It was a cool and dreary October Morning in Tennessee. A young girl and a hired driver wait in the baggage claim area of the Nashville International Airport. She half heartedly holds up a small poster board sign reading “Julian Baggini, Nigel Warburton, Kurt Andersen” written in neat, block letters next to the logo for the Fifth Annual MTSU International Philosophical Symposium. She absentmindedly plays with her phone while she waits for the British Airlines flight to land from London. Her first passenger, Kurt Andersen, is claiming his luggage from his Delta Flight that landed a few minutes early from JFK. The PBS host and author finally finds his suitcase and approaches his welcoming committee.
Young Girl, smiling: “Good morning, Mr. Andersen, on behalf of Middle Tennessee State University, I welcome you to Nashville and thank you again for coming here to cover our conference on your show, Studio 360. My professor, Dr. James Oliver, apologizes for not being here to greet you in person but, as the head of the conference, he was called away to handle some important matters. We are just waiting a few minutes for the two philosophers to arrive, their plane departed London late due to fog.
Kurt Andersen: “In that case, I distinctly remember the last time that I was in your town that there was some loud bar in the airport. I could use a drink after that bumpy flight to calm my nerves before the conference.
Young Girl, giggling nervously: “Oh, you mean Tootsie’s? It is over there by the escalator. (Sighing) Unfortunately, I am not old enough to enter there…”
Just then, two other gentlemen pulling only carry-on luggage approach the group.
Jullian Baggini: “You know a drink sounds pretty good, but where can a chap get a cup of Earl Grey tea.”
Young Girl, beginning from the top: “Good morning, Dr. Warburton and Dr. Baggini. My professor, Dr. James Oliver, was called to handle an important matter with the convention and has entrusted me to guide you all safely to Murfreesboro and to see that all of your needs are met. If you would like tea, can I suggest the Starbucks upstairs.”
Kurt Andersen: “That sounds like a fine idea. Maybe I can start to pick both of your brains in order to start preparations for our radio interview.”
Young Girl: “Yeah, great idea! Maybe your conversation will give me some ideas for my midterm essay that is due soon. I’ll lead the way to the café. Please follow me.”
So the group heads up the escalator to the Starbucks while the chauffeur heads off with all the luggage to the limousine.
Young Girl: “Please be seated in those cozy chairs over by the window and I will go take care of the orders. What would you like to drink?”
Kurt Andersen: “I’ll have a Coffee, Black.”
Jullian Baggini: “I will have that Earl Grey Tea and don’t forget a splash of milk!”
Nigel Warburton: “I will have the tea too but no milk for me, I will have mine with honey and a slice of lemon to make sure my voice is ready for my presentation.”
The men take a seat and the young girl soon returns with their drinks, along with a tray of scones and other pastries and a double chocolatey chip frappuccino for her. She passes out the drinks and joins the gentlemen at the table.
Nigel Warburton: “Thank you for your hospitality. The scones and tea look lovely. How is dear Professor Oliver anyway.”
Young Girl: “He is well and very much looking forward to the presentations at the conference today.”
Jullian Baggini: “Yes , I look forward to catching up with James. I am so glad that the Philosopher’s Walk is still on the schedule. The campus is so lovely and even more so in Fall. [Looking at the young girl] So, out of curiosity, what is the midterm essay subject anyway?”
Young Girl: “The question for my essay is “Do you think philosophy can help people learn to respect truth, facts, reality, and one another, and to reject falsehood, superstition, selfishness, polarization, partisanship, and mutual hostility based on differences of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, belief, etc.? If so, how? If not, why not?”
Nigel Warburton: “That is a very interesting question that your professor has posed.”
Young Girl: “Yes, I think it is a very good question for today’s world, but I am having trouble knowing where to start…”
Nigel Warburton: “Well, based on that question, I think of Hegel and his philosophy of the mind shaping reality just is reality. “As I wrote in my book A Little History of Philosophy, for Hegel, everything is in a process of change, and that change takes the form of a gradual increase in self-awareness, with our state of self-awareness being fixed by the period in which we lived.” So in this manner when you “say does philosophy help people learn to respect the truth and reject falsehood?.”, well Hegel thought history and philosophy were entwined and everything was driving towards something better. And this was not really an original idea because religions usually explain history as leading to some end point, such as Christ’s Second Coming.”
