Jul 29, 2015
Raj Persaud Talks to Carlos Fraenkel - an academic philosopher at the University of McGill in Canada about his new book - Teaching Plato in Palestine.
From the Princeton University Press website:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/104...
Teaching Plato in Palestine is part intellectual travelogue, part
plea for integrating philosophy into our personal and public life.
Philosophical toolkit in tow, Carlos Fraenkel invites readers on a
tour around the world as he meets students at Palestinian and
Indonesian universities, lapsed Hasidic Jews in New York, teenagers
from poor neighborhoods in Brazil, and the descendants of Iroquois
warriors in Canada. They turn to Plato and Aristotle, al-Ghazālī
and Maimonides, Spinoza and Nietzsche for help to tackle big
questions: Does God exist? Is piety worth it? Can violence be
justified? What is social justice and how can we get there? Who
should rule? And how shall we deal with the legacy of colonialism?
Fraenkel shows how useful the tools of philosophy can
be—particularly in places fraught with conflict—to clarify such
questions and explore answers to them. In the course of the
discussions, different viewpoints often clash. That’s a good thing,
Fraenkel argues, as long as we turn our disagreements on moral,
religious, and philosophical issues into what he calls a “culture
of debate.” Conceived as a joint search for the truth, a culture of
debate gives us a chance to examine the beliefs and values we were
brought up with and often take for granted. It won’t lead to easy
answers, Fraenkel admits, but debate, if philosophically nuanced,
is more attractive than either forcing our views on others or
becoming mired in multicultural complacency—and behaving as if
differences didn’t matter at all.
Carlos Fraenkel teaches philosophy and religion at the University
of Oxford and McGill University in Montreal. He is the author of
Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza, and his writing has
appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, the London Review of
Books, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other
publications.
You can listen to the interview via a free app on iTunes and google play store entitled 'Raj Persaud in conversation', which includes a lot of free information on the latest research findings in mental health, plus interviews with top experts from around the world. Download it free from these links
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rajpersaud.android.rajpersaud
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dr-raj-persaud-in-conversation/id927466223?mt=8
Review:
"What unites [the classroom conversations] is [Fraenkel's] skill in
the art of posing questions designed to perplex and provoke. He
lets us overhear the Socratic form of dialogue that Plato invented
and that Mr. Fraenkel practices much to his students’ pleasure, and
ours."--Benjamin Balint, Wall Street Journal
"Fresh, iconoclastic, stimulating
debates."--Kirkus
"The author urges religious people who aren’t bound by literalism,
secularists who don’t dismiss all religion as anachronism, and
inquisitive types of all persuasions to try something. First,
accept freedom of expression, recognize your fallibility and
prepare yourself to revise received assumptions. And then plunge
into debates about morality, faith, governance, rights and other
matters that divide us . . . the discussions you engage in, as
suggested by his and his students’ experiences, will likely broaden
your horizons and nourish your intellect."--Rayyan Al-Shawaf,
Toronto Star
"If you read one book published this year, then you might make it
Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided
World."--Aminatta Forna, The Independent
Endorsement:
"Carlos Fraenkel thinks that philosophy is essential to a culture
of debate that gets us out of our cultural, religious, and
intellectual cloisters. We understand ourselves by arguing with
others, and understand others by arguing with ourselves. Fraenkel
takes these convictions out of the classroom and tests them around
the world—from Makassar to East Jerusalem, from Bahia to Brooklyn.
The result is a wonderful, engaging, and readable book about the
power of philosophy."--Joshua Cohen, coeditor of The Norton
Introduction to Philosophy
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/104...