PHILOSOPHY

HAZEL ROWLEY, author, October 18, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Were (Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre) supportive of each other’s works, and were there any major issues on which they disagreed?
ROWLEY: They were wholly supportive or each other’s writings. In terms of their work, it is the most generous relationship I have ever heard of.
Arguments? Not really. Beauvoir was worried about Sartre’s closeness to the Communist Party in the early 1950s. She was afraid it would take away his independence as an intellectual. But he himself distanced himself from the party in 1956/

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH, Princeton University Philosophy Professor, February 10, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: I have observed that most religions agree of basic moral beliefs. Do you belief there are underlying moral conditions for all humans and, if so, what do you believe they are?
APPIAH: There are indeed many agreements across the so-called “world religions”, I think, at a certain level of abstraction. But when it comes to applying them in concrete situations they may lead to incompatible decisions. Just to give an example within the “West”, some people think that Christian ideas of sexual modesty suggest that homosexuals should be locked up, some people think that they mean that the churches should recognize gay marriages. But everyone believes in sexual modesty. I think there are universal moral truths, whether or not everyone accepts them. Here’s one very low level but important one: it’s very bad to torture people. (But, as you know, some people who agree with this also think that there are worse things than torturing people: e.g. letting terrorists keep secrets whose discovery could save lives.)