#hugh schofield

Article by Hugh Schofield

Not since the 1970s has there been such an important discovery from the Great War in France. In woods on a ridge not far from the city of Reims, the bodies of more than 270 German soldiers have lain for more than a century - after they died the most agonising deaths imaginable.

The British Campaign Against Antisemitism highlights a very interesting section of an analysis by the BBC on the terror attacks in Europe:

Through the last 18 months of jihadist terror in France, a simple pattern is emerging: it keeps getting worse. If the January 2015 attacks were aimed at specific groups - Jews and blasphemers - the November follow-up was more indiscriminate. At the Bataclan and at the cafes the Islamists killed young adults, out being European hedonists. This time, it's gone a step further. In Nice, it is the people at large - families and groups of friends - doing nothing more provocative than attending a national celebration. Ten children were among the dead.

In the mind of the BBC's Hugh Schofield, terror attacks aren't so bad when they target people who aren't Hugh Schofield. In his mind, jihadists have some sort of logical reason to attack Jews, cartoonists and kids dancing. Targeting them is not nearly as bad as targeting random people that he might feel more empathy for.

But even then, Schofield manages to distance himself and his readers from the recent attacks by saying that the terrorists in France had "a hatred for France, for its symbols, and for all it stands for." Not the West, not non-Muslims - just the French.

It is as if Schofield completely forgot what happened on July 7. 2005, in London.

I have been interested to see two articles in the mainstream press about philosophy, since philosophy almost never makes the news.

The first of these is Philosophy isn't dead yet: Far from having replaced metaphysics, science is in a mess and needs help. Einstein saw it coming by Raymond Tallis (posted to the Google plus philosophy of science group by Ben O' Hare). 

I agree with almost everything in this short article; indeed, it seems to me to closely reflect things I have been writing on my blogs, especially regarding fashionable anti-philosophy, further fashionable anti-philosophy, and beyond anti-philosophy.

While it would be wrong to say that physics and scientism have "failed," it would be correct to say that they have been asked to do too much, and this primarily because philosophy made itself irrelevant (as I argued recently in Philosophy Institutionalized) and was therefore no longer available to address questions of ultimate concern (to borrow a phrase from Tillich).

Just a few days ago in Quantification and its Discontents I wrote:

There is a precise parallel between the quantification of the qualitied world and the historicity of the ahistorical (or eternal) world. To treat science qualitatively when it approaches the world quantitatively would be to get science as wrong as one gets religion when one treats mythology scientifically. And I say this not because I want to spare the hurt feelings of religious believers, but rather because I do not want to see a mess made of science if science should be asked to be something that it is not.

Just as it would be a falsification of science to insist that it abandon its quantitative abstractions for qualities, so too it would be a falsification of science to insist that science can not only fulfill the role science but that of philosophy also. 

The other article in the mainstream press about philosophy that I would like to mention today is Why does France insist school pupils master philosophy? by Hugh Schofield, BBC News, Paris.

There isn't much in the way of content in this amusing little reflection, but the author's attitude to philosophy -- he writes, "Thank the Lord I was spared the torment" of taking a philosophy exam, and he says of his daughter who does have to take a philosophy exam, "My heart bleeds for her, as I look at the list of themes that have to be mastered" -- reveals something about the attitude to philosophy in the Anglophone world.

Here's an interesting observation from the author:

"...one of the effects of having such an ideas-based vision of society, and elevating ideas to such heights, is that people actually start believing in them, and then maybe they start thinking the ideas are worth fighting for, or perhaps dying for, or perhaps even killing for. And then what?"