Context - A Philosophical Approach · How will this look in a paragraph? 1. ... a root cause of...

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CONTEXTA PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

Drive your context response with

IDEAS rather than examples.

The types of conflict:

Internal Interpersonal Societal

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Fear

Ignorance

Greed

Open‐Mindedness

Justice

Courage

The roots of all conflict:

Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations)

Bertolt Brecht (Epic theatre)

Jean Baudrillard(hyperreality)

Friedrich Nietzsche (God is dead)

Edward Said (orientalism)

Causes of ConflictCONFLICT CAN BE CAUSED BY

GREEDAND THE DESIRE FOR POWER

Envy and desire

Perpetual pursuit of POWER

Relinquishing ETHICS and MORALS in pursuit

of that power

CONFLICT CAN BE CAUSED BY

FEAROF AN ‘OTHER’

SWIFT reactions

EMOTIONAL responses

Marginalisation of minorities

CONFLICT CAN BE CAUSED BY

IGNORANCE[a lack of knowledge and aninability or unwillingnessto recognise new views,facts or the need for change]

Inability/unwillingness to recognise new views or need for change

Locked into a sense of RIGHTEOUSNESS

Feels SECURITY from not being challenged

Deleuze and Guattari(rhizomatic and striated space)

Henry Thoreau (majority of one)

Responses to ConflictCONFLICT CAN BE RESOLVED BY

JUSTICEAND STANDING UP FOR WHATYOU BELIEVE TO BE RIGHT

Willing to STAND ASIDE from the majority.

RESOLVE and CONVICTION.

SELFLESS defence of RIGHTS.

CONFLICT CAN BE RESOLVED BY

OPENMINDEDNESS

Overcoming IGNORANCE and

PRECONCEPTIONS.

Being TOLERANT OF and OPEN TO new ideas.

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3. Provide an illustrating TEXT EXAMPLE (e.g. Life of Galileo)

2. Discuss a PHILOSOPHER (e.g. Nietzsche)

How will this look in a paragraph?

1. Introduce an IDEA related to conflict (e.g. ignorance)

How will this look in a paragraph?The roots of many conflicts can be traced to systematic ignorance and an inability or unwillingness to adapt past beliefs to respond to new ways of perceiving the world and the discovery of new evidence. The ignorant often become locked into an inviolable sense of righteousness, with security achieved only when their views are

unchallenged, unquestioned and blindly accepted.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explores this concept in his work The Gay Science, where he asserts that the “strength of knowledge” as historically been dependent upon “age and the degree to which it has been incorporated”

into the fabric of human thought systems and societal norms. Seeing religion as central to this idea of knowledge stemming from authority instead of evidence, Nietzsche rejected unsubstantiated belief in authority as a basis for truth and morality, leading him to famously declare that “God is dead”. At its core, this statement objects to the illusion of a tangible and provable system that a belief in God offers, and hence rejects those actions, values and meanings that

people subscribe to in the name of ‘God’. Instead, Nietzsche advocated for “a Gay Science”: a science of the self, which views “truth as experiment”.

The effects of this ignorance and its role as a root cause of conflict is made clear in Bertolt Brecht’s play Life of Galileo. Galileo comes into conflict with the church through their different views of the proper authority for truth. Whereas the

church vehemently believes that truth comes from “the authority of Aristotle” and the “holy scriptures”, Galileo instead advocates that “truth is born of the times” and must be based upon the “evidence of their five senses”. The church find comfort in its ignorance of the true state of the universe, choosing instead to cling to the notion that “the

creator’s eye rests upon” the Earth and the church “alone”.

Ultimately both Galileo and Nietzsche reject such justifications that are based upon religious belief, and the result of this is an inescapable conflict that is incapable of resolution until either the ignorance of the aggressor is overcome by the “triumph of reason”, or the challenge to their authority is removed and the security of tradition and previous

“conditions of life” are returned.

How will this look in a paragraph?

IDEA

PHILOSO

PHER

TEXT EX

AMPLE

EVER

Y M

AN

IN THIS

VILLA

GE IS A

LIAR

LIFE OF

GALILEO

EVER

Y M

AN IN

THIS VILLA

GE

LIFE OF

GALILEO

EVER

Y M

AN IN

THIS VILLA

GE

LIFE OF

GALILEO

EVER

Y M

AN IN

THIS VILLA

GE

LIFE OF

GALILEO

I WILL NOT BE

SILENCED

SAID

NIETZ

SCHE

DELEU

ZE

AND

GUATT

ARI

THOREA

U

BAUDRILLA

RD

BREC

HT

HUNTINGTO

N

FEAR IGNORANCE GREED/POWER

OPEN‐MINDEDNESS

JUSTICE

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What is missing from this plan?

Time to have a look at those philosophersand see if we can

link them to the texts...

Philosophy!

