Finaldraft

the-sophist.co.uk

produced and edited by students at the

University of Oxford

what is the

ethical

significance

of celebrities

in modern society

Welcome to the first edition of

the sophist a new magazine with a new way of thinking about philosophy

What is philosophy? Stuffy? Boring?

Complicated? At The Sophist we believe it shouldn’t be like that.

Philosophy is a discipline that is about questions that do not seek answers; it is the act of examining life itself. Is this irrelevant? We often picture philosophers as apart from society; considering questions from the insularity of ivory towers.

The Sophist aims to show how philosophy is not merely the province of academia. One beautiful thing about philosophy is that despite its seemingly academic nature, anyone can engage with it regardless of their prior knowledge. A philosopher is anyone who’s ever asked ‘why?’

Philosophy is applicable to every aspect of our lives, from simple moral questions of responsibility to careful decisions about our careers and what we wish to get from life. We hope to show how relevant philosophy can be with this edition’s theme of celebrity, an inescapable yet fascinating phenomenon of our daily lives. Especially thanks to social media, celebrities are now present in virtually every cultural sphere. We think it is time to step back and properly examine the odd, yet deeply ingrained, practice of deifying people within our society, which almost everyone does without question.

Our desire to make philosophy accessible to everyone is one of the reasons why we specify that all our articles be written in a readable, engaging fashion.

To paraphrase Richard Feynman, “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Since philosophy is about examining everything, it is much easier to do this when we explain things simply. We strive to say exactly what we mean, which is often more challenging than writing in flowery prose.

Another reason for this conversational style is that we want philosophy to be engaged with actively. This has precedent – one of the most famous pieces of philosophy, the Socratic dialogue, is meant to be a conversation. We want our articles to be discussed, argued about and criticised.

On this note, do not let language deceive you. Despite simple language, the ideas you will find here are no less valid than those written in a much more ‘academic’ style. By making philosophy comprehensible and, more importantly, readable, we hope to show you just how relevant and engaging philosophy can be.

So sit down and enjoy this diverse mix of articles but just remember: think responsibly.

henna, colette, eleanor I publishing editors

the

y t i r b cele issue

4

5

6

with celebrity in mind intro to mind Jonathan P. Martindale

The undead celebrity, how the famous survive death Edward wilkins

10

kishan koria

live in the world as it is make it as it ought to be sam peters

Make sure to check out our website for more in-depth articles

the-sophist.co.uk

Deserving of it? julian ashwin

19

thought experiment

20

Deserving of it?

avicenna’s floating man Colette lewis

Rheaa Rao 24

a lamentable state of affairs intro to ethics

11

17

celebrity is dead Jonathan P. Martindale

is there any justice in the world of celebrity? jack fisher

can we know celebrities? can we know anyone? colette lewis

8

14

the paradox of celebrity excess Kishan koria

26

Agony kant

27

philosbook

with

celebrity in mind The following contributions explore the theme of celebrity within the philosophy of mind, construed in a somewhat broad fashion, so as to expand the scope of the debate beyond the rather dry and technical annals of mental causation, mind-brain identity (is Lady Gaga really her brain?), and other such characteristic topics. Many of the articles explore the way in which our concepts of what it is to know and to be a person are rendered problematic by certain aspects of the celebrity lifestyle.

Our contributors are all agreed that thinking about celebrities can reveal important things about who we are; about what human beings, people or ‘persons’ are generally.

In cases of disagreement, it is up to you to judge what your own thoughts are on the matter; philosophy is nothing without dialogue.

Jonathan p. Martindale I mind sub-editor

THE SOPHIST / 05

A comment one often seems to hear in reference to the death of a close friend or relative is that the loved one will ‘live on’ in some fashion – be it in their accomplishments, through their creative contributions, or in the memories they leave behind. Whilst the bereaved may leave flowers, messages, or make visits to resting places (half-remembrances and half-condolences; think of the familiar call for the deceased to ‘rest in peace’), there are also parts of the person that persist in the thoughts of others.

These are detached parts, to be sure, but the thoughts that originated with the deceased in life had consequences (in action) that form the basis of memories in others.

Emotions which resulted in enduring creative works – a song, a diary, a joke – can still be read in the works left behind after the originator has passed away. Thus we can, in some fashion, still enjoy the company of our friends and family long after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.

A deep-seated desire to communicate with a dead loved one isnatural, despite there being little evidence to suggest that there is much in the way of two-way traffic in that communication. This suggests that the person, as we came to know him or her, no longer exists.

There is, however, some limited interaction possible with some of these parts of person-

ality that do endure. I can still be moved by a joke created by a friend who has passed; that little part of my friend literally lives on, a mental process (or brain state, if you prefer – the outcome is the same for this line of argument) that originated within my friend, found expression and now is part of my mental process.

If human personality can be likened to something like the software of a computer system, then a little sub-routine ‘leaks out’, to be adopted into the software running another system. The human computer is merely a (changing) system, so it is the ‘software’ which actually constitutes the person. But, in that case, it is trivially true that some part of this ‘software’ can run on another machine. In the case in question, my friend’s joke-creation algorithm has found a home in my computer of a brain.

The death of celebrities is particularly interesting. Celebrities do not have the same connection to most members of the general public that an average individual does with members of their family, or their close friends.

The most the majority of people see of any celebrity is the image cultivated around their status as public figures, usually by societal institutions like the media. The mass of ‘the public’ never meets, nor interacts in any directly personal way, with its celebrity idols – and yet they, and their works, are familiar.

Following the death of Princess Diana, thousands of gifts and hundreds of thousands of messages of condolence were received by the Royal household. It is a fair assumption that most of those sending gifts or messages had not met the Princess, or had met her only very fleetingly. Yet people often reported that they ‘felt like’ they knew her. What is it that they report knowing?

Part of what the public knew of Diana was undoubtedly not something originating from Diana, but rather the creations of spin doctors,

THE SOPHIST / 06 jealous lovers and newspaper gossip columnists. In the sense discussed above, such fragments are not parts of her personality.

Other traits did originate with her, of course.

The all-consuming general public can never be sure which parts of this image did spring from Diana’s original (living) personality, and thus the continuance of her as a personality (even in the very limited sense above) might be even more ambiguous than that of close friends and well-known relatives.

