Dear all,
Thanks for reading this! Your thoughts, comments, and feedback are greatly appreciated - either publicly at the bottom of this newsletter or privately via email to thephilosopher1923@gmail.com.
In this week’s reflection, our esteemed editorial team member and historian of philosophy Peter West reflects on reading 2022’s surprise philosophy mega-seller, William MacAskill’s What We Owe the Future and the role of impartiality in our ethical decision making.
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Offerings
Your Sunday Read!
“Death is Overrated”: Rivka Weinberg is a philosopher who specializes in ethics, bioethics, and the metaphysics of birth, death, and meaning. In this short, accessible, and entertaining essay, she questions the central role that death is said to play in giving our lives narrative structure, coherence, and meaning. Rivka will be joining me in conversation tomorrow (Monday) to discuss the what ultimate meaning is and why we cannot have it (more on this below).
This week, we also uploaded another essay from our “New Basics” series: “Violence” by Eraldo Souza dos Santos.
Events
“Ultimate Meaning (And Why We Cannot Have It)” (Tomorrow (Monday) at 2pm EST/7pm UK). Rivka Weinberg will consider many dimensions of meaning in life – from beauty to truth to death – before focusing on “point” or “pointlessness”. For Weinberg, this captures the essence of the problem of the meaning of life: it’s pointless. Join us to find out why…
What Matters Most (Tuesday at 2pm EST/7pm UK). What do you really value? And what do you do when your goals (inevitably) conflict? Valerie Tiberius and Karen Stohr will help us understand what really matters to us and how we can thoughtfully pursue it.
We also uploaded recordings of some of our recent events this week:
"Paulo Freire and Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (Henry A. Giroux with Brad Evans)
"Liberalism and its (Never-ending) Crises" (Helena Rosenblatt with Anthony Morgan)
"Deputization and Racial Violence" (Ekow Yankah with Elizabeth Hinton)
Podcast
Our podcast, “The Philosopher and the News”, returned this week after a six-month hiatus. You can listen to Suzanne Schneider discussing “The Ideology Behind Gun Ownership in America” (this episode is a great accompaniment to the “Deputization and Racial Violence” video above).
Plans
We are almost done with organizing our spring series of digital events. Events confirmed this week include: Todd May and Joan Tronto discussing the philosophy of care.
Our first print issue of 2023 is due out mid-March. The topic, “Where is Philosophy Going?”, has certainly helped to unleash the speculative zeal of the dozen contributors to that section! It will also contain long essays by Avram Alpert and Eva Meijer, and plenty more as well.
The schedule for our groups/classes this spring is slowly taking shape. Confirmed so far:
1) Eraldo Souza dos Santos will lead a group on “Philosophy for Activists”.
2) I/Anthony Morgan will lead a group on “Writing for the Public”.
With limited places, priority will be given to our Patreon supporters and print subscribers (please note that the print subscription option has now been incorporated into the Patreon membership) but we hope that everyone who wishes to attend a group will be able to do so.
Reflections
This week, our esteemed editorial team member and historian of philosophy Peter West reflects on reading 2022’s surprise philosophy mega-seller, What We Owe the Future:
I’ve just finished reading William MacAskill’s What We Owe the Future, in which MacAskill makes the case for “longtermism”. To be a longtermist is to accept at least the two following propositions:
1. That we have a moral responsibility to act in such a way as to improve the lives of future generations;
2. That doing so should be a priority for us, now.
Longtermism involves a radically impartial stance when it comes to the well-being of other moral agents (it seems radical to me, anyway).
It’s hard enough, you might think, to feel a moral responsibility towards those spatially distant from us (do those of us who live in the UK care about refugees from Syria as much as those from Ukraine, for example?). But longtermism requires that we act in the interest of those who are temporally remote – even those very, very temporally remote – from us too. That is, I’m obliged to consider the well-being of someone living several million years in the future just as much as I care about the well-being of my best friend, siblings, or partner. (It’s been suggested to me that MacAskill’s impartiality requirement isn’t quite that strong, but as far as I can tell, What We Owe the Future offers no indication that we ought not to take it in this strong sense.)
To motivate the longtermist position, MacAskill asks us to imagine that the whole of humanity (past, present, and future) is a single being, of which we are part. As Peter Wolfendale put it in his recent review of MacAskill, we’re asked to “personify” humanity. If we do that, then in fact a kind of partiality (ironically) might push us to act in the best interests of humanity as a whole. Yet, it seems like the biggest stumbling block is identifying compelling reasons why we should think in those terms. Given that we, naturally, feel strongest towards those proximate to us, the burden of proof is surely on the longtermist to shake us out of (what someone like MacAskill would call) our malaise.
This is especially important because MacAskill sees longtermism not just as a philosophical theory but as a social movement. He’s not just making room for longtermism in the logical space of reasons (as philosopher’s like to call the back catalogue of ideas that have been shown to be plausible); he’s hoping to start a revolution. Promisingly, for longtermism, there are signs that future generations of humanity are being seen as of if not equal then of comparable importance to ourselves. For instance, the “Well-Being of Future Generations Act” in Wales “requires public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their decisions”. Growing awareness of the threat of climate change will no doubt motivate similar policies. But as of yet, as far as I can tell, philosophers like MacAskill are still yet to demonstrate (in the strictly logical sense of the term) that impartiality should be at the heart of our ethical decision making.
Ending
Thanks for reading this. If you would like to write one of the reflections in future, please email something over to us at: thephilosopher1923@gmail.com. Ideally no more than 500 words.
Comments and feedback about any of this always welcome.
Wishing you all a great week ahead!
Anthony Morgan
Editor