Stephen Hawking's proclamation that philosophy is dead was clearly hyperbole. But when it comes to understanding the fundamental nature of reality, has philosophy really got anything left to contribute? Does the rise of physics demand the end of metaphysics? Debating these questions are Carlo Rovelli (Centre de Physique Théorique of the Aix-Marseille University), Eleanor Knox (King’s College London) and Alex Rosenberg (Duke University) with the BBC’s Ritula Shah in the chair. Our GDPR...

Over the past two decades, our view of the ideals for science in society has changed. Discussions of the roles for values in science and changes in the views on the responsibilities in science have shifted the understanding of science from ideally value-free to properly value-laden. This shift, however, seems to remove a key difference between science and politics, as now both science and politics are value-laden, and disputes in both can arise from value disagreements. If science is not...

Axel Honneth’s 2021 Royal Institute of Philosophy Dublin Lecture seeks briefly to reconstruct the history of conceptual disputes about the meaning of work from the beginning of capitalist industrialisation. Initially, the only kind of activity that counted as work in the proper sense was the industrialised manufacture of goods. Subsequently, this extremely narrow view of work was challenged by a succession of social actors who attempt to expand the definition by interpreting additional kinds...

Certain philosophies describe us as prone to forms of attachment that are illusory, and promise to indemnify us against the hazards of life by exposing such illusions. One such hazard is that of transience and temporal life itself, and it is sometimes urged that since the present is the only genuine reality, attachments to the past or the future are forms of illusion we can and should be free of. In the 2021 Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Cardiff Lecture, Richard Moran questions the...

The terms 'systemic injustice' and 'structural injustice' are often used interchangeably and are often equated with 'institutional injustice.' But in order to understand these different forms of injustice, we should have a clear idea of what they are and how to distinguish them. Using racism as a paradigm case, Sally Haslanger sketches an account of society as a complex system and shows how relations that make up the structures are constituted by social practices. This helps us locate some of...

There was an editing error on Ep. 10: Culture and Value in Du Bois’ The Gift of Black Folk with Chike Jeffers which has since been corrected. If you downloaded the episode before July 6th, please download the corrected version here: https://shows.acast.com/thinking-hard-and-slow/culture-and-value-chike-jeffers or by finding Ep. 10 on any podcast app. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What would it mean to do justice to testimonies of traumatic experience? That is, how can experiences which do not fit the customary scripts of sense-making be heard? Whereas processes of official memorialization or legal redress often demand that victims and survivors convey their experiences through familiar modes of narration, María del Rosario Acosta López's project on “grammars of listening” asks how it might be possible to hear these experiences on their own terms and what are the...

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) lived what was in many ways an astonishingly modern, transcultural and translingual life. He was born in Lisbon and grew up in Anglophone Durban, acquiring a life-long love for English poetry and language. Returning to Lisbon, from where he would never again leave, he set himself the goal to travel throughout an infinitude of inner landscapes, to be an explorer of inner worlds. He published very little, but left behind a famous trunk containing a treasure-trove of...

The classical Greeks give us a concept of substance that guarantees a permanent and unchanging subject as the substratum for the human experience. Roger Ames argues that in the Yijing or "Book of Changes" we find a stark alternative to this ontology which reflects a holistic, organic, and ecological worldview. This cosmology begins from “living” itself as the motive force behind change, and gives us a world of boundless “becomings:” not “things” that are, but “events” that are happening, a...

Lewis Gordon examines what it means for philosophy to be ‘colonised’ and the challenges involved in ‘decolonising’ it in philosophical and political terms.  Lewis Gordon is professor of philosophy and head of the department of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He works in a number of areas of philosophy including Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political thought, post-colonial thought and on the work of thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois and Franz Fanon....

In his famous 1897 essay, “The Conservation of Races”, Du Bois advocated that African Americans hold on to their distinctiveness as members of the black race because this enables them to participate in a cosmopolitan process of cultural exchange in which different races collectively advance human civilization by means of different contributions. Philosophers like Kwame Anthony Appiah and Tommie Shelby have criticised the position that Du Bois expresses in that essay as a problematic form of...

