Hilary Lawson

Last updated

Hilary Lawson
Era 21st-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Continental philosophy
Main interests
Notable ideas
  • Theory of closure
  • Reflexivity

Hilary Lawson is an English philosopher and founder of the Institute of Art and Ideas. [1] [2] His theory of "closure" [3] puts forward a non-realist metaphysics arguing that people close the openness of the world with thought and language. [4] Lawson has also had a broadcasting and documentary film-making career [5] and founded Television and Film Productions, now known as TVF Media. [6]

Contents

Biography

Lawson graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a first in PPE, and as a post-graduate began a DPhil on the problems of self-reference. [7] This later became his book Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament (1985) [8] as part of the series Problems of Modern European Thought in which he argued that self-referential paradoxes are central to twentieth century philosophy, and specifically post-modernism. [9] [10]

Later, Lawson pursued a broadcasting career. As a writer and director he made documentaries, created the series Where There's Life [11] and co-authored a book based on the series. [12] At 28, he was appointed editor of programmes at TV-am. [13] [14] In the late 1980s he founded the production company TVF Media [15] which made documentary and current affairs programming, including Channel 4's international current affairs programme, The World This Week. [16] Lawson was editor of the programme which ran weekly between 1987 and 1991. [17]

His book Closure was published in 2001. [18] The book has been described by Don Cupitt as "perhaps the first largescale Anglo-Saxon non-realist 'metaphysics'". [19]

Lawson founded the Institute of Art and Ideas in 2008 with the aim of making ideas and philosophy a central part of cultural life. [20] [21]

Philosophical work

Initially influenced by postmodernism at the outset of his career, Lawson contributed to and co-edited the collection of essays Dismantling Truth: Reality in the Post-Modern World, which explored the philosophical core of the theory. [22] [23] He also published the pamphlet After Truth - A Post Modern Manifesto, written in collaboration with Hugh Tomlinson, a translator of Deleuze. [24] The influence of a postmodern approach continued in his collaborations with the American philosopher Richard Rorty, who contributed to Lawson's BBC film Science...Fiction? [25] in which Lawson argued that "science is not powerful because it is true, but true because it is powerful" [26] and in Lawson's subsequent film on Plato entitled The First World. Rorty also contributed to Lawson's collection Dismantling Truth. [27]

These works demonstrate Lawson’s long-standing scepticism of realism, apparent in the last decade from his exchange of articles with Timothy Williamson [28] [29] [30] and debates with analytic philosophers John Searle, [31] Simon Blackburn, [32] and others. [33] [34] Despite accepting the basic postmodernist claims about the unrealistic nature of an objective truth, Lawson emphasises the need for “post-realism”. He argues that postmodernism is made incoherent by self-reference and ‘associated project of describing the relationship between language and the world.’ [35] [36] [37]

Lawson’s theory of “closure” responds to his rejection of realism and postmodernism, by proposing that the world is open and complex, but that it is enclosed by defined limits such as language and meaning. [38] [39] As Patrick Dillon says, ‘Closure can be understood as the imposition of fixity on openness. The closing of that which is open. […] Through closure there are things’. [40] The theory shifts the focus of metaphysics away from language and towards an exploration of the tension between openness and closure. [41] [42] Given Lawson’s earlier work on self-reference, an important element of the theory of “closure” is its own self-referential nature. [43]

The framework of closure enables Lawson to claim that he provides an account of the relationship between language and the world that does not rely on reference and which he argues overcomes the problem of how language is hooked onto the world that beset twentieth century philosophy. [38] [44] One of the consequences of the theory is that philosophical oppositions, between language and the world, fact and value, are no longer regarded as oppositions. [45] [46] Lawson proposes that science is 'driven by the search for closure’, whilst art is described as 'the pursuit of openness and the avoidance of closure', demonstrating that the two are not in opposition to one another but rather in different relationships to openness and closure. [47]

Books

In Reflexivity, Lawson argued that self-reference was central to contemporary philosophy. [48] Using Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida as the main examples, he sought to show that reflexivity was the primary motor of their work. [49] [50] It was implicit that similar arguments could be applied to Wittgenstein and the analytic tradition. [51] [52]

The introduction to Closure extends the arguments put forward in Reflexivity to the broader philosophical tradition. [53] It argues that issues of self-reference undermine currently available philosophical positions. The main body of the book describes the process of closure and the means by which people can intervene in the world and seemingly understand it. [54] [55] [56] In doing so it seeks to demonstrate that meaning and understanding are not dependent on notions of reference and truth, arguing that although there is nothing in common between closure and openness this does not limit the ability to intervene successfully in the world. [57] [58] [59] Other books include Dismantling Truth: Science in Post-Modern Times. [60] Articles include After Truth, [61] On Integrity, [62] and Philosophy As. [63] [64] [65]

