Offerings, Plans, Reflections
Feminism and autonomy; Where is philosophy going?; The Philosopher a century on
Greetings,
I hope that Sunday is feeling good wherever you are. And if not, that maybe something in what follows will make it feel a bit better. Or at least not worse.
I am heading off for a couple of weeks to various rural parts of New England (especially Maine and Vermont). So I will keep this newsletter and (probably) the next one fairly short. They do sometimes go on a bit, so maybe this is a good thing.
The one bit that is not short is the Reflection at the end which is much longer than normal. It’s worth it though. As this year is the 100th anniversary of The Philosopher, former editor Michael Bavidge offers a wonderful and often very funny look back at some of the highs and lows of the past century.
Offerings
Your Sunday Read
What Should Feminists Want from a Conception of Autonomy? by Serene J. Khader. As autonomy has typically been culturally coded as a masculine value, it makes sense that feminist thinkers have wanted to reject the focus of autonomy on rejection of any forms of dependence. But what are the perverse or unwanted political prescriptions that can result from this feminist focus on relational autonomy?
This week, we also published “Knowledge”, an essay by Lani Watson. Lani was one of the first people to explain to me the major shifts that have happened in epistemology in recent years, and in this piece she describes the transition from a very individualistic (and, let’s face it, rather dull) model to a more social one that accounts for the many ways in which knowledge features in our complex, interconnected, and fundamentally social world.
Events
We re-posted the video for our recent event, Wonder’s Politics, so here is the new link.
Plans
Our designer, Nick, is in a very rural part of New Zealand with limited to no internet access, so finalising the poster for our new events series is taking longer than expected. He has managed to send over a few designs for the cover for our forthcoming 100th anniversary issue. This one is my favourite:
All should be finalised by this time next week and the new issue will be available for pre-order.
I have also sent out details of our forthcoming classes/groups/post-event chats to our print subscribers and Patreon members as they get priority access. These will be online by this time next week, so you can sign up for them then if there are still spaces.
Reflections
In this week’s extended reflection on The Philosopher’s 100th anniversary, Michael Bavidge, chair of the PSE and former editor of The Philosopher, looks back a century:
In 1923, the Philosophical Society of England first published its “long-contemplated magazine”, The Philosopher. The Society itself had been formed ten years earlier when a number of pre-existing groups came together to form one organisation.
In a special edition of the journal to mark the Millennium, a history of the Society was published. It is a well-researched and authoritative account of a long and sometimes controversial past. It also contains archive articles by some of the distinguished people who have contributed to the journal, including G.K. Chesterton, Moritz Schlick and John Dewey.
The History reports that “[f]or most of its publication The Philosopher had been small and green, with the look somewhat of an old church hymn book, or perhaps even that of a race-track guide”. In the 1990s, improvements were made. The intention was to provide “interesting and stimulating writing for an audience, rather than writing for academic purposes”. Green gave way to white. Though, down the decades, various improvements were made in content and format, it was not until Anthony Morgan became editor in 2018 that the journal was transformed into a significant journal of public philosophy. It has become much more substantial and attracts submissions from a wide range of contributors.
Initially The Philosopher was conceived as “a fitting medium for the Society’s projects and endeavours”. It was hoped that “through the Society’s organ, a systemised expression may be given to the Society’s views…”. This stilted, if not suspect, statement of the relationship between the Society and the journal has in recent years been reversed. The sponsoring of the journal, and the online events associated with it, has become the main function of the Society.
Over its long history, the Society has encountered various problems and issues that brought it into uncomfortable relations with two institutions, the Church and the universities. It is worth reflecting on these as the Society and The Philosopher set out on their second century.
Before we launch into these choppy waters, we should remember that, for most of its over one hundred years of existence, the Society went about its business, innocently, quietly and untroubled. It facilitated study programmes, organised discussion groups and public lectures, and produced a journal. When G.K. Chesterton apologised for arriving late to address the Society at the Lyceum Club in 1926 he wondered how the audience had filled its time while waiting for him: “with what philosophical sports you have entertained yourselves in the interval”. Well, most of the time, the Society has engaged in a variety of sports, more or less philosophical, without frightening the horses. It is worth emphasising this point because, by going on about the problems that have arisen over the years, the impression might be given that the Society’s story is more turbulent than it has actually been or less turbulent than it ought to have been.