Even so – if we can allow that my five-yearold self and myself now are one and the same person, despite our many obvious differences – why not accept that the deceased personality is not going to be the same as when it lived? It would be surprising if death did not wreak some fairly major transformations in personality, after all. It may be that the dead Diana is not able to make original contributions to the world of ideas. Instead, some idea of hers (say, her opposition to land mines) may well become an idea adopted by me, and thus a part of my personality. The idea started in the brain of the Princess, was articulated

by her, circulated by the media, heard by me, became a part of my thought-process and becomes a strand of my personality.

To be clear: this is not simply to say that I adopted her idea, or picked up a meme. It is to say that if we accept that traits such as opinions are part of personality, and those traits are either physical processes or mental processes, then a part of a personality can survive after death, by virtue of becoming a part of another, living personality.

Celebrities can have large parts of their personalities ‘exploded’ across different media, leaving multiple traces of their personality out there – an idea, gestated in another mind, can be reborn as a process in my mind when I read the right book; a brain state which gives rise to a haunting piece of music lives again when I hear the music; an emotion which pervades the being of another can be stirred anew in my heart. Perhaps piecing together all these disparate secondary experiences allows the dead celebrity, in quite a meaningful way, a second sort of life.

can we know celebrities? can we know anyone?

i

n Bret Easton Ellis’ Rules of Attraction, it is strongly asserted that “nobody ever knows anybody else, ever!” While this appears in the midst of one characters’ expression of emotional turmoil, rather than considered reflection, what is highlighted is a strikingly philosophical issue.

The idea of ‘knowing a person’, innately linked to the question of identity, is distinct from the idea of ‘knowing facts’. If you say that you ‘truly’ know someone, you imply that you have a sense of ‘who they really are’ - or rather, what their identity is, and part of what

by colette lewis

this means is that you can ‘handle’ the person: you can predict their responses, know what will interest them, bore them, make them laugh, upset them, and so on (in short, the kind of knowledge that philosophers might be inclined to call ‘know-how’). In the above novel, one of the central themes is what happens when an idea of who someone is becomes challenged by the reality of their identity.

The reality is that the people whom we think other people are never really match up to how each person sees themselves. There are clearly a number of layers of a person:

THE SOPHIST / 07 from how we perceive ourselves, to how we act around our friends, to the person whom strangers think we are. Some of these layers are clearly less ‘real’ than others.

Celebrity is an interesting phenomenon, as it makes the distinctions between these different layers especially noticeable. Superficially, actors who have played certain parts for years (especially in soap operas or sitcoms) are often associated very strongly with their characters.

Then there is the façade that the media portray, whether this is the ‘saintly’ figure of Kate Middleton or the ‘crazy’ Miley Cyrus. Next, there is the person whom they pretend to be around their fans, followed by the person they are around their closest friends (who in turn can be divided further, because everyone presents a slightly different persona around different people).

Finally, there is the person whom they themselves think they are.

If you have ever met one of your ‘heroes’, you will surely be aware of the disparity between the different layers of who this person ‘really is’. Whether she was lovelier or whether he was much meaner than you expected, I am sure that one of the most striking aspects of the experience of meeting these people is the realisation that they are actually normal people. But the façade with which we are presented, or which we project upon them, turns these people into something much greater than us. They become paragons of our society, even though they really have the same failings and virtues as the rest of us.

This means that, in a sense, the supposed ‘reality’ behind the paragon does not exist.

This occurs in many other aspects of social interaction. For instance, if you tell someone you do not know very well that you are an Oxford student, I have little doubt that sudden-

ly their concept of your identity changes somewhat - perhaps becoming full of stereotypes, or the idea that you are the epitome of intelligence, even if this is nowhere near how you would personally define yourself.

This phenomenon, since it occurs on such an extreme scale for celebrities, perhaps explains in part why so many of them suffer from certain psychological problems. The pressure to try to conform to the person that people think you are, especially when such a person is unrealistically perfect, is surely mentally taxing.

Some celebrities are able to embrace this idea of having separate personae. Alice Cooper and Lady Gaga, for instance, have very clear distinctions between their stage personae and their more ‘real’ selves. This is probably healthier for the mind and the ego, as by creating an almost fictional character for fans to idolise and elevate to the superhuman status of celebrity, the real people behind are able to protect their human sides somewhat.

The ‘celebrity’ itself does not really exist.

We turn actual celebrities into something more than human, and this automatically makes the existence of ‘celebrities’ as such impossible. Though you may have got the singer in your favourite band to sign a t-shirt, the person you wanted to meet was never really there.

This is also true of ordinary people. We cannot help but try to categorise people artificially as we strive to ‘know’ them. However, we can never see all the facets of anyone, since we can never see into a person’s mind . That friend who you think can do no wrong may have incredibly dark thoughts, just as that ‘perfect’ celebrity may be seriously insecure.

We can never truly know our best friends, let alone celebrities.

The ‘celebrity’ itself does not really exist.

THE SOPHIST / 08

“I tell you: still have within to give a dancing

one must chaos oneself, birth to star”

Celebrity is Dead

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Foibles of Fame By jonathan P. Martindale

C

olette’s contribution to this issue shows how the ‘celebrity’, the person whose beliefs, personality, style and mannerisms with which we have come to feel acquainted through their exhibition in the media, may often be purely fictitious.

Those aspects are said to be at odds with the real identity of the agent whose actions may, at any point in time, come to shatter

our illusions. In the most extreme cases of personal disappointment, people have even been known to reject another as ‘dead to them’. It takes only a little imagination to understand how the person we thought we knew has been very literally ‘destroyed’ by what has come to pass. (The ‘Ian Watkins’ of thousands of young rock fans’ imaginations is an example).

THE SOPHIST / 09 Colette’s conclusion is that “We can never truly know our best friends, let alone celebrities” - since we can “never see into this person, see what it is like to be her from within her own mind”. This is an epistemological conclusion, i.e. pertaining to our knowledge of the ‘real people’ behind the image, in light of the way in which we encounter them (that is, their images) in modern society. More disturbing is the question of whether there are any ‘real people’ behind the celebrity persona to discover.

