Here's my AHRC report on grassroots philosophy via fancy 'turn the page' technology. Thanks for the QMUL creative services team for putting it together. Check it out!
This is a brilliant talk and a brilliant animation.
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I was slightly surprised to see that Julian Baggini had used his column in the Independent to make some criticisms of 'Stoic Week', part of a project at Exeter University with which I'm involved. When you think of all the serious things happening in the world at the moment, from extreme weather to the war in Gaza, it seems odd to use your column in a national newspaper to criticise a project which, taken all together, is in my opinion a small but positive thing within the philosophical landscape.
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We’re coming to the end of Stoic Week. People all over the world have been practicing Stoic exercises and reflecting on Stoic ideas this week, thanks to this wonderful initiative, launched by a young post-grad at Exeter University called Patrick Ussher. Some of Patrick’s students have been sharing their thoughts on the exercises via YouTube.
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I'm increasingly aware of two things: firstly, I can be a bit of a tub-thumping evangelist for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), as it worked for me; and secondly, the Improved Access for Psychotherapies (IAPT) government programme is far from perfect, and we need to look at how to improve it.
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Big day today. I’ve finally finished my report on grassroots philosophy groups, which you can download here: Connected Communities- Philosophical Communities.
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My publishers in Holland, Ten Have, are doing an amazing job. They recently launched a poster campaign across the country, and also lined up lots of great interviews for me, including a four-page interview in de Volksrant, and another interview in Trouw.
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Here are my top ten tips for recovering from mental illness. Tell me any really good tips I've missed out in the comments. They're not commandments, just what worked for me in recovering from social anxiety and minor depression - feel free to disagree. And although I don't mention medication, because I personally didn't use it, I know lots of people find that a helpful part of the recovery process - and an essential one if you suffer from a serious psychotic condition.
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There's an interview with me in de Volksrant, a Dutch newspaper, published today. The very nice interviewer asked me about an experience I described right at the end of the book, which was sort of a near-death experience I think.
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Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, The Master, tells the story of drifter Joaquin Phoenix’s relationship with the head of a New Age sect, which looks suspiciously like Scientology. The group, called The Cause, aims (like Scientology) to clear its members of the karmic traces of their past lives, and return them to their inherent perfection. They do this by hypnotising their members to retrace their past incarnations, or by subjecting them to a b
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Rick Lewis was working in the laboratory of British Telecom when he decided, just over 20 years ago, to launch a philosophy magazine for non-academics, called Philosophy Now. He tells me about the early days, how grassroots philosophy has grown, how he met his wife Anja Steinbauer, who runs Philosophy For All, and where he sees the 'movement' going.
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There was an article in Morgenbladet, the Norwegian newspaper, on philosophy clubs last month. It's not online yet but here are two beautiful photos from the story. Both are by Ellen Lande Gossner - thanks to Ellen for letting me use these photos in my report on philosophy groups!
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I'm writing this from a cafe in Antwerp, at the end of my first mini book tour abroad, having spent the last week doing talks and interviews in Amsterdam and Antwerp. My Dutch publisher, Regine, has been putting a lot into the promotion here - there’s even going to be a poster campaign around the country.
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I got to Amsterdam on Monday, for the launch of the Dutch edition of the book. Regine, my publisher, showed me the edition on the train from the airport. It has a beautiful colour reproduction of Raphael's School of Athens on the inside cover:
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They call me Jules 'one shot' Evans.
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A couple of weeks ago I organized a seminar (my first!) at Queen Mary, University of London, in its beautiful Octagon Room, about community philosophy, bringing together 20 or so practitioners in the field, who had a combined experience of over three centuries in grassroots philosophy. Here are some videos from the seminar:
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There's a new spirit of self-help and mutual improvement blowing through public health policy. I first felt its breeze in Scotland's national mental health strategy, which was published in August, and which made much of its 'person-centred approach' to mental health in Scotland.
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aul Doran is one of the founders of Philosophy in Pubs (PIPs), which is the biggest network of community philosophy groups in the UK, with around 40 PIPs across the UK, including 14 in Merseyside, where PIPs began. Here he talks about how PIPs started, how to run a PIPs group, and how he sees community philosophy developing in the future.
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Tonight, Channel 4 is showing the hypnotist and illusionist Derren Brown's Apocalypse. The show involves Brown hypnotising a man into believing that civilisation has collapsed after a meteor shower - an illusion enhanced with various actors and special effects (including, if the trailer is to be believed, zombies!)
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Thanks to A Very Good Company for organising a great event.
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Roman Krznaric is the author of two popular books that came out this year - The Wonderbox: Curious histories of how to live and How to Find Fulfilling Work - and is also one of the founding faculty members of the School of Life, which teaches the art of living to its clientele.
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Sad to hear of the death of Paul Kurtz, philosopher and arguably the founder of the modern Skeptic movement, yesterday. As it happens, I am writing today about Kurtz in my report on modern grassroots philosophy movements.
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Hip hop and Philosophical Inquiry
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The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there was no newsletter last weekend. Apologies. The reason for this is I have journeyed deep into the warm, pulsating heart of the happiness movement.
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This week, Lena Dunham, the very talented writer and star of the HBO series Girls, got a $3.5 million advance for her first book. I mean, I really do think she's very talented, Girls is an exceptionally good TV show, and perhaps she really is "the voice of my generation...or at least a voice of a generation", as she puts it in the first episode. But $3.5 million!!
