Here is our one-sheet document on “The Molemen and Plato’s Cave Today.” For short, you can just call it “Plato’s Cave Today.” The idea is to think about problems for conceiving of truth and knowledge, which lead to difficulties in trusting politicians, news sources, scientists, and more. Plato’s famous cave metaphor is explained in short for anyone who’s unfamiliar, and we invite chapters to pick a question that they’d most like to talk about together. After thinking about it and perhaps another for a time, flip over the page and consider the “Bread Breaking Questions,” questions about how and where the concepts discussed so far are sometimes applied and with challenges.
This one-sheet document is part of a series to come of one-sheets about episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread. We’re calling them “Slices of Philosophically Baked Bread.” It would be great if local SOPHIA Chapter participants had the chance to listen to episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread (such as this one, Episode 1 of the show), but we try to avoid requiring homework before people come to our events.
Instead, we want to ensure that everyone has a document that is one sheet of paper (front and back sometimes) that each person can read at the start of the event in a few minutes. Then, conversation can open up with everyone literally on the same page.
James William Lincoln has kindly taken on the job of creating our one-sheet documents for each episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread. We’ll be posting and cataloging one-sheets on other matters and topics, such as on pieces published in Civil American, plus we plan to post one-sheets that our members and chapter leaders gather or create.
If you have ideas for future one-sheet documents that could be great for SOPHIA to use in our chapter meetings, let us know! Email Executive Director Eric Thomas Weber with your idea.
Theodor Seuss Geisel, known simply as Dr. Seuss, remains one of the most widely beloved children’s authors of all time. Yet not many know that his contributions consisted of far more than fun or educational bedtime stories. During World War II, Seuss drew many cartoon editorials targeting the Germans and the Japanese. One pervasive theme throughout these cartoons was the display of “our enemies” as animals. Seuss often illustrated the Germans as alligators, piranhas, sea monsters, dogs, and snakes; the Japanese were drawn as monkeys doing Hitler’s bidding, or as sly cats infiltrating the United States.[1] In other words, our enemies were subhuman. This kind of sentiment permeated our culture at the time. In 1942, an editorial published in the Los Angeles Times argued in favor of the forced internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry, stating that “a viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched — so a Japanese-American, born of Japanese parents — grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.”[2]
Photo credit: colorado.gov.
The tendency to describe “enemies” as animals is part of the process of dehumanization. According to social ethicist Herbert Kelman, in order to understand how dehumanization functions, it is important to first “ask what it means to perceive another person as fully human, in the sense of being included in the moral compact that governs human relationships” (Kelman, 48).[3] Kelman notes that in order to perceive others as full members of our moral community, it is necessary to recognize them both as autonomous individuals who are “capable of making choices, and entitled to live his own life on the basis of his own goals and values” (Kelman, 48) and also as “part of an interconnected network of individuals who care for each other, who recognize each other’s individuality, and who respect each other’s rights” (Kelman, 48-49). In this sense, dehumanizing another person isn’t about literally denying their humanity (perpetrators of dehumanization would likely still view their victims as members of the species Homo sapiens); it is about denying their moral significance.
In this paper, I want to explore a more interdisciplinary approach to studying the problem of dehumanization. While existing literature on this issue typically focuses on the psychology of dehumanization, and the historical acts of violence often correlated with it, I am further interested in what ways philosophy can be used to combat the human tendency to rationalize causing suffering to others through the removal of their moral worth. More specifically, I want to explore how the ethical writings of Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and Emmanuel Levinas can help us re-humanize those who have been dehumanized.
From NPR, by photographer Ernest Withers, March 28, 1968.
A Brief Overview of Dehumanization
Immanuel Kant, who we shall discuss below, made it a cornerstone of his ethical imperative to respect all rational creatures. We are not permitted, Kant tells us, to treat rational, autonomous agents as mere instruments for our own ends. Because human beings can set their own end in accordance with the moral law, human nature commands respect. We are to treat all humans not as mere instruments, but as ends in themselves.
