Martin Butler has a PhD from Sheffield University in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein and Frege, and has also studied Nietzsche and Schopenhauer at the University of Wales. However, he is now more interested in ancient, political and moral philosophy. He taught philosophy and social science subjects for many years, as well as playing several roles in A level philosophy examining, and has edited an A level philosophy text book. Recently retired, he spends his time reading and doing woodwork.
by Martin Butler Recently I read an article which included the idea that nature can have rights, something I have to admit I had not come across before, despite a keen awareness that nature needs protecting. I discovered that this is a well-established point of view – there is a lengthy Wikipedia page on the…
by Martin Butler My favourite lesson in secondary school played no part in my future career but nevertheless enriched my life immeasurably. Despite being a sleepy rural school very low down the pecking order it had fully equipped woodwork and metalwork workshops. Woodwork was my favourite subject by far. This was in the days when…
by Martin Butler Given the increasing ubiquity of technology in all our lives, it’s surely time to consider what may sound like an obvious, even stupid question but one that is actually vitally important: What is technology for? At its simplest, technology can be understood as a tool which enables us to reach a particular…
by Martin Butler I was listening recently to some teenagers on the radio talking about how they saw their future lives and was struck by how many expressed the desire to be internet ‘influencers’. Why did I feel distaste? Was it my age, my generation? My problem is not with the internet itself but with…
by Martin Butler What do people want? Not such a simple question as it seems. Tom Turcich, the guy who recently walked around the world passing through 38 countries over seven years, claimed that from what he had experienced people just want to make a little money and hang out with their families, which sounds…
by Martin Butler Bemoaning the ills of individualism is nothing new. Jonathan Sack’s bestseller, “Morality, Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times”(2020) provides us with one of the more comprehensive accounts of how we lost community and why we need it back. Justin Welby sums it up well in the foreword: “His message is simple…
by Martin Butler Ideas often become popular long after their philosophical heyday. This seems to be the case for a cluster of ideas centring on the notion of ‘lived experience’, something I first came across when studying existentialism and phenomenology many years ago. The popular versions of these ideas are seen in expressions such as…
by Martin Butler Going with the evidence is one of the defining principles of the modern mind. Science leads the way on this, but the principle has been applied more generally. Thus, enlightened public policy should be based on research and statistics rather than emotion, prejudice or blind tradition. After all, it’s only rational to base…
by Martin Butler Liz Truss, the recently appointed UK PM, has said: “My mission is to make our country an aspiration nation, where every child, every person has the best opportunity to succeed.” At first glance who could argue with this? However when Truss speaks of success it’s reasonable to assume that she isn’t talking…
by Martin Butler Although by no means the only ones, two models of human beings and their relation to society are prominent in modern social and political thought. At first glance they seem incompatible, but I want to sketch them out and start to establish how they might plausibly be made to fit together. The…
by Martin Butler A UK politician recently suggested that people could combat the cost-of-living crisis by working more hours or getting a better job. This is one more in a long line of instances where societal problems have been framed as being solvable by individual actions. One of the earliest I can remember was when…
by Martin Butler Beliefs about the essential goodness or badness of human beings have been at the heart of much political theory.[1] A recent book by the political philosopher Lea Ypi succinctly expresses the conflicting approaches. Speaking of her mother she’s says: “Everyone, she believed, fought as a matter of course, men and women, young and old,…
by Martin Butler This is what my dad used to say when as an idealistic teenager I would propose various utopian schemes for reforming society. I suspect it encapsulates the response of many who view themselves as grounded in the ‘real world’. We might want to dismiss the saying as crude anti-intellectualism, but it’s worth further examination if only because it’s such a widely held…
by Martin Butler Imagine a world where the prison population was a rough mirror of wider society. In such a world there is a similar spread of rich and poor, highly educated and less educated, as well as a roughly equal proportion of men and women and those from deprived areas and well-off areas. The…
by Martin Butler Diversity is all the rage. It has even reached the boardrooms of the UK’s top companies and indeed those that are not so top. Targets are set for the percentage of women and ethnic minorities who should populate these boardrooms. A group known as the 30% Club aims for “30% representation of…
by Martin Butler Individualism has been blamed for the break up of communities, personal alienation and rampant western consumerism. At the same time, with its focus on liberty and human rights, it is lauded as the crowning glory of western culture. How do we come to terms with this paradox? Individualism feels natural to the…
by Martin Butler Shoshona Zuboff’s “The age of Surveillance Capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of Power” gives an impressive and comprehensive account of how the big tech companies gained their economic dominance, and why this is a problem.[1] We hear much about how these companies fail to pay their…
by Martin Butler Patriotism is a contested ideal in the culture war which bubbles away in the UK. It’s worth examining not only as an idea in itself but also with regards to how it is understood and expressed in the present cultural context of the UK. It seems to me that the debate is…
by Martin Butler For many years I taught ethics to 16-19 year olds, and was often struck not only by how strongly certain ideas resonated with the students, but how unfamiliar they were with these big ideas, the product of hundreds of years of western culture. Kant and virtue ethics in particular seemed to chime…
by Martin Butler Both morally and politically, equality is a powerful ideal. Over the last two centuries it has been one of the fundamental demands of most movements aimed at improving society. The French Revolution is the paradigm case. Despite its enduring relevance, however, equality has always been a somewhat vague ideal. It was hardly…