Trinity asked:

Can we consider Joseph Campbell to be a philosopher? I’ve read on your website that you have to study philosophy to be a philosopher, but does the fact that he taught philosophy make him a philosopher even if he didn’t formally study the topic. He did spend 5 years in the woods reading.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

I don’t know a lot about Joseph Campbell but I’m going to attempt an answer to your question anyway. That’s one of the things philosophers do. We’re not interested in investigating facts (the historical origins of myths, for example) but rather what can be reasoned out and proved without appeal to empirical data.

Philosophy is the ‘art of reason’ (according to Jonathan Barnes, author of The Presocratic Philosophers Routledge 1982). This is a nice definition because it combines two ideas that one doesn’t normally put together: art and reason.

Consider the art of drawing. To be master of this art, it is not enough to be able to draw a good likeness. You need to have mastered the different techniques and media (charcoal, pencil, conte, graphite stick etc.), know how to create different effects (e.g. shading or cross hatching), understand the laws of perspective, and have a good knowledge of human anatomy. To master the art of reason, it is not enough to be able to argue logically. Most persons can do that. Reason is much more than logic. The Presocratic philosophers invented new principles of reasoning that no-one had even considered before. The pushed forward our understanding of the nature of reason and the reasoning process.

Take the two (arguably) most fundamental problems of philosophy: the nature of Being and the nature of Consciousness. These questions can be found in Eastern and Western Philosophy. These are questions that move me, even though — despite all that i have learned — I doubt that I will ever solve them. However, it’s what you do in response to questions like these that defines the kind of thinker that you are. What I’ve tried to do, over the years, is reason these questions out. Maybe they are simply immune to reasoning, recalcitrant. insoluble.

Joseph Campbell had a different approach, as I understand it. Recognizing the limits of reason, he looked to the experience of the transcendent or numinous — the way of mysticism. Does that mean he is not a philosopher?

Let’s consider other great thinkers: Is Richard Feynmann a philosopher? Is Samuel Beckett a philosopher? is Mahatma Gandhi a philosopher? Put any of these men in a room with a philosophy professor and odds on the professor will look intellectually puny by comparison. All three produced ideas that changed the way we look at the world. The philosophical implications of their work are immense. No doubt there are many who would say the same about Joseph Campbell.

Speaking personally, philosophy has taken me to the point where I wonder whether, in fact, I am a philosopher. I am too keenly aware of the limits of reason (although it could just be my limits that are in question, not reason as such). So now I’ve taken to calling myself a philosophizer. It’s just a word. You can be a philosophizer — someone who takes a keen interest in the questions of philosophy — without undertaking the stringent commitment to rely on the art of reason alone.

In these terms, Campbell was undoubtedly a philosophizer. The case I’ve sought to make here is that it is not really interesting or relevant to ask whether, in addition, he was a ‘philosopher’.

 

Canton asked:

How does Socrates force Callicles to admit that there are ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures?

Answer by Gideon Smith-Jones

Thank you for this question, Canton. I was getting a bit tired of seeing ‘EU Referendum’ stuck at the top of the page.

This is a typical philosophy instructor’s question. You’ve been given Plato’s dialogue Gorgias to read. I did this as a first-year undergraduate and it blew my mind. This is the dialogue to read if you are looking for inspiration to choose philosophy as a career!

Ah well, I’m guessing that you feel less than inspired. In fact, I would go further and say that there’s a good chance that you haven’t even opened the book? Right? (I do hope that your instructor made you read the original text and not some watered-down summary.)

You wouldn’t be asking this question if you had, because you would know. Unless, having read the dialogue, you still don’t get Socrates’ case against Callicles. That would be sad. I’m not going to make things easy for you, why should I? We’re not here to pamper and please. (Does that statement sound familiar? who said it?)

This is philosophy. Take a view X. Look at the consequences of X and decide whether they hold up, logically or conceptually or in some other way. If they do not then X must be false. That’s one of the most basic argument forms in philosophy: reductio ad absurdum.

With me so far, Canton?

Callicles has a view about pleasure. What is it? If you don’t know what it is, stop right there because there is no point in going any further.

All right, I’ll give a hint. Callicles (along with a lot of other people, and a lot of them unfortunately are reading this) thinks that pleasure is a good thing. The best. The ultimate. You can’t have too much of a good thing. If you eat too much candy you will be sick and then you will feel sorry. So there’s a limit to how much candy you can eat. The pleasure turns to pain. But if something is pleasurable, and doesn’t turn to pain, if it just carries on being pleasure, then there’s no limit.

