An Interview with Sameer Bajaj

Admissions Director of PPE at Warwick

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to yourself – what is your academic background, and what does your role at Warwick entail?

I am American (if you can’t tell by the accent) – I was born and raised in Birmingham Alabama, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.

I then went on to Pomona College in California, where I was a philosophy major. I then went to law school at Columbia Law School in New York City where I got a law degree. 

I thought I was going to be a lawyer – but obviously I didn’t become a lawyer. 

When I was in law school I decided that really my passion was for philosophy. From when I was an undergraduate student. I loved philosophy but I thought it wasn’t a sensible decision to go on and get a graduate degree in philosophy. Still, ultimately I decided that I really did have a special inclination toward philosophy – so here I am! 

I then applied to graduate school – I got my PhD from the University of Arizona which at the time was kind of the leading place at least in the US to do political philosophy. 

I wouldn’t say that it is anymore, but it’s still a great place to do political philosophy. I got my first job, after I got my PhD, at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster Pennsylvania but then was contacted by the head of Warwick’s philosophy department Fabienne Peter. She said, “we have an opening, would you like to apply?” 

I didn’t think I had a realistic shot of getting the job; it’s a really prestigious department especially in moral and political philosophy – in many fields it’s a prestigious department but it has a real strength in moral and political philosophy. 

I applied and to my surprise I kept advancing in the job search and eventually got the job. 

That’s how I ended up here. 

In terms of my role at Warwick – I’m a lecturer here at the Philosophy department. I work in moral and political philosophy and teach classes in moral and political philosophy. 

Administratively, I am the admissions tutor for the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Programme.

I also head an academic centre called the Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs, which is a kind of research centre combining faculty in Law, Politics and Philosophy and we bring in speakers every week and so I helped run that along with a colleague in Politics. 

Sometimes when you read interview with philosophers and professional philosophers, people ask you – how did you get into academic philosophy they say things like “well ever since I was a child, I had proto-philosophical thoughts” and – that wasn’t me, I liked Nintendo and sports and I wouldn’t describe myself as having proto-philosophical thoughts as a child. But growing up in Birmingham Alabama – as the heart of the American civil rights movement – I had a great reverence for the leading figures of the American Civil Rights movement and an appreciation from a pretty early age of the power of democratic movements and the cardinal moral importance of justice and equality – so that conviction I think has stayed with me throughout my life. 

When I was in high school, though, I didn’t have any inclination that when I went to university I would study philosophy or get into academia. Put simply, they don’t teach philosophy in American high schools. 

I went to university thinking I would be an English major. I went and took English classes my first year at Pomona and found out it wasn’t quite for me, so I decided to look around for subjects that I thought would be interesting given my interest in literature. I took a class in moral and political philosophy with Professor Paul Hurley at Pomona College and it completely changed my life.

I think from that point on I developed a real interest in political theory but at the time, I wasn’t quite confident in myself in my abilities to think that I could be a professional philosopher or an academic – the most natural path for me seemed to be law school. Giiven, as I said, my conviction in justice and equality and given my interest in political philosophy, law is a natural pathway for someone interested in those things and of course it can be quite financially lucrative, so it seemed to me a more stable and secure path. I took the LSAT – the law school admissions test that you have to take to get into American law school. At least, at the time you did – perhaps some schools have dropped that requirement. But I took it and I got into Columbia Law School and it’s a very good law school so I thought, well, this seems like a very good career path and I kind of enjoyed it. I think at the time the culture of American law schools was rather cut-throat, rather ruthless, rather competitive – and I really didn’t like that. I think now if I was going back to law school now I would enjoy it much more than I did at the time. I was young, I was 22 years old and overwhelmed with the competitive nature of the law school especially considering it was Columbia, which has an especially competitive culture, and I missed Philosophy quite a bit. But I decided I was there, so I might as well go ahead and get the law degree; even if I wanted to go back into Philosophy it would be a good fallback career, but my third year of law school I decided to apply to Philosophy graduate programmes. It was quite a risky move at that point because I had offers from large American law firms, highly paying offers – and all my friends were going off to these major law firms or clerking for federal judges and everyone was wondering…what I was doing exactly? 

