We asked Seth Adelman (@sethadelman on Twitter) a longterm fan of Philosophy Bites who catalogued our backlist to select 10 episodes that are particularly relevant to our current situation.
Seth writes: I think these are all appropriate for our time, whether or not one agrees with the interviewee's perspective:
John Cottingham on The Meaning of Life
Samuel Scheffler on the Afterlife
Shelly Kagan on Death and Deprivation
Kimberley Brownlee on Social Deprivation
Anthony Appiah on Cosmopolitanism
William B. Irvine on Living Stoically
Kate Soper on Alternative Hedonism
Cottingham centers his discussion around life’s fragility. Scheffler, Kagan, Broome and Brownlee are all clearly relevant, and by this point a couple common themes have emerged: our biologic commonalities and our interdependence.
So who better than Appiah to take these ideas and frame them in such a generous way? His examples are from the mid-2000s but don’t affect the spirit of his argument, and I think listeners might need to hear something more hopeful at this point.
Susan Wolf is similarly broad-minded, and her idea that meaning in life isn't confined to morality as such (as long as someone benefits from your actions) is just as welcome. Irvine’s approach is obviously meant to be practical, and one doesn't need to be a capital-S Stoic to find his discussions of negative visualization and degrees of control helpful.
Richard Tuck’s discussion of free riding is especially relevant once we substitute ‘social distancing’ for any of his examples. And while Soper's anti-consumerist perspective might seem untimely, the sort of lifestyle she's advocating is oddly compatible with the restrictions most of us are living under and perhaps worth reconsidering.
Thanks Seth!
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