Our concept of being a person presupposes some stability of personality: where an individual’s attitudes and affectations appear strongly enough divided, they might even have multiple personality disorder.

Consider Britney Spears’ famous breakdown circa 2007, culminating in a shaved head and a trip to rehab following two short marriages; an increasingly riotous lifestyle and a move toward a more mature, sexualised image in her recording career. When we try to make sense of such actions, why must we suppose that there really is something, some self thwarted at every turn, secretly standing behind the visible chaos?

Nietzsche, for one, contended that the idea of a unified self possessed of privileged knowledge of its own identity was, ultimately, an illusion. He wrote instead that “We are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law ‘each is furthest from himself’ applies to all eternity.” For him, individuals are first and foremost bundles of drives, dispositions, irrational and primal urges. When the mutual execution of

Friedrich Nietzsche was a 19th century German philosopher. He is most well-known for the challenges he posed to Christianity and traditional forms of morality. Some of his key ideas include the will to power, the death of God, and what he termed the ‘Übermensch’. these drives leads to the enactment of an apparently orderly life-plan, then perhaps we may speak of persons. But this integration is utterly contingent and, for Nietzsche, an ideal which few (and most probably not Britney Spears) manage to attain.

Nietzsche, then, might suggest that the reason we can never know who celebrities ‘really are’ is just that there is no person behind the semi-chaotic exhibition of bundles of drives to know. Perhaps the various demands, commitments, expectations and responsibilities of the celebrity lifestyle, towards one’s family and friends on the one hand, to one’s fans on the other, and still further to the media and to one’s promoters and business associates, are simply conditions ill-suited for the cultivation of selfhood.

If this is right, then not even celebrities themselves need possess the answer to the question of ‘who they are’, for there need be no fact of the matter beyond whatever is seen to emerge from the interplay of animal drives. The self stands forever fragile, at risk of dissolution in the maelstrom.

But, of course, who said that being a celebrity was easy?

The self stands forever fragile, at risk of dissolution in the maelstrom.

IT IS A

Lamentable state of affairs t h at s e e s u s i n a w o r l d w h e r e i n t h e

Lives of celebrities

are more discussed than morality

H

e t h i c s

ello! OK, and Heat retain their presence on the shelves of our newsagents, whilst Aristotle and Adorno remain confined to the library. It is an unfortunate fact – but a fact nonetheless – that the glittering lights of the world of celebrity are, for many, a more appealing focal point than the conceptions of morality and the good life presented by the world’s greatest philosophers (and that’s before we even get started on meta-ethics).

The Sophist, however (and more specifically the contributors to this section) believe that there is an intriguing and largely unexamined overlap between the two subjects. Living in a world so obviously influenced by celebrity culture brings with it its own ethical conundrums. To do these problems justice requires both an awareness of celebrity and an appeal to the insights of moral philosophers both past and present. As such, we find ourselves with combinations of subjects that one might not expect to cohere: Mill and Minaj, Rawls and Rooney, Kant and Kardashian.

The wonderful thing about ethics, as a subject, is that it affects us all. Even the least philosophically-inclined are prone to feel pangs of moral disapproval about things they perceive as unjust or unfair, even they don’t want to formalise that discomfort in the manner of a philosopher. Ethics is a particularly accessible part of philosophy, and our contributions aim to reflect this.

Themes of excessive wealth, distributive justice, moral obligations and the desirability of the world as it is offer particularly interesting scope for reflection, and apply most pertinently to the 21st-century obsession with celebrity. Our contributors look to frame these common questions about the ethics of our world with more reflective insight, and in doing so shed light on the celebrity culture to which we are acclimatised.

Ultimately, morality (even when focused on a particular phenomena) is an area of enquiry that will never be exhausted. We hope, however, that the considerations of this section will provoke your own thinking about the ethics of celebrity culture – and perhaps bring fresh insight to your next perusal of the gossip columns.

Kishan Koria I Ethics sub-editor

THE SOPHIST / 11

Live in the World as it is, make it as it ought to be Sam Peters offers a discussion of the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ of celebrity culture, arguing that celebrities have notable ethical significance in modern society but that this is ultimately an undesirable state of affairs

J

ack Gleeson (of Game of Thrones fame) recently gave a talk at the Oxford Union in which he noted what he believed to be the pervasive and destructive nature of celebrity culture. As I sit pondering the talk, and my own experiences with ‘celebrity culture’, I find that I cannot help but agree with his assertions - there is little doubt that ‘celebrity culture’ is a social fact in the Western world. Not myself hugely interested in the lives of celebrities, I quickly note an unsolicited familiarity with ‘What Does the Fox Say?’, what ‘twerking’ is, and that Hilary Duff is one of the few child stars not to have gone ‘off the rails’.

My last point is, it seems, evidence of the darker side of celebrity culture, for it speaks not to a celebrity’s work, but to their personal life. As someone disconnected with celebrity news, Twitter, and Hello! magazine, I wonder how it is that I have such information. The answer, I think, comes from my queuing at Tesco, watching TV; even procrastination breaks on YouTube. In modern society, we are inundated with news of celebrity lives; what this celebrity is wearing this season; who has and has not, lost weight; that this celebrity has

gone off the rails again, entered rehab, got a divorce. It is not simply that we are familiar with celebrity names, for the ‘cult’ of celebrity has increasingly commoditised the lives of our favourites. We have become aware of intimate details about their lives, whether we seek such knowledge or not. As Gleeson argues, this is in its purest terms the dehumanization of a celebrity into a product that we can own, for as little as £1.20 a copy.

This is, in its purest terms, a dehumanization of celebrity into a product which we can own; for as little as one pound twenty a copy Gleeson goes on to discuss Baudrillard’s concept of ‘simulacra’ these are signs which, though intended to symbolise an ultimate reality, actually point to nothing. The growth of celebrity culture is the result of a

genuine interest in the lives of the famous; an interest fed by the constant supply that we receive in the western world. I propose, alongside Gleeson, that this is a matter of ‘prestige’. Tehrani suggests that celebrity culture is a product of our evolutionary makeup. When our ancestors noted an individual with certain skills, other individuals would emulate his or her behaviour, to learn the skill, endowing the first individual with ‘prestige’.