The Society’s first convenor was the wonderfully named Reverend Elphinstone Rivers, Vicar of Eltham. Of the 16 people who held official posts within the Society in that founding year, exactly half were clergymen. The proportion of clerical representation is indicative of a problem that kept recurring in the Society’s early decades. A brief scan of the complete list of articles published in The Philosopher from its first appearance in 1923 show how dominant theological and religious themes have been. This tendency reached a high or low point when, under the editorship of the Reverend A.J. Sinclair, The Philosopher became, in the judgement of the writers of the History, “an almost wholly religious, even devotional, magazine”. They quote the editor’s reply to a criticism that the journal had become too theological. “What must be our reply?” he asked. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, irrespective of the mess men have made of the world”.
The agenda of the Society has always been straightforwardly philosophical. Nevertheless, there was a vexed relationship between its project and the particular interests of the clergymen who were influential within the Society. This was not just an accidental feature of the individuals involved. The relationship between philosophy and other disciplines has always been contested. Not many philosophers these days are comfortable with Locke’s ambition to be the under-labourer in Mr Newton’s garden or Ayer’s identification of philosophy with the logic of science; none would agree with the medieval idea that philosophy’s role is to be the handmaiden of theology. Still, the Society’s early ecclesiastical involvement does not have to be given an entirely negative spin. Its mission statement says that “the Society brings together professional philosophers and non-professionals and encourages wide discussion of philosophical issues”. If this general aim is to be made more specific, if a unique selling point is to be identified, an orientation towards what might be called “spiritual values” could be a good candidate. It does not deny the past orientation of the Society, but it might distinguish it from other enterprises that also aim to spread the philosophical word beyond academic departments.
There was a more practical matter to do particularly with the clerical members that caused some difficulty. The Society organised programmes of philosophical studies for members who had no access to Higher Education. As part of this ambitious and worthy undertaking, awards – Associate Memberships and Fellowships – were introduced for successful students. The History traces the problems that developed as a result. They grew into the major element in the most disturbing incident in the Society’s history. In March 1952, a letter from Gilbert Ryle was published in The Spectator. He criticised the Society in scornful terms. He had a number of objections, but they all centred on his claim that the Society was passing itself off as a university, in particular it was selling counterfeit academic titles. Perhaps the founding members of the Society aspired to join the ranks of grander learned societies, or the clerical contingent were influenced by the popularity of theological, factional groups that sprang up at a time when, as Evelyn Waugh wrote in his biography of Ronald Knox, “church affairs were talked about with a vehemence and in detail to an extent entirely foreign to the modern age”.
Ryle had a point. The Society’s motto, “Wisdom to Direct, Knowledge to Govern”, expressed its aspirations. It not only awarded Associateships and Fellowships, it adopted academic gowns and walked in procession. Financial gain does not seem to have played any part in these developments. The amounts of money involved were trivial. But the Society does seem to have taken on airs and graces that laid it open to Ryle’s sort of criticism.
The matter was not only mentioned in The Spectator, it surfaced in Parliament when Tom Driberg, that bastion of propriety, raised the same issue in the House of Commons. The incident was painful for those involved. It was a sensational example of the uneasy relationship that can exist between educational institutions and non-professional societies.
A highly critical letter published in Times Educational Supplement in January 1956 made fun of a remark made by the Society’s Chairman: “when reading philosophy one should not try to understand it” and went on to claim that “the Society’s awards, whilst being some form of impetus to study, may also have appeared as an impressive qualification for teachers and clergy without qualifications”. This was, the History suggests, the real reason for the popularity of the Society with clergymen.
Many years later, I had experience of this problem when I was appointed Director of Studies. A clergyman would join the Society, apply for the Membership or the Fellowship, and then immediately suggest that he should be exempted from undertaking any study on the basis of work already completed for other courses. This could, of course, be defended – transporting credit from one institution to another is now a small industry in Higher Education. But it was dispiriting. In my naïveté, I thought people joined the Society because they were interested in philosophy, and they voluntarily entered on the Society’s courses because of their intellectual enthusiasms. Instead, it seemed that some of them at least were indeed looking for letters after their name, rather than a philosophical adventure.
