Alexandra Artley reports on the innovative efforts of The Oyster Club
to capture the popular imagination with philosophical debate.
THINK how difficult it must be to launch a magazine with the daring
aim of making philosophy more accessible to the general public. But this
miracle has been quite astonishgly achieved by Eileen Reid, daughter of
Jimmy Reid. In her magazine The Oyster Club, now in its fifth number and
second year, contributors have ranged from Roger Scruton and Anthony
O'Hear to Piers Benn, the philosopher nephew of Tony Benn, Susan
Flockhart, currently Scottish news editor of The Big Issue, and Bruce
Charleton, an affable Geordie doctor who writes like a dream on medical
ethics.
As the British, in particular, tend to think of intellectuals as being
rather fishy, the bright cover usually depicts something to do with
shell-fish, boats or the sea. In the world of glossy magazine publishing
it is said that cover-lines to do with sex are currently losing reader
appeal. Perhaps they should try the sort of article plugged on the front
of The Oyster Club's current number: Is it reasonable to be rational? As
an opinionated housewife who has been totally unreasonable and
irrational for years, I, for one, could scarcely wait to find out.
Brilliant editors spring from the most unlikely places. Like Eileen
Reid they somehow know how to electrify a magazine or newspaper in the
way a good host or hostess instinctively throws a lively party, whether
they have much money or not. The Oyster Club, now the most chic popular
philosophy magazine in Europe, is put out on a budget of #100 per issue
from the Scottish Philosophical Society and, of course, no pay for the
editor.
The current circulation of the magazine is 500. This is not a figure
likely to keep Rupert Murdoch awake at night, but it's pretty good for a
new philosophy magazine. It says something about Scotland's continuing
devotion to philosophy that even in these straitened times, the Saltire
Society in Edinburgh has just commissioned a statue of David Hume from
the young Paisley sculptor, Alexander Stoddart, also a contributor on
aesthetics to Eileen Reid's magazine.
Like many women for whom ordinary family life is still a golden ideal,
Eileen Reid, 34, was catapulted into lone parenthood against her will.
Coming from a family background strong and warm enough to have straddled
in its time both Catholicism and Communism, it is no surprise that her
research subject of the moment is Original Sin and Political Authority.
Agonising over the contents of a supermarket basket while juggling
child care, is not the calmest situation in which to have a stab at
philosophical issues. Currently, she has a part-time job teaching
political philosophy at Glasgow University. When that folds in
September, she has no idea how money or work will subsequently pan out.
Devotion to her father, Jimmy, led her to philosophy in the first
place: ''Not because he was a trained philosopher, but because he is a
good man and a deep thinker, always trying to work things out and
discussing them without acrimony at home in the way people who are
clever but not very high up in society usually tried to do.''
While child-minding for a living in 1992, the idea of starting a
magazine to make philosophy more accessible to the general public
suddenly came to her. People who are intrested in philosophy sometimes
find children a stimulus. Young children see the world with very few
preconceptions. They see life stripped down to some of the basic
questions that highly original philosophers have taken as their raw
material for centuries: What Is Time? What Are Numbers? Why Is One Thing
I Do Right And Another Wrong? Children who spin round and round to
deliberately make themselves dizzy have always struck me as philosophers
in the making. They are already puzzled by another hoary old question:
Is My Brain The Same As My Mind?
Eileen Reid felt that ''it should be possible for extremely good
skilled philosophers to write and write well for some kind of magazine
so that complicated ideas could be put over to the public at large.''
She is keen to emphasise that writing well for the public is two-way
traffic as far as professional philosophers are concerned.
''It puts them on a spot as well. They have to go back to the roots of
a philosophical problem, think about it again and again and then write
-- without distortion -- to achieve a kind of transparecny of
communication which requires enormous intellectual effort.''
Nowadays, this certainly puts mdoern French obfuscators like Derrida
in their place. ''The British tradition in philosophy has been to write
clearly. Look at Hume -- a wonderful man who writes with passion and
clarity and profundity. The modern French notion that to be really
brilliant you have to be incomprehensible is crazy.'' In digging up a
title for the magazine Eileen had the urge to get away from all the
trendy one-word stuff such as ''forum'' or ''Discourse'' -- that sort of
thing.
Some time later, she discovered that in eighteenth-century Edinburgh
there had been an Oyster Club, a dining club run by no less than Adam
Smith to discuss general philosophical ideas with people such as Joseph
Black the chemist. James Hutton the geologist and Robert Adam the
architect. Today she sees her magazine as a new way of ''expanding and
honouring the philosophical spirit of the Scottish Enlightenment''.
''Getting philosophy out of the universities,'' as Eileen puts it, is
not a new idea. Among the greatest philosophers, it is a subject which
has always swung between the universities and the market-place. Look at
the life of Socrates, for example. In Aristophanes' play, The Clouds,
Socrates was ridiculed as hanging up in a basket in his ''thinking
shop'' where the air was thinner. That was life in the ivory tower. But
Socrates, attempting to disprove himself the wisest man in Athens, also
went out among the people. By pretending to be ignorant and skilfully
questioning them, he was able to draw out the great wisdom which lay
dormant and for which they had hitherto had no words.
NEEDLESS to say, Socrates's mother was a midwife and his father a
sculptor -- two callings which with professional calm and precision
release beings already formed and waiting to be formed. Among Glasgow's
philosophical midwives, Eileen Reid cites her colleague. Catherine
McCall who is also trying to open philosophy back into the community.
''She is taking it out to schools and prisons and tries to encourage
people to develop philosophical skills themselves.''
But why, I asked her, should ordinary peoiple need philosophical
skills?
Nowadays, Eileen Reid feels it is all to do with political failure.
''People need to be able to discuss ideas logically again, without
personal or class acrimony and with respect for other people's opinions
-- with the calm intensity of the philosopher, in fact. One big question
we all need to discuss once more in Britain is ''What Inequalities Are
Unjust?''
It is always said that philosophers take hold of the public
imagination during periods of political chaos or darkness -- something
to do with ''the owl of Minerva taking wing with the falling of dusk.''
* The Oyster Club (#1) is on sale at all branches of John Smith
Booksellers, Glasgow. By post, it costs #1 (plus 50p postage and
packing) from: The Oyster Club, Department of Philosophy, University of
Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article