Category: Interviews

Anita L. Allen is the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, she is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition, the Warren Center for Network & Data Sciences and a Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics.  A graduate of Harvard Law School with a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Michigan, Allen is an expert on privacy and data protection law, bioethics and public philosophy. She holds an honorary doctorate from Tilburg University.  In 2019 Allen was President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.  In 2021 she was awarded the Quinn Prize for service to philosophy and philosophers. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Allen served under President Obama as a member of the National Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Allen currently serves on the boards of the National Constitution Center, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy Forum.  Allen has lectured on privacy in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and Israel; published five books and over 120 scholarly articles; contributed to and been featured in popular newspapers, magazines, podcasts and blogs; and appeared on numerous television and radio programs. In 2024 Allen will give the H.L. A. Hart Memorial Lecture at the University of Oxford.

How did you become interested in philosophy? 

My childhood was boring.  As the Italians say, it was all “casa, scuola, chiesa”. To relieve boredom, I read. I read a lot of novels, romance magazines, and encyclopedias before discovering philosophy and theology somewhere around age 12 or 13. Because I have read so widely and for a long time, my thinking has been diversely shaped by analytic, phenomenological, existentialist, critical, and feminist thought. Sadly, I was not exposed to Native American, Latin American, African or Asian philosophy in school. In college and graduate school, I was educated solely in American pragmatism, along with British, French, German and, of course, Greek philosophy.

What’s the most important concept or idea that you teach people? 

As an academic lawyer and philosopher working in a major research university, the most important concept I teach is the concept of privacy.  The most important idea I teach is that privacy has ethical and legal value highly relevant to the digital age.  In a less formal sense, I hope I teach by the example of my conduct, service and commitments, the importance of equality, self-respect and resilience.

What do you think is the most important piece of practical advice that we can derive from your work?

In recent work scheduled for publication in the Yale Law Review Forum, I discuss the problems of racial discrimination, hate and political manipulation perpetrated by online platforms – such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Uber – their algorithms, advertisers and users. I offer practical advice about using privacy and data protection law, along with industry self-regulation and other approaches, to address platform ills. I argue that there is promise but challenge in European Union GDPR-influenced US state and federal law and proposed laws.

Do you have a favorite quote that you use?

One of my favorite quotes comes from an American state court opinion recognizing the right to privacy, Pavesich v New England Life Insurance Co. in 1906. I seem to quote it in nearly everything I write about privacy. A judge analogizes invasions of privacy to slavery, the condition of bondage that brought my African ancestors to North America against their wills. The quote reads:

The knowledge that one’s features and form are being used for such a purpose, and displayed in such places as such advertisements are often liable to be found, brings not only the person of an extremely sensitive nature, but even the individual of ordinary sensibility, to a realization that his liberty has been taken away from him; and, as long as the advertiser uses him for these purposes, he cannot be otherwise than conscious of the fact that he is for the time being under the control of another, that he is no longer free, and that he is in reality a slave, without hope of freedom, held to service by a merciless master.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to learn more about what you do?

Anyone interested in learning more about my work in law, the nonprofit sector, government service or philosophy can always grab my cv from my University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law webpage or Google me. I note that there is a wonderful book that came out in 2019, edited by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting, which includes a chapter about me, Philosopher Queens: The Lives and Legacies of Philosophy’s Unsung Women. I recommend it! There is also a discussion of me placed in historical context in Carlin Romano’s book, America the Philosophical; and published interviews with me including in The New York Times and What It’s Like to be a Philosopher.

Suppose you were able to give a talk or workshop at the original location of Plato’s Academy…

It would be awesome to have the opportunity to offer a workshop at the original location of Plato’s Academy in Athens. I use the “Socratic method” in my law school teaching. Over the years I have become skilled at teaching through the process of posing questions and building knowledge dialectically through series of questions and answers, rather than through pedantic lecturing from behind a podium. (However, the fact that Socrates was sentenced to death for allegedly corrupting the minds of youth has to give one pause!)  

