"Philosophers like to talk a lot, but must take listening seriously"

Interview with Dr. Elizabeth Macintosh, Team Wales for "Philosophy in the Wild"

Beth is a Philosopher and a Visiting Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Winchester. She works in moral philosophy, medical ethics, animal and environmental ethics and on the work and legacy of Mary Midgley. For “Philosophy in the Wild”, she has organised a 5-part series of workshops for young people with an inspiring host of collaborators, to explore relations people in Wales have with a wide range of wild creatures – from marine animals to butterflies.

Beth, thank you for doing the first interview in this series with me! You are bringing such a wonderful energy as well as great philosophical expertise to the project. Can I start by asking what made you excited about it?

The opportunity to bring together my work and experience as a teacher and also as an academic philosopher was really important to me. Like Mary Midgley I’ve often felt quite on the outskirts of where ‘philosophy happens’ and similarly to her would argue that philosophy can move outside the academy, away from the armchair. It is practical and needs to be done by all – especially now as we face urgent social and environmental challenges.

Having children made me think in radically new ways and there is no doubt that I am utterly entangled in conversation and thought with them, but also with other people’s children as a teacher.

My young children, the children of Pembrokeshire (residents and holidaymakers) and my team of authors, poets, zoologists and artists [[LINK TO WEBSITE]] are all united by our love of wild places and wild things. I live and work in Winchester due to my husband’s job as a resident housemaster, but home is Pembrokeshire. It is so exciting to work with the children of the county, but also with the many species of animals that reside there in the stunning landscape. We bought our house in Pembrokeshire during the lockdowns and I owe so much to a community and place that continues to give me such hope and renewed purpose, in a similar way to how Midgley’s work has been so generous and inspiring for me. The workshops allow me to give back.

Your workshops all revolve around the concept of ‘listening’. I first came across it in the work of Argentinian philosopher María Lugones, who saw it as a pre-condition to world-travelling, so, to be able to really dive into another lifeworld, but carefully so. You take your inspiration from Mary Midgley [[LINK TO TALK ON YOUTUBE]]. What is her general idea and what do you make of it? And could you explain to readers why listening is more than saying nothing?

Philosophers like to talk a lot, but must take listening seriously. As Midgley puts it in her paper “Philosophizing Out in the World” (1985, p. 461), philosophers

must listen to everyone and cast their nets [widely] before starting to draw… new maps.

Listening is a key tenet of our similarities with other animals, part of how we order and shape our lives, and central to repairing our relationship with the natural world. We must listen to animals, to nature and appreciate, crucially, that they are listening, too. It’s manifest in how they detect, coordinate and thrive collectively.

Studies have found that numerous species, previously believed to be mute, do in fact communicate and vocalise, turtles for instance. We will cover them in one workshop that focuses on ancient and recent technologies to listen to the sounds of life. This is not new data. Indigenous thinking has long appreciated the vocalisation of other species. But it is presented in new forms. Again, we need to think about who we listen to, and why, and when we learn key information about our fellow creatures, we must then adapt previously damaging practices.

Hence, yes, absolutely, listening is more than saying nothing and there are just so many ways we could learn to listen, pay attention to and engage with other animals and our shared environment. The five workshops explore: Lost (or neglected ways of) Listening, Listening as Repair, Expansive Listening, Listening as Casting and Listening as Doing – which demands we practically diagnose and repair in view of our listening.

So, from your own experience in Wales, are there examples of humans accepting unpleasant things other animals had to say about them – or perhaps inconvenient truths?

Interesting, you know, in M. Wynn Thomas’ The History of Wales in Twelve Poems (2021, p. xiii), he writes in the introduction how the Welsh are a Tinker Bell of a people – mischievous, playful, difficult even, but a ‘deeply poignant’ creation requiring claps for survival. He writes

devoid of the robust supporting mechanism of an established state, and lacking the complex infrastructure necessary to ensure the safe transmission of a national culture the Welsh have had no choice but to exist by effortlessly choosing to do so and by constantly improvising strategies of self-renewal.

This speaks to the challenging relationship between the English powers and the Welsh and is also a useful image for the project.

So many of our fellow creatures find themselves in a situation where we make their very existence challenging – we constantly disturb and disrupt them.

For example, half the population of Atlantic grey seals breed on the Welsh coastline, and yet the seals face disruption from adventure tourism and people not heeding the signs to keep away. This could lead to a beloved wild area, beloved because of its seals and birds, becoming far less wild (animal inhabited) as they will need to breed and nest elsewhere due to such disturbance. There is now a six-month exclusion zone in Anglesey to protect an area, known as the Range, to protect rare bird species, and endangered wildlife, from adventure tourism and disruption during birding season.

The notion of ‘repair’ seems really important. What other forms can that take?

I see Midgley’s rallying cry that we are not just rather like animals; we are animals as all about repair. Similarly to the amazing Anat Pik, Midgley argues that we need to embrace the animal within humans to uncover a radical new ‘creaturely’ way of being in the world together as species and that this is an act of crucial repair. Listening is an act of repair, but listening is also about diagnosing the right issue.

In the case of the seals, my children and I were lucky enough to learn from brilliant facilitators from the Seal Research Trust about the distance we need to keep from the seals we can see on our coastal walks. Education is a big part of repair work, in order to ensure we commit to no further damage, but also, crucially, to restore, rebuild and yes repair.

You stress that other animals are also listening – does that make you hopeful that, one day, we could be working towards improved, if not always close, but at any rate good diplomatic relations with other, in particular wild living animals?

Yes and there is fantastic work going on in this area and I have been so inspired by the writings Eva Meijer about animal languages, the late Karen Bakker on how technology is opening up the sounds of life to us and your own wonderful book with Alasdair Cochrane in terms of ways in which animals listen too, and what this means for hopeful, dynamic and more solidaristic mixed communities.

Thank you so much – I really can’t wait to see how your events unfold!
One Final Amusing Question, my FAQ that I am going to ask everybody: What is your favourite scent?

Such a very hard question as I am never happier than buying perfume and books! But right now, all I want to smell is my St Eval candles and diffusers that are all over my home (and a guilty pleasure) in Pembrokeshire. The scent notes are fresh ground sea salt, a stiff onshore breeze, the steely eye of a stoic gull and sprays of bursting citrus - the smell of home and hope in a tin!

Wonderful - well, here’s to ending on a poem already, thank you.

It is such a privilege to work on this project with you Mara – thank you.