Some aspects of animal welfare tie in with another pressing concern—the whole business of damage to, and care for, the natural environment. One such aspect, vegetarianism, is sometimes treated in that way. Using vegetable materials to feed cattle, and then eating the meat, is said to be a very inefficient way of using the Earth’s resources, compared with eating the vegetables straight off and cutting out the cow in between. So vegetarianism is presented as being, long term, in everyone’s self-interest. Good move—the more people are listening, the more point in talking.Professional philosophers
You will have noticed, perhaps with some surprise, that I have said nothing about philosophy as it is being written now. That some of it is of value, and will last, I have little doubt, and even less doubt that what lasts will be a tiny fraction of what is now being published. I could guess at one or two titles, but a guess is exactly what it would be; so I have preferred to stick to work which we already know to have survived a substantial test of time. Part of the reason why it has survived the test is that it was written out of a real feeling that its message was needed for the benefit of humanity, and we can recognize the passion in it as well as the intelligence.
There is no reason why today’s philosophical writing shouldn’t be like this, and some of it is. But one should be aware that most of it is written by professionals, people whose livelihood and career prospects require them to write and publish on philosophy. Nothing follows from that—after all, Kant and Hegel were professional philosophers too. And it certainly doesn’t follow that their interest in philosophy isn’t genuine. But it does mean that amongst the various reasons for them to be interested, some are what I might call artificial. Back in Chapter 1 I spoke of philosophers as entering debate to change the course of civilization, not to solve little puzzles. But in today’s world of professionalized philosophy the most brilliant solution of a puzzle can get its author a very long way indeed; the temptations and pressures are there to write on puzzles, for other professional philosophers, and let civilization take its own course.
20. A professional philosopher—be just a little wary of this man.
That is not—please!—to be read as a blanket condemnation of everything now emerging from university philosophy departments. It is meant as advice to someone making their first approach to philosophy with the help of this Very Short Introduction. If you are leafing through the latest philosophy book from some academic press, or a recent issue of a top professional journal, and find yourself unable to see what is going on or what claim it could possibly have on your attention, don’t transfer your reaction to the whole of philosophy en bloc. It may be that you are looking at a detail from some much larger picture that you don’t yet have the experience to recognize. Or the worst may be true, and you really are reading the philosopher’s equivalent of a chess problem, something highly ingenious but with no wider significance. Whilst developing your own powers of discrimination, stick to the good old classics.
For no such doubts need arise about any of the philosophers I have tried to introduce you to. We know that they were writing from the heart as well as from the head. Alongside their enormous merits they may have their faults, to be sure: unsuspected ignorance, prejudice, overconfidence, obscurity—just to get the list started. But as I hope to have indicated, philosophy is as wide as life, and in its huge literature are exemplified most intellectual vices as well as most intellectual virtues. Wishing it were otherwise would be close to wishing that human beings didn’t have minds.
21. Philosophy class.
References
Chapter 2: What should I do? Plato’s Crito
Plato, Crito. Handy and accessible is The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Books) which contains The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo in a translation by Hugh Tredennick. My only complaint is that the Stephanus numbering is indicated at the top of the page, instead of being given fully in the margin. Should you feel yourself getting keen on Plato a good buy is Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Hackett Publishing Co.).
Chapter 3: How do we know? Hume’s Of Miracles
David Hume, Of Miracles, section X of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Many editions. Try that by L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford University Press), which includes Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Other writings on religion by Hume, also easily available, are his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion.
Chapter 4: What am I? An unknown Buddhist on the self: King Milinda’s chariot
Anon., The Questions of King Milinda is available in an inexpensive abridged version edited by N. K. G. Mendis (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1993).
Plato, Phaedrus 246aff. and 253dff. Plato compares the soul to a chariot.
Anon., Katha Upanishad, 3.3–7, 9: the soul is compared to a chariot in the early Indian tradition. An easily available edition of the main Upanishads is in the Oxford University Press World’s Classics series in a translation by Patrick Olivelle.
Chapter 5: Some themes
Epicurus. The early historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertius wrote a work called Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, published in the Loeb Classical Library by Harvard University Press (2 vols). The last section of vol. 2 is devoted entirely to Epicurus, and reproduces some of his writings. (Apart from these only a few fragments have come down to us.)
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. This short work, and Mill’s On Liberty (see below under Chapter 8)
