This paper considers Mary Midgley's views on evolution, especially as developed in her book Evolution as a Religion. In this she continues the critical campaign she waged against Dawkins’ notion of the selfish gene, but broadens her attack out to encompass many other thinkers, who are predicting dramatic and revolutionary futures for humanity, based supposedly on what evolutionary science tells us. Midgley argues that no such conclusions are scientifically warranted – hence evolution as a religion. Her own attempts to absolve (...) Darwin himself from this sort of scientism, and to remove from him any taint of social Darwinism are criticised, particularly by reference to The Descent of Man. Something is then said about Midgley's own alternative view of nature and humanity, a more holistic view, which itself has religious overtones. (shrink)

First published in 1988, the aim of this book can be stated in Nietzsche’s words: ‘To look at science from the perspective of the artist, but at art from that of life’. The title contests the notions that science alone can provide us with the most objective truth about the world, and that artistic endeavour can produce nothing more valuable than entertainment. O’Hear argues that art and the study of art are not indispensable aspects of human life, and that this (...) is equally as important as the investigation of the natural world. (shrink)

The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales: great literature can be read by anyone, with a little help. The eminent British philosopher Anthony O’Hear leads the way with this captivating journey through two-and-a-half millennia of books as powerful, thrilling, erotic, politically astute, and awe-inspiring as any modern bestseller. O’Hear begins with Homer, whose poems of epic struggle have made him the father of Western literature. After Greek tragedy, Plato, and Virgil’s Aeneid comes Ovid, whose encyclopedic Metamorphoses is an inexhaustible source (...) for European art and literature. Via Saint Augustine, O’Hear reaches Dante and his terrifying and sublime Divine Comedy. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Pascal, Racine, and finally Goethe complete the cast list. In each case, O’Hear patiently draws out themes, focuses on key passages, and explains why they are important. Not simply a grand work of reference, The Great Books is also a narrative history shot through with a love of literature and the author’s deeply held belief in its power to enrich and enliven everyone’s world. (shrink)

Even today, apologists for modernist and post-modernist architecture frequently appeal to what, following Sir Karl Popper, I will call historicist arguments. Such arguments have a particular poignancy when they are used to justify the replacement of some familiar part of an ancient city with some intentionally untraditional structure; as, for example, when a familiar nineteenth century block of offices in a prime city site is swept away to make room for something supposedly more fitting to the ‘new millennium’, a ‘twentieth (...) century contribution to monumental architecture’, a building ‘of substantial importance to the present age’. Similarly, those architects or consumers of architecture who fail to conform to whatever stylistic demands the age is held to demand are marginalized in many supposedly serious discussions of architecture, and made to feel out of place and out of time. (shrink)

Anthony O'Hear; VI*—Guilt and Shame as Moral Concepts, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 73–86, https://doi.org/10.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Based on the London Lecture Series of the Royal Institute of Philosophy for 2006–7, this collection brings together essays from leading figures in a rapidly developing field of philosophy. Contributors include: Alvin Goldman, Timothy Williamson, Duncan Pritchard, Miranda Fricker, Scott Sturgeon, Jose Zalabardo, and Quassin Casay.

Abstract The theory of evolution justifies neither optimistic nor pessimistic inferences regarding human knowledge. Darwinian accounts of knowledge would show the adaptive virtues of beliefs, but this is independent logically and practically of their truth. But equally, considerations derived from evolution should not support a downgrading of the manifest image in favour of the scientific image. As embodied beings our first and most certain interactions with the world are and must remain those of everyday life.

It has been claimed that following the decline of Marxism and Freudianism, Darwinism has become the dominant intellectual paradigm of our day. In the mass media there are many bitter disputes between today's new Darwinians and their opponents, often over religion. But the 'neo-Darwinian paradigm' is not as simple or as seamless as either its advocates or its opponents would sometimes have us believe. Biology is in a state of development which defies the standard stereotypes. The papers in this volume, (...) written by some of the leading philosophers in the field, bring out many of the fascinating and complex issues which arise in current attempts to account for life and its development. (shrink)

An ideal view is sketched of the relationship between the facts established in science and the values of ethics and politics, and of the distinction between them. Some necessary qualifications are drawn, which do not essentially undermine the ideal. Then two cases of scientific work are considered in which considerations of value may in different ways be playing a more intimate role in the science than the ideal would suggest. These are Darwin’s theory of evolution and the current consensus on (...) climate change. Are any general lessons to be drawn from these cases? (shrink)

Politicians of all stripes are committed to equality of opportunity. At least almost all of them put it in their statements of fundamental principle. It sounds like something we should all in fairness support, and it is supposed to be free of the radically redistributive and tyrannical implications of attempting to ensure equalities of outcome.