I have also become pretty good at educating other professionals using the Socratic method. I have designed and led professional development workshops at the University of Pennsylvania for university administrators (deans, department chairs, center heads) on the ethical exercise of discretion using a Socratic format. I think the ghost of Plato might be surprised, but not disapproving, to see a black American woman hanging out in Athens doing what Socrates did. Quoting from the Benjamin Jowett translation of Plato’s Republic:

Women are the same in kind as men and have the same aptitude or want of aptitude… . [T]here is no longer anything unnatural or impossible in a woman learning… .  [H]e who laughs at them is a fool…

Plato, The Republic

Anita L. Allen, Presidential Address, “The Philosophy of Privacy and Digital Life,” 93 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 21-38 (2019). 

Anita L. Allen, “Ideas and Ideals: Honoring Joyce Mitchell Cook,” Think, volume 20, issue 59, Autumn 2021.  

Anita L. Allen, Protecting One’s Own Privacy in a Big Data Economy, 130 Harvard Law Review Forum 71 (2016).   

Dr. Paul Blaschko is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Philosophy Department at Notre Dame University. A philosopher, his primary areas of interest are epistemology and action theory. His research focuses on the nature and normative dimensions of deliberative belief formation, but he’s also interested in theories of practical reason and value, the philosophy of religion, and medieval philosophy. His latest book on virtue ethics with Meghan Sullivan, The Good Life Method, is now available nationwide.

How did you become interested in philosophy?

I came to philosophy through religion. I was raised in a very serious Catholic home, and, fairly early, I started wondering about some of the more surprising things I was taught to believe. My parents bought me some books on apologetics, and I was immediately hooked on the idea that you could give philosophical arguments to defend the things you believe. I spent a good amount of time through high school on the internet, searching out the best philosophical arguments I could find. By then, too, my interests had become broader. I started listening to lectures on Ancient Greek philosophy. I was fascinated by the character of Plato. I tried to emulate him in my everyday life and drove everyone around me completely crazy. 

I think this backstory actually helps explain my approach to philosophy even today. I’m still very interested in approaching philosophy as a “way of life.” With Meghan Sullivan, I developed a course at Notre Dame that introduces students to philosophy by asking them to reflect on big questions that show up in their own experience. I started a program, with help from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to help other philosophers do the same. In these projects, you’ll see the commitment to the practical relevance of philosophy, but also the way in which I think we can meet people where they’re at (often on the internet, or even on platforms like TikTok), and just start doing philosophy together.

What’s the most important concept or idea that you teach people?

That philosophy can be a way of reflecting on, and improving, your life. In the first day of my good life class, I introduce my students to Aristotle’s conception of happiness as “eudaimonia.” We contrast this with simpler, more intuitive notions of happiness as, say, a pleasant emotion. Then we consider a couple arguments. According to Aristotle, our ultimate aim is to achieve eudaimonia, to flourish. This is the ultimate goal, and one that helps explain literally everything that we do.

As we reflect on this together, and as we start to get deeper into Aristotle’s account, students realize that happiness is something you can reflect on. That we can argue about it. And that philosophy is a crucial part of this process. This is just one example, too. When we talk about Marcus Aurelius, we start asking about whether there’s a part of us that is essentially contemplative. We start asking whether we should care more about external goods like wealth and fame, or whether we’ll be happier and more well-balanced if we focus on our inner-lives; on our reactions, emotional attitudes, and virtues.

What do you think is the most important piece of practical advice that we can derive from your work?

If you want to live a good life, learn to love the truth. Develop the ability to connect with other people and build true friendships and community, and to ask hard questions about what matters most in life. None of this is easy, but it’s something that we can do with the help of innumerable philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and so on. Philosophy is a living tradition, and it’s one that we can become a part of just by entering into this conversation.

Do you have a favorite quote that you use?

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says

[W]e are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use.

This is at the core of my approach to philosophy. I don’t think all philosophy needs to be immediately relevant or applicable to everyday life or experience, but the philosophy I’m most interested in — and certainly the philosophy I teach — all is. In a way, too, it also answers to that experience. We can ask questions like What makes a life meaningful? in order to seek out that meaning. And if we find that some philosophical theory of account just doesn’t capture our experience of meaning in life, well that’s a reason to go back and ask some hard questions. Maybe to throw the theory out and see if we can find (or come up with) a replacement.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to learn more about what you do?

I’m all over the internet, so people can follow me on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Substack. I also recently wrote a book with my colleague Meghan Sullivan, and in it we tell the story of the class we developed at Notre Dame. I love doing philosophy online, too, so send a Tweet my way or tag me in a TikTok, and we can just start dialoguing!

