John Rawls
 Image from http://www.libertylawsite.org/2013/05/09/can-reason-bear-liberalisms-weight/


For those who really want to impress at our Philo Cafe on Wednesday,  Jim Farmelant has found a PDF version of Theory of Justice online: http://www.univpgri-palembang.ac.id/perpus-fkip/Perpustakaan/American%20Phylosophy/John%20Rawls%20-%20A%20Theory%20of%20Justice~%20Revised%20Edition.pdf 

December 16th Philosophy Cafe: John Rawls' A Theory of Justice

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice: Can philosophy provide us with the rules for a just society?

Our next Philosophy Café (December 16 at 7:30 p.m.) will be on John Rawls's book A Theory of Justice (“TJ”), considered by some to be no less than the seminal work of 20^th century political philosophy.

Rawls attempts to determine the fundamental principles of social justice.  He employs a number of thought experiments, including the "original position" – in which those who will decide what rules shall govern society are assumed to be situated behind a "veil of ignorance" in which they do not know which social positions (e.g. gender, race) or assets (e.g., wealth, intelligence) they will have during their life on earth, nor what fundamental conceptions of the “good life” they will hold. 

Rawls thus takes the “social contract” approach of philosophers such as Rousseau, but attempts to apply it concretely so as to determine what specific rules and institutions would be adopted by the “contracting parties” who set out to create our social order.

Countless summaries, critiques, and abstracts of TJ can be found in print and online.  The book itself is well worth reading; but a few options for shorter versions include:

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/rawls.html (a concise summary)

  

http://www.iep.utm.edu/rawls/#H2  (specifically, Part 2, which provides a somewhat more detailed analysis)

http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Rawlschaps1and2.pdf (fairly readable, though it doesn't get into the notion of the Original Position in much depth). 

TJ also gave rise to countless books and articles that challenges Rawls, philosophically and/or politically, from the left and the right, as well as from non-Western traditions.

One of the earliest and best-known critiques of TJ was Nozick's Anarchy, State & Utopia, which attacks Rawls largely from a libertarian perspective.  See http://www.iep.utm.edu/nozick/#H2  for a summary of Nozick's view (specifically Part 2).

John Kekes has also argued against Rawls in a piece called “Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams.”  http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_urbanities-dangerous.html

To lighten the mood, thanks to Tom Canel for pointing out that TJ has even been made into a musical.  Here is the trailer https://vimeo.com/ondemand/atheoryofjustice.  Tom notes that he is asking for the soundtrack for the holidays – though in the Original Position, he wouldn’t know whether it would be for Christmas or Chanukah!  

11/18 Philosophy Cafe Topic and Readings

The November 18th Philosophy Cafe starts at 7:00pm  in the Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge MA.  This month's discussion will be led by Kiril Sinkel and will be:

John Kekes on the Human Condition:
How should one conduct one's life in an indifferent universe?

John Kekes is a secular philosopher (now professor emeritus at the University of Albany in NY) who has absorbed  the lessons of the scientific revolution of man's insignificance and non-centrality in the overall scheme of the universe and developed a response. He starts with a few premises about the human condition -- i.e. about the situation we humans find ourselves in. These can be summarized as:

1.       We live in a universe that is indifferent to human life. It itself imposes no purpose on our existence.

2.       We have only partial control of our lives. There are many contingencies which we cannot predict nor whose effects we can control.

3.       We are fallible. Our knowledge is incomplete and our ability to come to correct conclusions is imperfect and so our beliefs may be untrue or in error.

Significantly he does not make some other assumptions that have been made by other secularists. For example he makes no assumption of human goodness or 'perfectibility'. In fact he feels that humans are ambivalent concerning goodness and are capable of acting in both good and evil ways. Similarly he is neither 'optimistic' nor 'pessimistic' about human perfectibility and its prospects in the future.

Of course just because the universe seems indifferent to us and offers no ultimate purpose or goal  does not mean we ourselves should be indifferent. In fact we have every reason to care deeply about our lives. This naturally raises the question of what our goal should be. Kekes proposes that what we are interested in is our well-being.

While each of us can readily imagine what might constitute well-being, Kekes does not define it further.  Pointedly, he does not connect well-being categorically with freedom, equality, autonomy, security or abundance. For Kekes, there is no single overriding principle characterizing well-being -- its recipe is as likely as not to be a blend of compromises.

What is more important for Kekes is that each of us have our own concepts of well-being and that these concepts are shaped largely by the accidents of our heritage and upbringing and cultural milieu. Furthermore we act in accordance to our psychology -- our needs, desires, aspirations, and inclinations among many other drivers. Thus to Kekes, our beliefs about well-being together with these psychological drivers form a kind of theory of behavior. I shall return to this point in a moment.

Another important aspect of Kekes's theory is the role of what he calls contingency -- his term for all the aspects of our lives over which we have no control. These include both negative and positive aspects and include the misfortunes of natural disasters, disease and war, our congenital talents and handicaps, social position and even episodic strokes of good or bad luck. Basically 'stuff happens'. Try as we may to anticipate or ameliorate its effects, there is some residue which we cannot anticipate or control.

