Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Print this page
Commentary

The irreducible humanity of others

What philosophy has meant to me
by •
June 2025, no. 476
Commentary

The irreducible humanity of others

What philosophy has meant to me
by •
June 2025, no. 476

Some readers will know me as the author of Romulus My Father (1998). Romulus is not a book of philosophy, but it was obviously written by a philosopher profoundly affected by painful events in his childhood and the influence on him of his father and his father’s dear friend Pantelimon Hora, who helped raise him. Many people who have read the book said that it is obvious why I became a philosopher.

Leave a comment
Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita is Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne and Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Comment (1)

  • A wide-ranging and thought provoking commentary. I am reminded of a recent interview (2021) with Noam Chomsky in which Chomsky is asked to reflect on his 1967 essay on the Responsibility of Intellectuals. In one passage Noam reflects quizzically on the idea of the public intellectual and ponders why we might not consider (for example) a thoughtful janitor as a 'public intellectual'.

    It is a hell of an idea, but it does lead to the possible conclusion that the student of philosophy may not be best served by a life in academia, but rather using their understandings in a more mundane existence as perhaps a simple school teacher or tradie, sharing his or her insights in a practical way.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    31 May 2025