Some of our emotions are bad – unpleasant to experience, reflective of dissatisfactions or even heartbreak – but nonetheless quite important to express and, more basically, to feel. Grief is like this, for example. So, too, is disappointment. Amy Olberding explores how our current social practices may fail to support expressions of disappointment and thus suppress our ability to feel it well. She draws on early Confucian philosophy and its remarkable attention to everyday social interactions...

While Heidegger and Derrida both contributed groundbreaking reflections on hospitality (and “hostipitality”), they failed to recognize that the host-guest relationship can only succeed if it is correlated with the notion of mutual guardianship. The lecture will describe historic guardian civilizations and then turn to Ricoeur’s linguistic hospitality as a possible blueprint for future cultural hospitality. However, the latter scenario will have no need for a third party, i.e., a “translator”...

We live in an age of anger and shameless disregard for what is true and good. What can we learn from other cultures about better ways to do anger and shame? How can we develop better norms for being angry at the right things, in the right way, at the right times? How can we inculcate norms for proper shame at callous disregard for what is true and good? Flanagan argues that attention to how other cultures do anger and shame provides tools to enlarge our moral imagination. Owen Flanagan is the...

Aesthetic theories in the Western tradition, like most philosophical theories, do not set out to have only local application, as they try to articulate generally relevant and illuminating theoretical concepts and values. But can and should philosophical aesthetics have global significance? Can aesthetic theories find fruitful general application while also respecting the locality and variability of aesthetic sensitivity? What kinds of theoretical ambition and humility are called for in...

In classical South Asian philosophy, as in common sense, most thought that the first-person pronoun “I” stands for the self, something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions. The Buddhists accepted the “no-self” thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real. This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists. If there is nothing substantially real that “I” stands for, what are we talking about when we speak of...

Plato has been one of the most important philosophers in the West and is now read all over the world. He has undergone a lot of research in academia, but Noburu Notomi suspects that modern readers have missed some essential factors in analyzing Plato’s texts and thoughts. In order to correctly understand his central theory of Ideas and reconsider the potential of Plato’s philosophy in the modern world, Notomi discusses the reactions of four Japanese philosophers of the twentieth century to...

Self-described ‘hippie eco-philosopher’ Joanna Burch-Brown takes us on a deep dive into the philosophy of green finance and a step closer to addressing climate change, by way of a lively tale of philosophy going banking. Joining the discussion is Sean Edwards, chairman of the International Trade and Forfaiting Association Annual Conference.  Joanna Burch-Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Bristol. Her work has focused on issues of contested heritage and public...

Philosophers enjoy telling stories. Sometimes the stories are very short, but they can be long and detailed as well, for example in the form of utopian narratives by More, Cavendish and others. Why do philosophers invent such stories, and what do they want to accomplish with them? Helen de Cruz argues that existing accounts of thought experiments cannot easily explain the range and variety of thought experiments. In her view, philosophical thought experiments are not merely prettily dressed...

The methods of philosophy may be associated with practices such as rational dialogue, logical analysis, argumentation, and intellectual inquiry. However, many philosophical traditions in Asia, as well as in the ancient Greek world, consider an array of embodied contemplative practices as central to the work of philosophy and as philosophical methods in themselves. Leah Kalmanson surveys a few such practices, including those of the ancient Greeks as well as examples from Jain, Buddhist, and...

Since 1925, the Royal Institute of Philosophy has been on a mission to help those interested in and perplexed by the problems of modern life to ask the right questions. Following in that tradition, we bring you Thinking Hard and Slow, a show that asks for your full attention with the promise of rich lectures and discussions. Join host Julian Baggini and leading figures in the world of philosophy as they tackle a range of issues such as: The Philosophy of Green Finance, The Ethics of Anger and...