The Thinkers : 20th Century (4)

"A painter exhibited his last painting—his only work and masterpiece he has accomplished—entitled 'The Flood.'

At the same time, the painter announced that he would run as a Presidential Candidate. When asked what he would do if he was elected President, he replied, 'Of course, I will make my painting come true.'"

Swara proceeded, 'Baggini writes, 'The USA is a curious outlier when it comes to religious belief. The pattern in the rest of the developed world is that as economies develop and education becomes more widespread religious belief declines. Although there is some evidence that this is belatedly beginning to happen in America, religious belief has been unusually resilient there. One recent survey showed that 56 per cent of Americans describe themselves as religious compared to 27 per cent in the UK, 22 per cent in Sweden and 37 per cent in Spain. Only 7 per cent are convinced atheists, compared to 21 per cent in France, 14 per cent in Germany and 11 per cent in the UK. [WIN/Gallup International End of Year Survey 2016]

There are many theories as to why this is so. One of the most credible is that religious belief correlates less with average levels of wealth than with economic security. America is the world’s richest country but it lacks a European welfare state. Many people feel economically vulnerable, one pay cheque away from poverty.

It would be foolish to ignore such evidence, but it would be equally simplistic to ignore the values and beliefs that have shaped the American mind. If we want to know why Americans tend to be more religious, we might learn something from their home-grown philosophical tradition: pragmatism.

Pragmatism’s philosophical lineage extends back to British empiricism. The nineteenth-century philosopher and psychologist William James explicitly linked pragmatism to ‘the great English way of investigating a conception’ which is ‘to ask yourself right off, 'What is it known as? In what facts does it result?

James’s definition echoes those given by the two other great founders of pragmatism, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce defined the central principle of pragmatism as follows: ‘Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.’ Similarly, Dewey wrote that ‘knowledge is always a matter of the use that is made of experienced natural events’ and that ‘knowing is a way of employing empirical occurrences with respect to increasing power to direct the consequences which flow from things’.

One consequence of adopting the pragmatist viewpoint is that many philosophical problems are not so much solved as dissolved. ‘Intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume—an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest,’ wrote Dewey. ‘We do not solve them [philosophical problems]: we get over them.’

Pragmatists were bullish about their capacity to transform philosophy but realistic about the difficulty of the task. Pragmatism’s non-metaphysical bent perhaps explains why it has had some impact in China and Japan. Chinese admirers included the late nineteenth–early twentieth-century reformist monarchist K’ang and Sun Yat-Sen, the first president of the Republic of China in 1912, whose philosophy, like that of the pragmatists, emphasised action.

In Japan, Nishida was influenced by reading James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, which encouraged him to follow an empirical method that took as data the phenomenology of experience, in accordance with Zen tradition. In Nishida’s philosophy, the pragmatic emphasis on experience was linked with the Japanese emphasis on the limits of language.

The problem many critics have with pragmatism is that it appears to be too pragmatic. That is to say, it gives up the traditional conception of absolute truth and replaces it with a ‘whatever works’ model instead. The negative move is certainly there.

However, pragmatism, properly understood, is not as permissive as it might at first seem. It shares with empiricism an insistence on careful examination of the evidence and deference to what that evidence requires of us.

Given pragmatism’s British empiricist roots, we might ask why it was that it emerged as a distinctively American movement. It does not seem fanciful to suggest that full-blown philosophical pragmatism reflects a more general cultural pragmatism. Peirce, Dewey and James seem to be in tune with their compatriots in several respects. The British are noted for their ‘common sense’ and distrust of intellectualisation, but in the USA this seems to go further. Americans, with their frequent paeans to the common man, appear to have more faith in ordinary people than in experts and elites. After all, populist discontent with elites is a phenomenon across the Western world, but only America gave a vulgar property developer the presidency.

Furthermore, the last of what Baggini called, 'How the World knows,' is Tradition. We find it natural to talk about different philosophical traditions, say Baggini. Yet there is something about that phrase that might seem odd: philosophies have histories but surely they need to be justified ahistorically? You can appeal to the insight of sages, the power of logic, the evidence of experience, but never to the mere fact that a belief belongs to a tradition. Yet, in practice, tradition exerts a strong influence on all cultures, including philosophical ones. The emphasis on tradition is not essentially conservative and anti-rational. It is a logical consequence of accepting that ‘truth is not understood as something revealed from above or as an abstract principle, however logically consistent, but as a discoverable and demonstrable principle of human affairs. In other words, the real test of truth is human history.

