Madness in Philosophy!

Today I'm springing off from a strange article about psychiatry and the Philosophy of Madness, posted on TPM's Facebook....Long-winded too! You can read it here. 

Foucault is probably the best at discussing this subject matter. I'm reading an exciting book about him at the moment. I've already read one of Foucault's texts before looking at secondary literature. That way I can be more critical of any secondary literature I come across. I avoid reading secondary literature before reading the original text. My mother taught me that. She was taught at school to always read original texts before reading literary criticism.

As for Philosophy of Psychiatry? Really? Philosophy of Psychology, yes, that came up at uni but I didn't take that option. I went for Politics, Ethics, & Aesthetics, as options. History of Philosophy and Ep and Met were compulsory final year level core modules, anyway. So they were never up as an option. Hence, I've stayed within the History of Philosophy. Had they been options, however, I would have still opted for History of Philosophy because it builds on my home education, my mother being a qualified history teacher too. But I wouldn't have opted for Epistemology and Metaphysics anyway. 

Although, I have to admit that I thought History of Philosophy would be a more pleasant environment than say, the heavily male dominated area of Logic, it is, however, disappointingly, just as toxic as any other.

Which reminds me: A History of Philosophy conference is underway tomorrow until Saturday (3-5th April), called the British Society for the History of Philosophy History (BSHP) Annual Conference: 'Animals and the Environment in the History of Philosophy'. (Good luck with that topic within the History of Philosophy!) It's become a rather large conference these days unlike when I did my solo slot on Mary Shepherd at the BSHP 2017 conference at Sheffield University. So, I think, it's less prestigious now. Too many speakers. You can't be everywhere, and all day (starting at 9am, finishing at 5:30pm; or 6:30pm or later if you attend the conference dinner; or 4:30pm on the final day), 3 days on the trot. See here for details on the BSHP website. 

But, anyway, the conference is at Cambridge University, Classics department, 🤔 which is on a long road, off the beaten track, round the back of a Gonville and Caius College building, (or is it a nursery now?) & near to other departments such as, Theology; Criminology; Asian & Middle Eastern Studies. Down the road, however, from the Classics department is Newnham College, opposite of which is the Philosophy Faculty. So why wasn't the conference held down the road at the relevant faculty? 🤔 It's easy to find. We've all seen it. What's with the Classics? 📚

Anyway the Classics Department's main entrance leads straight into an archaeological museum, apparently. 🏛️🏺🙄 How extraordinary! Suddenly, museums are trending. KCL is off to UCL's Grant Museum of Zoology and here, in the Classics Department, it's an archaeology museum. I'm not going to either but maybe I should join in with the trend by going on my own trip to visit the Natural History Museum in London sometime this week!

Anyway, the BSHP Conference kicks off, for mere mortals, at 1.30 pm, but this is preceded by a 3 hour management committee meeting (for just the 5 "Management Committee members only"?) led by Chair /President Susan James, starting at 9.00am 🕘🖋️📓🏃‍♀️⌛🏃‍♀️🏺🏃‍♀️🏫⏳🏃‍♀️🗓️🥱⏰

Who holds three hour meetings for an ordinary, obscure society? 

What on earth is there to discuss for three long hours? Why couldn't most, or all of that, have been discussed and sorted out previously via Zoom or at KCL, rather than waste 4 hours of conference time on Committee and Journal meetings? It's inefficient and unnecessary. 

Or is it yet another typo? Like the Midgley / Shepherd conflation for the title of Fasko's paper? 🤔

This Committee meeting is then followed by another in which again select members spend another hour on a meeting for the journal BJHP, which is linked to the BSHP society.

(Employees are allowed to do a 4 hour shift and then have 20 minutes off but a narrow, specialist society isn't akin to shift work! You're not a restaurant trying to keep the meals moving and customers happy 🍽️🙂. So you shouldn't be asked to undertake such long hours.)

