Australasian Philosophy

One in a series of interviews by Saeed Naji.

This article continues an historical overview of Australian Catholic youth ministry begun in the previous issue of the 'Australasian Catholic Record'.

Review of: Liturgy in the twenty-first century: Contemporary issues and perspectives, by Alcuin Reid, ed., pp. xxvi + 367, paperback, GBP17.99.

Review of: In god's image: recognizing the profoundly impaired as persons, by Peter A. Comensoli, edited by Nigel Zimmermann,, pp. 243, paperback, US$31.00.

Proverbs 29:18 proclaims that without a vision the people perish; and history has proven this to be true. Part of the power of the great Nelson Mandela lay in his ability to articulate his dream for Africa and inspire others to commit themselves to make it a reality. His dream of a world where people of all races would work together in harmony captured the hearts and minds of his contemporaries. It did so with such power that the ground was (...) set for healing the deep wounds inflicted during the years of apartheid, which had been so destructive for all South Africans. (shrink)

There is an inherent link between colonisation and carceral institutions, and in this paper I aim to illuminate and critically review the philosophical implications of prison structures in relation to coloniality. I draw on the work of Lewis Gordon, Frantz Fanon & Nelson Maldonado-Torres in arguing that physical incarceration not only colonises the body, but the mind too, as a form of structural violence. In order to establish an existential phenomenological framework for coloniality in incarceration, I also make reference to (...) Hannah Arendt. Her work on both totalitarianism and the banality of evil help to develop the framework, and I further utilise Lisa Guenther’s work on solitary confinement in taking a phenomenological approach to thinking about incarceration. After this critical discussion of the coloniality of incarceration, I apply the framework to the New Zealand context, where Māori are hugely overrepresented in prisons. In invoking Sharon Shalev’s recent report into solitary confinement in Aotearoa, I argue that the disproportionate numbers of Māori in New Zealand prisons are symptomatic of the inherently colonial nature of carceral institutions, and also maintain that understanding the fundamentally colonial nature of prisons is key to ensuring the Crown and government fulfil certain obligations to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi. (shrink)

There was a significant monetary cost associated with establishing Catholicism in colonial Western Australia. The bishops and clergy funded the development of the local Catholic Church through donations from European benefactors, offerings from the congregation, and sponsorship from the Colonial and British Governments. As donations from Europe were variable and the resident Catholic population were largely poor, the government grants were the most reliable income for the Diocese of Perth. The government issued grants to support the establishment of congregations, schools, (...) and social welfare institutions. The development of congregations in new settlements was the Catholic Church's core ministry and the government issued stipends to Catholic chaplains to administer spiritual care to settlers and convicts in particular districts. Government grants were based on the census results and the Catholic Church was required to establish local church congregations and recruit clergy, and demonstrate an ability to contribute towards the maintenance of both. From 1852 to 1886, Bishops Joseph Serra, Rosendo Salvado and Martin Griver took charge of establishing congregations, managing clergy and lobbying the governors and other civil officials to fund colonial chaplaincies. The government also expected that the chaplains would promote moral and social order among the ex-convicts transported from Britain. (shrink)

The honour of being the first to teach philosophy in Australia belongs to the Congregationalist minister Barzillai Quaife (1798–1873), in the 1850s, but teaching philosophy did not formally begin until the 1880s, with the establishment of universities (Grave 1984). -/- Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: Idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. It was particularly associated with the work of the first professional philosophers in Australia, such as Henry Laurie (...) (1837–1922), Francis Anderson (1858–1941), William Mitchell (1861–1962) (who rejected the label) and a second generation including W. R. Boyce Gibson (1869–1935). Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, together with the British, particularly Scottish, revival of interest in Hegel through the work of the ‘Absolute Idealists’ T. H. Green (1836–1882), F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) and Henry Jones (1852–1922), the latter of whom conducted a popular lecture tour of Australia (Boucher 1990). -/- A number of the early New Zealand philosophers, including Duncan MacGregor (1843–1906), William Salmond (1835–1917), and Francis W. Dunlop (1874–1932) were educated in the Idealist tradition and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. William Anderson (1889–1955), at Auckland, brother of John at Sydney, was the only New Zealand philosopher that seemed to retain Idealist views. -/- In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who can be said to have influenced both strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