So, there are seven things that influence the philosophical tradition, which Baggini summarizes as 'How the World Knows': Insight, the Ineffable, Theology, Logic, Secular reason, Pragmatism and Tradition.

Now let's move on to the 20th Century Philosophers.

Philippa Foot, 1920–2010, is associated with the ideas of moral naturalism and the revival of virtue ethics. She is best known for introducing the 'trolley problem' into contemporary philosophical debate. She was born into a privileged family in North Yorkshire.

In Natural Goodness (2001), Foot argues against a long tradition in

philosophy that claims that ethics is what sets humans apart from nature. Foot argues that virtues and vices should be seen in the same way: as defects and excellences when it comes to our functions as living things. If we say someone is just, courageous, or compassionate, what we are saying is that they are fully expressing what it means to be a properly functioning human being. When we say they are cowardly or cruel, we are saying they have defects that mean they are not fully capable of doing the things humans should do.

She died in Oxford in October 2010, on her 90th birthday.

John Rawls, 1921–2002, one of the most important American political philosophers of the 20th century. His book A Theory of Justice explores his concept of 'justice as fairness' and has been widely influential.

Rawls argues that justice is fundamental to all well-functioning societies. 'Justice,' he says, must be understood 'as fairness.' Here, he draws on a philosophical tradition associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau—that of social contract theory: the idea that all societies are underpinned by an agreement about duty and obligation. If we have a clear view on what this contract is or should be, we can make our institutions more just.

He died of heart failure at his home in Lexington at the age of 82.

Thomas Kuhn, 1922–1996, was an American physicist, historian, and an immensely influential philosopher of science. He was responsible for the concept of the 'paradigm shift,' in which one scientific worldview is replaced by another. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was brought up in a liberal, nonpracticing Jewish family. Kuhn’s father was an engineer and a veteran of World War I, while his mother worked freelance as an editor, as well as a writer of texts for politically and socially progressive organizations.

What Kuhn calls 'normal science' takes place within a particular paradigm. If results turn up that do not fit with the paradigm, then the paradigm may be extended, tweaked, or adjusted—or, alternatively, the results may be ignored or overlooked as anomalies. Most of the time, science proceeds in this 'normal' phase, with scientists solving individual puzzles and problems within a particular paradigm. The paradigm does not just define how we go about solving these puzzles and problems—it also defines the kinds of puzzles and problems that seem worthy of attention.

Thomas Kuhn is one of the most influential of all philosophers of science. In 1994, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died 2 years later.

Jean-François Lyotard, 1924–1998, active in the second half of the 20th century, he examined a range of philosophical, political, and aesthetic issues, but is best known for his influential analysis of the human condition in the postmodern world. Born in the Paris suburb of Vincennes, Jean-François Lyotard had a middleclass upbringing and was educated in old-established Paris lycées.

Toward the end of the 1960s, Lyotard became increasingly disillusioned with revolutionary politics and to his philosophical work. He moved to the philosophy department at the newly founded University of Paris VIII in Vincennes in 1970 with his friend and colleague from his student days, Gilles Deleuze, and gained his doctorate with the thesis Discours, figure) (1971).

He remained at Vincennes until his retirement in 1987, and there wrote many of his most influential works, including La condition postmoderne (The Postmodern Condition) (1979) and Le Différend (The Differend) (1983). He died of leukemia in Paris in 1998.

Frantz Fanon, 1925–1961, a psychiatrist, philosopher, and militant Marxist who called for a radical rejection of colonialism. His passionate, emblematic texts have influenced some of the world’s leading politicians, thinkers, and activists. Born into a middle-class family in the French colony of Martinique in the eastern Caribbean.

In 1952, Fanon published his first book, Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), an important study of the psychology of racism and of the alienation suffered by the colonized under colonial rule; it drew on diverse sources, including Jean-Paul Sartre and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

In 1959, Fanon was injured by a mine near the Moroccan border, escaped an assassination attempt in Rome, and published L'An V de la Révolution Algérienne, about the Algerian war. The next year, he was diagnosed with leukemia and wrote his most famous book, Les Damnés de la Terre—allegedly in 10 weeks—while battling the disease. In this powerful and brilliant analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonialism, he famously advocates armed resistance in the struggle for decolonization. The text appeared in 1961, the year of his death, with a preface by his friend Sartre, who noted that 'the Third World finds itself and speaks to itself through [Fanon’s] voice.' The book became an international bestseller and positioned Fanon, albeit posthumously, as a leading thinker on decolonization.

