Julian Baggini

Imagine people up and down the country filling halls and paying good money to listen to philosophers, not all of whom are particularly famous. This isn't a pipedream but what is already happening. Literary festivals in Britain are finding that philosophy is increasingly popular, and they are making a significant contribution to the broadening of philosophy's audience.

“The Edinburgh International Book Festival started including philosophy events in the late nineties,” says the festival's director since 2000, and philosophy graduate, Catherine Lockerbie. “This has grown steeply in the last four years. Over this time, the festival has become more argumentative and discursive – less purely literary – and deals with many different issues: social, ethical, political and more, It is in this context that the number of philosophy events has increased.”

Kay Dunbar, the director of the Ways with Words festivals, reports similar growth. “For about the last 10 years we have had a philosophy day at the Dartington Hall festival. This has become increasingly popular over the years. Last year we programmed a day of philosophy at our Cumbrian Festival for the first time, and to our surprise 50 people booked in for the whole day and about another 1,000 attended individual events.”

As Lockerbie suggests, the appeal of these events is not so much because they are with philosophers, but because they promise audiences an encounter with ideas. “They like very much the intellectual engagement, the opportunity to hear, discuss and test ideas, to question orthodoxies and superficial perceptions,” she says. “The whole Book Festival here is designed to get beyond shallow sound-bites, the pre-digested and slanted nature of much of what the media offer, and to provide quite a rare forum to have some intelligent talk in a public space. Book festival audiences are in general interested in finding ways, normally through literature, to broaden their minds and live a more aware life. The philosophy events are in many ways a paradigm of this.”

Dunbar concurs. “Our audiences love ‘ideas based' events, so the audience for the philosophy talks is not very different to the others.”

This way of thinking is what leads Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, to play down any special role philosophy events might play. He doesn't think, for example, that they have their own special character. “I think most of the events touch on philosophical issues – inevitably if you're interviewing writers,” he says. “The direct lectures have worked fine, but feel a bit overtly direct.” The only thing specific to the philosophy events is that it enables many to “learn stuff their humanities training most often missed.”

So what kind of philosophy and philosophers goes down best with the punters? More or less everything, according to Lockerbie. “Our philosophy events range quite widely: from popular philosophy to café philosophiques ; to talks and lectures by philosophers such as Simon Blackburn, Roger-Pol Droit, Ted Honderich; to ethical discussions with a philosophical feel, such as with Mary Warnock. All of these are very successful, often selling out, no matter the time of day they take place and even where the participants are not necessarily particularly well-known. A C Grayling will sell out even at 10.30 on a weekday morning. Obviously well-known popular philosophers such as Alain de Botton sell out partly because of his profile; but we've identified a real hunger among the general festival-going public to engage with quite rigorous philosophy as well.”

“Inevitably writers with a media profile do particularly well,” says Dunbar , citing AC Grayling, Mary Warnock and Alain de Botton as exampes. “Some topics hold a particular appeal, such as Zihad Marar on happiness or Simon Blackburn on lust. Speakers need to recognise that they will have a general but intelligent audience and not a specialist, academic one. They don't like to be talked down to or left floundering, so finding the right level is important.”

Florence says that “Bryan Magee and A C Grayling have been easily accessible and entertaining. Simon Blackburn is always very popular and successful here too. The most successful though were the interviews with Edward Said.”

But what do the philosophers make of the experience, which is a far cry from their usual lectures to surly, hungover undergraduates? “I like it,” says Stephen Law, who has appeared at both the Ways with Words and Edinburgh festivals, among others. “I enjoy enthusing a wider audience about philosophy. My hope is they go away stimulated and provoked into thinking more for themselves. I'm pretty evangelical about bringing philosophy to a wider audience, especially a younger audience. I think it's important stuff, that it's important we all think about these Big Questions from time to time. That's the main reason I write children's philosophy books.

“These events also give me the chance to meet the people who have actually read my books and I love hearing their opinions about them.”

Simon Lee, the author of Uneasy Ethics and now vice-chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University also enjoys the festivals. “There's a wonderful atmosphere,” he says, in particular of Cheltenham, Edinburgh and Dartington, “because the audience participate and manifest a shared love of books, ideas, argument and good humour.”

To be honest, one of the reasons I personally enjoy speaking at festivals is that it is so flattering. For academics and writers, the fact that people will pay good money just to hear you talk, ask some questions, show such generosity in their appreciation and even ask you to sign their books is a tremendous ego-boost. For a little while, all authors are made to feel like celebrities, without any of the inconvenience that real fame brings. The contrast with the university lecture hall or the solitude of the study could hardly be greater.

At the time of going to press, most of the 2005 festivals had not finalised their programmes. But it is certain that philosophy will once again feature highly in most of them. Lockerbie goes so far as to say, “I exercise, as director, a kind of positive discrimination in favour of philosophy. That is, if there are interesting books in the philosophical field, designed for a general rather than purely academic audience, being published in any given year, I am very likely indeed to invite those authors to take part. Philosophy is an integral part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.”

Slainte Mhath to that.

 

Festival details

The Guardian Hay Festival
27 May-5 June
www.hayfestival.com
0870 990 1299

Ways with Words
8–18 July (Dartington Hall)
10-14 November (Southwold)
www.wayswithwords.co.uk
01803 867373

Edinburgh International Book Festival
13-29 August
www.edbookfest.co.uk
0131 624 5050

Cheltenham Festival of Literature
7-16 October
www.cheltenhamfestivals.co.uk
01242 227979

For details of other UK festivals, see:
http://literaryfestivals.britishcouncil.org