Key Philosophers in Conversation

by Andrew Pyle (Editor)

Key Philosophers in Conversation is a fascinating collection of interviews presenting the ideas of some of the worlds leading contemporary philosophers. Each interview features a discussion with a key philosopher looking at philosophical issues such as; the philosophy of mind, ethics, science, political philosophy and the history of philosophy.
Those interviewed are; W.V.O Quine, Michael Dummet, Mary Warnock, Hilary Putnam, Alasdair MacIntyre, Daniel Dennett, Martha Nussbaum, Roger Scruton, Bernard Williams, Jean Hampton, Richard Dawkins, Derek Parfit, Peter Strawson, David Gauthier, Hugh Mellor, John Cottingham, Adam Morton, Stefan Korner, Richard Sorabji and Nancy Cartwright.
This book offers an excellent insight to contemporary philosophy and is ideal for anyone seeking an introduction to what is happening in Philosophy today.

Genres: Philosophy

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Imlac · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good interviews (the Williams one is worthwhile) but most were dull and tedious.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

It appears as though Cogito was a philosophy magazine/journal aimed at a popular audience and these interviews, fittingly, all contain some material on the philosophers as men and women (Pyles quotes Hume as saying “Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man”). I must say I was let down: I thought it’d give me an accessible look at a broader range of philosophers and topics than I normally might encounter, though I found that lacking. Could it be the lay-out? I’m not sure.
This was a journal in England, so that shows at times (a number of interviewees refer to Gilbert Ryle, for example). Putnam is here, and when asked what makes a good philosopher, he quotes Burnyeat as saying philosophy needs “vision and arguments”. Dawkins says “moths fly into candle flames not from some urge to commit suicide but because candle flames are not a salient part of the environment in which their genes were naturally selected” (answering a question that came up for my lady recently). I did find myself enjoying Dennet and his work on philosophy of mind (including the story he told of having his daughter “push her pain” into his hand). The chapter on Bernard Williams was one of my favorites, both because he lists the only 6 moral philosophers worth reading (Plato, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Kant’s Groundwork, Mill’s On Liberty, Nietzsche’s Genealogy and Beyond, and Hobbes’ Leviathan), and the quote of the book (“I’ve always been impressed by the thought that if you took morality absolutely as seriously as it demands, almost nothing that we value would exist”; 159). Despite this, Williams is politically active (which makes this statement all the more powerful).
Macintyre is hard to understand, but Strawson has a real way with words. Parfit says the puzzling claim “I do not accept the Buddhist no self view, since I believe that persons exist. We are persons. But I believe that persons are not entities of a kind that must be recognized in any adequate conceptual scheme” (191). I always thought he did accept the no self view. Maybe it’s just that “identity is not what matters”. He goes on to say “I know that, after a few more years, I shall not exist. That fact can seem very disturbing. But, on my view, it can be redescribed. It is the fact that, after a certain time, none of the experiences that occur will be connected in certain ways to my present experiences. That does not seem so bad. In that redescription, my death seems to disappear.” Parfit then says “I imagined someone who was temporally neutral, and who cared in the same way about good or bad experiences, whether they were in the future or the past. Such a person would not be disturbed if he was about to die. Though he would have nothing to look forward to, he would have his whole life to look backward to. His position would be no worse than if he had only just started to exist, and had nothing to look backward to.” (194). This is a nice way of looking at things.
Nussbaum ends things off, including her saying “I think that this realization that preferences are not a neutral bedrock, but are malleable, and are often shaped by public policies, is one of the greatest revolutions in modern economics” (245). She also talks about laws that are too specific.

OK, maybe this book wasn’t so bad, but I thought it was going to be better.

[Joseph Sales · Rating 3 out of 5]

I drew from these interviews a chance to glimpse a bit of the human dimension and personal characteristics of some of the most important philosophers at the turn of the century...gleaning Dummett's precision, Cartwright's certainty, B. Williams' urbanity. Who were significant then are still significant now.