The problem with this method was that followers would also pick up habits from the skilled individual which were irrelevant to the skill desired. Celebrity culture, in our modern world, presents us with individuals who have a number of skills which are highly valued, and which many of us wish to emulate. They also live a life which we value. Celebrity culture, in fact, is presented to us as ‘the high life’. Living in big houses, driving big cars, taking regular holidays, and if the blooper reels are anything to go by, all whilst having a lot of fun on the job.

It seems therefore that, perhaps by a quirk of evolution, celebrity culture is not only here, but is here to stay. Returning to Baudrillard’s concept of ‘simulacra,’ we may note the

THE SOPHIST / 12 lie with which our evolutionary traits leave us; the false symbols we have forced our commodity-celebrities to be. There are numerous examples female body image, held up as an aesthetic ideal; making money and living the ‘high life’ held as the pinnacle of human achievement. The accumulation of fame made the marker for happiness. We have all seen the covers of ‘Hello!’ declaring X celebrity to be the ‘beauty of the year’. We pore over the latest box office figures to see which movie has made the most money, and delight in watching our favourite actors walk down that red carpet.

At the same time, we expect female celebrities to be perfectly skinny – but not too skinny. We expect celebrities to be philanthropic and

make a positive contribution to society. We delight in their excess, but sit in judgement if they go ‘too far’ at a party. Our celebrities therefore cannot be what they are said to represent. They are our ideal, granted

We must save

both ourselves & our celebrities from

the precipice

‘prestige’, so that they symbolise for us the lives of which we dream.

Yet in so placing them, we perch them atop an impossible pedestal, from which their fall is inevitable and painful – often resulting in substance abuse, psychological issues, and public disgrace. We create for

them an expectation paradox; if they are to maintain favour they are obliged to embody each one of our ideals in an attempt to live up to the symbols we create them, walking an impossible road between ‘ideal’ and ‘too far.’ Thus their empty symbolism becomes clear. We create them as commodities, asking them to live lives of public accountability, which we ourselves could not bear, so that we may ensure that they symbolise for us a life truly ideal.

What, then, is to be done? This article has thus far rejected celebrity culture. Yet, as its title notes, we must live in the world as it is. Celebrity culture is a social fact, and to that end, it seems that celebrities do face an ethical choice. The nature of this choice is complex, for in

THE SOPHIST / 13 many cases, it is not a choice they desire, foresee, or one to which they give their assent. I am quite sure that there are those who will argue that a celebrity chooses to take on life in the public eye when they decide to follow a certain career path, but I cannot agree. It is simply unfair to say that in opting to follow a careerpath for which one has not only an ability, but also a love, means also voluntarily opting for the loss of private personal identity. Yet the ethical choice remains, because the celebrity is in that position, however they travelled there. It would be naïve to assume that their actions will not make it, in some way, onto the public forum, and blind ignorance to assume that this will not have an impact on the general public.

To that end, celebrities are rolemodels. They live lives we desire, and have qualities we wish to emulate. And so long as the concept of beauty is defined by walking that impossibly thin line between ‘boyish’ and ‘slim’, between ‘feminine’ and ‘curvy’; so long as money and fame are treated as the epitome of human excellence, celebrities do society a disservice. There are a few, such as Jennifer Lawrence, who have come out and bravely declared to the world that they will look as they do. Still others, Gleeson a perfect example, have spoken of the huge disadvantages of fame. Keanu Reeves is noted as giving away $80 million of his ‘matrix’ salary to costume and special effects teams.

This work is to be admired, certainly, but the job has only just begun.

Though champions for a healthy society, many celebrities still fear to move past ‘curvy’ for fear of the tabloids, creating not a change in society, but simply an aesthetic paradigm shift. Many celebrities revel in their fame, selling gossip to magazines, forever concerned with the

accumulation of wealth.

True change does not require a paradigm shift in this kind of aesthetics, nor can it rely on the work of the few. Instead, we must see a change in thought pattern, such that material value no longer marks the sum of a person’s worth. We must realise that fame and money, though they can have positive effects on a person’s life, are not the epitome of human achievement, nor are they the sublime ideals we all hope them to be.

We must save both ourselves and our celebrities from the precipice of their socially-constructed pedestals.

As our role models, this power lies partly in the hands of the celebrities themselves, as they currently have virtually a monopoly on our accepted ideals.

Whilst all this ‘is’ the case, it ‘ought’ not to be. Celebrities ought not to have the heavy power of influencing whether a young girl feels worthy because of the number on her scales; they ought not to have to walk the impossible road between ‘ideal’ and ‘too far’; they ought not to face symbolising the pinnacle of our idealised lives. Our celebrities symbolise values that cannot, perhaps even should not, exist in the real world. We have turned celebrities into commodities in an attempt to run after these symbols, and in doing so, we have dehumanized them, and damaged ourselves.

To use Platonic parlance, we have treated celebrities as though they embody the Form of beauty, of excellence, and their lives the Form of happiness. We have deified them in an attempt to create something worthy of our attention and lust. Alas, men and women are not gods. Our celebrities cannot sit on the pedestal upon which we place them. They cannot act as our Forms, nor can they manage the impossible juggling act of attempting to fit that description. It seems likely that it is exactly the pressure of attempting to do so that pushes celebrities ‘off the rails’. We must strive to make the world as it ought to be.

We must push against this devastating culture, for the sake of consumer and consumed alike.

Celebrities are not Forms. They are not gods. Quite simply, they are us.

is there any justice

in the world

of celebrity?

Jack Fisher surveys some theories of distributive justice and their implications for celebrities, before suggesting that an oft-neglected account from John Stuart Mill provides the best means of determining whether a celebrity deserves their status

T

he eminent philosopher Lemar helpfully notes the question of deserving and undeserving celebrity in his song ‘If there’s any [distributive] justice’. When we use the terms ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’, we are trying to articulate the intuition we have about the idea we term justice. But what actually is justice – this term that seems so familiar? Upon brief reflection, different people have very different conceptions of the idea.

Some would say that Cristiano Ronaldo deserves his wages (he is a very talented footballer); others would say that he is an arrogant affront to sport. Some (even my best friend, I’m slightly ashamed to say) would say that Gemma from Geordie Shore deserves her wealth and fame as much as Mo Farah or Stephen Hawking; others wouldn’t.