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Friedrich NIETZSCHE

• “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

• People invented “lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content”.

• However, just because humans have invented these “conditions of life”, this does not prove their existence and we need to be aware that the world we have created “might include error”.

• The death of god “unchained the earth from the sun” and means that it is now time to “move beyond good and evil”.

• Our notions of morality and truth, as far as they are based on religion and belief, are therefore false.

• What was needed instead was “a Gay Science”, a science of the self which views “truth as experiment”.

Ignorance

Friedrich NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche• “God is dead…And we have killed him.”

• God is a construct used to justify morality, subdue desires and maintain power: a construct invented by society.

Life of Galileo

• Galileo: “Today mankind can write in its diary: Got rid of Heaven.” p24

• Sagredo: “So were is God?”

• Galileo: “Within ourselves, or nowhere.” p28

• Barbarini: “If God didn’t exist then we would have to invent him.” p61

• The Pope: “they have placed their faith in a brass ball they call a compass, not in God…God anyhow is no longer necessary to them…” p92

Ignorance

Life of Galileo

Friedrich NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche• Throughout history, the “strength of knowledge” has not depended on its degree of truth but rather on its “age and the degree to which it has been incorporated” into the fabric of human through systems and societal norms.

• Unshackled from belief and blind adherence to authority, we need “a Gay Science”: a science of the self, which views “truth as experiment”.

Life of Galileo

Galileo: “…to believe in the authority of Aristotle is one thing, tangible facts are another…I ask you to go by the evidence of your eyes…

Truth is born of the times, not of authority…

Such people [tradesmen] showed me a lot of new approaches. They don’t read much, but rely on the evidence of their five senses, without all that much fear as to where such evidence is going to lead them…” pp41‐43

Ignorance

Life of Galileo

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Henry THOREAU

• Author of Civil Disobedience.

• “Break the law”if the law requires you to be an “agent of injustice to another”.

• Thoreau also argued that people who create change in society view themselves as having “a majority of one” – a mindset that puts aside current injustices and peacefully but steadfastly fights for the greater good for all.

• At the heart of Thoreau’s theories is how we treat each other and that what is right for me must also be right for others.

• Thoreau suggested that we should act as a “counter friction” to try to “smooth” or, in some cases, “stop the machine”.

Justice

Henry THOREAU

Links to Life of Galileo:

Does Galileo stand up for justice? NO.In the end he does not – he recants.

• Galileo ultimately recants because he “was afraid of physical pain” after being shown the “instruments” of torture used by the inquisition. It is because of this “human weakness” that he ultimately fails before the power of the church. (p107)

Justice

Life of Galileo

Henry THOREAU


Does Galileo stand up for justice? NO.In the end he does not – he recants.

• Ultimately those in control in the church “do have the power” to achieve their will (p95). Ethics and morality, on both sides, crumble before the onslaught of this greed and desire to maintain power.

Justice

Life of Galileo

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Henry THOREAU


Galileo lacked the ability to follow through with his beliefs, and he worries about the effects.

• Galileo recognises in the end that he lacked the “particular courage” that the “pursuit of science” demands. (p108)

Justice

Life of Galileo

Henry THOREAU


Galileo lacked the ability to follow through with his beliefs, and he worries about the effects.

• Instead of “standing firm”, which could have developed within scientists “like the doctors’ Hippocratic oath, a vow to use their knowledge exclusively for mankind's benefit”, Galileo instead believes that his capitulation has given birth to “a race of inventive dwarves”. (p109)

Justice

Life of Galileo

Henry THOREAU

Links to I will not be silenced:• Sometimes, remaining

silent is all that is needed for injustice to perpetuate.

• While she did not need to “break the law”, in many ways Campbell-Stephen needed to challenge existing legal structures and take on an inherently unjust system in order to overcome the accepted belief that “no one wins rape cases in Kenya”.

• Charlotte Campbell‐Stephen’s seven‐and‐a‐half year journey, which saw her case “restarted from scratch eight times”, required her to maintain a steadfast adherence to justice and be willing to stand as a “majority of one”.

• Campbell‐Stephen’s commitment to education and advocacy has resulted in tangible improvements, with police now “trained in sensitisation towards gender‐based violence” and “how to collect evidence”.

Justice

I Will NotBe Silenced

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Giles DELEUZE & Felix GUATTARI

Open-Mindedness

RHIZOMATIC SPACE

STRIATED SPACE


• Deleuze and Guattaribelieve that we naturally exist in a “rhizomaticspace”.

• A rhizome “can be read starting anywhere and can be related to any other plateau” and lacks a “privileged centre”.

• Discussed in their book A Thousand Plateaus.

“A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things”

“The rhizome has no privileged centre”

Open-Mindedness


Striated space is RIGID, FIXED, UNYIELDING and based on DICHOTOMIES. In a state of “being”.

