editorial

from the editor

4 P hilosophy has always had gender

equality issues. Most lists of the greats

would be entirely male until the

twentieth century, although the same

could be said of music or the visual arts. More

recently, the profession has remained male

dominated. Evidence indicates that there is a

more representative mix among the younger

talent rising up the universities, but this hasn’t yet

translated into anything approaching equality at

the highest levels.

For us, this presents difficult challenges. I

find it embarrassing, for example, that this issue’s

forum, on the legacy of the Enlightenment (see

p64), is entirely written by men. How could I have

let that happen?

There are several reasons. One is that tpm’s

self-set mission has always been to reflect what is

going on in the world of philosophy, for better or

worse. If that means reflecting a male-dominated

discipline, so be it.

Nevertheless, that does not mean we can

wash our hands of all responsibility for any

inequality that might lead to. In realisation of this,

I am personally in favour of affirmative action, but

not positive discrimination. As I understand it, the

latter would require us to consider the merits of

female contributions to the magazine according

to a different, less rigorous, standard than we

would male ones. This seems wrong. In so far as

we have a responsibility and mission to put

together the best magazine possible, it would sell

readers short if we included articles of lesser

merit to even out the gender mix. Perhaps worse,

unless such a policy were secret, I think that

would be insulting to the women who did appear

in the magazine, as there would always be the

nagging doubt that they would not have been

published if we didn’t need token females.

Affirmative action is crucially different. What

it means is making an extra effort to encourage or

invite female contributors of the required

standard. I approve of this, but it has not been

easy to put it into practice. One reason is simply

that, like many small periodicals, we are not

exactly over-staffed, and there simply aren’t the

time and resources to make much extra effort to

do anything, above the already Herculean one to

put together four issues a year. So, given the

status quo, most articles end up being written by

men.

But over a decade of publishing this

magazine, I have also found women less inclined

to accept invitations to contribute than men. I did

try to get women to write for this issue’s forum, for

instance, but none said yes. Why this might be so

is not clear, but since it is so, can we really be

blamed if, as a result, the gender balance is not as

it ideally would be?

I’m genuinely unsure about how best to deal

with this problem, and your advice and opinions

are most welcome. In the meantime, I’m pleased

to say that we have two new columnists starting

with us this issue, both are women (Ophelia

Benson, p18 and Jean Kazez, p116), and both are

here entirely on merit and not to make up the

numbers. I hope you enjoy their contributions,

and all the others in this issue.

tpm3RD QUARTER 2008 news

Goethe gets down to business

OVER RECENT YEARS, philosophy has increasingly been

seen as a source of transferable thinking skills, relevant to a

broad range of professions and work needs. Melbourne Business

School has done its bit to substantiate this claim by

appointing John Armstrong in the newly created position of

philosopher-in-residence. The job was created to offer students

and faculty at the business school what the University hopes

will be a useful set of intellectual skills.

The Melbourne school's dean, John Seybolt, said in announcing

the appointment that lessons in leadership can be learned from

CEOs and managers and also from Plato, Goethe and “a

philosopher-in-residence who can transfer knowledge in an

accessible and enjoyable way.” Armstrong, of the University

of Melbourne’s department of philosophy, told tpmthat

philosophers themselves aren’t fully aware of the merits of their

discipline when it comes to asking people to explain what

they really think and why, and asking them to take on board

intelligent disagreement and

John Armstrong

either answer it or adjust their

own positions. He thinks this is something that a lot of

businesses need, and know they need.

He suggests that business should consider the possibilities

of educating desire, not in the sense of stimulating false wants

through advertising, but by asking what it would be

genuinely good for people to want and then to ask how it is

possible to supply that efficiently and effectively – and make a

profit. “The more intelligent you

are, the more likely you are to want to do good in the world.

Talent recruitment in business already faces the problem of

holding onto people who want money andvirtue.”

Armstrong thinks interaction with business is rewarding for philosophy. “Philosophy has a lot to gain when serious thinkers manage to extend their experience of the world and bring that constructively into their understanding. Much of the time philosophy is drawing surreptitiously on experience, and the broader and better digested that experience, the better the philosophy.” Armstrong urges that “because philosophy is a beautiful and noble pursuit it ought to be much more potent in the world. I'm terrified that a certain kind of shyness, dressed up as dignity and aloofness or just professional preoccupation, could rob the world of something it desperately needs. Intellectual grace is in such short supply. But for philosophy to be potent in the world, philosophers need to find ways of getting intellectual grace to speak to the ordinary and messy

3RD QUARTER 2008tpm 3RDQUARTER 2008tpm

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