Whether a distribution is just depends on the principle of justice that is being applied to it. The reason that different people have different intuitions about these cases is simply that different people hold different principles of justice.

THE SOPHIST / 15 So, what are some common notions of justice? And is it possible to choose between them, to see whether or not Jay-Z deserves his $550 million worth?

‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ has become the slogan of socialism, but regardless of whether or not you agree with the principle, the issue of what constitutes ‘need’ seems a very tricky one indeed – and probably one without an objective answer. ‘Each according to his desert’ is the customary mantra of justice, and seems intuitive. However, it presents the question that after thousands of years of moral philosophy is still disagreed upon: what constitutes good actions? This, again, appears to be a subjective notion. We cannot base a principle of justice upon it.

A final principle that seems intuitive is that of ‘each according to his effort’. However, a troubling objection to using this as our principle is that it seems likely that capacity for effort is, to some extent, determined by factors beyond our control (our genes, our environment in early childhood, etc.) There is widespread disagreement over whether or not this should be taken into account. Although philosophers have not given up on these mantras and continue to adapt theories around them, it seems that their vague, subjective nature will continue to cause a problem. We cannot yet decide whether Michael Jackson deserved his $700 million worth in spite of his dubious lifestyle choices.

It seems it will be very difficult to settle on a principle upon which everyone’s intuitions agree, but even if we do, the philosopher Robert Nozick’s ‘Wilt Chamberlain example’ (from Anarchy, State and Utopia) is considered by many to be an objection that cannot be overcome by any ‘patterned’ (prescribed distribution based on a principle) theory of justice.

Nozick asks us to imagine a world in which we have reached the ‘just’ distribution for a patterned theory of justice (D1).

He then introduces Wilt Chamberlain, a brilliant basketball player whom people will happily pay to see play. There is a game, and some people choose to pay Wilt a little extra to see him perform (D2). Nozick’s argument is that since at D2 Wilt will have more money and those who paid him less than D1, and D1 was just, D2 must be unjust. From this premise he goes on to conclude that a ‘patterned’ theory of justice would require the total loss of freedom if it were to be maintained, and so can never be just.

The main problem with this argument is that it relies on the assumption that a distribution is always binary: just or unjust.

It would seem that Nozick sees justice like a light switch – on or off; with no middle ground. However, it is certainly true that we use the vocabulary of ‘more just’ or a ‘greater injustice’ in everyday language and, therefore, it would seem that justice is in fact a spectrum. In this case, the aim of society in the Wilt Chamberlain example would be to get as close to justice as possible without unduly infringing liberty, meaning that this example does not present a problem for a ‘patterned’ theory of justice.

But since we still haven’t been able to arrive at a satisfactory ‘patterned’ principle, perhaps we should try the other alternative: an ‘historical’ theory of justice. This is the idea that a just transmission mechanism will necessarily result in a just distribution.

Here we should ask if voluntary action is always, somehow, inherently just. If so, we may find solace in ‘luck egalitarianism’.

This is the idea that we should be compensated for what we cannot control, but that

The undeserving or unjust celebrities are those whom we feel should be reprimanded

THE SOPHIST / 16 any consequences of our choices are just.

Intuitively this seems valid, for it agrees with our intuition that there is no good reason that someone who takes a risk shouldn’t be rewarded, whilst adhering to the defining egalitarian ethic that we shouldn’t benefit from things we can’t control.

Robert Nozick (1938-2002) was an American analytic philosopher best known for his work on political philosophy, in particular his responses to John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Later in life, Nozick went on to make large contributions to the fields of epistemology, personal identity, and moral philosophy.

However, what is to count as a choice and what constitutes something we can’t control are two very hard questions to answer indeed.

If choice includes effort, we may run into the environmental problems stated above. If something we can’t control includes our level of risk aversion, then it seems we must compensate in a broad and complex way. It could be argued that this is just a practical difficulty and that the idea is correct but, if it is based on something as widely disagreed about as what constitutes choice (essentially, what constitutes free will), then it cannot serve as our principle of justice.

It would seem that all these theories of justice are open to objection and rest on very controversial notions. However, we have one more avenue to explore: that pursued by John Stuart Mill. Chapter Five of Utilitarianism is often neglected, but in it Mill makes some of his most insightful observations. Using these and the idea of ‘logical opposites’ we may be able to reach a theory of justice that is easier to agree upon and harder to argue against.

The opposite of right is wrong. The opposite of good is bad. These are not contentious statements. Since we are trying not to merge justice and morality, and justice principally

concerns what is right whereas morality concerns what is good, it can be seen that these two notions are distinct. Mill observed that we do not call anything wrong unless we think a person should be reprimanded in some way for doing it.

This seems, upon reflection, to be true. For example, theft is wrong; we believe it should be punished (except in exceptional circumstances). A ‘white lie’ is not wrong; we don’t believe it should be punished, even if we think it is bad to lie. If wrong means ‘we think the person ought to punished’ and right is the opposite of wrong, then right must mean the negation or logical opposite of this. Therefore, right means ‘we don’t think the person ought to be punished.’ Using this method again, we can observe that we don’t use the word ‘good’ unless we think someone should be praised for that action..

Therefore, as bad is the opposite it must mean ‘does not deserve to be praised’.

If this is so, and if justice really is concerned with what is right and wrong, not good and bad, then we have arrived at our answer. The undeserving or unjust celebrities are those whom we feel should be reprimanded for their status (those who acted ‘wrongly’ to get there or who act ‘wrongly’ once there). There can, therefore, be more or less deserving celebrities, depending on the order in which we would rank them for reprimand. These feelings about whether they should be reprimanded are made of a combination of empathy and morality, and this means that justice is necessarily a subjective matter, resting mainly on the widelyheld, shared beliefs across society.

This subjectivity does not mean we should ignore feelings of justice. If unethical or irresponsible celebrities are portrayed as undeserving, then this will only discourage unethical or irresponsible behaviour as we perceive it – so making the world a better place for all of us.

THE SOPHIST / 17

Deserving Of It? Celebrities are often split into two camps of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’.