Rhizomatic space recognises change and is

a state of “becoming”.

Open-Mindedness

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Deleuze and Guattari“any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other”

“Each plateau can be read starting from anywhere and can be related to an other plateau.”

“A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things…”


Life of Galileo

“The universe has lost its centre overnight, and

woken up to find it has countless centres. So that

each one can now be seen as the centre, or none at all. Suddenly

there is a lot of room.” p8

Open-Mindedness

Life of Galileo


Deleuze and Guattari“any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other”

“Each plateau can be read starting from anywhere and can be related to an other plateau.”

“A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things…”


Life of Galileo

“Heaven and earth are no longer distinct… Heaven

because it is made of earth, and earth because it is just one more heavenly body.

There is no more difference between top and bottom,

between eternal and ephemeral.” p52

Open-Mindedness

Life of Galileo


Open-Mindedness

“Faced with the stars we are like dull‐eyed worms that hardly see at all. Those old constructions people have believed in for the last thousand years are

hopelessly rickety: vast buildings most of whose wood is in the buttresses

propping them up.” p17 LoG

Just like the striated spaces/ dichotomies that we have created!

The dichotomous categories crumble when faced with the true chaotic nature of the world!

Life of Galileo

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Open-Mindedness

But wait!

There’s more!

Deleuze and Guattari will fit with pretty much EVERYTHING!


Deleuze and Guattari• An open‐minded person is aware of the “striated space” that we have created and is able to move beyond it into the “rhizomaticspace” that reflects our true existence: chaotic, without a “privileged core” and where everything is always “in the middle, between things” and “connected” to everything else.

• People need to accept that truth is ever‐changing, does not fit into simple dichotomies, and that we need to question existing structures and be open to new ideas and ways of seeing the world.

Every Man in this Village is a Liar

• “You can survive and not survive, both at the same time.” p.4

• “Things are not mutually exclusive. Very little in Afghanistan is mutually exclusive.” p.27

Open-Mindedness

Every ManIn This Village


Deleuze and Guattari• An open‐minded person is aware of the “striated space” that we have created and is able to move beyond it into the “rhizomaticspace” that reflects our true existence: chaotic, without a “privileged core” and where everything is always “in the middle, between things” and “connected” to everything else.

• People need to accept that truth is ever‐changing, does not fit into simple dichotomies, and that we need to question existing structures and be open to new ideas and ways of seeing the world.


• Stack sees two mujahedeen with “fingers intertwined, plastic flowers glowing in black hair, winking and fluttering” like “two besotted lovers”. She is struck by “these strange peacocks, stunned by the magenta homoeroticism of this dry, pious land”. p9

• “Afghanistan was meaning washed away in floods of colour, in drugs, guns, sexual ambiguity, and Islam.” p.9

Open-Mindedness


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Edward SAID

• Wrote a book called Orientalism.

• He argues that “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.”

• “A line is drawn between two continents. Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant.”

• Orientalism became “a code by which Europe could interpret both itself and the Orient to itself.”

• “There is…a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of co‐existence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external dominion.”

• “…the terrible reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubricslike "America," "The West" or "Islam" and invent collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse

Fear

Key terms:Oriental = the East (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan)Occidental = the West (e.g. Australia, USA)

Edward SAID

Orientalism

• “Without a well‐organized sense that these people over there were not like "us" and didn't appreciate "our" values, the very core of traditional Orientalist dogma,…there would have been no war.”


• Stack’s American friend Ducreflects these views, seeing Afghans as a dehumanised ‘other’, where “those people deserve” “whatever happens to them”.

• Duc’s mind is closed to any attempts by Stack to highlight the “difference between Afghan civilians and al Qaeda”.

Fear


Edward SAID

Orientalism

• “…the terrible reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like "America," "The West" or "Islam" and invent collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse…”

Every Man in this Village is a Liar• A rift is seen in the views held by Americans towards Saudi Arabians, who are described as being “fanatic, brutal, sexist, materialistic, modern‐day slave owners”. Likewise, Saudis’ view the USA as “a nation of whores, drugs, broken families and guns”.

• By focussing on the most extreme differences, each culture reduces the others to stereotypes, and is perpetuated as they “don’t even try to understand one another” and reduces the other to that which “provokes visceral disgust” in the observer.

Fear


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Edward SAID

Every Man in this Village is a Liar: Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict

• Stack recognises that the lack of recognition of a shared humanity is a core issue in the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict, which was become “out of control” with “blood wash[ing] blood”.

• When Stack writes about how the bodies of suicide bombers piling up in Israeli morgues, she is attacked for “humanising” suicide bombers by suggesting that they have “corpses and families”.

• Stack realises the need for “truth and humanity” in this narrative, and the need to recognise that Israelis and Palestinians were indeed “one people after all, each one half of a whole”.