Art

Lawson created his first video paintings in 2001, with the aim of escaping narrative closure. [66] [67] He went on to found the Artscape Project in 2003, which brought a collective of artists together to develop the new medium. [68] [69]

His video painting work has been exhibited at: the Hayward Gallery (2006); sketch (restaurant) (2007), [70] the ICA (2007), and The Globe at Hay gallery (2008). [71] Now Revisited, performed at Shunt, London in 2009, was a video painting installation in five acts in which the audience found themselves the subject of the work. [72] [73]

Documentary film and factual television

Lawson's documentary films include: Your Own Worst Enemy, writer and producer, (ITV); Science … fiction?, written and directed (BBC); [74] [75] Broken Images, written and directed (BBC); [76] [77] [78] The First World, written and directed (Channel 4); [79] The Man, the Myth, and The Maker, produced and presented (Channel 4); Incredible Evidence (90mins), [80] written and directed (Channel 4). His current affairs output includes: The World This Week (1hr, weekly 1988-93), Editor (Channel 4); Cooking the Books, written and directed (Channel 4); [81] Patent on Life, written and directed (Channel 4); For Queen or Country, written and directed (Channel 4). [82]

Awards

Related Research Articles

In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is the position that the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality. In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modernism</span> Cultural and artistic movement

Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and social issues were all aspects of this movement. Modernism centered around beliefs in a "growing alienation" from prevailing "morality, optimism, and convention" and a desire to change how "human beings in a society interact and live together".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postmodernism</span> Artistic, cultural, and theoretical movement

Postmodernism is a term used to refer to a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break with modernism. What they have in common is the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality. Still, there is disagreement among experts about its more precise meaning even within narrow contexts.

Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the 20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist philosophical ideas regarding culture, identity, history, or language that were developed during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. Postmodernist thinkers developed concepts like différance, repetition, trace, and hyperreality to subvert "grand narratives", univocity of being, and epistemic certainty. Postmodern philosophy questions the importance of power relationships, personalization, and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. Many postmodernists appear to deny that an objective reality exists, and appear to deny that there are objective moral values.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hilary Putnam</span> American mathematician and philosopher (1926–2016)

Hilary Whitehall Putnam was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postmodern art</span> Art movement

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.

Postmodernity is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the 1980s or early 1990s – and that it was replaced by postmodernity, and still others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity. The idea of the postmodern condition is sometimes characterized as a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state like regressive isolationism, as opposed to the progressive mind state of modernism.

An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered a new avant-garde movement. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new style which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy.

Scientific realism is the view that the universe described by science is real regardless of how it may be interpreted. A believer of scientific realism takes the universe as described by science to be true, because of their assertion that science can be used to find the truth about both the physical and metaphysical in the Universe.

Christopher Charles Norris is a British philosopher and literary critic.

Philosophical realism – usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters – is the view that a certain kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it exists even in the absence of any mind perceiving it or that its existence is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality entirely.

Post-postmodernism is a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism.

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?", and "Why do we know what we know?". Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims.

Thomas McEvilley was an American art critic, poet, novelist, and scholar. He was a Distinguished Lecturer in Art History at Rice University and founder and former chair of the Department of Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Feminist epistemology is an examination of epistemology from a feminist standpoint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of Art and Ideas</span> British philosophy organisation

The Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI) is a British philosophy organisation founded in 2008. It operates the HowTheLightGetsIn philosophy and music festival.

Criticism of postmodernism is intellectually diverse, reflecting various critical attitudes toward postmodernity, postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, and postmodern architecture. Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, especially those associated with Enlightenment rationality though postmodernism in the arts may have their own definitions. Thus, while common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, and social progress, critics of postmodernism often defend such concepts. It is frequently alleged that postmodern scholars promote obscurantism, are hostile to objective truth, and encourage relativism to an extent that is epistemically and ethically crippling. Criticism of more artistic postmodern movements such as postmodern art or literature may include objections to a departure from beauty, lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviating from clear structure and the consistent use of dark and negative themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Glendinning</span> English philosopher

Simon Glendinning is an English philosopher. Glendinning is Professor of European Philosophy and Head of department in the European Institute at the London School of Economics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Critical realism (philosophy of the social sciences)</span> Philosophical approach to understanding science

Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science, and in particular social science, initially developed by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014). It specifically opposes forms of empiricism and positivism by viewing science as concerned with identifying causal mechanisms. In the last decades of the twentieth century it also stood against various forms of postmodernism and poststructuralism by insisting on the reality of objective existence. In contrast to positivism's methodological foundation, and poststructuralism's epistemological foundation, critical realism insists that (social) science should be built from an explicit ontology. Critical realism is one of a range of types of philosophical realism, as well as forms of realism advocated within social science such as analytic realism and subtle realism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Lawson</span> British philosopher and economist

Tony Lawson is a British philosopher and economist. He is professor of economics and philosophy in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge. He is a co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, a former director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, and co-founder of the Cambridge Realist Workshop and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. Lawson is noted for his contributions to heterodox economics and to philosophical issues in social theorising, most especially to social ontology.

