Afleveringen
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Soon after the US bombing of Iran's nuclear sites in June, following Israel’s bombings of the country, there was talk of the military operation going further: full war with Iran with the aim of regime change.
But some, including critics of Teheran's theocratic and authoritarian government, warned against such a move.
Can a county ever really be freed from an oppressive government through the violent intervention of an external power? Is such a move ever morally justified, even if strategically possible? And how does the complicated history and real-life politics of a region affect abstract philosophical arguments about justice?
This interview is based on a piece in The Philosopher magazine, entitled When Liberation Becomes Subjugation: The Moral Paradox of Regime Change in Iran
Hossein Dabbagh is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London and an affiliated member of Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education His work spans practical ethics, political philosophy, and Middle Eastern affairs, with a particular focus on Islamic political theology. He regularly contributes to public philosophy, writing on secularism and theocratic rule in Iran for Aeon, The Conversation, and other platforms, and has appeared on the BBC, combining philosophical analysis with regional expertise.
Patrick Hassan is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Struggle Against Pessimism (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and the editor of Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy (Routledge, 2021), as well as a range of peer-reviewed articles in ethics, aesthetics, and environmental and political philosophy.
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This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
At the end of May, Elon Musk quit his role as Special Government Employee and his leadership of the the infamous DOGE. The official departure was relatively amicable, if a little awkward, in the Oval Office with Musk sporting a black eye, in which Trump thanked him for his service. But things quickly turned ugly, with personal attacks from both men.
But aside from the egos clash, what does this divorce between Musk and Trump signify for the MAGA coalition? Does it point to a deep ideological tension between the Silicon Valley vision of politics and that of the likes of Steve Bannon? What is the level of influence of the people of Peter Tiel, who see democracy as disposable, on Trump's Government? And does Trump's Big Beautiful Bill reveal that the dominant ideology in Trump's government is still an old-fashioned version of "cut taxes and welfare"?
Yascha Mounk is an Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Persuasion, an online magazine devoted to the defence of liberalism. He is the author of many books, most recently The Identity Trap - A story of ideas and power in our time. And the host of the excellent podcast The Good Fight.
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This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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This podcast series started in January 2021. The first episode was on the Insurrection at the Capitol, instigated by Trump on the basis of his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. This episode was recorded just shy of a week away from Trump’s second inauguration as President of the United States. Trump’s signature policy proposals during his campaign had to do with deporting millions of illegal immigrants, closing the boarders, imposing tariffs on international trade, and returning to a kind of isolationism in foreign policy by removing US military support for Ukraine. Trump had gone on to implement many of those policies. These are the hallmarks of a closed society, something resembling a tribe, caring for nothing but itself, “on the alert for attack or defence” as Bergson said.
This episode revisits an old idea of an Open society, coined by Karl Popper in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Jason Alexander McKenzie is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and has written a (free access) book entitled The Open Society As An Enemy published by LSE Press, in which he defense the open society at a time when it's under great duress.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On June 4, Donald Trump issued a 6 month ban on foreign students entering the US who seek to study at Harvard University, citing national security concerns. That ban came after a court had already blocked the decision of the Department of Homeland Security to stop issuing visas to foreign students who were admitted at Harvard University. Harvard is not the only university under attack by the Trump administration – many have had their federal funding axed or bullied into submission, like Columbia University. This attack on universities seems in line with common authoritarian tactics that seek to undermine a country’s institutions of knowledge production, or at the very least submit them to the political will of those in power.
But are universities also partly responsible for ending up in this situation? Richard Rorty was already warning in the 1990s of the resentment that some voters would soon feel towards “post-modernist professors” and college graduates who were “dictating manners” to the rest of society. Did universities allow political ideology to contaminate their project of open inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge and truth? Did academia become too focussed on which canonical figures had to be “cancelled”? And are university professors too removed from the rest of society to be able to understand and engage with the ideas that go beyond their ideological comfort zone?
Sasha Mudd is a philosopher, writer, and columnist who examines the moral dilemmas at the core of today’s most pressing social challenges. Drawing on 18th- and 19th-century thought, she brings fresh perspectives to issues such as AI, climate change, immigration, and the erosion of democratic norms. She is an Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, a visiting professor at the University of Southampton, and the Philosopher-at-Large for Prospect Magazine, where she writes a monthly column.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
After a pause, The Philosopher & The News is back! In fact, we have been back since last September of 2024, in the form of a series of live online events in partnership with The Philosopher journal that have then featured in The Philosopher's YouTube Channel. But we thought it's about time we updated our usual podcast channel too.
The term "crisis" gets banded about with ease these days, in fact some have argues that we are living through an era of polycrisis, with more than one crisis going on simultaneously. But with its origins in Ancient Greek medicin, what does the term "crisis" really mean today? How can philosophy help us understand the different types of crisis, from the arena of science to that of politics? And what kind of political crisis yields a President like Donald Trump? This conversation took place on the day of the US election.
