Jonny Thompson, who teaches philosophy at Oxford, explains that "when cultures, ideologies and peoples come together, great steps forward happen." Does one assume that there are extraordinary times in history when the world throws up a torrent of genius?īut why was it possible then and not before? There are others who argue that these societies were not necessarily "islands of light." Plato's writings aren't really conceivable without Zoroastrianism and Egyptian moral ideals. German-Swiss philosopher Karl Jaspers explains that these societies independently embraced moral universalism, prompted by the teachings of Plato, the Hebrew prophets, Zarathustra, Buddha and Confucius. It was around 500-300 BC that saw the advent of the greatest religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions in Eurasian societies. Didn't Arnold Toynbee warn us that civilisations are not murdered – they commit suicide? How do we explain the greatest minds walking the earth over two millennia ago: Confucianism in China, the Upanishads and Buddhism in India, Homer's Greece and Hebrew prophets? But the industrial society, considered by some as a "suicide machine," has squeezed the space for philosophy. Public intellectuals often fight a war on the plane of ideas. Philosopher David Blitz considers Russell like "few others before him and even fewer after him" bringing his intellectual acumen to bear on public issues.
Is smart technology dumbing down the human race? And uncompromising intellectuals like Noam Chomsky have become marginal as they are excluded from the mainstream media. Intellectuals also align today with corporate and institutional thinking. With our stress on techno-solutionism, many intellectuals have been forced to live in hermetic bubbles.