On 27 January 2016, the Philosophy Café returned with "International Law", a discussion moderated by Professor Terry Nardin.

Prof. Nardin started off the Café with a brief history of international law, and then opened up the floor to discussion. We talked about intellectual pluralism, Rawls on rationality and justice, and attempted to craft a non-arbitrary theory for justice in 8 minutes (the key word here is 'attempted'). What we came up with began with the premise of personhood, followed by the recognition of others' personhoods (and you can fill in the rest from here). This naturally let to the question: are there even persons, and what implications would no-self have on our notion of justice?

But regardless of whether the self exists or not — food was eaten, Starbucks was imbibed, and fun was had by all.

We would like to thank Prof. Terry Nardin for his valuable insights, and for leading us in such a stimulating conversation. See you next time at "Kant on the Ethics of Capital Punishment", a discussion led by Prof. Matthew Walker! 

On 3 February 2016, 23 students and faculty from Yale-NUS and NUS gathered in the Cendana Student Commons with cups of coffee, snacks and fruit to discuss "Kant on the Ethics of Capital Punishment". Below is a student piece written by Patrick (Yale-NUS '19) about his thoughts on the discussion led by Professor Matt Walker. Thank you to Prof. Walker for the great insights, and thanks to all who attended. Enjoy!

Kant has this fascinating line about executions:

“Even if a civil society were to dissolve itself by common agreement, the last murderer remaining in prison must first be executed.”

To learn why Kant is so committed to killing people, I went to Professor Matt Walker’s talk on “Kant on the Ethics of Capital Punishment.”

Here’s what I left with:¹

Kant starts everything with what’s right. What’s moral! And what’s moral is the Categorical Imperative:

“Treat humanity, whether in yourself or others, always as an end in itself and never merely as a means.”

Translating to like normal English, it means:

Treat people with respect for their human dignity.

Now how to apply this rule is super complicated, but Kant thinks² that the following reasoning is legit: ³

· People have a certain dignity.

· Crime violates that dignity.

· Justice demands that people retaliate for harms to human dignity.

· This right to retaliate means that the punishment for crimes must bear a certain symmetry to the crime itself (in order to retaliate proportionately).

· Life and death are incommensurable.

· Therefore, the only punishment that is proportionate to murder is execution.

Conclusion: We must execute murderers in order to respect human dignity.

So is Kant persuasive?

Well without going too far into his metaphysics, here are some questions I left with:

1. Why must the punishment be proportionate? Say the victim doesn’t want to see the same harm inflicted on someone else. Doesn’t that matter?

2. Why are life and death so incommensurable? People regularly make trade-offs between life and death (e.g. unhealthy habits, suicide, etc.). Can’t we “proportionately” punish people without killing them?

If anyone has answers, I would be totes appreciative! Totes!

But I suspect this will end up being yet another case where philosophy leaves me with more questions than answers.

¹ I might be totally wrong. Take your chances.

² I don’t actually know what Kant thinks. I’m also oversimplifying.

³ More knowledgeable people please correct me!

Also, thanks to the Philosophy Café for giving me this chance to proselytize for philosophy!

And thanks to anyone who read this to the bottom! I write for you dear reader.

On 17 February 2016, 17 students and faculty gathered in Cendana Student Commons to discuss Medieval Philosophy. We would like to thank Dr. Fuchs (Bamberg University) for leading the discussion and sharing his knowledge and insights, and our participants for keeping the questions coming! See below for a write-up by one of our attendees, Evangeline (Yale-NUS '17).

The medieval period was a time of lively philosophical discourse which was largely driven by the entrance of Aristotle. Until Aristotle’s corpus was translated from Greek or Arabic into Latin in the 12th-13th centuries, Aristotle had been practically forgotten in the West. His rediscovery had a major impact on the existing philosophical framework of the time: Christianity. Christianity’s foremost philosopher, St. Augustine of Hippo, held that philosophy and reason, while good, cannot alone lead to the good life. Higher than reason is the Christian faith, which guides one to the beatific vision after earthly life passes away. According to Aristotle, however, one can achieve the good life by reason and philosophy in the earthly life itself, without need for the gift of faith.