How would you feel about giving a talk or workshop at the original location of Plato’s Academy, in Athens?

In the first chapter of The Good Life Method, Meghan and I imagine what it’d be like to see Plato walking around Athens, asking inconvenient questions and arguing with the most powerful politicians, artists, and sophists. The idea of inhabiting that world in a more literally way sounds amazing. I’d love to think more about how we can continue to spread the message — through our teaching, research, and public writing — that philosophy can be approached as a meaningful “way of life.”

Meghan Sullivan is the Wilsey Family Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and serves as Director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. Her latest book on virtue ethics with Paul Blaschko, The Good Life Method, is now available nationwide.

Sullivan’s research tends to focus on philosophical problems concerning time, modality, rational planning, value theory, and religious belief (and sometimes all five at once).   She has published work in many leading philosophy journals, including Nous, Ethics and Philosophical Studies. Her first book — Time Biases —develops a theory of diachronic rationality, personal identity and reason-based planning. 

She is now writing a monograph on the role love plays in grounding moral, political and religious reasoning.  It is tentatively entitled Agapism: Moral Responsibility and Our Inner Lives. And with Paul Blaschko, she has just finished a book on virtue ethics based on the God and the Good Life project.

How did you become interested in philosophy?

I arrived at college (the University of Virginia) confident I wanted to be a lawyer and I would major in politics.  I loved debate – which I had done in high school.  Like all freshmen, I had a hard time getting all of my first-choice classes that first semester.  My advisor put me into an introductory philosophy course called Issues of Life and Death.  I *loved* it. The assignments asked us to try to make clear, persuasive and logical arguments for big practical questions about the beginning and end of life. 

The goal was to find the most rational view to hold, not just to reproduce what other people thought about the view.  I discovered that I loved working on the assignments for that course – I would want to work on those projects even if they weren’t being graded.  I started taking more classes and declared a second major, thinking this would just be a hobby while I worked on all of my politics requirements.  But by my third year, I knew I wanted to get much more serious about this kind of research.  Twenty years later, I find I still work on a lot of philosophical questions that gripped my imagination when I was eighteen.

What’s the most important concept or idea that you teach people?

A lot of folks assume that there really aren’t better or worse ways to reason about philosophical questions – you just need to pick a camp and learn how to defend it.  I work a lot with students to help them see there are often incomplete or badly designed arguments for moral, political, religious, or otherwise philosophical conclusions.  And we could design better arguments, and our moral, political, religious and philosophical lives will be better for putting in the work.  One of my strengths as a teacher is finding philosophical debates in the wild (in major newspapers, in modern life puzzles) and then teasing out all of the old philosophical questions in the fresh example.

What do you think is the most important piece of practical advice that we can derive from your work?

One topic I work a lot on concerns time and rational planning.  We oftentimes let our emotions narrow the time horizons of what we are willing to care about – we get anxious about the near future and have a hard time imaginatively or rationally engaging with the more distant future.  But we can give ourselves philosophical reasons that can help us manage and understand these biases, developing plans with longer time horizons and building our capacity to resist temporary disruption.  We do this with thought experiments and by learning to tell longer stories about how our lives are unfolding.  We’ll have better lives if we build up this skill.

Do you have a favorite quote that you use?

Are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth or the best possible state of your soul?   

Socrates in the Apology

Philosophy is meant to help us live better lives – it ought to matter to us.  And this takes a bit of work to keep our eye on the questions that really matter to our lives.  

What advice would you give someone who wanted to learn more about what you do?

You could start by reading The Good Life Method, a recent book I wrote (with my colleague Paul Blaschko) about how philosophers work and how philosophy can change how you live your life.  It’s a great place to start learning about philosophy as a way of life.  You might also check out a Youtube channel related to our project– Philife.  Or the website for one of my big classes: godandgoodlife.nd.edu.

Suppose you were able to give a talk at the original location of Plato’s Academy…

Plato understood – perhaps more than any modern philosopher – how hard it can be to pursue a philosophical life while also honoring democratic commitments.  Plato despaired about whether we could pull it off, especially once he saw how Socrates was dealt with by Athens.  It would be incredible to be back in the Academy now in 2022 and reflecting on whether we have made any progress in developing democracy or philosophical methods in the past two millennia.  I’d love to host a dialogue on whether philosophy can thrive in modern democracies.