Culture & Anarchy

Callum Hackett

The art of learning by forgetting what inhibits us, with readings from classic texts in the arts and sciences. callumhackett.substack.com

Episodes

  1. Jul 7

    Philosophy as therapy

    When I took Culture & Anarchy for the title of this project - stealing it from a book by Matthew Arnold - I was thinking primarily about how all human understanding is based in useful fictions, though we pretend our concepts are representations of a fundamental reality because we can’t otherwise get our heads around why they’re useful. This pretence is often an obstruction to progress, however, because it encourages us to cling to concepts that we must abandon if we’re to adapt to new circumstances. Thus, in all domains of human activity, we go through cycles of discovery followed by periods of stagnation which require a shaking off of old habits - culture sows the seeds and anarchy clears the weeds. As much as we would all like to master this dynamic - to know exactly when to profit from our current worldview and when to rebel against it - rebellion is typically an inter-generational phenomenon. Hence Max Planck’s famous remark: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Unfortunately, it seems to be in the nature of human psychological development that becoming an adult is partly a process of intellectual ossification. We needn’t be fatalistic about this, however. Some people are more adaptable than others, but it’s not as easy as simply choosing to be open-minded. Method is crucial. For that reason, I’m experimenting with a new style of philosophical conversation, presented here as a podcast - whereas the newsletter is a careful, cultivating practice of essay-writing, the podcast is an attempt at anarchic free association. For the time being, you’ll probably want to treat this more as an unorthodox art project than as a typical philosophy podcast - its whole purpose is to avoid the standard mould of conceptual warfare in an effort to find new modes of engaging with each other, but this requires exploration and openness to failure. Get full access to Culture & Anarchy at callumhackett.substack.com/subscribe

  • 1 Episode

About

The art of learning by forgetting what inhibits us, with readings from classic texts in the arts and sciences. callumhackett.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Callum Hackett
  • Episodes
    1
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Callum Hackett
  • Show Website
    Culture & Anarchy