Julian Ashwin explores some of the factors that we perhaps utilise when making the distinction and considers whether it is a legitimate and sustainable one to make.

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hy is it that we think of some celebrities as deserving their fame while others do not? That most of us do is undeniable.

We certainly think differently of a celebrity like Angelina Jolie or Andy Murray than we do of celebrities like Paris, or indeed Perez, Hilton. Usually we think of ‘desert’ in the context of its being by virtue of something else.

So Cristiano Ronaldo might deserve his fame by virtue of his talent and dedication to football.

The problem we face, however, is that we can’t just pick any causally relevant factor and attribute ‘desert’ to it. We wouldn’t say a burglar deserves his loot because the house he burgled was empty or inadequately secured.

Nevertheless, it seems intuitive that the reasons for someone’s celebrity status are relevant to whether that status is deserved. A paradigm case of what we dub an ‘undeserving’ celebrity would be a person of little or no creative talent who consciously attempts to become famous through a reality

TV show. Do we, therefore, see fame as an improper motivation? We do not like to see the unashamed and cynical pursuit of fame; just as we may feel uneasy with a similarly relentless pursuit of financial wealth. But this is not the whole story: if a talented artist decided to fol-

If you were to trawl the internet, as I have done, looking for lists of the ‘least deserving’ celebrities, the same names keep cropping up low a career as a painter even though he wouldn’t enjoy it, and purely because he craved the fame, we would still think of him as deserving. In fact, we might even think that he deserves it more, as he has worked hard at what he considers an undesirable career. Is the motivation, then, more important than the method?

Is there a distinction between being ambitious and ‘fame-

hungry’ (as the Mirror recently described Josie Cunningham)?

It’s tempting to make one, but to put one’s finger on precisely the difference between an ambitious actor or musician and a ‘fame-hungry’ glamour model, for example, is difficult. Is it an issue of talent: do we think that some so-called celebrities deserve their fame because it is a fruit of their natural ability, while some so-called ‘talentless’ celebrities do not? If you were to trawl the internet looking for lists of the ‘least deserving’, ‘most pointless’ or just plain ‘worst’ celebrities (one of which – inexplicably – puts Adolf Hitler in fourth place behind Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian) the same names keep cropping up, and are very often coupled with accusations of ‘talentlessness’. In fact, you would find largely the same names in the lists of ‘talentless’ celebrities.

Whether or not Justin Bieber has any talent is debatable, but talentless-ness is certainly one of the primary criticisms thrown his way.

THE SOPHIST / 18 There remain problems if we wish to equate desert with talent.

In the case of an accomplished actor such as Carey Mulligan, her talent apparently justifies her fame, and we feel fairly comfortable saying that she deserves any of the perks that come with it. At what point, though, does an asset become a talent? Is Kate Moss’ appearance a talent? This seems harder to maintain. We waive moral boundaries for those whom we hold to be specially talented – even if their talent has not come

about through particular work so much as ‘natural ability’. Talent is, to a meaningful extent, subjective – and this is problematic for its use in distinguishing between the deserving and undeserving celebrity.

We also admire abilities in others that we could never possibly hope to attain ourselves.

For instance, no matter how hard I train, I will never be as good at football as Wayne Rooney, or even as good as one of the many professional footballers who are accused of a lack of application

or sloth. Regardless of how hard I study, I won’t have the aptitude and intelligence of a celebrity academic like Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins. These cases highlight that we usually consider such celebrities more deserving of fame than reality TV stars, because we feel that they have capabilities that most people do not.

Is there even a point to deciding whether a celebrity is deserving? Who happens to be a celebrity depends entirely on the obsessions and needs of contemporary society. A society obsessed with beauty, youth and wealth will create celebrities who exemplify these characteristics. The relevant causal factors are not the people who become celebrities, but the society that creates them. If we take this logic further, we end up with a Rawlsian view that natural talents or motivation are not deserved either, but are just a product of the ‘natural lottery’.

So, whether someone deserves their fame is based on a multitude of things: their talent, their motivation, how hard they work – and perhaps even their moral worth. This gives rise to a point about agency: a limiting condition for an agent to deserve fame is that s/he must be responsible for his or her own fame. If we take this logic further, however, we seem forced to conclude that no one ever deserves everything with which they’re endowed (be it fame, wealth, or otherwise). And perhaps, on reflection, no one – not even the most talented of celebrities – ever does.

THE SOPHIST / 19

Thought experiment explained:

Avicenna’s floating man

by Beth Hibbert

A

vicenna is probably the best known of a group of brilliant Arab philosophers who flourished during what has become known as the Golden Age of Islam. From around 750 to 1250 CE the area around Baghdad flourished culturally and scientifically; great achievements were made in mathematics, medicine, art, architecture, education and philosophy.

But why is this era seldom studied in the West?

During the period that we refer to as the Dark Ages, the philosophy of Avicenna, or Ibn Sina, in the East was in fact pre-empting what would be achieved in the West, by René Descartes, 600 years later.

Avicenna’s floating man thought experiment supposes that a man is created in a perfect state, apart from the fact that he is blind and suspended, floating in the air. The man can perceive nothing through his senses, nor has he had any experience at all. Is it possible, then, that he is aware, of anything?

Avicenna argues that the floating man cannot be aware of his empirical body, yet he could be aware of the existence of himself; the thinking being.

The distinction between the guaranteed awareness of the self, or soul, as opposed to the unguaranteed awareness of the body asserts a kind of dualism between body and soul almost identical to that of Descartes.

While Descartes affirms the existence of the self by asking one to imagine that everything known to us though the senses might be unreal, Avicenna’s thought experiment is simpler as his floating man need not forget what he already knows from experience, since he has had no experience at all.

This thought experiment is a clearer and easier way to understand Cartesian doubt, while leading us to a similar conclusion. Consider now what it would be like to see, hear, and feel nothing: does this lead you to conclude that at least you think, therefore you are? Or is it the case that thought can never be truly separated from physical experience?

WHY

THE SOPHIST / 21

SO SERIOUS? Humour and ethics share some ground in that they both are suscepted to debate on matters of universality and relativity of values. But what of the ethics of comedy when cultural distinctions are blurred?