Michel Foucault, 1926–1984, a major influence on Structuralism and Poststructuralism, he developed his own distinctive blend of philosophy, psychology, and history to analyze the way in which power is exercised in society. Both of Michel Foucault’s parents came from families of doctors: his father, Paul-André, was a surgeon in Poitiers, western France; his mother, Anne, the daughter of a surgeon, would have liked to have been a doctor, but this was out of the question for women at the time.

Having completed his doctoral thesis, Madness and Insanity (which was published in 1964 as Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason). This text heralds the start of Foucault’s massive project to dismantle post-Renaissance Western culture, exposing its contradictions, instabilities, and fissures.

His next major project was the massive The History of Sexuality (1976–1984), which was to occupy the rest of his life. He spent a lot of time in the US; it was probably there that he contracted HIV, which developed into AIDS in 1984. Foucault was one of the first Europeans to have the virus, which had been identified only 3 years earlier in New York, and at first his symptoms went undiagnosed. He was taken to the hospital in June 1984, but within 2 weeks, he died.

Although initially identified in the early 1980s in the US, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) probably had its origins in the Belgian Congo in the 1960s or even earlier, and had spread to the US by the 1970s. It rapidly spread from isolated cases among gay communities and intravenous drug users to become a global pandemic, affecting millions worldwide. The term AIDS (which stands for 'acquired immune deficiency syndrome') is used to describe a range of conditions that are due to HIV infection, generally appearing in the later stages of the disease.

It is sadly ironic that Foucault should die of a disease that reinforced many stereotypically repressive ideas of homosexuality and conventionally 'deviant' behavior because he was completing a comprehensive study of precisely those attitudes.

There are many other names can be mentioned:

Nishida Kitarō, 1870–1945, Japanese philosopher, renowned for striving to synthesize Eastern philosophy (Zen Buddhism in particular) and Western philosophy. He is most famous for his theory of basho, or place;

Martin Buber, 1878–1965, Austrian religious thinker, educator, translator, and political activist, Buber helped to redefine religious existentialism through his 'philosophy of dialogue.'

Gaston Bachelard, 1884–1962, one of Europe’s [French] leading cultural theorists and philosophers, focused initially on the philosophy of science.

Tanabe Hajime, 1885–1962, Japan’s foremost philosopher of science.

Edith Stein, 1891–1942, philosopher, spiritual writer, and Carmelite nun.

Susanne Langer, 1895–1985, an American philosophy teacher, is thought by many to have changed the course of aesthetics with her theories on the importance of art, the influence of the arts and music on the mind, and her belief that these constitute essential human activities.

Feng Youlan, 1895–1990, as chair of philosophy at Tsinghua (Qinghua) University in Beijing.

Keiji Nishitani, 1900–1990, A prominent Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School and a disciple of Nishida Kitarō.

María Zambrano, 1904–1991, she was a Spanish staunch republican and a bitter opponent of Spain’s military dictator Francisco Franco (ruled 1939–1975).

Emmanuel Lévinas, 1906–1995, helped to establish phenomenology as a key branch of philosophy in France.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1908–196, along with Jean-Paul Sartre, MerleauPonty was a leading figure of French phenomenology.

Willard van Orman Quine, 1908–2000, among his major concepts is that of 'indeterminacy of translation.'

Mou Zongsan, 1909–1995, one of the foremost disciples of the modern Chinese philosopher Xiong Shili.

Gilles Deleuze, 1925–1995, famous for his radical commentaries on movies, literature, and art, as well as for his work on the history of philosophy, for which he produced controversial new readings.

Derek Parfit, 1942–2017, an influential moral philosopher from the 1980s.

We conclude this session, and continue the next session with 'Today's Thinkers' according to our contributors."

"Finally," said Swara, "before I go, allow me to tell you a joke, 'A pharmacist was squinting and holding the prescription slip up to the light. Finally she took up a magnifier in a futile effort to read it.

'We don’t think too highly of this particular doctor,' she told the customer, 'but there’s one thing he obviously can do better than anyone else on the planet.'

'What’s that?' said the costumer.

Exhaled, the pharmacist said, 'Read his own handwriting.'

And Allah knows best."

Citations & References:
- DK London, Philosophers - Their Lives and Works, Cobaltid
- Julian Baggini, How the World Thinks - A Global History of Philosophy, Granta
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