Part 1: Metaphysics and Conceptual Analysis 1. Analysis, description and the a priori?, Simon Blackburn 2. Physicalism, conceptual analysis and acts of faith, Jennifer Hornsby 3. Serious metaphysics: Frank Jackson’s defense of conceptual analysis, William G. Lycan 4. Jackson’s classical model of meaning, Laura Schroeter & John Bigelow 5. The semantic foundations of metaphysics, Huw Price 6. The folk theory of colours and the causes of colour experience, Peter Menzies Part 2: The Knowledge Argument 7. Consciousness and the frustrations of (...) physicalism, Philip Pettit 8. Jackson’s change of mind: representationalism, a priorism and the knowledge argument, Robert Van Gulick Part 3: Ethics 9. Analytic moral functionalism meets moral twin earth, Terrence Horgan & Mark Timmons 10. Consequentialism and the nearest and dearest objection, Michael Smith 11. The ’actual’ in actualism, Julia Driver Part 4: Conditionals and the Purposes of Arguing 12. Conditionals, truth and assertion, Dorothy Edgington 13. Conditionals: A debate with Jackson, Graham Priest 14. Two purposes of arguing and two epistemic projects, Martin Davies Replies to my critics, Frank Jackson. (shrink)

An interview that addresses the issue of the development of philosophy in schools in Australia, that suggests it is the educational culture that has had the most effect on modifying Matthew Lipman's philosophy for children, leading to a proliferation of new materials.

In the late 1960s Matthew Lipman and his colleagues at IAPC developed an educational philosophy he called Philosophy for Children. At the heart of Philosophy for Children is the community of Inquiry, with its emphasis on classroom dialogue, in the form of collaborative philosophical inquiry. In this paper we explore the development of educational practice that has grown out of Philosophy for Children in the context of Australia. -/- Australia adapted Lipman’s ideas on the educational value of practicing philosophy with (...) children in order to advance children’s social and intellectual capacities and dispositions. This has subsequently led to its development by both scholars and practitioners in directions that may or may not have been what Lipman had initially intended and to discussions on the nature and educational value of varied approaches that have been implemented in the classroom. To understand fully the effects of these changes requires an understanding of the towering influences that Peirce and especially Dewey were to Lipman. Whilst Lipman developed his own educational philosophy, he freely acknowledged that philosophy for children owes a debt to Peirce for the concept of the community of inquiry and to Dewey for his guidelines on education. -/- We will explore various ways in which the practice of philosophy for children has been implemented and analyse its expansion. This will achieve a better understanding of the possible future directions for classroom practice and research. (shrink)

We offer an overview of the development and production of the diverse range of Australian P4C literature since the introduction of philosophy in schools in the early 1980s. The events and debates surrounding this literature can be viewed as an historical narrative that highlights different philosophical, educational, and strategic positions on the role of curriculum material and resources in the philosophy classroom. We argue that if we place children’s literature and purpose-written materials in opposition to one another, we could be (...) missing valuable opportunities to develop further what might be considered a new genre in educational literature. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to highlight significant developments in the history of philosophy in schools in Australia. We commence by looking at the early years when Laurance Splitter visited the Institute for the Advancement for Philosophy for Children (IAPC). Then we offer an account of the events that led to the formation of what is now the Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations (FAPSA), the development and production of a diverse range of curriculum and supporting materials for philosophy (...) in schools, the making of the Australasian journal, and more recent events. Our purpose is to create further interest in exploring this complex and rich history. This will achieve a better understanding of the possible future directions for classroom practice and research. (shrink)