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One of the most unchallenged and unexamined narratives in our culture is that the culture is dumbing down. High culture is disappearing beneath the toxic sludge of reality TV. The dark ages are around the corner. We are in the End Times, culturally speaking.
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Skepticism is an interesting and vibrant movement that has arisen in the last 40 years, which is to some extent part of the grassroots philosophy landscape. Skeptics might baulk at that affiliation, as they often see themselves as pro-science and, on occasion, anti-philosophy. Nonetheless, philosophers have played an important role in helping modern Skepticism grow, and the Skeptic movement’s vibrancy offer useful lessons for other philosophy groups.
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There's a cognitive bias which supposedly causes emotional disorders, whereby you minimize your own achievements while maximizing those of other people. I feel the authors of Britannia Unchained, a new book about how to save the UK from national decline, suffer from this bias.
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The latest episode of In Our Time is a particularly good one. Melvyn Bragg gathers three contemporary scholars of Druidism, who reveal some fascinating stuff about the druids. We find out, for example, that when the Romans encountered the druids, after their invasion of Britain and Gaul in the first century BC, they were very impressed with them and thought of them as natural philosophers in the mould of Pythagoras - both the druids and Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of souls, apparently.
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As regular readers know, I’m researching the rise of grassroots philosophy groups for a project called Philosophical Communities. This has got me thinking about the roles of groups and networks in the history of ideas, and I’d like to sketch out some initial thinking. I hope the following isn’t too pretentious...
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I was at a drinks party of a history conference this week, talking to a young academic who was writing a PhD. ‘And what are you working on?’ she asked me. I said I was researching philosophy groups, and was interested in the role of support groups and self-help networks in education and health.
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A few newsletters back, I talked about the idea of the ‘mass intelligentsia’, and posted an interview I did with Melvyn Bragg about the term (he used it in this programme on class and culture back in March). I’ve been digging into this idea a bit more since then, for an academic research project I’m doing on philosophy clubs. I’d like to unpack the idea some more, if that’s alright by you.
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Here is a great short vid by Leah Green, doing a broadcasting MA at Warwick, on the future of philosophy. It features Dr Angie Hobbs, and lots of members of the London Philosophy Club, including me looking a little bug-eyed. Must learn not to do that!
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An academic got in touch with me last week, inviting me to a seminar on Stoicism, which was nice of him. On the seminar programme, he described me as 'an author of books on happiness'. Alas I've only written one book (one that was published anyway), and it's strange to have it described as 'on happiness'.
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This week, I interviewed the philosopher and scientist Massimo Pigliucci as part of my research into philosophy clubs and the Skeptic movement. Massimo is a fascinating figure: he grew up in Italy, then moved to the University of Tennessee to become a professor in ecology and evolution, before moving to City University of New York to become a professor in philosophy.
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Does philosophy still matter?
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Welcome to another PoW newsletter. At the moment I am deep in research for a project I am running at Queen Mary, University of London, looking at the history and contemporary rise of philosophy groups. The hope is it will build links between academic philosophy and 'street philosophy', and also encourage people to get involved with grassroots philosophy, by joining clubs or setting up their own.
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Below is a video of a place on Second Life called The Philosophy Garden, set up by Portland community College. I'm not a big Second Lifer myself, but am curious - do any of my readers know of other philosophy groups, schools, cafes or communities that exist in massive multiplayer online games like SL? Let me know if you do, it would be useful for my research on philosophy clubs. Tnx.
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Yesterday, as you probably know, a girl punk band called Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for singing a protest song in Moscow's cathedral. Later that day, another Moscow beauty staged her own protest. Putin has, literally, lost his cool, and Russians have apparently lost their fear.
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A global bank's reputation is at rock bottom after a string of money-laundering scandals, fraud cases, and government bail-outs. A new CEO is appointed, with a mission to clean up the bank’s profile. He introduces a ‘five point ethics plan’, including strengthened risk controls, more enlightened incentives for bankers, an 'ethics hot-line', and a huge ethics training programme for the company’s 300,000 employees - arguably the biggest ethics training initiative in the history of American business.
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I've been researching the Chautauqua movement in the US, which was an adult education movement that began in the late 19th century and really blossomed in the first two decades of the 20th century. It typically involved groups of lecturers and entertainers touring rural America, setting up a big tent, and then giving talks and performances to the locals.
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Philosophy and comedy share certain characteristics. At the most basic level, both philosophers and comedians ask the question, why? Why do we do things this way and not a different way?
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Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of blog-posts and newsletters the last couple of weeks - I'm on holiday in Venezuela, travelling around and visiting the rather beautiful beach below, and will resume normal service next week. Thanks to all the people who've recently signed up to the newsletter - we've now passed the 1,000 mark of subscribers!
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One of the non-fiction writers of my generation who I most admire / envy / emulate - Jonah Lehrer - has just performed one of the steepest plummets from grace I've ever seen. At 31, Lehrer had already authored three best sellers: Why Proust Was a Neuroscientist, How We Decide, and Imagine, which came out in May 2012, the same month as my book.
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My city hosts the Olympics today, and I feel a bit anxious - like when you hear guests buzzing on the door bell, the house is a mess, and you've just had a raging argument with your wife. Well, I am very proud to be British, and proud to be a Londoner. I hope the games go really well and my fellow Londoners aren't too grumpy to the tourists.
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Here are some quotes from my favourite living artist, David Lynch, about the creative process. They're from Chris Rodley's book, Lynch on Lynch:
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