Despite this opposition, theologians attempted to synthesize the two. St. Thomas Aquinas is perhaps the most well-known. Aquinas’ solution to the apparent opposition between faith and reason was to propose that one can have reasonable faith. Faith reaches what reason cannot deduce, but reason can reconstruct the contents of faith. Aquinas also adopted Aristotle's conceptions of the good life and virtue. Aristotle’s ‘good life’ is achieved through Aristotelian virtues on earth, but both the means and end are imperfect; the true, perfect good life, reached through perfect theological virtues, is in heaven.

Aquinas’ synthesis did not immediately find universal acceptance. While many were eager for synthesis, they disagreed about the ‘how’, and even the ‘why’. Given that Aristotle was pagan, I find the eagerness to integrate Aristotle particularly interesting. Dr. Fuchs suggested as explanation that Aristotle opened up areas of inquiry new to medieval philosophy. Prior philosophy was largely monastic, oriented towards the spiritual life and less engaged with understanding the world. Aristotle dealt comprehensively with concepts that were undeveloped, e.g. substances, attributes, and theories of motion. Hence he became ‘The Philosopher,’ and Aristotelianism featured prominently in the worldview of centuries to come.

The reason why theologians were so eager to integrate Aristotle still intrigues me. However, I left with a better understanding of what a stir Aristotle’s entrance caused and the debates and controversy that ensued.

On 9 March 2016, we had our first special edition of the Café, and it was all about getting a degree in Philosophy! Thank you to Professor Amber Carpenter for hosting, and Professors Cathay Liu, Fabian Geier, Neil Mehta, Simon Duffy, Sandra Field, Malcolm Keating and Matt Walker for sharing about their journeys in philosophy. To wrap it all up, here's Abel (Yale-NUS '17), soon-to-be-Philosophy-major*, with his thoughts on the event, and his personal reflections on why we all should care about philosophy.

Who cares? And why would anyone want to do that?

Ultimately, these are questions we must answer for ourselves – but the Yale-NUS Philosophy faculty certainly gave us a lot to think about! During this week's Philosophy Café, our beloved professors shared with us their own personal journeys through philosophy, and also addressed general questions about philosophy.

As it turns out, the paths to academic philosophy come in many forms. Think it’s easy to avoid being bitten by the philosophy bug? Well think again. While some of the faculty were hooked from the very beginning, others started off with ordinary lives. They took interest in good and normal things like math, pharmaceutical science, politics, or literature – only to find themselves asking one too many questions – and by then, it was too late. Philosophy knew, and it had come for them. It can come for you even if your parents don’t fancy it; it can come for you even if you run off to the publishing industry for seven years. For Philosophy is relentless and unforgiving.

Hearing the faculty’s experiences and motivations certainly struck a chord with me, causing me to reminisce about my own philosophical journey. I often tell people that my intellectual journey began with two books: the Bible, and DK’s The Ultimate Dinosaur Book. So in a way for almost as long as I could read, I’ve been engaged in philosophy, even if I didn’t know what to call it back then. What’s the relationship between science and religion? Reason and faith? (Fun fact: My first encounter with the Omnipotence Paradox was at Tampines MRT when I was 11. No, I’m not quite sure why I specifically recall this.)

Why is philosophy important? For me, it’s because everything in life seems to be one big question that both begins and ends in philosophy. I just can’t avoid it. Everything I do, it seems, implicitly or explicitly commits me to some kind of philosophical position. Why do philosophy? Well, because in order to even answer that, I’m going to have to do it.

Of course, I could be wrong. But here’s the kicker. If I'm ever going to change my mind on these things – or anyone else’s – I’m going to have engage in philosophy to do it.