But I really just decided that I had a passion for philosophy and maybe it would work out and I wanted to give it a try. So I applied to graduate schools and decided to go for a couple years to get a Masters at Tufts University which was a really pivotal time for me – at that time I kind of developed the confidence that one needs to be successful in a PhD programme and also I think got a deeper background in philosophy more generally and epistemology and metaphysics. 

One thing you learn as you continue to go on in Philosophy is that everything is related – questions of epistemology are central to political philosophy and metaphysics. Essentially, everything is related to everything else so it was really important I think to deepen my background in philosophy and so I did that at Tufts and then applied and then got into Arizona and did my PhD there. 

2. So you completed most of your education in the US, but now teach in the UK. What do you think are some of the strengths and weaknesses of one education system compared to another? And perhaps particularly in regard to philosophy? 

Here’s one advantage of the American system. And it was an advantage that was absolutely crucial in terms of dictating my future career path. You don’t enter into a certain programme – you apply to a university. Otherwise, You’re asking students to make an incredibly pivotal choice perhaps before they are ready. I entered university thinking I was going to be an English major, then switched to Philosophy. Then, One advantage of the UK system is that it is exponentially cheaper. The tuition at Pomona College, where I went, is now north of $60,000 per year. That’s absolutely standard, and obviously that’s a major disadvantage – being saddled with debt – oftentimes crippling debt – which lasts over the course of decades of their life. Student quality is similar. From what I can tell, the quality of the education is similar. The quality of the work being done by the philosophical community in the UK is similar to that in the US. So the significant advantages to the UK system are to do with the speed and the cost. 

3. Are there any philosophers whose thoughts you most resonate with? 

He’s not particularly conceived of as a philosopher but I taught him a couple of weeks ago in my democracy module and his work is the reason I developed an interest in philosophy and that’s the work of Martin Luther King. “A Letter From a Birmingham Jail” provides what is now taken to be the standard justification for civil disobedience which is now found in the literature. I now resonate very deeply on a personal level with that essay and some of the other work of Martin Luther King. As it applies to traditional analytic political philosophers…I love the thinkers from the social contract tradition – Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau. I have always enjoyed the systematicity of their thought. The way in which they have a keen eye towards the social nature of human beings. Of course, there are ways in which their work is misguided in lots of ways. Certainly in the work of Locke and Rousseau you can find a lot of bigoted, sexist and racist statements. So, when studying philosophers in the canon, in the history of philosophy. One has to separate the good elements from the bad elements of their work. Of course there is debate about whether that can be done – I believe it can be – which is why I am influenced by the report. In more contemporary philosophy, I think the work of John Rawls has had a more significant impact on the way I think about contemporary philosophy. I’ve moved somewhat away from Rawls’ work as I’ve gotten deeper into other kinds of topics but Rawls continues to be a major influence. 

And there’s lots of other people – I can go on if you’d like. 

4. Our next question is more about your research interests – moral and political philosophy, and in particular democratic theory. Could you tell us more about these fields and perhaps how are they relevant today in these times? 

Moral philosophy as I conceive of it is the study of what we owe to one another and how we ought to live our lives. 

Political philosophy is the study of how we ought to design our institutions and what kinds of obligations we as individuals have with respect to our institutions. 

My research focuses on democratic theory and specifically what I focus on is the moral demands of democratic citizens. So, the question of first of all, is why we ought to participate in politics and secondly, how we ought to participate, if we should. I ask a number of questions like that  in my work – what kind of obligations we have as democratic citizens, for example. So for example, we are working on the question now of why we ought to vote. 

In the recent literature on democratic theory have been a number of challenges to the idea that democratic citizens ought to vote and these challenges are motivated by the thought that we as individuals remain indifferent to the outcomes of these elections, and if that’s the case, why shouldn’t we spend our time doing other things? As opposed to voting. 

So some of my work tries to answer that question, why individual democratic citizens ought to vote. I’m also interested in questions about the ethics of representation. How should representatives act, and what kinds of differences to electoral outcomes make to how representatives ought to act. 

