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Philosophy at Cambridge Newsletter of the Faculty of Philosophy Issue 14 May 2017

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Philosophy at Cambridge Newsletter of the Faculty of Philosophy Issue 14 May 2017 Philosophy at Cambridge Newsletter of the Faculty of Philosophy Issue 14 May 2017 ISSN 2046-9632 From the Chair Tim Crane Many readers will know that the British Government’s periodic assessment of research quality in universities now involves an assessment of the ‘impact’ of this research on the world. In the 2014 exercise, demonstrations of impact were supposed to trace a causal chain from the original research to some effect in the ‘outside world’. It’s hard to know how the ‘impact’ approach would have handled with the achievements of Bernard Williams, one of the Cambridge philosophers we have celebrated this year – in his case with a conference in the Autumn of 2016 on Williams and the Ancients at Newnham College, organised by Nakul Krishna and Sophia Connell (pp. 2 & 3). In numerous ways, Williams had an impact in the public sphere, and his work has profound Onora O’Neill has been named the winner of the 2017 Holberg Prize. Photo: Martin Dijkstra implications for our understanding of politics. But it’s hard to see how one could this way is Casimir Lewy, whose life and Central European University in August. trace any of these effects back through work we celebrated at a delightful event at It’s been an exciting period in the Faculty, a simple chain to one or two ideas. Trinity College in February (p. 6). The list of with many new appointments and Another example of a Cambridge philosophers Lewy taught in his 30 years in unprecedented success in acquiring philosopher who is still a leading public Cambridge contains some of the leading research grants. It has been an honour figure is Onora O’Neill, who has made philosophers of the last 50 years; and it is to work in this great university, with its significant contributions in public life, as clear that they owed a vast amount to him. rich tradition in philosophy, stimulating well as developing a distinctive version Surely every philosopher wants their colleagues and wonderful and talented of Kantian moral philosophy. How exactly work to have impact of some kind – the students. The Faculty is very fortunate we should trace the exact connections only question is what this means. The truth to have Rae Langton as my successor between her work in ethics and her work of the matter seems to be that it is hard to as Knightbridge Professor and Chair of on, say, the Leveson Inquiry, is a difficult predict or control which ideas have which the Faculty from 2017. As readers of task, and not obviously the best way specific effects, both inside and outside this newsletter will know, Rae came to to think about her achievements. the academic context. By all accounts, the Cambridge in 2013 after teaching at MIT, Fortunately, this did not bother the forthcoming assessment exercise (in 2021) Edinburgh, Sheffield and Monash. She committee in Norway who awarded her is likely to take a more nuanced approach works on ethics, feminism, Kant, philosophy the prestigious Holberg Prize earlier this to impact. of language, metaphysics and many year. We congratulate Onora on this Speaking personally, I do not expect to other things too. Appointing Rae to the wonderful achievement. be around in Cambridge in 2021, though. Knightbridge Chair – the first woman to One way in which a philosopher can Not only is this my last newsletter as Faculty be appointed to this ancient professorship clearly and indisputably have impact, Chair (a position I have occupied for five – also gives us the opportunity, we hope, though, is through their students. Someone years and a bit), it is also my last term at to expand and enrich the Faculty by making whose lasting legacy can be measured in Cambridge – I move to take up a job at the more junior appointments. Watch this space. Philosophy at Cambridge page 1 May 2017 Togas and Olives Nakul Krishna “The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.” The audacious first line – of Bernard Williams’ essay, ‘The Legacy of Greek Philosophy’, strikes a characteristic note: considered, unapologetic, magisterial. And yet, as the reader discovers a few sentences in, the aphoristic punchiness is not achieved through exaggeration. Williams goes on to describe, in an account succinct but rich in telling detail, the relation between Greek and later Western philosophy so that his metaphor of a legacy proves to have a precision that A.N. Whitehead’s better- known remark about Western philosophy as “a series of footnotes to Plato” lacks. Legacies can be squandered, but they can also be improved upon, and Williams – a modern philosopher through and through – never looked to the Greeks as sages. Educated at Oxford in the late 1940s in what he once described as “the Detail from The Remorse of Orestes by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Photo: Wikimedia Commons heyday of analytic confidence”, Williams absorbed an approach to the study of modern world was lamentably Socratic be a different and more sophisticated thing, Greek philosophical texts informed by in its “heightened reflectiveness, self- and it will represent an achievement.” ‘triumphant anachronism’. The view that consciousness, and inwardness”, and A philosopher writing in the late 20th “we should approach the works of Plato these things, Nietzsche had thought, century, Williams assured his Berkeley as though they had appeared in last “it was ... one of the charms, and indeed the audiences that he did not wish to ally month’s issue of Mind” was, of course, power, of the Greeks to have done without.” himself “with those who suspect that the theoretically indefensible. Indeed it was When Williams was invited in the early closing scenes of the Eumenides already barely intelligible; for one thing, the works 1990s to deliver the prestigious Sather display a dangerous weakening toward of Plato could not have made it past the Lectures at the University of California, liberalism.” (This is the scene where the referees. But oddly enough, as Williams Berkeley – later published as Shame and frenzied Furies, figures of vengeance, was the first to admit, the method worked, Necessity (1993) – he had a good deal to are transformed into guardians of justice, producing a generation of philologically say about the Greek philosopher. But his with courts and procedures to go with and philosophically acute scholars real interest was in overturning, with every their new role.) The point wasn’t to do who refused to patronise the texts and argumentative and rhetorical resource away with the achievements of the took them seriously as articulating available to him, a certain ‘Whiggish’ modern world in thought and politics arguments that we might accept or interpretation of history. This interpretation in exchange for some slave-owning, reject on their merits. saw the modern world and its philosophy toga-wearing, olive-eating and largely In the 1970s, Williams’ thinking about as equipped with a set of notions – invented vision of a classical past. The the Greeks underwent a deep shift, in part morality, responsibility and ‘the will’ among point was to give us and our institutions the consequence of his own, increasingly others – that the Greeks had lacked and a more truthful self-understanding, and pessimistic, ideas about what philosophy been the worse off for lacking. learning to see the Greeks aright might could do, in part the consequence of his Williams denied this: the Greeks had all be one way to do that. growing fascination with Nietzsche. The the notions they, or we, needed. A simpler In his writings in the 1990s, Williams Greeks, Nietzsche had more than once philosophy of action, using only the terms came to articulate with a startling remarked, “were superficial – out of available to Homer, could make all the directness the pessimistic reflections profundity”. Nietzsche was not talking necessary distinctions without muddying towards which he had been reaching in of the respectable philosophical Greeks the waters with concerns derived from all his previous work: “human beings are to who took their cue from Socrates and that unfortunate institution, morality some degree a mess”. Given our history took virtue and wisdom as the way to (or, as Williams preferred to say, ‘the – our natural, evolutionary, history as well happiness. The Greeks he most respected morality system’). But one couldn’t as that of the last two or three thousand were the characters and creators of tragedy, regain the pre-Socratic Greeks’ profound years of civilization – “no form of life is history and rhetoric, even the teachers of superficiality just by trying. “That is not likely to prove entirely satisfactory, either rhetoric Socrates maligned as ‘sophists’. possible for us,” wrote Williams, “after so individually or socially”. We will always want For Nietzsche, as Williams put it, the much history: any such attitude for us will more things than we can have, and this is Philosophy at Cambridge page 2 May 2017 not just a contingent – if unfortunate – how far the existence of a worthwhile life truth about the world, but a necessary for some people involves the imposition truth about beings like us, cursed with of suffering on others.” desires and aspirations that cannot by The ‘we’ is deliberately provocative. It is their nature be jointly satisfied. And to clear enough what the right-on thing to say the extent that we might simplify our is, but to what extent are those convictions desires so that they can be satisfied, our reflected in the lives and lifestyles of those new existence may not be one we can of us living, and sometimes flourishing, recognise as an improvement. under capitalism? What would it be like Life, in other words, will always be a for us to try to live in ways that imposed disappointment to us.
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