A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Author: Michael Bennett

Academia / Children / General / Pedagogy / Public Philosophy / Teaching / Teaching Philosophy

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Teaching students to be good

What’s the point of teaching moral and political philosophy?

Ancient philosophers around the world would have thought the answer to this question was blindingly obvious: the point is to make students better – better as citizens, rulers, or just as human beings.

Yet today I suspect very few academics would defend this position, and most would find the idea of inculcating virtue among their students to be silly at best, dangerous at worst.

I think the ancients were right on this one. We should educate our students to make them better moral and political agents. And I don’t think this has to be scarily illiberal at all – at least, that’s what I’m going to argue here.

The model of ethical discourse my students seem to be learning in secondary school
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Distribution / Economics / General / Social justice

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The small-mindedness of means-testing

The hot topic in British politics last week was the government’s decision to scrap the winter fuel payment. People over the age of 65 used to be able to claim a lump sum of between £200 and £300 pounds each winter. Desperately scrabbling around for cash, the government has changed the policy so that now only elderly people who are already receiving state financial help are eligible for the payment. This is a classic example of “means-testing”: making state benefits only available to those who do not have the means to pay for things themselves.

Means-testing tends to be popular because it seems to make a lot of sense. Why waste money providing benefits to millionaires? At the most general level, a state with any egalitarian ambitions must treat the rich and poor differently.

Nonetheless, means-testing is generally small-minded and regrettable.

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Democracy / General

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3 Points for a Win and Constitutional Design

Critics of the “first past the post” electoral rule often complain that it is unfair. It seems unfair that (for example) in the 2019 UK general election the Scottish National Party won 7% of parliamentary seats with only 4% of votes cast across the country, while the Liberal Democrats won 2% of seats with 4% of votes.

So, which electoral system is the fairest of them all?

I submit that there is really no answer to this question, and we would do better to discard it.

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Academia / Moral values

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An ad-hominem attack on anti-consequentialism

I think there’s something unintentionally revealing about the title of Frances Kamm’s book Intricate Ethics. Most people, I expect, would find it quite odd for intricacy to be a key selling point for a theory of ethics. Yet this actually makes complete sense, albeit not in the way Kamm intends. Philosophers need ethics to be intricate. If it were simple, they’d be out of a job.

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Democracy

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Slow boring or endless weeding? Metaphors for politics

It’s easy to get sick of politics. So much wasted effort. So many stillborn schemes and plans that go nowhere. So much running to stand still. But if you’re running to stay in place on a treadmill, and you stop running, you go backwards. And the same is true in politics. Seemingly wasted effort is often not really waste, because without it your political opponents would have gained (even more) ground. Of course, some forms of activism are more effective than others, and some may even be counter-productive. But the mere fact you have not achieved anything concrete does not mean you’ve been ineffective: your achievement may instead have been to hinder your opponents.

One of the most celebrated political metaphors comes from Max Weber:

Max Weber
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Democracy / Governance / International

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Confucius’s Mistake, and Plato’s

This year I decided to put some Chinese philosophy on our curriculum, and I’ve been enjoying getting to know that tradition. But there’s something frustrating about classical Chinese political philosophy. It’s the same thing I find so irritating about Plato.

The wisest should rule. This is the core of Plato’s political philosophy. It’s an idea shared by Confucius and indeed most of the classical Chinese tradition. But I think it’s largely meaningless.

The ancient philosophical beard: who wore it better?

Plato presents rule by the wise as the answer to a question of constitutional theory. Who should rule? Ancient Greek thought gives a menu of options such as:

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Academia

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Political Theory Podcasts

Political theory hasn’t been neglected by the podcast boom, but it’s not always easy to know where to go. Here, I list (with links) the best political theory/philosophy related content in the podverse. (There are also some iTunes U courses and related suggestions below).

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