Does that influence how they ought to govern? In line with my interest in Martin Luther King and the American civil rights movement, I also work on questions about the proper form of democratic protest. There’s been a long tradition extolling the virtues of civil disobedience in society. Might there be something to be said for the uncivil disobedience in a democratic society? Is uncivil disobedience a legitimate form of democratic protest? 

To take an example that might be near and dear to your hearts, in 2020, the Statue of Edward Coulston was toppled in Harbour. That’s very much the standard definition – standard act, even – of civil disobedience 

Does that kind of act, because it involves the destruction of public property, have a legitimate role to play in a democratic society? So my work focuses on democratic theory, honing in on the demands of democratic citizenship, focuses on why and how we ought to participate. I think each of us should want to know how we ought to act in a democratic society when we are one amongst millions of people. People who disagree very strongly with us in certain cases and I take it these are questions that I would hope are at the forefront of ordinary democratic citizen’s minds. 

5. Could you go in detail into one of your papers?

One paper focuses on the theory of the German Political philosopher Reinard Forst, who is a student of the very famous German philosopher and theologist Jergan Habermaas. That paper is an attempt to explain – kind of an attempt at meta-ethics, actually – an attempt to critique Reinard Forst’s theory of morality – we have what’s called a deliberative theory of morality and objective moral facts arise from the kind of idealised deliberative situation. If you want to know what objective moral facts are we ask what kinds of facts idealised deliberators would agree to and try to provide a fundamental critique of the idea that you could derive objective moral facts from an idealised deliberative situation – it’s interesting you ask about that particular paper as that’s probably the most abstract of any of the papers I’ve written. 

6. Our next question is also related to something you’ve written that we found quite interesting – you co-wrote the entry on democracy with Tom Cristiano in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. What prompted that entry and what was your aim in writing it? 

I wrote my PhD at the University of Arizona under Tom’s supervision. Tom is a leading normative democratic theorist. He works on the moral foundations of democracy and believes that the right way to understand moral justification of democracy is in terms of respecting the equality of all individuals. 

So at any rate he’s a well known democratic theorist; he had written the previous entry on democracy and I think he asked me to help write the updated entry, because I perhaps was a little more focused on the cutting edge research on the dimensions of moral demands and democratic citizenship. He thought that that was a missing element of the entry. 

As you may notice in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy – it’s kind of a marvellous creation – completely free Encyclopaedia of philosophy that is written by experts in the field. 

It is the authoritative encyclopaedia of philosophy – it is the one that everyone recognises as being the definitive Encyclopaedia of philosophy. 

So It was a cool opportunity when he asked me to write it. 

Our aim in writing it was to provide sort of an up to date overview of the field that would be accessible to both specialists and non-specialists alike. That’s kind of the role of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Anyone can read the entry and tell me if we achieved that. Basically, we wanted to provide an overview of normative democratic theory as it stands right now. One of the great things about writing an entry for the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is that you have to ensure that you are up to date with an incredibly wide range of work in whatever subject you’re writing about. It’s really an opportunity to get up to speed on the main works of normative democratic theory as they stand right now. 

7. Now moving more into the contemporary political scene. Soon, a majority of the world will vote in democracies, but at the same time we’re seeing this explosion of strong-man rule around the world – What do you think prompted those sort of fundamental threats? 

I think the threat of strongman rule arises naturally within democracy to some extent and the 2024 elections will have a pivotal role in determining whether democracies continue the backsliding into far right authoritarianism, which is already happening, or whether perhaps that threat will be averted. 

It’s difficult to say what exactly prompted it. I’m not entirely sure there’s a unified cause. 

There may or may not be. If we just think about Europe, for example. Let’s look at the situation for Europe. In Hungary and Italy, we already have far right parties in power. In France and Germany far-right parties are very much on the rise. In Poland, far-right parties – although the law and justice parties are perhaps different than some of the far right parties that have gained power, nonetheless. So, the situation is: far-right populism is very much on the rise in Europe. Obviously, far-right populism is a major threat in America too. 