• Until this is done, and people can see past their misconceptions and fear of the other, resolution to such engrained conflicts will remain elusive.

Fear


Samuel HUNTINGTON

• “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.”

• “…the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.”

Greed

• “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

• “…differences between civilizations are…basic.”

Samuel HUNTINGTON

• The West tends to view itself as a “universal civilization”, and ignores the fact that “Western concepts differ fundamentally from those prevalent in other civilizations”.

Greed

• “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion...but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non‐Westerners never do.”

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Samuel HUNTINGTON

Clash of Civilizations• “The very notion that there could be a ‘universal civilization’ is a Western idea…”

• “In the political realm…these differences are most manifest in the efforts of the United States…to induce other peoples to adopt Western ideas concerning democracy and human rights. Modern democratic government originated in the West.”


• Regarding Iraq: “…we heard that the war has been necessary because of our rigorous American ideology and morals. Saddam was an oppressor and a tyrant and so we deposed him.” p79

• “Americans are the ones who always say that America is the model.” p122

Greed


Samuel HUNTINGTON

Clash of Civilizations

• “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion...but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”


• Regarding Iraq: “But other Arab dictators still sat among their riches and their torture chambers.” p79

• “This was the conclusion dawning on many Arab despots: that Saddam had been forced into hiding because he refused to play along, not because of democracy, human rights, political prisoners, or press repression.” p84

Greed


Samuel HUNTINGTON

Clash of Civilizations

• “…religion…provides a basis for identity …that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.”

• “differences between civilizations are…basic… different views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority…”

Every Man in this Village is a Liar• A preacher in Jordan during the Iraq war: “The Arab nation is being humiliated because we are not religious enough…If we unite as Arabs we will win this war.” p112

• “…the complaints about America’s basic moral unseemliness…” p116

• “Nora was an Arab and I was an American…That distinction grew up like a wall, and we each sat on our separate sides…” p123

• “We will coexist but neither side will sacrifice its character.” p128

Greed


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Jean BAUDRILLARDIgnorance

• “…given the principles of simulation which governs all information, even the most pious and objective, and given the structural unreality of images and their profound indifference to the truth, these cynics alone are right about information when they employ is as an unconditional simulacrum… They alone are conscious of the profound immorality of images…”

• “Information is not knowledge”

• “Television is not seeing”

• “We are no longer the direct agents of our acts and thoughts.”

Jean BAUDRILLARDIgnorance

Jean BAUDRILLARD

‘The Gulf War did not take place’ Every Man in this Village is a Liar

Ignorance

• The War on Terror “was not a real thing. Not that the war on terror was flawed, not that it was cynical or self‐defeating, or likely to breed more resentment and violence. But that it was hollow, it was essentially nothing but a unifying myth for a complicated scramble of mixed Impulses and social theories and night terrors and cruelty and business interests, all overhung with the unassailable memory of falling skyscrapers.”

• “Since this war was won in advance, we will never really know what it would have been like had it existed.”

• “But this is not a war, any more than 10,000 tonnes of bombs per day is sufficient to make it a war.”

• “For the Americans, the enemy does not exist as such.”


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Jean BAUDRILLARD

‘The Gulf War did not take place’ Every Man in this Village is a Liar

Ignorance

• “the first voice in this article was no longer that of an Afghan victim. Instead, it was a Pentagon official who said: ‘This is a false story.’”

• “News writers depend upon the world to organise itself into some kind of tale, a story that can be told in short, recognisable form. People rise and fall; murder and redeem; cheat and reconcile. In Afghanistan, I kept waiting for a narrative to assert itself… Instead, events flickered, split, and rolled away like mercury.” p28

• “the structural unreality of images and their profound indifference to the truth”

• “Information is not knowledge”

• “Television is not seeing”


And that is it!It’s a lot to take in, so:

Check the materials on STL Link…Pick those examples/ideas that work for you…Revise the relevant parts of the relevant texts…Figure out which philosophers you want to use with which ideas…Practise using these ideas in relation to prompts…

Context: A Philosophical Approach

IDEA

PHILOSO

PHER

TEXT EX

AMPLE

FEAR IGNORANCE GREED/POWER

OPEN‐MINDEDNESS

JUSTICE

SAID

NIETZ

SCHE

DELEU

ZE

AND

GUATT

ARI

THOREA

U

BAUDRILLA

RD

EVER

Y M

AN

IN THIS

VILLA

GE IS A

LIAR

LIFE OF

GALILEO

EVER

Y M

AN IN

THIS VILLA

GE

BREC

HT

HUNTINGTO

N

LIFE OF

GALILEO

EVER

Y M

AN IN

THIS VILLA

GE

LIFE OF

GALILEO

EVER

Y M

AN IN

THIS VILLA

GE

LIFE OF

GALILEO

I WILL NOT BE

SILENCED

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