What it's all about

We begin at the beginning in all four classes today, asking What is philosophy? What is atheism? What is bioethics? Or answering, to turn it around Jeopardy-style. The short affirmative prompts, then, to which these simple questions are each an appropriate respective response:

• The stubborn commitment to thinking and speaking clearly, motivated by the love and pursuit of wisdom.
• The belief that there are no gods or other supernatural agencies and forces guiding the fate and destiny of human beings.
•  The study of life in light of the rules, conditions, and actions by which it may flourish.

I'll solicit crowd-sourced alternative prompts and definitions from each class, as always.

[Scooter and I began early this morning, btw. Sometimes he's lazy at 5:20 a.m., but not today... so we had a lovely pre-dawn ramble, when the world seems most stable and still. I recommend it, future peripatetics.]

Not every philosopher is devoted to clarity, nor does every philosopher seem especially clear on the meaning of wisdom. When the Philosophy Bites inquisitors asked a sampling of contemporary philosophers to say what their profession is and does, the results varied widely. None of them came up with a better answer than William James's "stubborness." What is philosophy? Who's your favorite? The most impressive? To that last, I'd have to nod to my old mentor John Lachs. He taught me to mistrust mediation. (Here he was last Fall in one of my old Vandy haunts, deploring the tendency of people to shun responsibility in a place where I used to be responsible for counting the cash and locking the doors when the movies ended.)

There's less variety among atheists, definitionally, but there's a distinct spectrum of attitudes and temperaments within the godless community. Some atheists are "friendly" like Hemant Mehta and Julian Baggini, some are nasty like P. Zed Myers, many just want to understand what others mean by "God" and why, like Spinoza. I'm urging him as our role-model.

There's plenty of difference among bioethicists, particularly when religious convictions concerning the god-granted sanctity of life are introduced, but none would deny that good living is the field's focus. And good dying. That'll be our capstone topic, as Atul Gawande leads us into the thicket of issues surrounding life's final chapters. 

What does it mean to live a good life and anticipate a good death? If that's our jeopardy answer, the affirmative prompt might just be: What all of our classes are ultimately about... which also suggests a better answer to the question they put to this otherwise-impressive panel of contemporary philosophers who gathered one evening at the New School: does philosophy matter? If it matters to live a good life, a life of wisdom, passion, toleration, and kindness, then it certainly does.

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On this day... a poem ... another (but still missing WA). Happy birthday John Hancock, & happy HoF induction Willie Mays, Elvis Presley, James Brown...

1.21.16-5:50/6:67, 31/41. King Louis XVI was beheaded on this date in 1793 in Paris, btw. Lots of heads rolled in the French Revolution. Not a good last chapter for anyone, though the King's gracious last words weren't bad.