Kant makes a much-unexpected confession in a much-unexpected place. In the Criticism of the third paralogism of transcendental psychology of the first Critique Kant accepts the irrefutability of the Heraclitean notion of universal becoming or the transitory nature of all things, admitting the impossibility of positing a totally persistent and self-conscious subject. The major Heraclitean doctrine of panta rhei makes it impossible to conduct philosophical inquiry by assuming a self-conscious subject or “I,” which would potentially be in constant motion like (...) other thoughts. For it rules out the possibility of completely detached reasoning which necessitates an unchanging state of mind. In this paper, Kaplama uses panta rhei to critically examine the philosophical shortcomings and contradictions of Kantian and Enlightenment ethics. In his examination, he specifically focuses on the teleological nature of Kant’s principle of freedom and ideal of moral autonomy which have dominated the Enlightenment thought. By doing so, he argues that it is essentially inaccurate to posit Überlegenheit (the state of being superior to nature) as the foundation of philosophical inquiry mainly because this would contradict the Enlightenment’s claim to constitute a rupture from classic and medieval metaphysics and would render Enlightenment a mere extension of Christian metaphysics. As in Christianity, Überlegenheit presupposes two separate realms, the actual (contingent) and ideal (pure) realms of thought and assumes that the transcendence commences from the level of the late metaphysical/teleological construction of the ‘subject’ who is completely persistent, self-conscious and immune to change. He then substantiates these points with reference to the philosophical roots of ethnic prejudice displayed by the post-Enlightenment colonialists and the missionaries in Fiji and the Pacific. This brief critical examination of the post-Enlightenment ethnocentrism will be conducted under the following three points: a) On the Enlightenment’s teleological and universalistic understanding of humanity and the concept of progress versus the Fijian concepts of the continuity of life, regeneration, and reproduction b) On the Enlightenment’s ideal of the free-willing and independent individual subject versus the Fijian ideas of 'the cord', reciprocity, and vanua, and c) On the Enlightenment’s (and Christianity’s) strict dualism between physics and metaphysics, nature and human mind, body and soul versus the Fijian bio-centrism, the sanctity of vanua and the cosmological concept of mana. (shrink)

Does moral philosophy corrupt? Socrates spent his days talking with many others about goodness and virtue and suchlike, and, partly as a result of showing them how very ignorant they were about such things, he was eventually charged with corrupting the youth. Much more recently, Raimond Gaita has claimed that there are some things it is evil to believe or even to think, and that academic philosophy nevertheless instructs us to seriously consider such things. He lays two charges, that this (...) is corrupt in itself, and corrupt in the effects it risks-anyone who seriously considers whether evil is an illusion is already morally corrupt, he claims, not to mention the risk that they might end up actually believing it. The aim of this paper is to examine whether moral philosophy as practiced today is susceptible to Gaita's charges. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita’s work in moral philosophy is unusual and important in focusing on the concept of sainthood. Drawing partly on the work of George Orwell, and partly on the life and work of Simone Weil, as well as on further material, I argue that Gaita’s use of this notion to help make sense of the concept of human preciousness is unconvincing, not least because he does not properly explore the figure and psychology of the saint in any detail. I relatedly (...) argue that the notion of human preciousness in question is implausible and, in some ways, sentimental. I also explore Gaita’s concept of “speaking personally” in moral philosophy, and suggest that matters here are a great deal more complicated than he supposes. (shrink)

The work of Raimond Gaita, in books such as _Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception_, _A Common Humanity_ and _The Philosopher’s Dog_, has made an outstanding and controversial contribution to philosophy and to the wider culture. In this superb collection an international team of contributors explore issues across the wide range of Gaita’s thought, including the nature of good and evil, philosophy and biography, the unthinkable, Plato and ancient philosophy, Wittgenstein, the religious dimensions of Gaita’s work, aspects of the Holocaust, (...) and aboriginal reconciliation in Australia. (shrink)

Interaction between Peter Singer and Christian ethics, to the extent that it has happened at all, has been unproductive and often antagonistic. Singer sees himself as leading a 'Copernican Revolution' against a sanctity of life ethic, while many Christians associate his work with a 'culture of death'. Charles Camosy shows that this polarized understanding of the two positions is a mistake. While their conclusions about abortion and euthanasia may differ, there is surprising overlap in Christian and Singerite arguments, and disagreements (...) are interesting and fruitful. Furthermore, it turns out that Christians and Singerites can even make common cause, for instance in matters such as global poverty and the dignity of non-human animals. Peter Singer and Christian ethics are far closer than almost anyone has imagined, and this book is valuable to those who are interested in fresh thinking about the relationship between religious and secular ethics. (shrink)

This is the first book devoted to the work of Peter Singer, one of the leaders of the practical ethics movement, and one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.

