This is Philosophy Bytes with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy Bites is available at www.com.

Can philosophy make any difference at all in times of conflict?

It might seem not.

But Sari Nasebe, a Palestinian philosopher trained in both Islamic and Western traditions,

is more optimistic than most.

He believes that philosophy can teach us both to challenge our own beliefs

and to understand other people's standpoints, even when they are in strong opposition to us.

This episode was recorded in early 2025.

Sarina Sebe, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thank you very much. Very grateful for having been invited.

We're talking today about philosophy and conflict. But before we get into that, perhaps you can tell us a bit about your early

years, because you're born into a very famous and distinguished Palestinian family. Yes, I was born into a

family that considers itself to be distinguished. Our family name Nasebe comes from the very, very distant past.

It's the name of a woman who supposedly fought alongside the Prophet Muhammad. And in theory,

we actually came to Jerusalem right from that time. I was born personally in Damascus. That was during the early

wars that created Israel and created, on the other hand, the Palestinian refugee problem. My parents,

mother was in Damascus. I was born there. But a year or two later after my birth, I came to Jerusalem and grew up in Jerusalem.

And then you went to Oxford as an undergraduate at a time when Wittgenstein and linguistic

philosophy more generally was dominant, ordinary language in particular, the idea that philosophical

problems, as it were, dissolve in the analysis of language.

That's very much gone out of fashion.

But I wonder whether its influence has stayed with you, what the importance of your Oxford philosophy was.

...