It must be admitted that institutions have the power to corrupt. When I became Director of Studies, I was neither an Associate Member nor a Fellow of the Society. Older colleagues thought this was anomalous, so I was prevailed upon to apply for a Fellowship. As I was Director of Studies this meant that I had to apply to myself. I shamelessly exempted myself from completing further study on the basis of a book I had just published. However, I turned my application down on a technicality. One of the two required referees had failed to send his reference in on time. When this condition was eventually satisfied, I awarded myself a Fellowship. This was a ridiculous, if not dodgy, situation in which to find myself, and I half expected my name to appear in a tabloid exposé of fraudulent academic establishments.
Like all good rows, however, there were two sides to this one. The 1950s was a time when British philosophy was dominated by a particularly self-satisfied version of Analytic Philosophy. There was a feeling that the great questions of philosophy had been, if not exactly solved, at least cut down to a professionally manageable size. Going along with this intellectual self-confidence was a feeling that the universities, and in particular Oxbridge, were entitled to control what counted as philosophy within and outside the walls. One of Ryle’s complaints was that many members of the Society’s Council had no university degrees or philosophical credentials whatsoever. Given that at that time less than 10% of the UK population went on to any sort of Higher Education, the universities were claiming the right to supervise the behaviour of a large part of the population with which they were not prepared to have anything to do.
Things have changed considerably since then. The Society gave up the trappings that could mislead people into thinking that it aspired to any sort of official status. There were discussions about acquiring accreditation for the Society’s awards from an academic institution, or scrapping them completely. Fortunately, the Council had the good sense to take the second option.
While the Society sought to face up to its role as a small society of enthusiasts, there were bigger changes within the universities and in the funding of Higher Education. Philosophy was struggling to maintain its position as an academic subject. Philosophers felt increasingly under threat. As a result, most academic philosophers came to think that more or less any manifestation of interest in the subject was welcome; and they were no longer so defensive about their right to control the philosophical agenda.
Another development in the UK which affected the pursuit of philosophical interests was the Government decision to withdraw funding from Adult Education in the universities. This meant the end of university-funded “liberal studies”, open to the general public. There used to be thousands of people around the country who studied philosophy on adult education programmes – an indication of the widespread interest in philosophy that exists outside the formal educational system. Within a three-year period, about one and a half million publicly-funded adult education places disappeared.
Many people have made significant contributions over the years to the development, and sometimes the survival, of the Society. In recent times, the most important was Professor Brenda Almond. She was President from the turn of the century to 2014. Thanks in large part to her energy and reputation, meetings were frequent, well-attended and attracted strong contributions. Day conferences were held regularly in London, Newcastle, and Alnmouth. Under her presidency the Society celebrated its centenary in 2012 with a weekend conference at Malmsbury. We were sad to hear that she died in January this year.
The question of what role the Society will play in future is uncertain. Everything is up for grabs, even its name. “The Philosophical Society of England” now sounds both too grand – it makes a national claim – and too restricted – why England? The device of moving to initials, PSE, buys time.
From its inception, The Philosopher was planned as a quarterly magazine. Economic reality, as well as the development of online opportunities, mean that this is about to change. The journal will only appear only twice a year, but its content and production standards will be maintained. The ambitious series of online talks and discussions that have been associated with it will continue. And a new series of classes and groups will be launched. The aim will be to give participants opportunities to engage actively in philosophical discussions and inquiries. Fluid in structure, they will take the form of reading groups, discussion groups, masterclasses, and whatever other ways of doing philosophy that emerge.
To have kept going for more than a century is an achievement in itself. Where now?
[If Michael’s essay has helped generate some brand loyalty and you, like him, are asking, “Where now?”, may I humbly suggest the 100th anniversary merchandise store!?]
Ending
For now, The Philosopher remains unfunded and relies on your support to keep going, pay our contributors, and so on. Please consider becoming a supporter via Patreon or offering a one-off/monthly/annual donation.
All being well, by the time you are reading this I should be relaxing somewhere in rural Maine with no internet access. This holiday has been a while coming, but, as ever, all the hard work on The Philosopher these past couple of months has been well worth it. Thanks as always for your support.
Anthony Morgan
Editor