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Mill’s bicentential bonanza

The 200th birthday of John Stuart Mill on May 20 was widely commemorated in and outside academe. Most serious newspapers and magazines took the opportunity to refl ect on Mill’s legacy. Anthony Skelton penned an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Richard Reeves anticipated his new book on the man in Prospect, and Roger Scruton wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Mill “never understood that wisdom is deeper and rarer than rational thought.”

Melvyn Bragg did an hourlong programme on Mill for BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time while the philosopher Peter Cave presented John Stuart Mill: The Utility Man for the same channel. University College London hosted a four-day Bicentennial Conference, with internationally renowned speakers such as Wendy Donner, Martha Nussbaum, Fred Rosen, John Skorupski and Peter Singer. And in a great gift to fans of Mill with Internet access, the

Online Library of Liberty put all thirty three volumes of the University of Toronto Collected Works (General Editor JM Robinson,) online in pdf format in February. The OLL says the html version will be added “in the near future”. The International Society for Utilitarian Studies also devoted its ninth conference to marking the bicentenary of Mill’s birth. The Collected Works are at http: //oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Col lections.php?Collection=68

Friends of wisdom

The philosopher Nicholas Maxwell has formed a new group of academics calling for “a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry.” The Friends of Wisdom believe that “instead of giving priority to the search for knowledge, academia needs to devote itself to seeking and promoting wisdom by rational means, wisdom being

the capacity to realise what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. A basic task ought to be to help humanity learn how to create a better world.” Maxwell, who is Emeritus reader in philosophy of science at University College London, has pursued this theme in a number of books,

such as What’s Wrong With Science? (1976) and ence? (1976) and ence? From Knowledge to Wisdom (1984), as well as in to Wisdom (1984), as well as in to Wisdom articles for this magazine. Founding members of the group come from a variety of disciplines and include the philosophers Michael Krausz and GL Pandit, as well as regular TPM columnist Mathew Iredale. More about the group is available on its website, www. knowledgetowisdom.org.

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The Philosophers' Magazine /3rd quarter 2006
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Boycott briefl y back

The UK’s largest lecturers’ union voted on May 29, just three days before it merged with another union, in favour of a boycott of Israeli lecturers and academic institutions who do not publicly dissociate themselves from Israel’s “apartheid policies”. Delegates at the annual conference of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (Natfhe) narrowly backed the proposal, despite an opposing petition from more than 5,000 academics. The motion was proposed by Tom Hickey, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Brighton and a member of the union’s national executive committee. He told the Guardian that “The Guardian that “The Guardian majority of Israeli academics are either complicit or acquiescent in their government’s policies in the occupied territories,” and called it “culpable blindness” to overlook what Israeli colleagues think of the actions of their government.

The Association of University Teachers last year voted to boycott two Israeli universities, but after a revolt led by another philosopher, Jon Pike of the Open University (see TPM 32), the AUT overturned the boycott vote. Since Natfhe was due to disappear on June 1 as it and the AUT joined to form the largest higher education union in the world, with more than 110,000 members, the boycott motion, which was in any case only advisory, will become defunct. Nevertheless the AUT issued a statement on May 30, stating that it did not endorse the boycott and strongly urging its members not to implement it, adding, “In May 2005 AUT council overwhelmingly rejected an earlier decision to boycott two Israeli universities and reasserted its belief that freedom of expression, open debate and unhampered dialogue are prerequisites of academic freedom.”

No profi t is good news

EpsitemeLinks, the web’s #1 philosophy links site, has recently become a non-profi t corporation. The site was founded by Thomas Stone in 1997, the same year as TPM launched its website. By focusing solely on collecting and organising philosophy-related weblinks, Stone was able to create an indispensable resource which made EpistemeLinks a “category killer”. TPM Online , for instance, stopped maintain

ing its own philosophy links because Stone’s authoritative collection made it redundant. If you want to fi nd information on specifi c philosophers, themes, or to locate an etext, EpistemeLinks is almost always the fastest way. Stone continues to run the site, but as a non-profi t EpistemeLinks is now ultimately answerable to a board of directors which includes Ron Barnette, Stephen Hicks, Donald Hubin and Susan Wake.

In brief

A European collector has paid $750,000 (£400,000) for 26 letters sent by Voltaire to the Russian Empress Catherine the Great between 1768 and 1777. Catherine described herself as a “philosopher on the throne” and corresponded with several thinkers throughout her reign. The letters discuss Catherine’s foreign policy; Voltaire often signed himself “the old hermit”.

The New Statesman has announced the result of its poll to find the “heroes of our time”. The top fi ve were Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Bob Geldof, John Pilger, and Margaret Thatcher. Of more philosophical interest were Noam Chomsky (7), the Dalai Lama (9), Richard Dawkins (26) and Amartya Sen (29).

The French philosopher Jean-François Revel died on April 27 at the age of 82. He was a blunt critic of the antiAmericanism of European intellectuals, especially French ones. He considered himself a leftist in his youth, but later became troubled by views which condemned American foreign policy as imperialistic while always interpreting Soviet imperialism as philanthropic. He published Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution in 1970 after his fi rst visit to the US. The book became a best-seller in the US and in France, but received hostile reviews from European critics. Revel was made a member of the Académie Française in 1997.

The Philosophers' Magazine /3rd quarter 2006