Dear Philosopher: A Conversation About Philosophical Advice Columns

Barry Lam (Hi-Phi Nation) will lead a discussion with the two most famous philosophical agony aunts and uncles about their advice columns in The New York Times and The Guardian, including how they started, how they select letters, their most memorable advice, and the role of philosophy in thinking about the moral challenges of everyday life.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor Of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values Emeritus (Princeton University), is currently Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. He has been answering readers’ questions about their ethical quandaries as writer of “The Ethicist ” weekly column in the Sunday New York Times Magazine since 2015.

Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy and a current Harold W. Dodds Fellow. She has been penning the “Leading Questions” weekly advice column in The Guardian since 2019, where she takes “an inquisitive approach to life’s puzzles and grey areas.”

Barry Lam is currently a visiting faculty member in the Department of Philosophy, where he is teaching an undergraduate course in podcast production and piloting a graduate course on creating philosophy for a public audience in print and other media. He has been writing and producing the Hi-Phi Nation podcast since 2017 and will take up a position as Professor of Philosophy at UC-Riverside in the fall of 2023.

Please note:  This is an in-person event only and will not be livestreamed or recorded.