And yet, even Kant did not follow his own moral imperatives as well as he should have. He argued that women were incapable of acting according to rational moral principles; that when they did act in accordance with the moral law, it was solely due to aesthetic reasons (because “the wicked… is ugly… nothing of duty, nothing of compulsion, nothing of obligation!). Because Kant associated moral value and worth with the capacity for rationality, women’s alleged compromised capacity for rational agency entailed that their moral status is equally compromised. Women only have access to full moral worth via their relationship to the men in their lives (fathers or husbands), and, in marriage, men are to control their wives and tell her “what [her] will is.”[4] In addition to his attitude against women, Kant also harbored incredibly racist views. He argued that Native Americans were not capable of being educated, and that persons of African descent were only capable of being educated as servants or slaves.
In this forty-ninth episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, we interview Matt Yglesias on the subject of “Public Philosophy and Polarization.” Before starting his career as a pundit, writer, and philosophical blogger, Matt majored in Philosophy in his undergraduate studies.
Matt is a Senior Correspondent and a co-founder of Vox.com, which he started with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell in 2014. Vox.com is a popular online news publication that offers commentary and explanations about news of the day. Matt’s writings focus on politics and economic policy. He also co-hosts The Weeds podcast twice a week, a show that gets into the weeds of politics and policy. In addition to his writings for Vox, Think Progress, The Atlantic, Talking Points Memo, and The American Prospect, Matt has authored two books, including most recently, The Rent Is Too Damn High, about the policy origins of the middle class housing affordability crisis in America.
Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.
In this forty-fifth episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, we interview Dr. Brian Butler of the University of North Carolina Asheville. We talk with Brian about two applications of the idea known as “democratic experimentalism” that have been at the heart of his work. One application concerns Constitutional law. The other involves the history of Black Mountain College, an experiment in democratic experimentalism applied to higher education, where art was central to education in the college.
Dr. Butler is the Thomas Howerton Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at the UNC Asheville. He recently published his book, The Democratic Constitution: Experimentalism and Interpretation, with the University of Chicago Press. He was also the Project Director in 2010 for a large grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities’s “We the People” Grant program, which focused on “Black Mountain College: An Artistic and Educational Legacy.” Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 in North Carolina as was an experimental college with a central role for art in liberal arts education. John Dewey’s philosophy of education was a fundamental inspiration for the college.
Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.
This forty-third episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast is a special new show format, more of a round-table discussion than usual, and with a new theme: The Stories of Our Day. In this first “Stories of Our Day” episode, we’re talking about The Game of Thrones! For this discussion, we knew that we wanted to bring Dr. Shane Courtland back on the show, given his specialty in Thomas Hobbes’s somewhat bleak philosophy, which has a lot to tell us about the harshness and quasi-realism (if you focus on human beings rather than the dragons) of Game of Thrones.
Dr. Courtland was our guest once before, in Episode 8 of the show, on “Selfish Ethics?” Dr. Courtland is director of the Center for Free Entreprise at Western Virginia University. His recent book is titled Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy, and was released with Routledge Press in 2017.
Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: Dover Publications, 1992).
In his You Tell Me! question, Shane mentions Syrio Forel, about whom there’s a wiki page here.
You Tell Me!
For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, we posed a few questions in this episode’s round-table format:
“Is death a major theme in Game of Thrones, and if so, why?”
“Do you think that talking philosophically about Game of Thrones and the Stories of Our Day is frivolous or meaningful? Should we keep making episodes with this new theme?”
“What are the Stories of Your Day, the stories from your youth that were really formative of who you are?”
Let us know what you think! Via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below.
This one-sheet document is part of a series to come of one-sheets about episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread. We’re calling them “Slices of Philosophically Baked Bread.” It would be great if local SOPHIA Chapter participants had the chance to listen to episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread (such as this one, Episode 1 of the show), but we try to avoid requiring homework before people come to our events.
James William Lincoln has kindly taken on the job of creating our one-sheet documents for each episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread. We’ll be posting and cataloging one-sheets on other matters and topics, such as on pieces published in Civil American, plus we plan to post one-sheets that our members and chapter leaders gather or create.