What accounts for this? There’s obviously been a backlash to immigration policy, and I think in particular immigration policy after the Syrian refugee crisis 2014, so that’s a very standard explanation for why far-right parties tend to gain power – there are people who leverage anxiety about immigration and multiculturalism into a kind of conservative response. 

And so I think immigration has certainly had something to do with it – I think economic insecurity has had something to do with it. I think the post financial crisis in 2008 has had something to do with it – there’s definitely been – I mean that’s a standard playbook again – when there’s economic insecurity, far-right authoritarians are able to leverage that into gains in political power. That’s part of the standard playbook. 

I wish I could offer a unified explanation, I wish there was one but I doubt there is just one. I think it has something to do with immigration; it has something to do with economic insecurity. I think also it has something to do with a rise of political polarisation in democracies. At least that explains why conservative parties in Europe and America, which have traditionally been more moderate than they are now, have become increasingly radicalised. 

Part of that too is a reaction to left-wing politics so I think it has something to do with polarisation with polarisation defined as a tendency of members of a deliberating group to move to more extreme versions of their views. What’s causing political polarisation in democracy? There’s a lot of explanations for that – I’m not sure I can give anything like a simple explanation and in my view these are all plausible candidates for partial explanations.

Immigration, economic insecurity and the rise of political polarisation – obviously these are related in various ways. That would be my best attempt at isolating common factors to help explain the rise of right-wing authoritarianism and what had traditionally been stable, liberal democracies – I think it’s a very serious threat for various reasons. One reason it’s a very serious threat is because right wing authoritarianism is always associated with marginalisation and oppression of minority groups within a particular state. I also think it’s likely to be very bad at economic policy – a kind of turn away from global cosmopolitan international trade. Also it makes solving the many global problems that the world faces nearly impossible by thinking first and foremost of the impending climate crisis. 

So it’s going to be very difficult to solve that crisis and plus there is very stable and open international cooperation. And there are more proximate worries with specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – Trump and all of the leading Republican candidates in the US have been quite clear that if they gain power they’re going to dramatically reduce funding altogether for Ukraine and of course effectively that means Ukraine loses the war. 

There are lots and lots of reasons why the rise of right-wing populism is a worry – I don’t see it as something that’s rising alongside the 2024 elections – I see the 2024 elections as a pivotal point in determining whether a far-right authoritarianism will prevail in liberal democracies, at least in the short to medium term. 

I know that’s intense and I don’t wanna create anxiety in the room but that’s the situation we’re in. 

8. Just to ask a more personal question, What are your thoughts on India’s position as a democracy?

I wouldn’t classify it as a dictatorship. A dictatorship is a political system where one legally controls a monopoly of political power. 

India is much closer to a full blown democracy than it is a dictatorship but India again is another country where far right authoritarian populism is on the rise – increasingly so, there’s been very significant crackdowns on free speech. 

As of course, recently been laws passed to create second-class citizenship for Muslim citizens. India is increasingly becoming a religious, nationalist country. But India in 1947 was a paradigm of multicultural democracy, very self-consciously designed as a multicultural democracy and a very impressive one in certain ways. It’s really a foundation of India’s constitution and the framers of India’s constitution are very conscious of the need to ensure that India remains an open, liberal multicultural democracy. So the idea that India would become a Hindu nationalist democracy I think was most certainly not the understanding of the framers of India’s constitution. There’s a lot of different dimensions of the kind of Hindu nationalistic populism which is on the rise and impressive for minority groups. 

There’s a lot of different dimensions of the kind of Hindu nationalism that’s on the rise. There’s been a very significant backlash against the Dalits. The point I’m trying to make is that, to answer your question, India is another paradigm of a democracy that is increasingly tending towards right-wing authoritarian populism. 

It just seems to be a global phenomenon in democracies and I view it as a significant threat – perhaps the most significant threat to democracies. 

9. You mentioned that immigration is a major driver of the instability and rise of the far right – what do you think could promote tolerance in the age of increased migration and diversity? What are ways to promote that sort of tolerance and intercultural understanding that could perhaps ease the tension? Or historically, what’s been successful? 

It’s a very good question. One thing to say is that I’m just a philosopher. 