References

  1. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". Forum for Philosophy. 7 July 2014.
  2. ↑ James Waddell (11 August 2022). "The Ideas Man". The Fence (12). Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  3. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  4. ↑ Law, J (2004). After method: Mess in Social Science Research. Routledge.
  5. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". BFI. Archived from the original on 29 April 2018.
  6. ↑ Raymond, Gary (26 May 2016). "Interview: Hilary Lawson, Director of How The Light Gets In". Wales Art Review. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  7. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". Forum for Philosophy. 7 July 2014.
  8. ↑ Cilliers, P (1998). Complexity and postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. Routledge.
  9. ↑ Harvey, Lee (1988). "Review: Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament by Hilary Lawson". Acta Sociologica. 31: 185. doi:10.1177/000169938803100207. JSTOR   4200700. S2CID   144925032 . Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  10. ↑ Nakayama, Tom (1995). "Whiteness: A strategic rhetoric" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Speech. 81 (3): 303. doi:10.1080/00335639509384117.
  11. ↑ "BFI National Library and BFI National Archive". JICTAR Weekly Audience TV Reports. 1981.
  12. ↑ Joseph, Michael (1982). Where There's Life. ISBN   0-7181-2137-6.
  13. ↑ Bonner, P; Aston, L (2003). Independent Television in Britain: New Developments in Independent Television 1981-92: Channel 4, TV-am, Cable and Satellite. Palgrave Macmillan.
  14. ↑ Mair, John (4 May 2010). "Waking up to a new era". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  15. ↑ Montefiore, Alan (1999). Integrity in the Public and Private Domains. Routledge. ISBN   9781134679386 . Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  16. ↑ "BFI National Library and BFI National Archive". JICTAR Weekly Audience TV Reports. 1981.
  17. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". BFI. Archived from the original on 29 April 2018.
  18. ↑ Lawson, Hilary (2001). Closure: A Story of Everything. Routledge.
  19. ↑ Cupitt, Don (2002). Is Nothing Sacred?: The Non-realist Philosophy of Religion : Selected Essays. New York: Fordham University Press. pp. xxi. ISBN   0-8232-2203-9.
  20. ↑ "Oxford University Philosophy Society, Hilary 2018 Termcard".
  21. ↑ Raymond, Gary (26 May 2016). "Interview: Hilary Lawson, Director of How The Light Gets In". Wales Art Review. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  22. ↑ Dismantling Truth: Reality in the Post-Modern World. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1989.
  23. ↑ Troiani, Igea Santina (2005). The politics of friends in modern architecture 1949-1987 (PDF) (Thesis). Queensland University of Technology. p. 24. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  24. ↑ After Truth - A Post Modern Manifesto. Inventions Press UK. 1986.
  25. ↑ "Horizon, BBC, tx". the tvdb. 17 February 1986. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  26. ↑ Hackett, Dennis (27 February 1986). New Scientist Review. p. 53.
  27. ↑ Rorty, Richard (1989). "Dismantling Truth: Reality in the Post-Modern World". History of the Human Sciences. 9 (3). Weidenfeld and Nicolson: 1–25. doi:10.1177/095269519600900301. S2CID   145627339.
  28. ↑ Lawson, Hilary. "Post-realism". IAI news.
  29. ↑ Williamson, Timothy (29 January 2021). "In defence of realism". IAI news.
  30. ↑ Williamson, Timothy (23 February 2021). "Politics, truth and self-reference". IAI news.
  31. ↑ "After the End of Truth | John Searle, Hilary Lawson Hannah Dawson". art19.com. Philosophy For Our Times. 31 August 2016.
  32. ↑ "Morality Before Metaphysics". IMDB.
  33. ↑ "Is Post-modernism to Blame for Our Post-truth World?". LSE Player. 2 October 2017.
  34. ↑ "Error, Lies and Adventure: the pursuit of adventure". LSE Player. 1 May 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  35. ↑ "Oxford University Philosophy Society, Hilary 2018 Termcard".
  36. ↑ Lawson, Hilary. "Post-realism". IAI news.
  37. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". Forum for Philosophy. 7 July 2014.
  38. 1 2 Barton, John Arthur (2007). Systems Thinking: Philosophy, Methodology and Applications to Knowledge Management (PDF) (Thesis). Monash University. p. 46.
  39. ↑ Besner, Linda (10 June 2013). "The Closure Delusion". Hazlitt. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  40. ↑ Dillon, Patrick (March 2007). "An Epistemology of Presence and Reconceptualisation in Design Education". Interchange: 82.
  41. ↑ Fryer, Gladin (2007). A practice of painting: living with the reception and generation of image on the visual threshold (Thesis). University of Plymouth.
