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Between 2000 and 2013 Professor Ken Gemes collaborated with one of the Department's Visiting Professors, Simon May, on Nietzsche and the `death of God'. They used Nietzsche's discussion of nihilism as a foundation for exploring the idea that without religious belief, underpinning values lack secure grounding, resulting in a crisis of values. Their insights have been widely disseminated through publications, public lectures and podcasts, and have influenced ideas about the basis for values in a largely secular age.
In recent years, few institutions have contributed more intensively than Southampton to the wider appreciation of two of the 19th Century's most influential thinkers, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. By way of a determined campaign of public engagement, we have shared our research on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche with over three million members of several different publics. This has resulted in genuine cultural enrichment: our interlocutors have encountered new approaches to topics that they find intrinsically compelling, and have been prompted to think and feel differently about issues that are — or that have come to be — of real significance for them.
Through our very successful schools outreach programme, Philosophy in the City, several members of staff have brought their research ideas to school students and teachers, with considerable influence both on the students themselves and on the way in which philosophy is taught and thought of within those schools. This activity has formed an important part of our civic engagement with Sheffield and its region, in enabling our research work to be understood beyond the academy, while drawing school pupils into the subject and influencing their attitude both to the issues we deal with and to higher education more generally.
Rai Gaita's work brings a distinctive conception of good and evil to bear on a range of central and abiding moral questions. His work has shaped and changed the understanding of core moral and political issues by the general public in Australia and in other countries, and it has influenced the attitudes of policy makers and lawyers. Some of his books are on the reading list for the Higher School Certificate in Australia and have therefore had an immediate impact on the moral sensitivities of young Australians.
Not many contemporary moral philosophers have had such impact beyond the academic sphere. Why and how has Gaita achieved this impact? While academic philosophers tend to present their ideas in more technical form, Gaita's work crosses the boundaries between philosophical inquiry and literature. He brings philosophical issues to life by using the narrative form. For instance, his book Romulus, My Father, which uses biography to meditate on the human condition, has reached and influenced vast numbers of people. It was adapted into a film of the same title internationally released in 2007 and 2008. The inextricable connection between form and content in Gaita's work enables non-philosophical audiences to engage with, and respond to, his moral philosophy. In addition, his work has made a substantial contribution to the publishing and creative industries through the outstanding success of his books and related outputs.
Prof. Galen Strawson has developed ideas challenging our central conceptions of the self, freedom, agency, responsibility, and the nature of mental life. The impact of his research at the University of Reading has been a continuing one on cultural life and civil society, helping to shape the views of people outside the academy on these most important aspects of our thought about ourselves. Very unusually for an academic philosopher, Strawson has made significant contributions to popular debate on philosophy of mind, in particular free will and consciousness, and its implications for ethical thinking. This impact includes contributions on national and international radio, television, newspapers and blogs. Through these means, Strawson's radical thinking about subjectivity, the mind, personal identity, free will, and moral responsibility has had a direct impact on non-academic opinion and stimulated lively debate as a result.
Baroness Professor Onora O'Neill has applied ideas derived from her extensive research in the field of moral philosophy to substantive practical questions in bioethics: for example, what is it for patients to give their consent? Should assisted dying be legalised? And more generally, what kinds of safeguards should be employed to protect patients? O'Neill developed this work together with Dr Neil Manson while working at the University of Cambridge. This research has had impact on decisions and the reports made by the Commission on Assisted Dying (2011-12). O'Neill was an expert witness for the Commission and her ideas were incorporated into the 2012 report of that commission.
Chappell's recent work developing an anti-systematic philosophical ethics, and in particular his work on the notions of personhood and second-personality, has had an impact on (1) provision of public and health services, (2) policy-making, and (3) cultural life. He has presented work on ethics and persons to public audiences in Northampton, Mexico City, Oxford, St Andrews, Leeds, Milan, and Sydney. Besides a general intellectual-cultural impact on these public audiences, he has had specific impacts on thinking and practice (1) in paediatrics at The Northampton General Hospital and (2) in religious and educational constituencies in Britain and Australia.
Vierkant has produced a distinctive body of work that explores the implications of contemporary neuroscience for the notions of free will and moral responsibility. As a result of this research, he was invited by the Church of Scotland to participate in their Society, Religion and Technology working group, which had, as part of its remit, the role of producing the Church's official position on these issues. Vierkant played a key role in formulating the group's recommendations in this regard, which in 2012 were put before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. These recommendations were approved and have now become part of the `Blue Book' that contains the official laws and policies of the Church of Scotland. In particular, the Church changed its official stance on the implications of contemporary neuroscience with regard to free will and moral responsibility as a direct result of Vierkant's research-led recommendations in the working group report. Vierkant's research has thus led to a demonstrable and significant impact on the policy making of an important non-academic public body.