Anthony O'Hear; Academic Freedom and the University, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 13–21, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

Anthony O'Hear; Academic Freedom and the University, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 13–21, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

During the recent Iraq war there was a great deal of discussion of the desirability of bringing democracy to Iraq, and indeed to other countries which were suffering under ruthless and oppressive dictatorships. There was also the thought that if Iraq had a flourishing democratic system, its benefits would become evident within the Middle East, and other peoples in the area would be encouraged to press for more democracy in their own countries. And critics who expressed doubts about any of (...) this were accused of treating the people of the Middle East in a patronising way, implying that they were not able to do what we in the West have managed for some time. (shrink)

History of Philosophy: Twentieth-Century Perspectives is based on the Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2014–15. A group of eminent scholars consider important figures in the history of philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to twentieth-century philosophers including Frank Ramsey and Wittgenstein. Along the way, there are considerations of Plotinus and Aquinas, the Rationalists and Empiricists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Frege and the Analytic Revolution. Readers will find new perspectives on the (...) thought of these philosophers as well as stimulating discussions of the validity of their arguments. The volume will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This volume is based on the lectures given in The Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series in London for 2005–6. In it leading figures in the philosophy of science focus on key topics in the subject: realism, natural kinds, scientific progress, the confirmation of theories and the notion of simplicity in theory evaluation, the use of models in science and the relation of physics and metaphysics. There are also discussions of action at a distance, of the relation of science (...) to technology and of lessons from the history of science to the evaluation of university research today. Taken all in all the volume provides a snapshot of some of the liveliest debates in the philosophy of science today, and also to the ways in which issues in the philosophy of science are relevant to philosophy in the wider sense. (shrink)

This balanced and up-to-date introduction to the philosophy of science covers all the main topics in the area, and initiates the student into the moral and social reality of science. O'Hear discusses the growth of knowledge of science, the status of scientific theories and their relationship to observational data, the extent to which scientific theories rest on unprovable paradigms, and the nature of scientific explanations. In later chapters he considers probability, scientific reductionism, the relationship between science and technology, and the (...) relationship between scientific and other values. (shrink)

In this controversial new book O'Hear takes a stand against the fashion for explaining human behavior in terms of evolution. He contends that while the theory of evolution is successful in explaining the development of the natural world in general, it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and our rationality we take on goals and ideals which cannot be justified in terms of survival-promotion or reproductive advantage. O'Hear examines the nature of human (...) self-consciousness, and argues that evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty; in these we transcend our biological origins. It is our rationality that allows each of us to go beyond not only our biological but also our cultural inheritance: as the author says in the Preface, "we are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal and individual way through life.". (shrink)

In one sense all philosophies attempt to analyse a small number of questions central to human life: the self, knowledge, the nature of the cosmos and reality, God or the divine. But while topics may be common, approaches have differed historically, and according to the traditions and times in which particular thinkers have worked. The Royal Institute of Philosophy's London Lecture series for 2012–13 brought together contributions from scholars expert in different traditions in order to explore continuities and discontinuities in (...) world philosophy. In this volume there are papers on Indian thought, including Buddhist and Jain contributions, on Daoism, on modern Japanese approaches, on Jewish and Islamic thought, on stoicism, and on African philosophy, as well as on modern analytical philosophy, the so-called 'Continental' tradition and on the thought of Nietzsche. (shrink)

Notice the key concepts: wonder, purification of emotion, piercing the blindness of activity, transcendent functions. There are echoes here of the Platonic doctrine of philosophy as the care of the soul, therapy, the turning of the soul from fantasy to reality. Education, says Plato, is the art of orientation, the shedding of the leaden weights which progressively weigh us down as we become more and more sunk in the material world and the world of desire, eating and similar pleasures and (...) indulgences. All this is in the context of the Cave, and a form of vision which is to become able to bear ‘the sight of real being and reality at its most bright… which is a form of goodness’. (shrink)

