Offerings and Plans (No Reflection today!)
Temperament & truth; Living with dark moods; Equality of opportunity; London event
Greetings!
It’s a very busy time for us in the weeks ahead! We have two digital events this week and then the week after we have both the publication of our first book and our first in-person event since 2019 at Conway Hall in London. More details on all of this, and much more, below…
Offerings
Your Sunday Read
“Temperament”: an essay by Kieran Setiya. What if philosophy turns out to be a form of cryptic self-expression, a manifestation of aversions and desires, inhibitions and obsessions? If philosophy aspires to knowledge, aren’t philosophers bound to deny that temperaments – as opposed to arguments – determine what they think? In this wonderfully engaging and accessible essay from our “New Basics” series, MIT philosopher Kieran Setiya wonders if it is possible to be a philosopher whose views both succeed as self-expression and get things right. Your can read Kieran’s essay here.
Please note that Kieran will be in conversation with Mariana Alessandri in tomorrow’s event, “Living with Dark Moods”. More on this in the next bit.
Mid-week Read
This week, we also uploaded "On the 'Cancellation' of Berkeley" by Berkeley scholar Peter West. Trinity College Dublin has just announced that it is “denaming” the Berkeley Library, one of its main libraries, because George Berkeley was a slave-owner and endorsed views that are recognisably racist. In this essay, Peter explains why he thinks that reactionary or defensive “culture war”-style responses to the decision to rename the library are misguided. You can read Peter’s essay here.
Event #1: Monday at 11am PDT/2pm EDT/7pm UK
“Living with Dark Moods”: Under the light of ancient Western philosophies, our darker moods like grief, anguish, and depression can seem irrational. When viewed through the lens of modern psychology, they can even look like mental disorders. The self-help industry, determined to sell us the promise of a brighter future, can sometimes leave us feeling ashamed that we are not more grateful, happy, or optimistic. In conversation with Kieran Setiya, Mariana Alessandri will invite us to consider a different approach to life, one in which we stop feeling bad about feeling bad. Full details and registration here.
Thanks to oxford public philosophy (opp) for co-hosting this event with us. The editors at opp are seeking writers and reviewers for Mariana’s new book Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves through Dark Moods to participate in a “review forum”. They plan to include a series of contributors who offer different perspectives on the same book, especially one as personal and intimate as Night Vision, for an extended and rich reviewing conversation. They invite readers to share their thoughts in the form of a review, response, critical reflection, or even creative work or essay. They plan to publish the review forum on their website once submissions are in. If you might be interested in participating in the review forum, please contact Eliza Browning at eliza.browning@ell.ox.ac.uk
If you would like to join the speakers for an intimate post-event chat, please email me at thephilosopher1923@gmail.com. There are very few places left, so apologies if you miss out.
Finally, Mariana is running a “Night Vision Book Club” starting next month. Again, there are very few places left, so please sign up asap!
Event #2: Tuesday at 11am PDT/2pm EDT/7pm UK
“What’s Wrong with Equality of Opportunity”: The last decade has delivered increasingly bleak portraits of vast inequalities in income, wealth, health, and other measures of well-being in many rich countries. What should we do about them? Join Christine Sypnowich and Ben Burgis for a conversation on equality and opportunity, choice and personal responsibility, and how we can structure society so that people can live equally flourishing lives. Full details and registration here.
We are excited to be co-hosting this event with Boston Review.
Last Monday’s Event
For those who missed Ben Laurence and Amogh Sahu discussing “The Role of the Political Philosopher”, you can watch the recording here.
Book and London Event
On 18th May, Agenda is publishing our first book! What Matters Most: Conversations on the Art of Living is a collection of 24 conversations from our event series, our podcast, and our journal. It features many of the world’s leading philosophers engaging with some of the most morally and intellectually urgent issues of our time. Here is the proof version of the cover:
As a double celebration both of the book’s publication as well as our 100th anniversary, we are hosting an in-person event at Conway Hall in London on Thursday 18th May. The event will feature three brilliant speakers, all of whom appear in the book:
“What does it mean to ‘perform’ gender?”
Finn Mackay (University of the West of England, Bristol)
“Psychiatric Classification and the ‘Mental Health Epidemic’”
Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed (King’s College London)
“The Right To Know: What it is and why we need it now”
Lani Watson (University of Oxford)
If you are in or around London on the 18th, it would be great to see you in person! You can find out more and buy tickets (including concessionary ones) here.
Plans
Challenging Pseudoscience
We are excited to announce that we have received some funding from the “Challenging Pseudoscience” group at the Royal Institution. This autumn, we will be hosting a series of events looking at some of the key philosophical questions at the intersection of science and pseudoscience. We will also be producing a publication on this topic in 2024.
Ending
It’s been a long newsletter this week, so I decided to skip the Reflection. I’ll try and make next week’s extra good!
Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Editor