virtual philosopher

Humanist Thought for the Day - On Death, Burial etc.

You can listen to my Humanist Thought for the Day here.

Presumed Consent and Organ Donation

The British Government is thinking about implementing an 'opt out' policy on the donation of body parts. The presumption will be that everyone with suitable body parts has consented to having them used post mortem unless they have explicitly removed their consent. This seems, on the face of it, a good idea, particularly if it delivers more organs for transplant. But not everyone is happy. Mick Hume has some critical points to make (particularly in relation to recent political history) in his article in Spiked.

Listen to a discussion on this topic on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze (only available until Tuesday 22nd Jan.)

Jeremy Bentham's Body as Auto-Icon

As specified in his will, the great utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (he of the 'greatest happiness principle', the 'felicific calculus' and the panopticon prison design), had what was left of him after death (in 1832) displayed in a case - currently in University College London.  At one point his mummified head with glass eyes was on the floor between the legs (it was repeatedly stolen by students, so is no longer there). A reasonably realistic wax head is on the dressed sekeleton, topped with a broad-brimmed hat. He holds his walking stick in his hand and he is seated. Most people know this. But I recently realized I only had a hazy notion of what he was doing by presenting himself as an Auto-Icon (his term). So I looked at the authorative University College London Bentham Project website to get an answer, and was surprised that there is room for speculation about this. Is this a secular momento mori? Or perhaps a macabre kind of statue created by a slightly vain man who was seeking posthumous immortality? Or is there some other more plausible explanation? Is this really not known?

There is an article from 1958 by C.F.A. Marmoy about the Bentham Auto-Icon available here.

 

 

Book Review: Emily Wilson - The Death of Socrates

Emily Wilson The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (Profile Books, 2007)

This is a superb book. I picked it up by chance and have been gripped. Socrates, 'the Jesus Christ of Greece' as Shelley dubbed him, comes to most philosophers via Plato. Emily Wilson, a classicist, provides a lively overview of the numerous Socrates that have existed for different thinkers at different times. These include the hen-pecked master of self-help platitudes described by his pupil Xenophon, the  absurd figure that appears in Aristophanes' The Clouds, the tyrant-loving chatterbox despised by Plutarch, the man of integrity admired by Voltaire and Diderot, the drunken reveller in the Monty Python song who was 'a bugger when he's pissed,' and the unthreatening and decidedly un-socratic  Socrates of Phillip's Socrates' Café (less gadfly, more nice bloke - see my previous post on this). Along the way she makes astute interpretations of images of Socrates' death including the famous painting by David and even analyses the medical effects of different types of hemlock to determine whether Plato's description of Socrates' progressive loss of feeling in the Phaedo is a santised version of what must have happened (the answer is probably not).

Wilson provides plausible explanations of why the Athenians were so ready to execute Socrates. His political views (anti-democratic, apparently pro-tyrant), his associations (with those who had acted impiously), his irritating arrogance, and possibly his public humiliation of his accusers, these are the background to the charges of corrupting the youth, and neglecting the gods of Athens. She also provides the social and political background to Socrates trial, and a succinct overview of his philosophical stance as Plato portrays it. But the real strength of the book is Wilson's ability to characterise the numerous Socrates that have existed throughout history in an elegant and economical style that is engaging, stimulating, and at times profound. Highly recommended.

Secular Thought for the Day on Death podcast today

You can listen to my secular Thought for the Day. Here is a transcript:

I was on the train to London a few days ago when, as we were passing through a station at high speed, there was a disconcerting jolt … we went over something on the rails. The train carried on for a few hundred yards, and then stopped… and we waited. There had been an obstruction on the track, we were told, and we had to get clearance. An ‘incident’ had occurred. Nothing more specific. After an hour and a half of waiting, and learning that the driver had had to be replaced, most of us realised what had happened: someone had thrown themselves under the train.

At this point selfish concerns about being late for appointments evaporated considerably. Most people’s thoughts, I suspect, were with the train driver and with the friends and family of whoever had taken this desperate step. But not for too long. We had to get back to our lives despite having been unwilling accomplices in someone else’s suicide.

When we eventually pulled into Paddington, we bustled into the underground and got on with whatever we had to do. That’s what being alive is like.

It’s a cliché, but still true, that death is all around us, often painful death, but we are shielded from it most of the time. We rarely encounter death or even give it much thought. But perhaps we should.

As a philosopher I think it is something worth thinking about quite hard. I like the classical idea that philosophy should teach us how to accept death. But it can take a real death to focus the mind.

If, like me, you believe that death is the end of all experience, then there is great consolation in thinking that when it has happened there won’t be anything else. That’s it. Epicurus was surely right when he said: when I am there death is not, and when death is there, I am not’. As he pointed out, we don’t worry about the eternity before we existed, why be concerned about the eternity during which we won’t exist in the future?

Atheists often describe believers as indulging in wishful thinking when they claim that there is a wonderful afterlife to come. But from my perspective never-ending life would be a kind of hell that would remove meaning from everything I did, like an interminable piece of music that never reached its final chord. If wishful thinking is believing something that would be pleasanter than the truth, then this is a misnomer. I don’t want what the philosopher Bernard Williams called the sheer tedium of immortality  - even if it were an option.

What is bad about death is what it does to other people: the ones left behind to grieve, and experience absence. Slow death, and pain in dying are terrible facts of the human condition. But death itself is nothing to fear. Paradoxically, death, like love, makes life worth living…

Previous post on secular Thoughts for the Day.

The Gambler's Argument for Believing in God's Existence: Blaise Pascal

Attached is a short dialogue on the question of whether it is a good gamble to bet on God's existence, exploring some of Blaise Pascal's thoughts on the issue. This appeared in the journal Think (issue 7, Summer 2004), and also in the British Humanist Association's Thinking About Death (London: BHA, 2004) edited by Peter Cave and Brendan Larvor.

Here is the first page or so:

Imagine you are on your death bed, You have been an agnostic all your adult life, but are now aware that you have at best a few hours to live. You still believe that there is a small chance that the Christian God exists, that is why you never felt able to embrace atheism and declare that there is no God. But you are not convinced that there is a God. In fact on balance you believe there is no God, no heaven, no hell, and that within a few hours you will simply cease to exist forever, except in other people’s memories and by the other traces you have left behind you. At this moment, a friend who has read Blaise Pascal’s Pensées comes in and tries to persuade you to embrace a belief in God.

You: I really think this is it. I have to be honest with you, I don’t think I’ll last much longer.

She: Don’t speak like that, you could still recover.

You: No. Ive spoken to two doctors now. They only give me a matter of hours. I’m about to slip away to nothing. I can’t say I feel too bad about it. Perhaps it’s the painkillers I’m on, but I feel quite serene. I’ve been lucky, I’ve had quite a good life. Plenty of friends, no serious hardships. …Why are you crying? Don’t cry. Let’s talk about something else. Look out of the window, the crocuses have come out already. It’s not that bad.

She: It might be.

You: What do you mean? Why are you looking so scared?

She: What if you are wrong? What if Hell really exists and you end up there forever?

You: But it probably doesn’t exist, does it. Be realistic It doesn’t seem very likely. You’ve been looking at too many Hieronymous Bosch paintings…Hell is a medieval belief. We’re in the twenty-first century....

[For the whole dialogue, download below]

[12KB rtf] Download gamblers_argument.rtf