Kekes's response is that we should therefore concentrate our efforts in areas over which we do have control. These are primarily our concept of well being and our psychological drivers and attitudes.  In the first place, our concepts of well-being are subject to error. Some of our predispositions -- wants, fears, preferences -- may similarly be counter-productive. Since these are internal to us, these are the areas where we have the most control. Thus Kekes feels that our freedom and agency lies primarily in critically examining these concepts and predispositions and developing the most productive ones that we are able.

Reading

Jussi Suikkanen: Review of Kekes's The Human Condition  

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24575-the-human-condition/

Wittgenstein on Philosophy

October 21st Philosophy Cafe Topic Description and Readings Link

This Philosophy Cafe will start at 7:00pm at the Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge MA 02138 on Wednesday October 21st

What Are We Doing When We Do Philosophy?

   Why do philosophical problems seem perennial?

The meaning of life, the existence of a benign providential order, the political ideals that should guide civilised societies, the extent to which we can control our actions, the justification or criticism of legal and moral practices are some examples of perennial philosophical problems. The widely, but fortunately not universally, accepted philosophical approach to them is to divide a problem into smaller and smaller segments, concentrate on one of the smaller ones, contribute to the increasingly more technical writings on it by drawing finer distinctions, raising and refuting possible objections, and inventing ingenious fictional cases of the what-would-you-do-if sort that may call for the revision of some details of previous contributions. Following this approach is thought by many to be a requirement of professionalism and the failure to follow it is condemned as incompetent.

The perennial problems that concern vitally important matters get lost in the accumulation of exfoliating pedantic details whose relevance, if any, only a handful of specialists working on a minute segment of one of the problems can understand. The countless journal articles and specialist books that adhere to the prevailing approach are incomprehensible to non-specialists and have failed to provide a generally accepted response to any of the basic problems, not even one that specialists could agree on. The regrettable result is that philosophy has become remote from everyday life…..

In more ancient times, say when Socrates was holding court, students of philosophy would meet in an agreeable location ( the agora that  exists in ruins at Ephesus Turkey for example), to discuss matters that concerned and perplexed them.

Today we are likely spend our time shopping at a mall,buying things we don’t really need in an effort to assuage our battered selves and lick the wounds that modern life has inflicted upon us. But shopping is not, in the end, quite satisfying. It is fueled by an endless quest, to acquire the right “things”, which will perhaps,  impress a  cohort that we judge as desirable. That at least  is what Madison Avenue thinks, and adolescents are delighted to fulfill those expectations.

But we happy few are gathered here for loftier and more fulfilling goals (if we finish before 9  can I still make it to the mall?).

Philosophy pertains to each of  us, even if we don’t routinely indulge in its practice. The meaning of life and our eventual deaths, the question of free will, or how to go about living the best lives for ourselves (or others), are some basic unavoidable questions humans need answers to. Some of these include traditional philosophical problems related to free will, practical reason, value, well-being, human nature, evil, moral responsibility, and so on. Philosopher John Kekes contends  that questions ... become perennial and philosophical when they are caused by reasonable and yet conflicting evaluations that follow from different modes of understanding. The problems connected with the meaning of life, a providential order, political ideals, control over how we live, and the justification or criticism of legal and moral practices are perennial and philosophical.

Thus, a physicist might be satisfied when a problem is reduced to materialist terms. Some people are content if it can be shown how the thought or behavior arose from Darwinian selection. Others see things from an historical or religious or moral perspective, still others think language and logic or math is the basis of understanding.

At cafe-philo we are not professional or academic thinkers. We come from varied lines of thought and experience and for that reason we will be satisfied by different kinds of answers to the questions we ponder.

If you expect the one right answer to a particular problem this is not the right place to look for it.

Questions and answers are only relevant to human beings: we humans are the ones that pose them and only we can have a say as to whether or not the topic has been answered and resolved (maybe even that is assuming too much since humanism is not everyones cup a tea)

So this evening let’s discuss what questions intrigue us on a personal level. We can include not only why it matters but what kind of answer we are seeking.

DO WE WANT?

1.      to better understand the philosophical problem being discussed?

2.      to educate the uninformed about an insight that we have that sheds light on the problem?

3.      a chance to engage in a (rare) forum where such topics are taken seriously?

4.      a place to hear and be heard where there is no pre-existing hierarchy, so that we attend as equals, not as teacher and student?

5.      to educate ourselves by hearing other people speak-or maybe to impress others with the depth of our insights.

6.      A social gathering built around the framework of  serious discussion

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/53490-the-nature-of-philosophical-problems-their-causes-and-implications/

Philosophers, Enter The Ring!

                                          (Thanks to Wittgenstein Quotes at QuotesGram.com.)

Temporary Philosophy Cafe Blog with Readings

Until the Owl of Minerva takes and flight and our proper website is re-established, we are going to post the topic and readings for the Philosophy Cafe on this blog.  Remaining dates for 2015 are  Wednesdays  Oct 21, Nov 18, and Dec 16.   The Philosophy Cafe is held at the Democracy Center, 45 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge MA 02138