The Hägerström Lectures 2024 – Mary Margaret McCabe
- Date: 16 April 2024, 13:15 – 18 April 2024, 15:00
- Location: English Park, see below for more details
- Type: Lecture
- Organiser: Department of Philosophy
- Contact person: Pauliina Remes
Mary Margaret McCabe: 'Common among friends': Socratic Method and Conversational Justice
Abstract
Does the history of philosophy proceed in a straight line? Or are there fractures along the way, places from which we can look at our own position and see a different set of starting points, a different procedure, different outcomes, unimaginable from here? I shall argue that a far-off view from the Platonic dialogues, especially the Republic, gives us a way to rethink our epistemic relations with others; and that here the history of philosophy has a critical role both in contemporary thought and in public policy. I begin with Plato’s reflections on the first-person plural, which are explored through the subtle techniques by which the dialogues are composed, but which perform a surprisingly central role in his epistemology. Attention to pronouns then invites us to think again about the nature of the so-called ‘Socratic’ method, as it demands a full collaborative approach. Using a set of examples from UK prisons, I argue that philosophical method of this kind should meet the conditions of epistemic justice to an elevated degree. This, in turn, invites a rethinking of the notion of ‘epistemic justice’ in the context of our relations with others, notably as they are figured by epistemic emotions. I conclude that we can best understand this as Plato invites us to do, in terms of epistemic and ethical virtue and how it develops: ‘common among friends’.
Dates, times and venues
Dates
April 16, 17 and 18
Times
13:15–15:00 (each day)
Venues
April 16 in the Geijer Hall and April 17–18 in the Humanities Theatre
Programme
Lecture 1 – Plato’s pronouns: on beginning with ‘us’
Plato’s pronouns: on beginning with ‘us’
When we do philosophy, where do we begin? One starting point is reduction, to the smallest element, the fewest assumptions: hence, for example, the Cartesian ‘I’. A different approach acknowledges philosophy as an activity done by, with and from the tangle of language, working always in the middle of things. I propose a way of reading Plato, on the slogan ‘Plato writes nothing in vain’, to illuminate his radical account of thinking in the middle of things, beginning with the first-person plural, ‘we’. In this first lecture I explore how Plato ties the first-person plural to his motif ‘common among friends’, and how that may explain his interest in the process of developing virtue. For his account of process and progress is tied, throughout, to a complex analysis of language, speech and conversation: and for this, the plural ‘we’ is essential. Reading Plato like this, I shall suggest, shows the capacity of the history of philosophy to provide a radical critique of our own philosophical assumptions, especially by reflection on the role of ‘common among friends’ in understanding virtue, in both the epistemic and the ethical domains.
Lecture 2 – Socratic method and the problems of epistemic injustice
Socratic method and the problems of epistemic injustice
When we talk about ‘philosophy’, what kind of thing do we think it is: body of ideas? A system? A principle? Or is it more like a process, something we just carry on doing? And why do we think (if we think) that philosophy matters? Why might philosophy matter if its questions are intractably hard? I begin by reflecting on the ‘Socratic method’ and its conditions: a process of question and answer between interlocutors who are accountable to each other in the face of profound puzzlement. That puzzlement figures in what I shall call a ‘cognitive gap’ between the interlocutors, each accountable to the other in the face of deep puzzlement. But that cognitive gap, I suggest, has a profound effect on how Socratic conversation is done. I illustrate the point by some reflections on philosophical conversations conducted by the charity Philosophy in Prison in some UK prisons. In these contexts, the intractable questions of philosophy generate conditions of epistemic justice. In these contexts, I argue, we can understand epistemic justice as primarily an epistemic virtue, in development. I close with some questions about what that would mean to us, especially in a context of ‘common among friends’.
Lecture 3 – Virtue in the end: epistemic emotion and why it matters
Virtue in the end: epistemic emotion and why it matters
Plato’s dialogues are rich depictions of high emotion – often taken to be irrelevant to the philosophical content of the dialogue. I argue that in fact these ‘epistemic emotions’ have a central role in understanding accountability: for they are essentially other-regarding, directed at the other person in the conversation. I suggest that Plato’s moral psychology endorses the importance of such emotion (rather than an ideal of pure reason, the first-person plural, ‘we’, is ineliminable even from our internal order) to drive epistemic process and change, for the better or the worse. So the attitudes of other-regarding emotion have a dynamic role in the processes of accountability, and may have a positive direction, too, towards epistemic justice and friendship. But if we can be epistemic friends, does that have anything to do with the ethical value of friendship? I suggest that joint experience, in both epistemic and ethical domains, has a background narrative: and that Plato gives us a way of understanding that narrative in terms of his fundamental ethical question, ‘how best to live?’. The complexity of this question about lives turns on our common humanity: but that is instantiated in particular individuals. That then explains the particularity of philosophical conversation, in the middle of things, and its demands in terms of accountability, justice and friendship: common among friends.