And it doesn’t matter what gives you the pleasure. That’s the other thing Callicles believes. Pleasure is pleasure. All  that matters is the intensity — how pleasing it is. If you enjoy squashing beetles (remembering an early episode of Game of Thrones when Tyrion gives some insight into his early family life) then the more beetles you squash, the more pleasure you will get. In fact, you would be perfectly happy — nothing could improve your state of happiness/ pleasure — if you just spent your whole life squashing beetles, while you were fed intravenously and had various other bodily functions taken care of.

This is basically Socrates’ argumentative strategy against Callicles, although he doesn’t give the example of beetles (and Game of Thrones didn’t exist then, or maybe it did?).

What Socrates is asking you to do is look at the life that has been described and form an attitude about it. This attitude isn’t intrinsically moralistic, but rather based on your ability to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ different kinds of life. You wouldn’t want to be that person, would you?

In that case… what?

You fill in the dots (and give the relevant examples from the text). I’m not writing your essay for you!

 

Ruth asked:

Is it fair to draw a parallel between the British policy of Appeasement prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the Remain campaign in the UK European Union Referendum?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

There are parallels — the question is whether these are instructive or not. You decide:

When the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1939 with a letter from Adolf Hitler promising that Germany’s territorial ambitions did not extend any further than the foreign lands that Germany had already occupied, many in Britain breathed a sigh of relief. Memories of the carnage of the First World War which had ended just a couple of decades earlier were still vivid in people’s minds.

Then, as now, there was vigorous debate between the Appeasers and those who were sceptical of Hitler’s promises. Yet behind the scenes, preparations were already underway for War and Britain made the best use of the breathing space.

Today, ‘Appeasement’ is a word loaded with egregious overtones. Chamberlain was duped, the historians say. And yet the Appeasers were proved right: if there was to be a war, they warned, millions would die. Many more millions died than anyone could have foreseen in their worst nightmares.

The consensus of opinion is that the Remainers are right that there will be adverse economic consequences (maybe worse than the most pessimistic forecast) in the wake of the EU vote. And yet the Leavers are adamant that this break had to happen — before it was too late.

There was outrage in the press and media when Leave campaigner Boris Johnson compared the EU’s ambitions for an European superstate with Hitler. We all know, don’t we, that the EU’s motives are benevolent,  not malevolent. There will be no death camps. Social ills of  every kind will be overcome through the tireless work of EU mandarins striving to make Europe better for all its citizens.

The response from Leavers is that we want to make these decisions for ourselves. Let other countries decide what is in their best interests, including the creation of an European Army and merging together to form a United States of Europe.

The EU is extremely unhappy about the outcome of the Referendum. (I overheard the funny remark that EU politicians are ‘behaving like a psycho ex-girlfriend’. Some are pleading, ‘You can’t leave us!’ while others warn, ‘We’ll get you for this!’) The war, when it comes, will not be waged with armies and airplanes, guns and tanks. It will be an economic war undertaken to protect the EU from further breakup. Everyone knows this, both the Remainers and the Leavers. The time has come to stop endlessly debating the outcome of the vote and prepare ourselves for the coming storm.

 

Sheila asked:

Who is greater, Aristotle or Kant? and why?

Answer by Craig Skinner

My vote goes to Aristotle.

Here’s why.

Both are giants of philosophy, in their different ways, and I couldnt choose between them in this regard. But Aristotle was a great scientist, logician and literary critic as well.

To mention just a couple of their enduring contributions to philosophy.

Aristotle.

• virtue ethics is flourishing with lively ongoing philosophical debate, as well as appeal to notions of good character and habits by parents everywhere when bringing up children
• ideas of proper function, ends and purposes, remain very influential in biology and in a naturalistic approach to human nature.

Kant.

• deontological ethics is also flourishing, both philosophically, and in appeals by parents to duty and right action.
• ideas of forms of perception and categories of understanding are very influential in cognitive science.

But Aristotle pulls away with his other achievements.

• his physics is often derided these days. Unfairly so. Given the accepted cosmology of his day (Earth-centred system of concentric circles), his physics is a coherent system of fluid mechanics which held sway for 1500 years till Newton came up with something better.
• his field work in marine biology is suberb, it’s like reading Darwin. He is one of the great biologists.
• his logic was only improved on in the 19th  Century.
• I am not big on the arts, but leading classicists regard his analysis of tragedy as “the single most important piece of literary criticism in Western culture into the twentieth century” (Beard &Henderson 2010. Classics: A Very Short Introduction. OUP).

In conclusion, whilst Aristotle and Kant are two of the three top all-time great philosophers (alongside Plato), Aristotle pulls ahead of Kant in virtue of his being a great physicist, biologist, logician and literary critic.