A selection of the best from recent issues of the Philosopher

Probably not, especially as that was New England, not New Britain. What then, whilst we're in the US, about the New Realism movement at Harvard which led to some of the grim features of American philosophy today - or indeed what of the general philosophical challenge of the New Right ? 

Twenty years ago, the Guardian newspaper in the UK ran a three-part series on the state of anglophone philosophy in general and British work in particular, 'lamenting the linguistic, empiricist tenor' of what its practitioners did. British philosophy was not, and never would be, radical, sexy, or relevant, it observed.

But now things have changed! 'New British Philosophy', (at least in the eyes of Baggini and Stangroom) is both all of these and none of these. Though of course modesty precludes them from saying so, Baggini and Stangroom are part of that trend, through their magazine, The Philosophers' Magazine.

"The overall effect of these changes in British philosophy has been to make the subject more diverse, more exciting and more relevant to the concerns of more people."

But let's have a closer look at the book itself. Of the sixteen philosophers chosen to represent BritPhil, no less than thirteen are from the most venerable, most traditional philosophy common rooms. We are invited to eavesdrop conversations with professors from Oxford and London and Edinburgh, Leeds, Warwick and Reading. The remaining three interviewees, from Essex, Southampton and the Open University scarcely qualify as the radical fringe either. Indeed, an appendix reveals these philosophers to be the "hereditary aristocracy" of the subject. Yet the introduction assures us that the 'oligarchy' of a few philosophy departments in Britain has been swept aside by the new BritPhil, with "many more regional centres and greater scope for different styles of philosophy to flourish". 

What then of the subject matter of the survey, for that is what we have ostensibly here - not a movement in philosophy at all. This account is not of a movement, despite a few tentative attempts to suggest 'trends': more awareness of the wider public debate/ less elitism/ broader definition of the subject. "One aim of this volume is to provide such a showcase. We believe that this is a particularly interesting time for British philosophy and that there are many people who will be stimulated challenged and invigorated by reading what it has to offer."

'Interesting' is an important word for New BritPhil. Over the course of the conversations, it occurs regularly, to distinguish between 'interesting' and 'boring' moves - of 'no interest'. The book kicks off with Ray Monk talking about 'philosophical biography', which the interviewer tells Ray Monk is "interesting, because some people would say there is a philosophical question about how one can tell the truth of a life". Perhaps confused by this role reversal, Monk, (philosophically the most famous of the crowd here, for his biographies of Wittgenstein and Russell) having just declared firmly that if you "start contribution to the theory of biography you've pulled the rug out from under yourself", and then adds that his next project is to be a book on philosophy and biography - exploring the notion that what makes a biography philosophical "is that it shows the interplay between thought and life."

Next up is Roger Crisp, the modest Oxford don with an interest in applied ethics. He is advised of "an interesting example in the United States" where a group of philosophers agreed on a submission to the Supreme Court on the topic of euthanasia. "Was that just a piece of luck, or does it tell us something more?" ask Baggini and Stangroom. But Crisp is more interested in introducing his notion of 'welfare' to replace 'happiness'.

There seems to be less of interest in the conversation with Jonathan Woolf, who solemnly recounts how he delivers "essentially the same paper" to audiences of academics and school children, but "I just use longer words on one occasion than on the other" (presumably the academics complain about his verbosity otherwise), and when Baggini and Stangroom tangle with Aaron Ridley, the "Associate Director of the Centre for Post-Analytic Philosophy" at Southampton. Harmlessly (as they thought) musing "what defines an object of phenomenon as 'art'" an outraged Ridley snaps back: 

"I've always thought the 'what is art' question is fantastically boring! I don't think it is an interesting part of the business of being a philosopher of art to give necessary and sufficient conditions for something's counting as art." 

"The traditional approach can be contrasted with the 'reductivist' approach, which, in my conception, is a truthful caricature of post-modernist scepticism about the authority of reason. What the reductivist thinks is that there isn't really any special authority that attaches to the force of reason, and therefore there is no significant difference between rationally persuading someone that P and getting them to believe that P by some other powerful means..."

But by the later interviews, as the editors warm to their investigation with Tim Crane being urged to answer whether there is a "genuine single category of the mental in the first place" or whether "the idea of consciousness captures all that we want to put in the category of the mental in the first place", I suspect many readers will like me be beginning to struggle on wearily. 