Rheaa Rao considers whether we are taking it all a bit too seriously.

g

lobalisation and multi-culturalism have added to the complexity of the ethics of comedy. If being on stage is considered a privilege, it also puts a great burden on comedians. It is particularly tricky to be an ethnically non-western comedian targeting a western audience.

Firstly, identity politics aren’t that straightforward. A comedian may find himself with the responsibility of reconstructing perceptions regarding the com-

munity they seemingly represent whilst perhaps not identifying themselves as a member of solely that community. They also have to face different types of audiences: the real and the online, the unaware and the hypersensitive. So, as they reinsert themselves into popular dialogue, they need to make consciously ethical decisions about how to acknowledge the elephant in the room and train it to their bidding.

THE SOPHIST / 22 In amongst all this they are expected to be funny too. In the stand-up arena comedy becomes a service, laughter becomes a right. The comedian has to find a way of making their brand of humour accessible and acceptable to a globalized audience that is aware of certain stereotypes of the cultural other, but perhaps not so aware of nuances. That’s why there are so many lights on the stage, so comedians aren’t intimidated by their audience! Comedians on stage are also considered to have some form of right to offend, to push the boundaries but always have to keep in mind that they mustn’t go to far. So what does one do?

Comedians often exaggerate stereotypes in an attempt to subvert them, but also do so since that sort of humour is easy and palatable. As a cross-cultural comedian, you’re obviously aware of where you come from, it is material you use in your sketches to your advantage or disadvantage. Accents are exaggerated, generally depicting immigrant parents who are so desperately trying to fit in. Russell Peters built his fame on doing this. Margaret Cho and Bobby Lee’s funniest sketches have them imitating their parents responses to their sexuality and career choices. Accents are funny but only when you notice them: you do when everyone around you talks differently. In a world that pretends we’re colour blind and that race isn’t an issue, the fact that accents are so funny and are now considered a cliché comic trope is something to think about.

When people drop the disclaimer ‘just kidding’, they are generally not. You would be surprised at the morbid things audiences cheer because it’s dished out to them as comedy. Trevor Noah, a South African comedian, laments over his childhood during apartheid where he felt “like a bag of weed” since he was mixed race. He satirically recalls his struggle to be considered ‘black’ in America and Germany. It’s hilarious because he presents it with a grin, devoid of bitterness.

Even as a member of the audience who personally can’t relate to this, we find it funny.

This still doesn’t mean that humour is universal. Rex Navarrete, a Filipino American comedian has been tagged as a comedian solely for Filipino audiences. Muslim comedy has suffered a similar plight. Post 9/11, comedy has become prominent subverting prejudices by openly acknowledging them. Initially, as journalist Sarfraz Manzoor points out, it was difficult to convince the world that Muslims can be funny. It took the community time to create stereotypes that everyone can laugh at. We now cackle when Ahmed Ahmed, an Egyptian American comedian talks about how hate crimes against Muslims have increased, but they’re still fourth on the list after “blacks, Jews and gays”. It sounds grim on transcript, but he has a flair for building things up. However, ironically, just as Muslim comedy is stepping out of its diapers, there’s an appeal to avoid the stereotypes of Islam and be more universal. Comedy that delves on personal narratives, real or exaggerated. is often well received. But when these narratives

As an

audience we

seem to have a moral compass that functions like a wheel of fortune and expect comedians

to magically abide by it

THE SOPHIST / 23 address specific cultural themes over and over again, how does one know whether to celebrate the discourse gaining popularity or read it as a signal to move beyond it?

Additionally, how far is too far? This is a heated debate we have too often. As an audience we tolerate comedy if the person is making fun of themselves or their race.

If they’re a part of a minority community, they’re allowed to make fun of other races.

But as an audience we also tend to make generalizations about where people come from and what their limits should be. Comedian Aziz Ansari recalled how he was asked if he’s psyched about Slumdog Millionaire though he had nothing to do with the project. We tend to see comedians as representatives of the places they look like they’re from even if they don’t relate to it or don’t want to be seen solely through the lens of a particular culture. Instead we expect them to educate us at the rate of two guffaws per minute.

Beyond racial and cultural stereotypes are certain taboos comedians are expected not to address. Jokes about rape and paedophilia are generally not well received, masturbation jokes are cringe-worthy. The rules of comedy are as confusing as English grammar. The Holocaust cannot be taken lightly, not by the Jews and certainly not by the Germans. But 9/11 which is still fresh in the memory is joked about.

Deciding on what is acceptable in this regard is to realize that the question is not ‘how soon?’ but ‘how creative?’ while also realizing that you’ll never actually get even the question right. As an audience we seem to have a moral compass that functions like a wheel of fortune and expect comedians to magically abide by it.

It seems the audience has a better deal.

We are allowed to control what we find funny. There is certain etiquette one has to follow as a real audience in formal settings. But online audiences often get into ‘righteous’ squabbles with other users or take up the role of the moral police that storm in with their comments, often telling comedians to “respect their culture” or “go back to their country.” The allegedly ‘ethical audience’ split in two: using their freedom of expression to either criticise the comic or exhibit a increasingly common tendency, a lack of tolerance for the intolerant. This new breed of intolerance assumes that all objection stems from the same type of allegedly ‘anti-liberal’ view.

So, if you have an opinion about things that aren’t funny, you’re urged to look away. With all this ‘outrage fatigue’, both comedians and the audience may go too far because there is no etched ethical code and no mechanism to dispose of nonsense. This is the paradox: in the realm of comedy you can’t be hypersensitive, but it’s also a problem if you’re too thick skinned.

THE SOPHIST / 24

the paradox of celebrity excess Kishan Koria considers whether our contradictory attitudes to the excessive lifestyles of celebrities add credence to Nietzsche’s critique of objective moral values.

i

f we are living in “the age of austerity”, somebody might want to inform our celebrities. Consider a few developments that have been mentioned once or twice in recent times. Kim Kardashian (of questionable fame) and Kanye West (of rapping/music-ing fame) are getting married soon. The rumoured cost of their nuptials is in the region of $30m. Wayne Rooney (of ball kicking in a field fame) signed a new contract with his club Manchester United earlier this year. The reported weekly salary he will now enjoy is £300k a week. Oh, and there were some acting awards called the Oscars in March and the world spent plenty of time gawping at the designer clothes worn down the red carpet. Cate Blanchett (of Best Actress 2014 fame) wore jewellery and a dress costed out at a grand total of $18.1m.

