1. Professor Blum, let me start by asking you how did you come to philosophy, first as an undergrad at Princeton, and then as a grad student at Harvard. How did your interest in ethical theory develop?
LB. This is a long time ago. When I entered college I was originally a math major, I didn't really know anything about philosophy, I barely heard of it. I took one course and it was quite intriguing, but I was sticking with the math. Then I took a second course, and I just got more interested in it, and I also started feeling like math was too abstracted from the world, while philosophy was really about the world. Of course this turns out to be somehow ironic because many people find philosophy itself to be too abstracted from the world, but in contrast with math, philosophy seemed to me engaged with the world. My first ethics course was with Joel Feinberg, who was an important moral and political philosopher. I just fell in love with the subject of ethics. So, I basically got into philosophy through ethics and I became a complete fanatic. I just thought about ethics and ethical theory all the time. And when I went to graduate school it was natural for me to want to head in that direction.
Interviste
Conversation with Lawrence Blum
di Federica Berdini
28.09.2015
Lawrence Blum è Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education e Professor of Philosophy alla University of Massachusetts Boston. I suoi interessi di ricerca comprendono teoria della razza, filosofia e psicologia morale, educazione morale, multiculturalismo, filosofia sociale e politica e filosofia dell'educazione. È autore di quattro volumi e numerosi articoli accademici nei suddetti ambiti. Negli ultimi decenni Blum ha portato le sue competenze di filosofo morale nel contesto multiculturale di una scuola superiore di Cambridge, MA, insegnando per quattro volte un corso su razza e razzismo. L'intervista ripercorre l'evoluzione della sua identità filosofica illuminandone i legami con l'ambiente accademico (filosofico e non) e con quello sociale in un arco temporale di oltre quaranta anni.
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