinking about lately. We are I think intuitive Aristotelians when it comes to questions of flourishing, i.e., we think that a wide range of conditions need to be met to truly flourish 7/
E.g., many middle-class western folk typically think that it would be hard to flourish if one is very poor, or ill, or disabled. Now scholars on disability have pushed back against this narrative and have argued: it's possible to flourish even under conditions of adversity 8/
But there are alternative conceptions of happiness, flourishing, wellbeing, virtue that do *not* require that a whole range of conditions (largely dependent on luck) need to be met. We can see this in e.g., Stoicism and Daoism, where you have less luck-dependence 9/
Specifically, I am thinking a lot about the Stoic conception of arete, of achieving excellence in virtue in adverse circumstance. A lot of people can achieve arete even in pandemic conditions, and I think the pandemic has taught us 10/
... about how it is possible to have something like excellence, virtue or flourishing even though one is also under really difficult and testing circumstances, even though one's life is severely disrupted, even though one can be scared, weary, worn-out 11/
This, I think is a truly valuable lesson. We will often disavow that the value of our lives are dependent on things such as wealth, travel, good health, but I think we now experience first-hand that our lives are more than such factors. /end
Also, here's a thread by @AlisonReiheld summarizing Carel's paper
Here is my promised thread on the political philosophy of Watership Down (1972), the timeless novel by Richard Adams.
Short summary: to me, this work is a defense of liberalism, bottom-up democracy by consensus where everyone can flourish (cf Dewey), and political authority 1/
Why do we need political authority? One popular answer, defended in this book, is that political authority is needed for collective action. When Fiver foresees the destruction of the warren, a leader is needed to leave the warren and to found a new one, to channel decisions 2/
The best decisions are the decisions that are in the best interest of the group. This is Rousseau's "general will" and with that I do not mean a kind of demagogic "will of the people" where a group imposes its will on everyone, but what's best for everyone 3/
Thinking of William James' critique of Herbert Spencer's theory of psychology and what it can mean for us, especially today. 1/
Paper by James here unav.es/gep/RemarksOnS…
Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) was a proponent of social Darwinism and he's noted for the phrase "survival of the fittest". His book The Principles of Psychology (published 1855, before Darwin) aimed to put psychology on the footing of biology, with laws that we could discover 2/
Though the first edition of Spencer's Principles of Psychology was published before Origin of Species (1859), i.e., Darwinian, he was wanted to apply evolutionary principles to psychology - notably Lamarck, and he tried to understand animal psychology as adaptation. 3/
Why do Christians in the US support Trump? Several sources provide useful answers. A short thread and reflection on this.
Disclosure of interest: I self-identify as a Christian, but I am not American (I currently live in the US).
1/
As November 2020 looms, it's becoming more and more clear thanks to this excellent analysis by @elizabethjdias that the American white Christian support of the president is not in spite of him, but *because* of him. How can this be? 2/
Well, Christians feel under siege, and feel their values are under attack. They support the person they believe will defend those values and their religious freedom:
"Is he a man of integrity? Absolutely not,... “Does he stand up for some of our moral Christian values? Yes.”3/
For my upcoming philosophy of religion class #PORcourse we will look at the notion of oneness--the idea that the universe is one, that we are all interdependent. Oneness is both a feeling and a philosophical position. Maybe the best way to introduce it is with poetry... 1/
Walt Whitman's (1819 – 1892) poems are joyful pieces that express the feeling of oneness in two ways: we are part of the universe "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you", and the universe is reflected in each of us, in our own bodies. 2/ whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1…
Whitman's sense of oneness makes him acutely aware of other creatures, how they might feel, such as a tree in Louisiana, "Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green", or some blades of grass whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1… 3/
For my philosophy of religion class today #PORcourse we will look at Daoism, particularly the disagreement between Daoists and Confucians on how to find the way (the dao).
There's an enduring tension between ritual and authenticity in ancient Chinese philosophy 1/
In fact, that philosophical tension you can even see in contemporary stories, such as this Taiwanese drama (on Netflix), which examines whether the male protagonist should live an authentic life or live a life that's pleasing to his parents 2/
As Graham notes, Whereas European philosophers have focused on the question "Where is the truth?" the main concern with Chinese philosophers has been "Where is the way?" - the word for way, both metaphorical and literal (i.e., doctrine), is 道 (dao) 3/
This is utterly fascinating. Why did the UK react so slowly, in spite of seeing the pandemic unfold in other countries?
"British scientists assumed that such drastic actions would never be acceptable in a democracy like the UK." 1/ reuters.com/article/us-hea…
Yet here we are now. It's April, and democracies like the UK and US which highly prize individual freedom are in stringent lockdown. The presumption that somehow effective but stringent actions from SE Asia would not work there bc of cultural differences is dangerous. 2/
So take for instance S Korea (a democracy, btw), which used extensive data mining to, for the moment successfully it seems, track spreaders and test extensively. We should be indeed wary of use of data in this way, but... 3/