It’s an empirical question rather than another abstract question. I think anti-immigration sentiment tends to flourish when there’s an underlying sense of fear and anxiety in a population. 

What causes that underlying fear and anxiety in a population? One element is economic factors.

I think immigration has certainly had something to do with it. I think economic insecurity has had something to do with it. I think post-financial crisis in 2008 there’s definitely been something to do with it. 

It has something to do with a rise in political polarisation in democracies. I think why conservative parties in Europe and America which have traditionally been more moderate than they are now have become increasingly radicalised. 

Part of that, as I said earlier, is a reaction to left wing politics so I think it has something to do with polarisation – polarisation defined as the tendency of members of a deliberating group to a more extreme version of their views. What’s causing political polarisation in democracies? There’s a lot of explanations for that. They’re not quite sure I can give anything like a simple explanation, but in my view, these are all plausible candidates for partial explanations. 

Immigration, economic insecurity and the rise of political polarisation – obviously all these things are related in various ways. That would be my best attempt at isolating common factors that explain the rise of right wing authoritarianism in what have traditionally been stable, liberal democracies. 

Another point we have not touched on is that it also makes solving the many global problems that the world faces fairly impossible. 

I’m thinking first and foremost, the impending global climate crisis. There are more proximate worries – specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump and all of the leading Republican candidates in the US have been quite clear that if they gain power, they’re going to dramatically reduce funding altogether.

My understanding of where the empirical research lies with respect to immigration is that immigration is good for economies rather than bad but the question was about what can encourage tolerance, and that’s a question about how people perceive things rather than how things are – and the understanding is that immigration tends to undermine the economic standing of those who are resident in a country. One thing that can be done I think is to encourage policies that make people better off and more financially stable. We’re currently in a global economic downturn that makes that difficult, but we can come out of that relatively soon in a way that people will feel is making a difference in their lives.

It’s a really tricky thing. 

I think that politicians on the left in particular need to do a better job of extolling the virtues of large scale immigration. They need to do a better job perhaps of developing the view in democratic populations that it’s their moral obligation in some cases – that it’s their obligation to provide a place to people who are legitimately seeking asylum or a place to live. 

So it’s just a very difficult question. My sense is that a lot of it comes down to the fact that, as it currently stands, certainly politicians and the conservative media are doing a better job that the rest of the media than drumming up support for their particular side of the immigration debate.

Liberal politicians don’t have a great grasp on how to counteract that messaging and they need to develop a strategy quickly. 

10. What do you think is the most important skill that philosophy can impart to its students? 

That’s a great question – I often tell my students that they’re not gonna remember exactly what they learned in my lectures, but they’re gonna hopefully employ the kind of thinking skills they learned throughout their lives. 

The first thing I hope philosophy imparts to its students is how to think rigorously. To not leave assumptions unexamined. To not merely accept received wisdom, because it is received wisdom. To learn how to develop an argument and to defend positions carefully and clearly. Also to learn how to write with great clarity. 

It’s often suggested that philosophy is not particularly a marketable degree. But what the research shows in the US is that philosophy majors are amongst the top of the non-STEM fields in terms of mid-career salaries. 

If you look at who does well at graduate school admissions test, asides from a few majors, philosophy majors score the highest on law school admissions tests. It’s a little bit difficult to know precisely what skills you want your employees to have 3, 4 or 5 years from now. You want employees that know how to think. Employees that can apply critical thinking to problems you may have in your company. 

So that’s the first thing it teaches. 

I hope in addition to that, it teaches students a love of the truth. I would hope that philosophy students as they go throughout their philosophy training, develop a real appreciation for the value of truth for truth’s sake. 

I would hope that philosophy teaches students that it’s possible through careful analysis to uncover certain truths and that the truth is to be revered. So I hope it teaches students a love of the truth. Then, It teaches students the actual subject matter of philosophy. I intentionally put that third, behind the other things I just mentioned, because it’s just reality that most of our students who don’t go on to pursue a career in philosophy are gonna forget most of what they learn in their philosophy classes. It’s probably the case that every single student would forget most of what they learn in their university years. 