Philosophy flourished in Australia after the war. There was spectacular growth in both the number of departments and the number of philosophers. On top of this philosophy spread beyond the philosophy departments. Serious studies, and interest in philosophy is now common in faculties as diverse as law, science and education. Neither is this development merely quantitative, the Australian researcher has come of age and contributes widely to international debates. At least one movement originated in Australia. This makes the study of (...) philosophy in Australia timely, evidenced by the number of articles concerned with this area that begin to appear in international journals. In Australia itself there is growing interest in the history of the country's philosophical development. There are discussions in conferences and meetings: the matter is now the subject of courses. (shrink)

Book Information A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice Raimond Gaita London Routledge 2000 xxxi, 293 Hardback £17.99 By Raimond Gaita. Routledge. London. Pp. xxxi, 293. Hardback:£17.99.

Chris Mortensen, Graham Nerlich, Garrett Cullity and Gerard O'Brien.

In a very short interview, Waters discusses trademarks and patents regarding indigenous knowledge, and how "biosprospecting" is being done in the context of colonial preference. Waters notes the importance of recognizing indigenous common law, and indigenous nations pragmatic value of knowledge.

History of women philosophers in Australia delivered as part of a series of of lectures on many aspects of philosophy in Australia.

European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, is the most acclaimed of all Bernard Smith’s many texts on art history and cultural theory. In conjunction with its 1992 companion-piece, Imagining the Pacific, and supported by collations of art and cartography from Cook’s and other voyages, this work also established his reputation as a major presence in Pacific-centred research. Likewise, the ongoing influence of European Vision and the South Pacific has seen Smith claimed as a foundational figure in (...) post-colonial scholarship, as one who ‘anticipated’ aspects of Edward Said’s late-1970s analysis of orientalism. But while there are important parallels and overlaps in the thinking of this pair, their differences and divergences are at least as significant. Above all, Smith’s Pacific-centred writings need to be understood as the unique intellectual achievements they undeniably are. (shrink)

The interactions between humans, animals and the environment have shaped human values and ethics, not only the genes that we are made of. The animal rights movement challenges human beings to reconsider interactions between humans and other animals, and maybe connected to the environmental movement that begs us to recognize the fact that there are symbiotic relationships between humans and all other organisms. The first part of this paper looks at types of bioethics, the implications of autonomy and the value (...) of being alive. Then the level of consciousness of these relationships are explored in survey results from Asia and the Pacific, especially in the 1993 International Bioethics Survey conducted in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, The Philippines, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. Very few mentioned animal consciousness in the survey, but there were more biocentric comments in Australia and Japan; and more comments with the idea of harmony including humans in Thailand. Comparisons between questions and surveys will also be made, in an attempt to describe what people imagine animal consciousness to be, and whether this relates to human ethics of the relationships. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita's moral philosophy has a Platonic emphasis on “goodness beyond virtue.” But it also displays an anti-rationalist tendency, subordinating reason to the immediate responsiveness of human beings to each other. However, Gaita's account of the lucidity on which moral life depends fits ill with this subordination. Some Wittgensteinian remarks that have influenced Gaita are deployed to show that a Platonic rationalist psychology better serves his purposes than does his own, implicitly empiricist, psychology. The conclusion notes that Gaita's more recent (...) work evidences less hostility to rationality. (shrink)

v. 1. Public lectures on philosophy in Australia and New Zealand -- 2. Interviews with Australian and New Zealand philosophers.

In this paper, I evaluate Elizabeth Grosz's corporeal feminism and ontology of sexual difference(s), by moving through her Derridean and Irigarayian conceptual heritage. The question here is asked whether Grosz succeeds at deconstructing feminism's enemy; biological determinism, and if she deconstructs binary dichotomizes or in the end reinforces them. Grosz's Darwinian ontology of sexual differences is then analyzed via these two leading motives, and through the perspectives of Derrida and Irigaray.