  42. ↑ Eyres, Harry (6 December 2013). "Among the ghosts of Fleet Street". Financial Times. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  43. ↑ du Toit, Cornel W (2007). Viewed from the Shoulders of God: Themes in Science and Theology (PDF). Pretoria: University of South Africa. pp. 161–162. ISBN   978-1-86888-481-0.
  44. ↑ Besner, Linda (10 June 2013). "The Closure Delusion". Hazlitt. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  45. ↑ "Beyond Truth: Error and Adventure". LSE Player. 4 March 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  46. ↑ "The Power of Lies". LSE Podcasts. 21 March 2013.
  47. ↑ Eyres, Harry (6 December 2013). "Among the ghosts of Fleet Street". Financial Times. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
  48. ↑ Taylor, Mark C. (1987). "Lawson, Hilary, "Reflexivity: The Post-modern Predicament" (Book Review)". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 55 (2): 402. doi:10.1093/jaarel/LV.2.402.
  49. ↑ Macey, David (1987). "Hammers and Nuts" (PDF). Radical Philosophy (45): 47. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  50. ↑ Lather, P (1991). Feminist research and pedagogy within/in the postmodern.
  51. ↑ Cilliers, P (1998). Complexity and postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. Routledge.
  52. ↑ Wilber, K (2001). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Shambhala.
  53. ↑ Lawson, Hilary (2001). Closure: A Story of Everything. Routledge.
  54. ↑ Law, J (2004). After method: Mess in Social Science Research. Routledge.
  55. ↑ Barton, J; Stephens, J; Haslett, T (2009). "Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method". Systemic Practice and Action Research. 22 (6): 481. doi:10.1007/s11213-009-9148-6. S2CID   144252485.
  56. ↑ Evans, K (2005). An introduction to integrative psychotherapy.
  57. ↑ "Beyond Truth: Error and Adventure". LSE Player. 4 March 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  58. ↑ "The Power of Lies". LSE Podcasts. 21 March 2013.
  59. ↑ "Is Post-modernism to Blame for Our Post-truth World?". LSE Player. 2 October 2017.
  60. ↑ Dismantling Truth: Reality in the Post-Modern World. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1989.
  61. ↑ After Truth - A Post Modern Manifesto. Inventions Press UK. 1986.
  62. ↑ Lawson, Hilary (15 May 2013). "On Integrity". Port Magazine. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  63. ↑ Kang, Meng Chow (2008). "An action research derived piezoelectric approach for information risk management". Southern Cross University. p. 209.
  64. ↑ Lawrence, Stephen (2010). "A Poetic of Disunity: Selves and Silence" (PDF). Digital Library. University of Adelaide.
  65. ↑ Lawson, Hilary (2008). "The Poetic Strategy". IABLIS. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  66. ↑ Suess, E (2014). "Doors don't slam: Time-based architectural representation". Consuming Architecture. Routledge. pp. 259–275. doi:10.4324/9781315813523-23. ISBN   9781315813523 . Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  67. ↑ Bolewski, Christin (2021). Narrative and spatiotemporal structure in video painting (thesis). Loughborough University. p. 12. doi:10.26174/thesis.lboro.14547030.v1.
  68. ↑ "The Open Prize for Video Painting 2010". Aesthetica. 21 July 2010.
  69. ↑ "Open gallery at the London Art Fair". Artrabbit. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  70. ↑ "Video Painting" . Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  71. ↑ "The Globe at Hay". Visit Wales. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  72. ↑ "Now Revisited". Artrabbit. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  73. ↑ "Hilary Lawson, Now Revisited Revisited (2009)". www.opengallery.co.uk. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  74. ↑ Hackett, Dennis (27 February 1986). New Scientist Review. p. 53.
  75. ↑ "Lawson Hilary Lawson Results". British Universities Film & Video Council.
  76. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". IMDB. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  77. ↑ Herbert, Hugh (31 March 1987). "Broken Images". The Guardian.
  78. ↑ Cropper, Martin (31 March 1987). "Broken Images". The Times.
  79. ↑ "The First World". TVF International.
  80. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". IMDB. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  81. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". IMDB. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  82. ↑ "Hilary Lawson". BFI. Archived from the original on 29 April 2018.
  83. ↑ "The First World". TVF International.
  84. ↑ "Educational Television Awards 2000". Royal Television Society. 24 January 2011.
  85. ↑ "Children's | Schools Factual - Primary in 2001". BAFTA.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.