Graeme Kay's Free Thinking Blog

I hope that Beatrice did not get up to too much evil with you over the weekend, Graeme.



;)



If I may also take the opportunity to respond to Krompetz40 on the Arts & Ideas messageboard, as the BBC Radio 3 messageboards are undoubtedly better for my absence:



"Following Tony's comment, will Wittgenstein, Nietzsche & Aristotle be speaking - or will kleines do the talking for them?"



https://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F7497570?thread=7022349&skip=0&show=20#p87529646



I suspect that they speak through you, Krompetz40, although to the best of my knowledge, they did not turn up at 'The Sage' over the Free Thinking weekend, although maestrolover clearly did. Nor could I talk for this year's Free Thinkers, as I am elsewhere (Strasbourg).



https://www.au-crocodile.com/



Nevertheless, in all humility, it was probably a better Free Thinking Festival for my, and the great philosophers', absence. Very briefly, Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably the greatest of twentieth century philosophers, thought that by becoming conscious of the real character in our personal use of language, we can remove the intellectual cramps that have come from our failure to understand how language actually functions.



https://www.open2.net/historyandthearts/philosophy_ethics/wittgensteinbiography.html



Friedrich Nietzsche was also something of a Free Thinker, in the sense that he was interested in finding out what human beings can do, what human possibility is, what humanity is capable of understanding and creating from within.



https://www.open2.net/historyandthearts/philosophy_ethics/nietzsche_bio.html



In terms of morality, Aristotle uses this image: he says that just as an architect is not going to try to measure a complex fluted column with a straight ruler, so too the ethical judge is not going to take a simple and inflexible set of rules into the complexities of a practical situation, for example, the Interactive Hub of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at 'The Sage' last weekend.



Instead, just as the architect measures 'The Sage' with a flexible strip of metal, when we address the complexities of the human condition, we have to have our faculties open and responsive, ready to shape ourselves to the complex, perhaps unique and non-repeatable, demands of a particular situation. We don't ultimately control our moral environment, and we cannot therefore be self-contained moral entities. We sometimes therefore need to adjust rules to meet new challenges.



This is certainly applicable to Free Thinking. In philosophical terms, I suspect that Aristotle has found the right balance between the oversimplifying theorising that takes philosophy too far from the messiness of ordinary life and the house of cards approach which suggests that there is no point in asking for and giving explanations, because the assumptions on which they are based are fundamentally flawed:



"I count us braver who overcome our desires than those who conquer their enemies; for the hardest victory is over self."



Aristotle



https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/greatest_philosopher_aristotle.shtml



The key point to remember about Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, is that he was ultimately resistant to theory.



"We just act."



Ludwig Wittgenstein



So we do, Graeme?

So, I've just had the good old BBC trying to sell me the idea that T Dan Smith was not a crook, who helped create the poverty that still blights the region, but indeed, a courageous, visionary, giant of a man, even a poetic and brilliant savant who had a plan for the North, that still resonates today! Of course it does, what he did and what all the other great spell blinding charlatans do from Maxwell to Madoff, ( to name but two) isto betray the trust they assume. Smith , despite his heroic working-class background, and oh how many of this ilk are able to boast equally impressive roots, betrayed the trust created by the myriad of equally heroic but far less well rewarded foot soldiers of the North's search for a decent way of life against the grain of indifference and neglect. He and his gang of cronies, such as Alderman Cunningham, yes dear Jack's dad, used the Labour Party as little more than their private club sharing out parliamentary seats like liquorice allsorts to one toady after another, who without exception, did their best to help kill, the little bit of genuine inspiration that flourishes in the North. No, I don't buy the T Dan Smith was a great man let down by a few misjudged relationships fairy tale, the real price of men like him is too high for any such sentimental revisionism!!

Tuesday night's talk on women and evil was compelling. It seems that women have the same capacity as men to commit evil acts, although no society exists where men do not account for at least 80 per cent of violence. The discussion on Franz Stangl who oversaw the deaths of around 900,000 Jews in Treblinka, and the ordinariness of the guards who volunteered to work in the place, was chilling. How could they slaughter Jews day after day yet live a seemingly normal family life? The point was made that it is the normality of evil that ought to intrigue us.