Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

Philosophers Come to the Surface

by J.L.H. Thomas

Once a year in mid-July the city of Durham abandons its habitual reserve and becomes the scene of the Durham Miners’ Gala. This year the gala coincided with another meeting of labourers who spend most of their lives out of sight doing a difficult and not always properly appreciated job, the annual conference, or ‘Joint Session’, of the philosophers of Britain. This conference, which dates back to 1918, is organised jointly, hence the name, by the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association at one of the universities in turn, and for many years the format has remained fundamentally unchanged. On the Friday evening a professor of philosophy from the host university delivers an address on a philosophical subject of his own choosing; then on the Saturday and Sunday six or seven symposia, on various topics, are held, at each of which two speakers present papers. The address and all the papers are published in advance in a volume of proceedings, and half of each two-hour session is given over to open discussion under a chairman.

…