PHILOSOPHY
John Carey
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Adventures in Philosophy
with Kids by Scott Hershovitz
Allen Lane £20 pp270
Scott Hershovitz believes
that all small children are
philosophers. That is, they ask
the same questions as adult
philosophers do. Later,
though, they turn into adults
and forget all about it —
unless, of course, they grow
up to become professional
philosophers, like Hershovitz.
For example, he
remembers as a child asking
his mother whether, when she
saw the colour red, he saw the
same colour as she did. Might
what she called red appear to
him as blue? She choked him
off for talking such nonsense.
But later he found that the
puzzle he presented his
mother with wasn’t nonsense.
Philosophers call it “the
shifted colour spectrum”,
and the idea is credited to
the 17th-century English
philosopher John Locke. This
idea is just a subsection of the
bigger question: can you get
inside someone else’s mind?
Hershovitz’s answer is no.
Because you have to ask: would
you know it was you inside
the other person’s mind? If
the answer is yes, then you
would not have got inside the
other person’s mind. You
would still be you. If the
answer is no, you would not
still be you, but would have
become the other person. So
either way you would not have
got inside the other person’s
mind. (At least I think this is
Hershovitz’s conclusion, but
it’s hard to be sure.)
He seems to me needlessly
insulting to his children —
Rex, aged four, and Hank,
aged five. He explains that his
book’s title is a quotation from
another 17th-century English
philosopher, Thomas Hobbes,
who said that, without strong
government, human life
would be “solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short”.
According to Hershovitz, Rex
and Hank are “nasty, brutish,
and short” — though with the
rather sick-making rider that
“they are also cute and kind”.
In fact he gives no evidence
of their being nasty or brutish,
and to say they are short is
just a silly joke at their
or not? Do you decide five
men have more right to life
than one? Hershovitz invokes
Immanuel Kant in his bid to
solve this problem, but he
does not seem much help. Nor
does Hershovitz, though he
does point out that whatever
answer you give connects with
the debate about abortion and
whether it should be legal.
He is not as good when he
ceases to reason with his
children and scoots off on his
own. The chapter Authority
starts with Rex, told to put on
his shoes, saying, “You are
not the boss of me” — a
challenge to paternal
authority courageous in a
four-year-old. Hershovitz
replies, “F*** you,” but
silently, and instead spends
the chapter safely on general
matters, such as whether
employers should haveabsolute authority over their
employees. (They should not,
of course.)
There are moments when it
seems Hershovitz despairs of
reasoning with his children,
though it is what he does best
throughout the book. Out of
the blue in the chapter on
Punishment he writes of
children: “It’s somewhere
around six or seven that they
start to become real people.
Before that, they’re animals.”
(How does that square with
his earlier claim that they
are philosophers?)
Parts of the book will
arouse opposition — usually
deliberately. In the chapter
Language he argues that
swearing is good — a skill all
kids should master, and that
“f***” is the most versatile
word in the English language,
“and the most fun”. In the
chapter Sex, Gender and
Sports he contends that if
a person sees herself as a
woman she should be allowed
to compete in women’s
sporting events, irrespective
of whether she is physically
a woman or not. In the
chapter on Race and
Responsibility he thinks it
“atrocious” to celebrate
works of art that white people
have produced, and when
Rex says, “I wish I was Black.
Because White people do lots
of mean things,” Hershovitz
clearly sympathises. In the
chapter on Truth, when
Hank innocently proposes
that different people
believe different truths,
Hershovitz jumps on him.
“This is relativism [...] And
I was shocked to hear it in
my house.”
All the same, Hank seems
to be right in this instance,
and that becomes clear when
Hershovitz gives examples of
what he takes to be objective
truths: “Is abortion wrong?
Was Beethoven better than
Bach?” In the first of these
two examples the answer
must surely depend on
circumstances, and the second
is just a matter of personal
taste. Some people will argue
that God likes Beethoven better
than Bach, or vice versa. But
that answer is unavailable to
Hershovitz since, as is
apparent from his final
chapter, he does not believe in
God. But enough quibbling.
This is an enormously rich
and mind-expanding book,
which anyone will gain from
reading, especially parents. cphilosophical topics — truth,
revenge, punishment, the
mind, authority, infinity, God,
and so on, and this is where
the book gets interesting.
For example, his chapter
on human rights starts with
Hank wailing at bath time that
he doesn’t want to have a bath
and doesn’t have any rights.
His father explains that rights
are not things you can see or
touch, and goes on to consider
how you gauge other people’s
rights. This leads to a famous
philosophical conundrum
called the Trolley Problem. A
runaway trolley is running
down its track, heading for five
workers who will be killed if it
hits them. But you are standing
near a switch that can divert
the trolley to another stretch
of track where only one man is
working, and he alone will be
killed. Do you throw the switchGETTY IMAGESexpense. The cover picture
shows a small boy trying to
reach up with a paintbrush to
add the words “with Kids” to
the title. Despite the dust
jacket’s claim that the book is
“hilarious”, humour does not
seem to me Hershovitz’s forte.
What he does, chapter by
chapter, is to question the
boys so as to bring out the
meaning of a selection ofMy sons the
philosophers
Scott Hershovitz tackles some of life’s trickiest questions, with
the help of Rex, 4, and Hank, 5 (they know their Hobbes too)This is a rich
and mind-
expanding
book
BOOKS
I think therefore I am
Children ask big questionsDo I have
rights?
What is
truth?
26 1 May 2022