There’s nothing wrong with that. What I hope philosophy gives you is a lifelong ability to think logically, clearly, analytically, about difficult, complex topics of great importance to the world and human beings. 

That is the main skill that students learn. 

It actually helps you throughout your life and through your career. It’s a useful and marketable skill – learning how to think philosophically. 

11. What do you think is the role of the philosopher in the modern world? 

If you ask 100 philosophers this question you’ll probably get 100 different answers. 

The first and most fundamental role of the philosopher in the modern world is the same as the role of the philosopher in the ancient world, which is the discovery and analysis of truths of fundamental importance to the human condition, and the teaching of different views of truths of fundamental importance to the human condition. 

I think the role will continue to be the pursuit of truth for the sake of truth, and the teaching to others of different views of the truth. That’s really the first thing and that’s what I conceive of my most important job. 

Now, there is a question beyond that of the role of the philosopher in public debate, in discourse, and whether and to what extent philosophers ought to seek out a central role in public debate and discourse. Undeniably, It is important that there are philosophers in the public discourse and realm. They are simply performing the fundamental task of the philosopher since the days of Socrates. Some philosophers that perhaps have a greater aptitude and taste for public discourse ought to contribute to engage in public discourse and debate. 

Public debate and discourse often occurs at a very low level. There is conceptual confusion. Lots of time people are out simply to make a name for themselves, or to accumulate money on social media. Philosophers need to call out bullshit – philosophers, due to their training, have a real talent at calling out bullshit. So, as I said I think the fundamental role of the philosopher in modern times is the same as it has always been and will always be. But there should be a space of pure philosophers that don’t have a taste for public discourse 

12. Something I wanted to check. As you said there’s been a long term decline of social democratic parties. Why?

I’m not sure I have anything profound to say about it. It’s really a question of political science. 

I suppose the link is that these political parties had a very important role in social life and social participation in the 1970s. For example German social political parties played a very important role 

Since the rise of the 3rd wave, centre left parties have retreated to a greater extent that is separate from their lives. Trying to appeal to something outside of their lives rather than something within their lives. To the extent that their characterisation is right it stands at odds with the increasing dependency of people to identify their identities with political parties. 

There is a rise of party identification as a central aspect of personal identification. You see that phenomenon everywhere. It’s quite interesting if that characterisation is right that that should be happening. My inclination is to say that centrist parties in general are on the decline. 

You do from time to time see a rise in centrist parties, but in general increased polarisation means that centrist parties are falling by the wayside more and more as a general matter. It’s not entirely true. As a general political phenomenon I think labor has become more centre rather than left. 

That has to do more with the fact that they just got crushed in the last election. 

So it’s an interesting question – why centrist parties would have taken a step back in terms of being less integrated with people’s lives. That’s at odds with the way in which democratic politics has moved over the last 20 or so years, which is increasingly intertwining with people’s personal lives and identities. I wish I had a more detailed explanation to offer for it. Some of it could have to do with the decline of centrist parties more generally.

13. This is a question concerning your discussion on the rise of the far-right. If you thought that citizens’ assemblies had a positive impact – would it be a solution to the rise of the far right? 

What exactly are you imagining when we say citizen’s assembly?

It’s a little bit difficult to say. But, first of all, my inclination is to say it should be tried because the way things are going, polarization is getting increasingly out of control. 

I think perhaps citizen assemblies of the type you’re describing could have a positive effect on that – bringing citizens of different backgrounds together. It’s a little bit unclear – one thing they also have a positive effect on is increasing knowledge of the wide range of interests that citizens have. I think democratic citizens in part due to polarisation and in part due to phenomena that are characterising the public sphere don’t have exposure to people of different backgrounds. 

Assemblies of the kind thriving could increase exposure and could have a positive effect on knowledge of where the range of interests in a democracy are – my sense though is that these things are unlikely to have a really significant effect and the reason for that is that I’m just a bit worried that the situation is too far gone for that kind of thing to make a big difference. I’m not sure whether that’s true or whether it’s not. 

This presumes in general some kind of shared desire to reach mutual understanding and common ground and it’s not obvious at this point that democratic citizens have that. 

Not to be a pessimist but I just don’t know what it’s going to take to develop it. 

