Episode 58, ‘The Idealism and Pantheism of May Sinclair’ with Emily Thomas (Part II)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 604 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2019
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emily Thomas is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Durham University; whose work focuses primarily on the history of metaphysics and the metaphysics of space and time. Thomas’ work in these areas has had a great impact, most notably, through her 2018 books Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics and Early Modern Women on Metaphysics.
In this episode, we’ll be discussing Emily Thomas’ forthcoming work on The Idealism and Pantheism of May Sinclair. Born in 1863, May Sinclair was a prolific novelist, as well as a deeply influential poet, translator, critic and philosopher. It Is this last field, philosophy, which perhaps she is least well known for her work. Amongst her many great novels, short stories and poems, May Sinclair published her philosophical treatise in A Defence of Idealism in 1917, and The New Idealism in 1922, which both form the focus of today’s discussion. Sinclair’s unusual take on questions concerning space and time, god, and classic philosophical problems such as Zeno’s paradox, provide us with a refreshing and exciting approach to our understanding of the universe. Combined with her great passion, wit, and her breathtaking writing style, it is no stretch to say that May Sinclair is one of the 20th-centuries most underrated philosophers.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pan |
| 0:02.0 | Pan |
| 0:03.0 | Psychist |
| 0:05.0 | Part two, further analyses and discussion. |
| 0:24.6 | Like I said, I think I'll regret including this in the script, but we'll give it a go. |
| 0:29.6 | So there's this old joke of a Jewish grandmother watching her grandchild on the beach, |
| 0:34.6 | and a huge wave comes and takes him out to sea and she pleads please god save my |
| 0:39.6 | grandson i beg you bring him back and then whoosh a big wave comes and washes the boy back onto the beach |
| 0:46.0 | good as new and she looks up to the heaven and says he had a hat the idea being that we want god not just to be |
| 0:54.0 | um i guess creating the world or sustaining the world, |
| 0:58.1 | but we also, the Theist, wants God to be acting in the world. |
| 1:00.7 | They want a personal God. |
| 1:02.8 | And it's just not enough for the majority of the population on the earth for God just to be. |
| 1:08.4 | They want him to be acting as well. |
| 1:12.2 | So can this mind that we're talking at the end of the last part we said that Sinclair's solution that there's no motion is that |
| 1:17.2 | there must be one big mind. Now, is this one big mind able to act in the world or exert its will |
| 1:23.7 | into the world? On Sinclair's view? |
| 1:38.8 | I don't believe that that big mind would be interacting with the world in small particular ways. |
| 1:49.1 | So Sinclair certainly implies that God is creating the creating new universes in fact that's suggested in some of her fiction fiction that's closely tied enough to the philosophy that I think we can take it |
| 1:55.1 | seriously but there's no indication that God is acting in particular ways within the universe. |
| 2:01.7 | So he doesn't care about the boy's hat. |
| 2:03.5 | Those things are just too mundane for this God to care about. |
... |
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