Philosophy on Late Night TV

Last week, Craig Fer­gu­son prob­a­bly made a lit­tle tele­vi­sion his­to­ry when he invit­ed a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor to appear on The Late Late Show. The guest is Jonathan Dan­cy, a prof at UT-Austin, who also hap­pens to be the father of actor Hugh Dan­cy, and the father-in-law of actress Claire Danes. And the unlike­ly top­ic of dis­cus­sion? Moral par­tic­u­lar­ism, which argues that moral­i­ty is con­tex­tu­al, not objec­tive­ly defined. The con­ver­sa­tion runs 11 min­utes, and it’s intrigu­ing to see how Fer­gu­son and Dan­cy nav­i­gate the inter­view, try­ing to bring phi­los­o­phy and com­e­dy togeth­er. Mean­while, if you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’ll note that Dan­cy’s think­ing stands in sharp con­trast to the con­tro­ver­sial vision of moral phi­los­o­phy out­lined by Sam Har­ris at the recent TED Con­fer­ence. Part 2 con­tin­ues here.