Anything should be tried to improve the quality of relationships and improve knowledge of what other people’s interests are. But the public deliberative spheres of democracy are really quite broken. 

So while I don’t think these kinds of assemblies are gonna make much of a difference, I think anything is worth a shot given the direction things are heading. 

14. I’ve got a slightly more theoretical question – you can have things sort of in political theory, you can have things in epistemology and metaphysical concerns coming into the normative sphere. Do you think the arrow of contribution can come the other way? Do you think the normative can have any impact on the epistemological or metaphysical?

When I think of epistemology as a normative field, the question of justification is fundamentally a normative question, about reasons for belief. So, I think of epistemology as a normative field through and through. 

There is an interesting question however as to whether moral philosophy could have an impact on epistemology – so the question of how we ought to act could have any influence on reasons for belief. And there’s a literature on what’s known as pragmatic encroachment – the idea that moral standards and moral principles could have an influence on what counts as justification or knowledge. And that’s a really interesting question. When it comes to metaphysics, you know, it’s a little bit – kind of tricky. I’m not sure what the impact of moral philosophy on the fundamental problems of metaphysics is. I’m not a metaphysician, so I’m not up to date on the absolute latest developments in metaphysics. 

The question of how we ought to take – it’s not obvious to me what kind of influence we ought to have on the question of what exists so I think of the direction of influence going the other way – questions of what exist could have fundamental impact on moral and political philosophy. For example, democracy is all about we the people as a collective making group decisions but we assume 

It’s a little bit difficult to see how morality could influence fundamental metaphysics but certainly I think normative questions are sort of inextricably tied up with epistemology and questions of reasons for belief. 

It certainly could influence fundamental metaphysics. Certainly, normative questions are inextricably tied up with epistemology and other reasons for belief.

What I do know for sure is that epistemology and metaphysics have a fundamental role, especially in epistemology and metaphysics – questions in epistemology are just front and centre of epistemological theory – there is just a broad – field of democracy that explores democracy. 

The direction of influence that goes the other way I think is more unclear. 

15. At the beginning we talked about how you started out as a literature student and ended up majoring in philosophy. What drew you to literature? What are the links between literature and philosophy?

Literature often has a dimension that philosophy lacks. David Foster Wallace talks about this, I’ve heard Toni Morrison talk about this – the first and foundational task of literature is human connection – reaching across the void and touching someone’s heart. There is something profound in finding in written work an expression of our deepest thoughts and worries and fears. There’s a form of connection there, of being seen, seeing that other people think like us and are like us – there’s that dimension to literature that is not necessarily front and centre in philosophy. Or at least in the kind of philosophy I do, in Western analytic philosophy. I can’t afford to speak with authority in Western kinds of traditions – we’re often separated from a view from nowhere – a kind of impartial perspective of analysing social problems – you hope that you connect with people. I certainly hope that I connect with my students, but when I write work and when I publish articles, I don’t expect to be touching people’s hearts.  Whereas I think that’s – at least in the literature that I gravitate towards, it’s a really central part of literature. I’m sure there are literary traditions where that kind of connection is not front and centre but the kind of literature that I’m interested in it is – so that kind of difference in intention with at least the kind of literature that I love and the kind of philosophy that I love. 

I think of philosophy as fundamentally about illuminating the truth and living in the light of the truth, where I think of literature as more about connection and these are different kinds of tasks. Philosophers have a million different views on what Philosophy is going to be like. I do think there is a difference in what literature is doing and what Philosophy is doing and that applies also to I think analytic philosophy of art – that’s less about the kind of human connection that a lot of writers are hoping to get when they write their work. But that’s what’s beautiful about literature as well – it’s just one way of understanding and appreciating the world. I wouldn’t wanna say 

You could never get from John Rawls what you get from Toni Morrison or Murakami – both geniuses in their own right.

That’s good – it’s good that there are both types of things in the world. There is no reason to portray philosophy as the best or dominant subject. It does connect to the human condition and the search for truth, but there are a lot of other aspects and subjects that other subjects are better able to tap into. 

(This interview has been lightly edited for clarity)