The attention of the world’s media and subsequently (if we assume they provide in some form what is demanded by the general public) the world itself has been firmly fixed on such events. Yet we seem to balance two conflicting attitudes to the decadence, glamour and sheer monetary excess enjoyed in the world of celebrity.

The fascination of modern society with the opulent world of celebrity seems to transcend one of mere morbid curiosity. This world is idealised and seemingly aspired to by us. Reality TV shows are inundated by those eager for a slice of such a lifestyle and a large portion of the rest of us replicate elements of it on a smaller scale. Yet still (as shown in the tone of my opening remarks) we seem to have a degree of moral discomfort about the excessive wealth of celebrities, a sense that it is all a bit too much. Moreover, though we enjoy observing and aspiring to the life of celebrity we want to claim that celebrities with such excessive wealth have a duty to philanthropy, or even come to delight in their downfall after lifting them up to such a lofty status. What does it say about us that we delight in following the realm of celebrity excess, aspire to it in many ways, yet engage with a level of ethically driven condemnation regarding the agents and actions belonging to it?

THE SOPHIST / 25 Friedrich Nietzsche offers one quite sobering answer to this question. In his provocative polemic On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche critiques moral values, claiming that so called self-evident, or eternal “facts” about morality are in the main “moral prejudices” that come to prominence in particular social, cultural and historical contexts.

Slave MOrality Central to Nietzsche’s polemic is his analysis of two conflicting moralities in Western history. First is the morality of the politically dominant group (the “masters”), which is based primarily around the attribution of the positive value ‘good’ to their life of power, strength and success. The counter of this is the moral value of ‘bad’ which refers to those subordinate individuals (or “slaves”) who are too weak to live this kind of fulfilling life. However eventually there comes a slave revolt against the form of valuation encapsulated by this morality. The slaves are weak and oppressed, and come to view their lives in no affirmative way and hence develop a reactive, negative sentiment against those whose moral discourse produces this. The basis of their morality comes to be the negative value ‘evil’ which is applied to the master’s conception of good that they have come to resent so deeply.

This “Slave Morality” somewhat resembles our modern moral code as developed out of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Instead of glorifying power and success, it resents it as evil. Nietzsche claims that from this resentment comes a recapturing of what it means to be good into merely something that isn’t evil, and those slaves whose weakness once excluded them from being good come to present their natural weakness as a choice for

a more moral life. Moreover this is a choice they claim to be vindicated in making as their morality wins them everlasting life.

Our interest in, and desire of the excessive celebrity lifestyle is incompatible with meaningful criticism of it It appears that Nietzsche’s critique provides a rather damning explanation of the two attitudes to celebrity excess, suggested to be in tension earlier. If we articulate ethical attitudes drawn from what he dubs the tradition of “slave morality” our condemnation of celebrity excess can be explained as being based on resentment, and our remaining interest in holding such a lifestyle ourselves the residual effect of earlier ideas of the good from the “master morality”.

Nietzsche’s philosophy makes sense of our own hypocrisy.

Yet it needn’t be this way.

We might reject the psychological thesis of “slave morality” and uphold values of humility, sympathy and modesty, but we must do so more consistently. Our interest in, and desire of the excessive celebrity lifestyle is incompatible with meaningful criticism of it. Nietzsche might be capable of being proven wrong regarding his critique of moral values in general, but his analysis of ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘evil’ can teach us a powerful lesson. To ensure we do not contradict our own moral code we need to avoid falling into the trap of purely reactive moralising, and stay true to our convictions.

The paradox of celebrity excess is one of our construction and one we are ultimately responsible for solving. If we think said excess is morally wrong, it seems it is time to put down Hello! magazine.

THE SOPHIST / 26

Agony Kant Because existential crises don't solve themselves

Dear Kant, Ever since commencing my undergraduate degree (BA, Hons) in Philosophy and Early Modern History of Art at the University of Oxford, I have begun to experience the most tremendous, rolling waves of terror and doubt. I am overcome by my own insignificance. This is a new thought, and one which I find profoundly discomforting.

Nothing has meaning. My being is chaos and void. My friends tell me that this is an “existential crisis” and “perfectly normal after two terms spent drinking and having to do my own laundry”. But I will not believe it.

The abject horror is so vast that, as yet, I cannot even channel it into the seminal opus of post-post-modernism upon which I am currently working (contact my tutor for details).

The world is awful. Please assist.

My sincere thanks, Crispin Beaumont

Dear Crispin, Thank you for your painstakingly handwritten letter. It clearly took a lot of effort to script such fluid prose from the depths of your despair. I myself know this feeling all too well. Philosophy can often distance you from reality, especially when this reality itself is constantly being questioned. I enlisted the help of a few philosophers to contribute their advice:

Sartre Your life does have meaning, but that meaning is what you make it. There is only so much armchair philosophy can do for you; go out and do something. Your life is defined by your actions so if you spend much more time thinking rather than actually doing anything, your life really will be meaningless. Actually, stop reading this and go help in a war or something. Idiot students.

THE SOPHIST / 27 Hume In life, we have the philosophical and the vulgar. Philosophical issues may draw you into a pit of confusion, but take comfort in the fact that whatever sceptical conclusions you reach, you cannot escape your dull, day-today life. While I could spend hours questioning whether my body actually exists, I’ve just got to suck it up and act as though it does, because that’s the way I am. Don’t analyse your instincts too much and try not to let your philosophy become at odds with the fact that you are human.

Bentham If philosophy isn’t increasing your happiness, stop doing it.

Sorry, they weren’t as helpful as I thought they might be… They clearly aren’t conforming to the categorical imperative. Ultimately, what you have to bear in mind is that whether you can explain meaning or not, this is the world you live in. Personally I’d encourage you to ignore my colleagues and just make sure that you are a good person by sticking to some fundamental rules. If you really want to find some enjoyment in life, go in search of some poetry and paintings which invoke in you the harmonious free play of your faculties. Alternatively, you could distract yourself from your existential crisis by trying to work out what on earth I mean by that.

Hope this helped!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Agony Kant

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