Author: Mark Hannam

Earlier this year, the TLS published my review of two books by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas.  In the recently translated first volume of Also a History of Philosophy (2023), Habermas discusses a paradox in the genealogy of post-metaphysical thinking, that is, contemporary philosophical thought that is concerned with the character of our knowledge of the world, but which has abandoned any ambition to imagine, describe, or know anything beyond our world.  The paradox is this: despite the secular character of modern Western thought, its origins can be traced back to early Jewish theology and ancient Greek metaphysics.  In this respect, modern Western thought shares features common to other major intellectual traditions which also draw upon ancient religious texts, notably, Buddhism and the Vedic teachings of ancient India, and Taoism and the Confucian teachings of ancient China.  These traditions all experienced a gradual but decisive revolution in character during in the period known as the Axial Age (roughly, the eighth to the third centuries, BCE). 

Habermas’s argument is that during the Axial Age, previously well-established forms of reasoning ceased to provide convincing explanations for what was observed in the natural world, and that core religious beliefs and ritual behaviours ceased to provide effective forms of communal integration in the shared social world.  These failures, or blockages, provoked the intellectual revolutions associated with the teachings of Buddha, Moses, Laozi, and Plato.  The collective learning processes that overcame these blockages – which took different forms in each context – provide the template for Habermas’s theory of philosophical and social progress.  As a species, he argues, we are able to learn, to solve problems, to improve our knowledge of the world around us and the arrangements by which we organise our society.  While progress has taken different forms in the East and the West, there is an underlying continuity of shared learning and its application across the whole range of human thought. 

Continue reading “Unlimited endings”

Within five minutes’ walk of my London home there are a dozen Vietnamese restaurants.  They cluster together at the southern end of Kingsland Road, all offering broadly the same cuisine, but each with subtle variations to the menu, the décor, and the price.  In the evenings, they are often full, with groups of prospective customers spilling out onto the pavements, forming approximations of queues, waiting for tables to become available.  I sometimes head to one of them for lunch, when they are comparatively quiet, to enjoy catfish in a caramelised sauce, or a chicken curry with coconut milk, and maybe a bottle of Hanoi beer.  The easy availability of good quality Vietnamese food, has always been part of my experience of London life. 

The presence of significant numbers of Vietnamese restaurants in the London Borough of Hackney is partly due to the work of Thanh Vu, who died two years ago.  During the border war between Vietnam and China in 1979, he fled by boat with one of his daughters.  They were picked up by a British ship after two weeks at sea, and taken to Singapore.  From there, Thanh and his daughter made their way to London, two of the 30,000 Vietnamese refugees (known as the “boat people”) who were accepted by the British government of the day.  Initially they were widely dispersed around the country, a policy designed by the British to avoid the over-concentration of refugees in one area.  Many Vietnamese people, preferred to live closer together, to re-establish family and friendship networks, and to support each other as they adapted to life in a new country. 

Continue reading “Boat people”

Directly outside my home, level with the second floor, a train track runs along a cast-iron bridge that was built in the 1860s.  The track was disused for many years but re-opened just over a decade ago as part of the expanded London Overground network.  I like the shape and structure of the bridge, a reminder of London’s industrial past and the constant renewal of its material infrastructure, and I enjoy watching the regular passing of trains, especially since their noise is almost completely excluded by my secondary glazing.  On bright summer mornings, the sunlight that floods into my study through the east facing window, is supplemented by light from the glass of the moving train carriages reflected through the west facing windows.  When I catch the southbound train, from nearby Hoxton station, I sometimes glance at my home as we cross over the bridge, but the train moves too fast for me to see anything other than a blur of bookshelves.

Sometime later this year, this Overground line will acquire a new name: the Windrush Line.  The name refers to the ship, the Empire Windrush, which in 1948 brought the first sizeable group of postwar immigrants from the West Indies to London.  The Windrush generation, as they are now commonly described, comprise those who arrived in the late-1940s and 1950s, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Many of this generation continue to live in the areas connected by this line: Dalston, Haggerston, New Cross, Peckham, and Penge, and they have contributed much to the vibrancy and variety of London life.  Transport for London, the body which is responsible for the management of this railway line on behalf of London’s Mayor, says that the new name celebrates the Windrush generation and the wider importance of migration that has created a lasting legacy that continues to shape and enrich London’s cultural and social identity today.    

Continue reading “Names for trains”

Last month I visited Antwerp.  I left my house early in the morning, and took a taxi to St Pancras station, to catch the train to Brussels.  After passing through the automatic ticket barrier and the security check, where my bag and coat were scanned, I queued to “exit” the United Kingdom by showing my passport to an employee of the UK Border Agency.  Immediately afterwards, I queued to “enter” France, showing my passport once again, to be stamped by an employee of the French Direction centrale de la police aux frontières.  Although my train was going to Belgium, it passes through France first, so my entry into the EU was controlled by the French border force.   Since France is a member of the Schengen Area, I was able to travel from France to Belgium without further identity checks.  It is a curious fact that entry into the Eurostar departure lounge at St Pancras station in London requires the permission of the French government.  Unfortunately, the quality and the price of the coffee available remains decidedly mainstream British.

A few days later, I travelled to Co Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.   I left my house early in the morning and took a train to Gatwick airport, to catch a flight to Belfast.  After passing through the automatic ticket barrier and the security check, where my bag and coat were scanned, I treated myself to another over-priced and bland coffee, before heading to the gate.  My ticket was checked again, however I was not asked to show any form of ID before I boarded the plane.  After landing, I picked up a hire car and drove for just over an hour to Derry, after which the A2 becomes the N13 as I crossed the otherwise unmarked border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  For the second time in a week, I had exited the United Kingdom and entered the European Union, but in this case, I had not been asked to show my passport to anyone.  Brexit has been enormously disruptive to life in Britain, but crossing the land border between the UK and the EU remains wholly unnoteworthy. 

Continue reading “Disrupted”

Next year — or perhaps the year after, since the historical record is not clear — will be the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of the death of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, who was brutally tortured and then executed on the orders of his former employer, Theoderic, King of Italy.  In the history of philosophy, Boethius is both important and famous, but not for the same reasons.   His importance lies in the scholarly work of his earlier life, when he translated several Greek works into Latin, including texts by Aristotle, and wrote commentaries on other important classical works, particularly on logic, as well as some early Christian theological studies.  These translations and commentaries were highly influential in the philosophical and theological thought of the next millennium, leading one contemporary scholar to describe him, along with Augustine and Aristotle, as the fundamental philosophical author in the Latin tradition.  Despite his influence, as a person he plays a very minor role in most histories of philosophy, being viewed today mostly as a conduit of Greek thought to medieval Europe rather than as an important thinker in his own right. 

The work for which he is famous, and which remains easily available today in English translation, is the Consolation of Philosophy, a literary text written while he was in prison in Ravenna, awaiting execution.  Written as a dialogue between the author and a woman who personifies “philosophy”, part in prose and part in poetry, the book asks us to consider what true happiness consists of, and how we should understand life’s sudden reversals of fortune.  For a man who came from a leading patrician family in Rome and had been appointed to a position as a senior royal official, but who now faced imminent death for defending a senator accused of treason, and whose erudition and scholarship had attracted unjust accusations of participation in occult practices, this was a real and pressing question. 

Continue reading “The provocation of philosophy”