Miguel de Beistegui is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He is a philosopher with a broad range of interests from ontology and aesthetics to ethics and political philosophy. He has written monographs on Heidegger, Deleuze, Proust, Chillida, and Lacan. His forthcoming book, A Philosophy of Crisis, aims to construct a rigorous concept of crisis.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
In April Time magazine published a story entitled The Return of The Dire Wolf. Having roamed America's continent for thousands of years, the dire wolf had gone extinct around 10,000 years ago. Until, that is, a company called Colossal Biosciences claims that it has managed to bring the species back to life in the form of two wolf pups: Romulus and Remus.
But despite the scientific wonders of gene editing, can we be sure that these pups are genetically identical to the dire wolfs of the past? Are genetics all that matters in the identity of a species? And even if it is practically possible to bring back to life species that have gone extinct - is it a good idea? Are we are morally obliged to bring lost species back to life if we can, especially if humans were responsible in their extinction? Or would such a practices risk "Jurasic Park"-like scenarios and our limited resources for environmental conservation are best channelled in preserving existing species?
Jay Odenbaugh is the James F. Miller Professor of Humanities at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, USA. His research is in the philosophy of science, especially ecology and conservation biology, and environmental philosophy. He is the author of the book Ecological Models (Cambridge University Press) and has written about the ethics and aesthetics of species conservation and de-extinction.If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
After a pause, The Philosopher & The News is back! In fact, we have been back since last September of 2024, in the form of a series of live online events in partnership with The Philosopher journal that have then featured in The Philosopher's YouTube Channel. But we thought it's about time we updated our usual podcast channel too.
In this episode I spoke with Robin Reams about The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times less than a month before the US election. Did Trump manage to get elected once again using the rhetorical tricks that the Sophists used to undo Athenian democracy? Or does our era of memes, Twitter and fake news mean that demagogue’s methods have changed?
Robin Reames is associate professor of English and Culberston chair at IU Blumington, specializing in rhetorical theory and the history of ideas. Her latest book is The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times (Basic Books, 2024)
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
Chat GPT, an AI powered chat-bot, has become the world’s fastest growing application, with over 100 million users in the first month of its launch. Even its harshest critics concede that when interacting with Chat GPT, it can seem as if one is talking to an intelligent machine. But, the standard critique goes, that’s just an illusion. Chat GPT isn’t in fact intelligent. It doesn’t understand the questions it’s asked, or the answers it gives.
But, what if this critique is wrong? What if our elevation of human understanding to something that machines like Chat GPT can’t reach is mere narcissism, or worse, a philosophical mistake? What if, what current AI can do isn’t really possible without some robust level of understanding?
Reuben Cohn- Gordon is an AI researcher at the Iniversity of British Columbia and UC Berkeley, and recently wrote an article entitled GPT’s very Inhuman Mind for Noema magazine, in which he argues against the standard critique of large language models like Chat GPT, namely that they lack any form of intelligence and understanding. Reuben uses a number of ideas from 20th century philosophy in approaching this, as well as intriguing metaphors from Classic Roman literature.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On May 6th, the coronation of King Charles III took place in Westminster Abbey in London, making him officially the head of state of the United Kingdom, the head of the Church of England, and of the UK’s Armed Forces. It also made him head of Nation of sever other counties, including Canada and Australia.
According to polls, more than half the British citizens seem to approve of the monarchy and the pomp and pageantry that goes with it. But can a monarch ever really have democratic legitimacy? Does the monarchy perpetuate an outdated and unjust social hierarchy in British society? And even though today the role is meant to be merely ceremonial, is it really possible for the monarch to be politically neutral?
Alex O’Conor is the host of the YouTube channel Cosmic Skeptic, with over half a million subscribers, which is dedicated to the publication of philosophical debates in an accessible format.
He is also an international public speaker and debater, having debated ethics, religion, and politics with a number of high-profile opponents before college audiences, on radio talk shows and on national television.
Alex published a video essay soon after the death of Queen Elizabeth entitled Abolish the Monarchy, and went recently head to head with Piers Morgan over why most young people today would prefer an elected head of state, rather than a hereditary monarch.
If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On March 22nd, the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization focussed on reducing existential risks facing humanity, and in particular existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI), published an open letter entitled Pause Giant AI Experiments. Its signatories included tech luminaries such as Elon Musk, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Its opening sentences read:
“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs… Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.”
But given the kind of AI available today, are these kinds of concern justified? Is Chat GPT, for example, really a kind of intelligence? And if so, are governments capable of taming it and channelling its capabilities for the benefit of humanity, rather than its destruction?
John Naughton is a Senior Research Fellow at Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge and Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University. He is also the technology columnist of the Observer newspaper.
Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
February 24th marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some still blame the expansion of NATO in Russia’s neighbourhood as the deeper cause of this war. Others see it as Putin’s mad personal plan to go down in the history books. But some are pointing the finger to something much deeper than any of that: the Russian soul.
A concept that originated in Russia’s literary tradition of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and other great authors, is seen as animating today’s national exceptionalism, fuelling Putin’s speeches.
But how straightforward is it draw a causal link between a country’s cultural past, and the politics of today? Is it really ideas than animate history, or should we look to material conditions for a better explanation of events?
Josephine von Zitzewitz is a Lecturer in Russian at the University of Oxford, and recently wrote an article entitled The Uses and Abuses of the Russian Soul: The weaponization of Russian Identity, in which she explores the limits of the idea that Russian culture and literature have a role to play in the war against Ukraine.
Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On January 21, 11 people were killed in a mass shooting in Monterey Park, near Los Angeles, California. Two days later, 7 people were killed in another shooting in Half Moon Bay, a small city on the coast south of San Francisco. It was the 37th mass shooting in the United States in 2023, only 24 days since the year began.
So why is it that despite these repeated incidents, gun laws in the United States are becoming less rather than more restrictive? What is the ideology that is driving America’s love of guns? Is it a love of liberty, and the constitution, along with an instinctive suspicion of any state attempt to limit access to guns? Or is something deeper, more disturbing, behind the supreme court’s recent decisions to undo laws that regulated access to guns, coupled with a huge recent increase in gun ownership?
Suzanne Schneider, Is Deputy Director and Core Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, specializing in political theory and history of the modern Middle East. She is the author of , most recently, The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism, and her comment pieces in places like The New Republic and The Washington Post have tackled this issue of gun ownership in the United States, and bring a perspective that goes beyond the usual clichés about liberty and the constitution.
Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On June 24, the US Supreme court overruled a landmark decision: Roe v Wade. For nearly 50 years, abortion was a constitutional right in the Unites States. No more. “The constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” Read the decision.
But quite apart from the legal argument, everyone knew this was at heart deeply political decision. Three of the judges in the majority opinion were appointed by the previous president, Donald Trump, who had explicitly promised his voters he would appoint pro-life judges when given the chance.
So how should we understand this political decision? Why is the right, always brandishing liberty as its central value, so happy to restrict the freedoms of millions of women? Why does the party who wants a small state, and is averse to government regulation, so happy for the state to intervene in the private lives of citizens, and regulate one of the most personal choices one can make: whether to have a child or not? Is the Republican party simply riddled with internal contradictions when it comes to freedom? Or do they simply understand freedom in an altogether different way?
Toby Buckle is the producer and host of The Political Philosophy Podcast, and the editor of a new collection of essays entitled What is Freedom? Conversations with Historians, Philosophers, and Activists, from Oxford University Press.Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On May 2nd, Politico leaked a draft opinion of the US Supreme Court that suggested the court had voted to overrule Roe v Wade, the previous high court decision from 1973 that guaranteed the right to early term abortion in all of the US. This ruling by the Supreme Court seemingly passes the power to decide on the legality of abortion to individual States, though this essentially amounts to an immediate ban on abortions in several states.
So was the Supreme Court right in allowing individual States to decide on the legality of abortion, given the strong moral disagreement on the issue? Should the law on abortion reflect the morality of the matter? And what does the moral status of abortion depend on?
If so many parents direct love and care towards young foetuses, does that mean they matter morally, and therefore it would be wrong to kill them? Does the foetus have a moral status merely in virtue of it being a potential person? Or is the matter a lot more complicated than that?
Elizabeth Harman is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Philosophy department and the University Center for Human Values, at the University of Princeton. One of her many longstanding research projects is about moral status, harm, and the ethics of procreation.
Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
We don’t often think of animals as war casualties, but animals die in large numbers in every war. Sometimes as specific targets, to deprive the enemy of a food source, sometimes trapped in zoos and shelters, and other times as wildlife. But their deaths are never officially counted, and the senseless killing animals, unlike the killing of innocent civilians, is not considered a war crime.
So do we have special moral duties towards animals in war, given that they have no conception of what war is, and it is something imposed on them by humans?
To what extent does our treatment of animals during war reflect our treatment of animals, particularly those raised for industrial farming, during peace time?
And why, despite the clarity of the moral arguments against the mistreatment of animals in industrial farming and the mass consumption of their meat, do so many of us keep eating animals?
Lori Gruen is William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University, and a leading scholar in Animal studies and feminist philosophy. She is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Ethics and Animals: An Introduction, Entangled Empathy (Lantern, 2015) and the forthcoming Animal Crisis (Polity, 2022) co-authored with the philosopher Alice Crary.
Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On March 16th the UN’s International Court of Justice asked Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine. It had found no evidence to support Russia’s claim that Ukraine was conducting genocide against Russia Speakers in the East of the country, which has been Russia’s justification for the war. A day later Russia rejected the ruling.
So, is international law completely impotent in preventing countries from going to war? And why has the law been more effective in constraining the way that countries fight even illegal wars?
Has the way that the US and other great powers defied international law undermined its effectiveness, and allowed countries like Russia to ignore it? And was Leo Tolstoy right in thinking that making war less brutal, and more humane, would in fact end up in causing more suffering and destruction, by perpetuating war into the future?
Samuel Moyn is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at the Yale Law School and a Professor of History at Yale University. He has written several books on European intellectual history and human rights history, including Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018). His latest book is Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.
Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On February 24th, Russia invaded the country of Ukraine, in an unexpected escalation of a conflict that began in 2014. It is the largest conventional military attack in Europe since World War II.
According to an influential analysis of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, this is all down to NATO’s overreach in the region, and Russia is simply defending itself from being encircled by Western power. But, pay closer attention to what Putin is actually saying, and a very different explanation emerges. Putin believes it’s his destiny to restore Russia to its former glory.
So how should we interpret the actions of states like Russia? Are they merely driver by power and security concerns, like the realist school of thought claims? Or are the beliefs and worldviews of political leaders, like Putin, as well as the national identities of people like those of Ukraine, the real driving force of events?
Is necessity and structural issues the motor of history, or is it contingency and uncertainty at the steering wheel?
Stathis Kalyvas is the Gladstone Professor of Government at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of All Souls College. He is a political scientist who’s written extensively on civil wars, ethnicity, and political violence. and is the author of, among other books, The Logic of Violence in Civil War.
Our conversation was based on an article Kalyvas wrote for the Institute of Art and Ideas, entitled “How we got Putin so wrong”.
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This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and order a copy: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
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Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
On February 1st a national vaccine mandate took effect in Austria. Those over the age of 18 who haven’t been vaccinated could face fines of over €3,000. Several other countries have introduced similar mandates for the elderly, medical staff and care home workers. Those resisting vaccination say it should be their choice whether to get the jab, not the state’s. Others argue that in liberal societies, it’s the state’s a right to limit the freedom of individuals when their behaviour harms others.
So are those resisting vaccination right in saying it’s a matter of their personal freedom? Or does the harm they might be causing others justify state intervention? Would mandating vaccines an act of paternalism by the state? And could ending the pandemic be a good enough reason for overriding other ethical concerns?
Stephen John is the Hatton Trust lecturer in philosophy of public health at the University of Cambridge, and works on the intersection of philosophy of science, applied ethics, and political philosophy. He is author of the book Objectivity in Science, and is a regular contributor to publications like The Conversation, and the online magazine of The Institute of Art and Ideas. Our conversation is based on an article Stephen wrote for the latter, asking “Are mandatory vaccines justified?”.
Pease leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and order a copy: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org
Artwork by Nick Halliday
Music by Rowan Mcilvride -
It’s been a year since the end Trump’s presidency, and the beginning of Biden’s. And while Biden pleaded for unity, and the healing of bitter political divisions in his inaugural speech, the country remains as divided as ever. 40% of Americans say in polls that they don’t believe Joe Biden is the legitimate president, and the International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Report now classifies the United States a “backsliding democracy” sighting “runaway polarization” as one of the key threats.
So is there still hope for American democracy to recover? How exactly should we understand polarization? Is it possible to overcome it by engaging more with the opposite side? And how might reading old philosophy books, about different political realities help?
Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vandrbilt University, and author of a number of books on the nature of democracy, liberalism and the American pragmatist tradition. His most recent book is called Sustaining Democracy: What we Owe to the Other Side, by Oxford University Press.
Talisse is also himself the host of two podcasts: New Books in Philosophy podcast as well as the Why We Argue podcast.
The Institute of Art and Ideas article discussed in the episode can be found here: Democracy and the Polarization Trap.
This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal.
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On November 24th, 27 migrants died trying to cross the Channel to the UK in an inflatable dinghy. This was one of the deadliest incidents of this kind.
The UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson blamed France for not taking stricter measures to prevent those who enable such journeys. People trafficking gangs were “literally getting away with murder”, he said.
But are the people smugglers really the ones to blame for these deaths? Would tougher sentences on those who offer such services be warranted? Are tougher measures likely to benefit migrants in any way? Or would they end up putting them in situations of even greater danger?
Mollie Gerver is an assistant professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. From January 2022 she will be an assistant professor in the Department of Political Economy at King's College London. Her philosophical research focuses on two main topics: consent, and immigration ethics.She is the author of the book The Ethics and Practice of Refugee Repatriation and a number of papers on the Ethics of Immigration, one of which we discuss on the podcast: Decriminalizing People Smuggling.
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