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cover of episode Peter Brian Barry, "George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Peter Brian Barry, "George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality" (Oxford UP, 2023)

2025/1/29
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Peter Brian Barry: 我是哲学教授，研究方向是邪恶的道德概念以及如何利用文学文本探讨哲学问题。我发现奥威尔的作品中处处体现着哲学思想，许多观点被误解或未充分讨论，哲学可以帮助解释这些重要内容。我的书对奥威尔的作品进行了哲学解读，试图找到他思想的核心，特别是他的伦理思想。哲学界普遍认为奥威尔是一位具有深刻哲学思想的思想家，但他被认为缺乏哲学能力的声誉部分源于其传记作者，例如伯纳德·克里克。奥威尔的著作中处处体现着哲学思想，有时含蓄，有时明确。奥威尔与一些哲学家，如伯特兰·罗素和A.J.艾耶，有联系，这影响了他对哲学的看法。奥威尔是坚定的民主社会主义者，他的政治和伦理思想基于对人文主义的理解。奥威尔的人文主义基于“人是万物的尺度”这一观点，但这并非指任何想法都是真理，而是指善的定义以人为中心。奥威尔认为，善是指对人类有益的事物，即促进人类福祉、繁荣和生活改善的事物。奥威尔很早就关注自由意志的概念，并在其作品中反复探讨，有时明确，有时含蓄。奥威尔认为自己有时无法自主行事，但他仍然承担责任并自责。奥威尔反对结果论，他认为道德义务与个人关系有关，而非仅仅取决于行为后果。奥威尔认为，他那个时代的主要问题是人们对个人道德的信仰衰退。奥威尔作品中的“体面”并非指卓越，而是指普遍存在于普通民众中的最低限度的善。奥威尔对平等主义的理解包含关系平等主义和运气平等主义两种视角，他更倾向于关系平等主义。奥威尔并非完全意义上的左翼自由主义者，因为他的一些政治立场与自由主义的某些核心原则相冲突。奥威尔对社会主义的设想并不完整，罗尔斯提出的拥有财产的民主制度可以作为一种补充。 Morteza Hajizadeh: 作为访谈主持人，Morteza Hajizadeh 主要负责引导话题，提出问题，并对 Peter Brian Barry 的观点进行回应和补充。他表达了对本书的赞赏，并指出本书对奥威尔的解读具有新颖性和独特性。

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This chapter explores whether George Orwell, known for his literary works, can also be considered a significant philosophical thinker. It examines his background, the unique approach of the book, and how it differs from other works on Orwell's life and writing.
  • Peter Brian Barry's book offers a philosophical reading of Orwell's work.
  • Orwell's philosophical views are explored using contemporary theories and terminology.
  • Orwell's relationship with Bertrand Russell and A.J. Ayer is discussed.
  • The chapter examines the books Orwell owned to understand his philosophical influences.

Shownotes Transcript

George Orwell is sometimes read as disinterested in (if not outright hostile) to philosophy. Yet a fair reading of Orwell's work reveals an author whose work was deeply informed by philosophy and who often revealed his philosophical sympathies. Orwell's written works are of ethical significance, but he also affirmed and defended substantive ethical claims about humanism, well-being, normative ethics, free will and moral responsibility, moral psychology, decency, equality, liberty, justice, and political morality. 

In George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality) (Oxford UP, 2023), philosopher Peter Brian Barry avoids a narrow reading of Orwell that considers only a few of his best-known works and instead considers the entirety of Orwell's corpus, including his fiction, journalism, essays, book reviews, diaries, and correspondence, contending that there are ethical commitments discernible throughout his work that ground some of his best-known pronouncements and positions.

While Orwell is often read as a humanist, egalitarian, and socialist, too little attention has been paid to the nuanced versions of those doctrines that he endorsed and the philosophical sympathies that led him to embrace them. Barry illuminates Orwell's philosophical sympathies and contributions that have either gone unnoticed or been underappreciated. Philosophers interested in Orwell now have a text that explores many of the philosophical themes in his work and Orwell's readers now have a text that makes the case for regarding him as a worthy philosopher as well as one of the greatest Anglophone writers of the 20th century.

Peter Brian Barry is Professor of Philosophy and the Finkbeiner Endowed Professor in Ethics at Saginaw Valley State University. He is the author of Evil and Moral Psychology and The Fiction of Evil as well as several papers in ethics, applied ethics, and social and political philosophy. He has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell, and George Orwell Studies.

Morteza Hajizadeh) is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel). Twitter).

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