A deep concern with consciousness and intentionality is one of the several things that has lately moved into the centre of the philosophy of mind. The issue of consciousness is often treated as something distinct from intentionality, but – as Tim Crane notes in his incisive new Foreword – there is now something of a sea-change. This classic volume may be at least partly responsible for the shift in how philosophy of mind is starting to be understood. Before its first (...) appearance, discussions of consciousness and intentionality in the context of perception were in their infancy. The book was a departure from the way this part of philosophy was conceived. It pointed to new ways to look at the discipline, addressing both the epistemology of mind, and intentionality and consciousness, especially in connection with perception. Showcasing many leading figures in the field, it offers a splendid overview of the issues at stake. (shrink)

In this country, we tend to look at Wittgenstein in a rather ahistorical way. We see his concerns as fundamentally logico-linguistic, following on first from the work of Frege and Russell, and then referring back indirectly to the concerns of the British empiricists, to those of Locke and Hume, say, on such matters as the reference of our talk about sensations and scepticism about the external world. Recently there has been considerable discussion of the extent to which Wittgenstein's own analysis (...) of the private language and of rule-following might not itself be a new version of a fundamentally Humean scepticism: according to Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein's arguments amount to a demonstration that there is no more reason for speakers of a language to follow the rules governing the concepts of that language in the same way than on the Humean account there is any reason for an effect to follow its causes. (shrink)

Even today, apologists for modernist and post-modernist architecture frequently appeal to what, following Sir Karl Popper, I will call historicist arguments. Such arguments have a particular poignancy when they are used to justify the replacement of some familiar part of an ancient city with some intentionally untraditional structure; as, for example, when a familiar nineteenth century block of offices in a prime city site is swept away to make room for something supposedly more fitting to the ‘new millennium’, a ‘twentieth (...) century contribution to monumental architecture’, a building ‘of substantial importance to the present age’. Similarly, those architects or consumers of architecture who fail to conform to whatever stylistic demands the age is held to demand are marginalized in many supposedly serious discussions of architecture, and made to feel out of place and out of time. (shrink)

Is philosophy capable of establishing truths scientifically? If not, what can it do? What is its standing and what are its credentials? Is philosophy an essential element in humane study? Can philosophy establish anything at all? Philosophy asks questions about all areas of experience, but what about philosophy itself? In 2007–8, The Royal Institute of Philosophy, in its annual lecture series, asked distinguished philosophers to reflect on the nature, scope and possibility of philosophy. Contributors include Peter van Inwagen, Stephen Clark, (...) John Cottingham, P. M. S. Hacker, Michela Massimi, Stephen Mullhall, Herman Philipse and Bryan Magel. (shrink)

In this volume a group of distinguished aestheticians consider the distinctive ways painting, sculpture, music, poetry and the cinema approach their subject matter and add to our aesthetic understanding. In addition these are discussions of artistic value and artistic truth, of the value of performance and of the problem of fakes, all of which contribute to a volume which will be of interest both to aestheticians and philosophers more generally.

This collection of essays from the Royal Institute of Philosophy, first published in 2007, looks at a wide range of topics in political philosophy ranging from issues such as terrorism, egalitarianism and the just war to considerations of the political philosophy of Edmund Burke, of philosophical liberalism and of the current state of utilitarianism in political thought. There are also treatments of the role of innocence and of emotion in political discourse.

We spent a wonderful morning in the van Gogh gallery in Amsterdam. Of course we knew all the paintings, we had seen them all in reproduction, and the building was more like a bank vault than a setting for art. But what art! At first sight how small and uniform the paintings were in reality: yet every blade of grass, every flower in a field, every olive tree, every vibration in the sky, every patch of colour, every brush stroke, testified (...) to life and to a life vibrating beneath the surface form. In a true sense, an artist inspired, an artist breaking convention, artistic and social, but nevertheless an artist transforming life with a vision of the enhancement of life, a vision inviting each one of us to look again at the natural forms around us, to feel the spirit or the gods dwelling in them, a vision of enchantment and of humanity in a disenchanted world. Art—painting—can, then, be a source of spiritual nourishment as Kant and Schiller and Ruskin in their different ways thought it should be. (shrink)

As we stand on the brink of the third millennium, a large part of the human race may feel justified in a certain complacency. We are very much in thrall to the idea that history is moving forward in a desirable - or progressive - direction. In much of the world - and certainly in its most prosperous parts - we are all basically liberal, fundamentally pacific and reasonably affluent.