Kurt Andersen, interrupting: “Oh Nigel, don’t forget that you are in America now, not Europe. So many of our ideas of religion are just fantasy. We prefer to believe in all of history’s greatest conspiracies. All of these pious protestants believe in a stark prophetic version of history and the future. You know, a divine virtue fighting it out with satanic evil. They think that they are getting better, but they are just getting deeper into Fantasyland. Need I remind you of some examples of our follies - Salem Witch Trials, Cane Ridge, Scientology, Billy Graham,Disneyland, ...need I go on? While America may have builders, doers, go-getters and dreamers, it is also full of self-promoters, scofflaws, occasional frauds, and peripatetic self-reinventors. Americans are prone to be hustlers who have enjoyed more opportunity to pursue their ambitions, by foul means or fair, than any other people in history.”
Jullian Baggini: “Kurt, I wish you were not so pessimistic about your own country. I hope your interview with us is more open-minded. In order to become a philosopher instead of a commentator, you will need to be able to understand more than criticize. Anyway, to give an Eastern perspective on your professor’s question, according to Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the Islamic conception of time is based essentially on the cyclic rejuvenation of human history through the appearance of various prophets. Each cycle however, also moves humanity forward, with each revelation building on the former - the dictation of the Qur’an to Muhammad being the last, complete testimony of god - until ultimately the series of cycles ends finally in the eschatological events identified with the appearance of the Mahdi.(109).
Young Girl: “That’s good information. So far my only idea for something to write about actually came from my US History class. We have been studying US history from the end of the Civil War through the Great Depression. The textbook has talked a lot about nasty politics and racial injustice and unrest in those time periods and then I look at the evening news and it seems like I am just rereading the same stories and history repeating itself. I hope that as a nation we are growing, improving, and learning from our mistakes. It seems like we are growing more self aware. Also, it seems like you learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.”
Nigel Warburton: “In fact, Hegel has thoughts on exactly what you just described. One insight that he had was the way in which the ideas that we have are directly related to the time we live in and can’t be fully understood outside their historical context.”
Young Girl: Do you mean like how some people now want to judge George Washington as an evil person because of their feelings on slavery?
Kurt Andersen: “Well I agree with you there, Americans like to change their opinions with the changing times. Since the 1960’s, their motto has been If it feels good, do it. Instead of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they have embraced ‘believe the dream’, ‘mistrust authority’, ‘do your own thing’ and ‘find your own truth’. So henceforth realty will be whatever you - you inviolate individual, you empowered American, you priest of your own religion, you author of your own story - wish it to be.”
Jullian Baggini: “Well, not every group has such a ‘me first’ opinion. Thinking of time cyclically makes especial sense in pre-modern societies, where there were few innovations across generations and people lived very similar lives to those of their grandparents, their great- grandparents, going many generations back. Without change, progress was unimaginable. Meaning could therefore only be found in embracing the cycle of life and death and playing your part in it as best you could. Perhaps this is why cyclical time appears to have been the human default. The Mayans, the Incans, and the Hopi all viewed time in this way. (108)
If you want to look at Chinese thought, wisdom and truth are timeless, and we don’t need to go forward to learn, only to hold on to what we already have. Confucius said that he did not think his purpose was to announce any new truths, or to initiate any new economy. It was to prevent what had been previously known from being lost.(109)
In a universalist philosophy, the aspiration for the universe becomes a crude insistence on the uniform. Sensitivity is lost to the very different needs of different cultures at different times and places. (112)
You may have heard Mark Twain’s famous phrase that ‘history never repeats itself but it rhymes.’ The entire phrase brings even understanding ‘History never repeats itself, but the kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends’.”
Young Girl, glancing at her phone: “Oh, no...look at the time. We must be heading to the car now if we are to make the Philosopher’s Walk on time. Thank you for sharing all your advice with me about my midterm; I now have so many ideas for my essay!”
Alarm Clock on the iPhone, now in the young girls dorm room where she has fallen asleep with her head resting on a stack of philosophy books : “BEEP, BEEP, BEEP! …BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!”
Young Girl: “Oh no, I fell asleep and my Philosophy paper is not done. If I could only remember what I was dreaming about…”
"It seems like we are growing more self aware" - We are? Even as we repeat the mistakes of history? Or are we just cycling around again (and again, and again...)?
ReplyDeleteEnertaining conversation, and nice touch scheduling that walk. The talk's sure to get even livelier.