virtual philosopher

Ethics and Integrity - Free London Lectures

Integrity in public life is a key ethical issue of the day. The Open University Philosophy Department has organised a series of free lectures by eminent speakers in May and June 2009. These are all free, but places need to be booked (see below)
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6th May - Dr John Githongo: The Paradox of Two Recessions  

John Githongo, the Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner now working as Senior Advisor - Advocacy, World Vision UK, will consider some of the scandals that have come to light as the economic tide has gone out in European business. He will compare the apparent paradox whereby economic upturn and democratic recession have gone together in Africa.

20th May - Lord Butler: Integrity and Politics  

Lord Butler will draw on his experience as a previous head of the Civil Service, and lead author of the Butler Report, to discuss the ethical pitfalls facing politicians and civil servants, and how to avoid them.   

27th May - Professor John Cottingham: Integrity and Fragmentation  

Professor Cottingham, the distinguished philosopher from the University of Reading, will argue that we are harmed by living in a compartmentalised culture. Our institutions are manned by specialists who have mastered a particular field, but are not expected to form a view of the whole. Yet the classical ideal of the unity of the virtues suggests that people cannot live well unless their activities are integrated into a meaningful structure, informed not just by narrow technical expertise but by an overall vision of the good for humankind. We need this idea today.  

17th June - Baroness O'Neill: Trustworthiness, Accountability and Character  
 
Baroness O'Neill, cross-bench peer and President of the British Academy, focuses on the place of trust in public life, and explores what we should take as evidence of trustworthiness. Character, codes of conduct and  formal systems of accountability can all be helpful for judging trustworthiness, but what can we do when they don't provide enough evidence?

 

These free, open to all lunchtime lectures will be hosted at St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, London from 12.50 - 2pm.  

Click here for directions.

Places are limited, to book your place please email Marie-Claire Le Roux on m.leroux@open.ac.uk  

Deadlines by 29^th April for Dr John Githongo’s lecture, 13^th May for Lord Butler’s lecture, 20^th May for Prof. Cottingham’s lecture, 10^th June for Baroness O’Neill’s lecture.

 

Amazon and Censorship

Amazon seems to be engaging in a moralistic campaign against books they deem to have adult content, see the account in The Guardian today  'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking'. Apparently books catalogued as having sexual content, including Jeanetter Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and E.M. Forster's Maurice have been removed from Amazon rankings. If this is true, and it seems to be, I will be removing all Amazon links from my weblogs and quitting Amazon associates. This is a very serious development that effectively damns such books to lower Amazon sales because they won't show up in ranked category listings. I hope Amazon realize that this isn't just outrageous, but is likely to be very bad for business. There are plenty of other places we can all buy books from.

UPDATE: Amazon claim it was a 'glitch' and are re-ranking everything see here.

John Rawls and Religion

I'm ashamed to say that I had not realized just how much John Rawls' A Theory of Justice was driven by his religious beliefs. Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel have written a fascinating article which in passing explains precisely how Christianity infuses this book. Read their  'John Rawls: On My Religion' which, amongst other things, gives a persuasive analysis of the sources of Rawl's rejection of merit and desert - a position that I've always found difficult to stomach. It's origin is almost certainly the Augustine notion that we cannot earn salvation by our own merit.

The Art Instinct - discussion on Radio 4's Today programme tomorrow

I hope to be discussing the idea that we have an art instinct with Denis Dutton, author of The Art Instinct (and creator of Arts and Letters Daily) tomorrow morning (some time between 8.40 and 9 am) on Radio 4's Today programme - assuming unfolding news stories don't change the schedule. I reviewed The Art Instinct for April's Prospect Magazine (read the review). Dutton has a page of links to reviews of the book here.

You can watch a lecture Dutton gave on this topic to Google here (from YouTube):