Even when Michael Martin is rolled out, by way of a grand finale, to discuss "The Concerns of Analytic Philosophy" in general, and the "problem" of an apple that may or may not be there, it is in vain:

"hallucination does have to involve the existence of some object, but as there is no mind-independent object perceived in hallucination - no actual apple is there - what is perceived would have to be a mind-dependent object, what is usually called a sense-datum." 

And so Timothy Williamson 'On Vagueness' and Robin le Poiveden, the self-styled 'Professor of Metaphysics' pass in a blur, as the survey lurches south to 'continental philosophers', as if forgetting its mission of identifying 'New British' stuff. Now the debates centre around possible ways to combine the 'analytic' and the 'continental' approaches, and how to overcome any possible 'reluctance of analytical philosophy to embrace subjects outside of itself'. At least we are reassured by Simon Critchley's assessment of his own work in the area, viz: "I am certain that it will be an enormous success".

Hopping over Simon Glendinning ('The Analytic and the Continental') and Christina Howells ('Sartre's Existentialism'), we arrive at last at the Oxford base of Stephen Mulhall, and 'Post-Analytic' philosophy, which is surely something worthy of the title 'new'. Mulhall, we are told, is very concerned with questions of 'how philosophy moves on', but by the end of the interview, the editors bring him and the reader down to earth again with the observation that "Many people working in British universities are quite happy with analytic philosophy and don't see any need for post-analytic philosophy", ("so how do you see things playing out there?") at which point Mulhall surprisingly acknowledges that there isn't any sense in which "philosophy has gone post-analytic", and "certainly not in the UK" .

It appears that New BritPhil then finds itself in "A Post Human Hell", certainly courtesy of Warwick's Keith Ansell Pearson it does, Pearson observing that "it is interesting that [Baggini and Stangroom] think that having a philosophical concern with the human condition means one must be a closet humanist"! And Pearson finishes the interview with another warning:

 "I want to insist upon this. I don't approach philosophy in the vain hope of discovering or finding myself and I don't believe one writes for oneself - one writes for the other, including the other that is oneself. The self is completely vertiginous. There is only becoming. This is the profound and uncanny truth of time."

"As I see it, there are very few philosophers a century that make an impact on the subject - perhaps one or two a decade. That's just the way it is. Most of the philosophers who are alive today and writing prolifically will be completely forgotten in twenty, maybe thirty years. Probably sooner than that. Only a handful will make a serious impact on the subject. There's a great deal of self-deception about what is going on in universities.... From the lecturer's point of view, many of them see themselves as philosophers making highly original and important additions to the subject. Sadly, most of them are making fairly banal, footnote-like contributions to what has become an industry for churning out articles and books as an end in itself."

Nonetheless, the reader expects Baggini and Stangroom to intervene to defend the virtue of magnificent New BritPhil - but if there is even perhaps a sharp intake of breath it goes unrecorded. Anyway, Warburton surges on magnificently:
"These are scarcely read. That's not surprising when you see how poorly written many of them are."

Warburton's concern is that the practice of teaching philosophy is overshadowed by the cult of the 'philosopher-as-researcher'. 

"Unfortunately many of those in a position to portray philosophy its best to a wider audience see this activity as somehow beneath them." 

 ". . . having thought about their own lives, have decided to devote them entirely to making a mediocre contribution to an obscure debate. It's like deciding to spend your life solving crossword puzzles. These people are the best philosophers, in the sense that they've passed all the exams and their peers say they're the best philosophers, but are they really in the spirit of philosophy when they do this?"

But in fact there are other benefits to the study that remain. Baggini and Stangroom have prepared for the interviews well, and much of the discussion is to the point and informative, if you set aside the rather plodding 'senior commonroomese' it is conducted in.

And the book certainly has a role in sketching out, for those whose interest is more Old BritPhil than New BritPhil, the experience of studying it in a university. How sad, though, it would be for a Society like ours, committed to 'Philosophy for All' to see, as the authors confidently predict, "the philosophers here" taking their places "at the very top of the profession" and setting the style for "what philosophy will be like tomorrow". 

Fortunately, I do not think that is very likely to happen. The philosophical world is wider and deeper than perhaps some of the New British Philosophers have realised.