Anyway, it's a members-only club for both meetings so excluding ordinary members, of course. WTF! So you can be a member of the society but that still doesn't give you access to everything, which it should, because members should know how the society is run and how decisions are made and have a vote. I suppose the AGM on Saturday 5th April (this excludes Jews who observe Shabbat) 🙄 is for the lowly members at the bottom of the feudal system. They'll just be told the result of the committee meeting. And nominally put their hands up to agree to what has already been agreed.

Hierarchical and authoritarian is not what a society should be, not that the current Chair seems to be benefiting from her position at the top of the tree! One would expect her to be powerful and that people would defer to her better judgement, but I'm not seeing it. I bet a man in the same position would be allowed to exert power despite having very poor judgement - no problem!

A society should surely function democratically. That's why it's called a society, not a workplace. 

I mention this conference because social media seems awfully quiet about this rather large philosophy conference while mentioning every tiny philosophy twitch elsewhere around the world, which is a good thing, even when they are conducted in foreign languages but how about mentioning all philosophy talks and conferences!🙂

The conference is also holding a plenary in memory of Prof Bob Stern, Sheffield University, FBA, President of BPA, who specialised in Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, Løgstrup, & Luther, a motley, unattractive combination. And apparently he was a Jew although after his Bar Mitzvah he sloped off to be a 'I can't be asked' 🤔 so debatable how much of a Jew he was after that. If you're Jewish you don't research these philosophers/theologians, and especially not Luther who was antisemitic! 

But Stern is a good example of how you can end up being manoeuvred into areas you are not interested in by those in charge, as well as, should you get a book deal, the publisher changing the title of your academic books for you. A title being rather important because it tells you, at a glance, what a book is about. 

Either way, he must have become popular with philosophers, for some vague reason, 🤔 because they are giving him a lot of attention. Maybe because he bumbled along not sure where he was going.🫤 That's a popular look.🙄

Here's an interesting, informative, entertaining mammoth 🦣 of an interview with him for you to read.

Unfortunately, you can't just drop in to the BSHP Conference because you have to be a member of the society to attend the conference - a suggestion made by an alumni of Cambridge University, Sarah Hutton, I think it was, at the 2017 AGM meeting that I attended. So I'm presuming it's her idea.

Talk about being exclusionary! Privileged! 

And it's not necessary because it didn't function quite like that prior to the 2017 AGM. And, as a charity, I didn't think a society could do that. It should be open to all for the public good (whether philosophers or not), not a closed members' club, otherwise, it's not fulfilling its description of supporting 'public understanding of all aspects of the History of Philosophy' or their 'public benefit' requirement as a registered charity (number 299041). 

Furthermore, as a member, you end up having to pay twice over, once for a lowly membership and once for the annual conference, receive no perks, and no events to attend during the year except two, which is very little: one in November (a talk anywhere in the UK eg Scotland that doesn't require membership) and one in April (conference somewhere in the UK, does require membership). November-April: a very short academic year!

An independent researcher and author, like myself, doesn't want someone or some body e.g. a society, thinking they can have some power over me, dictate what I can/can't do, interfere with me and my work, claiming it belongs to them, simply because I did x (just using a uni library can cause an intellectual property dispute for an independent researcher) thus my body of work goes down the 🚽 All those years of hard work down the 🚽 🪠 And, before I know it, the society will be claiming research points too, for my research and writing (academic philosophy books, papers), maybe even passing them on, under some wrong category or other, and I won't be aware of it. 

My academic body of work belongs solely to me because I'm the sole researcher and sole author, no-one else is involved, whether a person or AI! 

I like it that way and intend to keep it that way! Because that way people know that what I've written (books, papers, blog posts, content for my Circles, even down to social media) or recorded on my audio podcast or YouTube channel is the result of my own hard work and represents what I, as a philosopher, think (without any censorship). It's also a body of work that's taken me nearly 12 years so, no, you can't just wade in and find a way to destabilise it.