Conversations about philosophy through history
By Sean Baumann
“Is suffering inevitable? Are our lives really meaningless? Is God dead and, if so, how should we live?” This is just one of the chapter headings in Between the Sea and the Land. The book is an extended conversation about philosophy between Tomas and Sara, who are confined to an isolated coastal peninsula during the long days of the Covid Pandemic.
They discuss in an inquisitive and sometimes playful way the difficulties of understanding the nature of the crisis in which they find themselves, the fallibilities of language and science, what can be known and not known, how to find a balance between individual needs and public safety. They consider the anxieties provoked by intolerance and political strife, and how to cope with the unpredictability and precariousness of life.
The book encompasses a broad history of philosophical ideas from the pre-Socratics to the present day, and the search for answers in shifting contexts of fear and wonder, from the mysteries of the beginnings of consciousness to quantum physics and the accelerating developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
About the Author
Sean Baumann is a retired doctor and specialist psychiatrist with a philosophical interest in the neuroscience of “the Psychoses” and chronic pain. He is the editor of Primary Care Psychiatry: A Practical Guide for Southern Africa (Juta), and the author of Madness: Stories of Uncertainty and Hope (Jonathan Ball).
After approximately thirty years teaching and working as a clinician in a busy public hospital he has become preoccupied with the limits of knowledge, and the problems arising from the pursuit of illusory certitudes. He believes that the yearning for certainty can lead us astray and contribute significantly to the conflicts and intolerance characteristic of phenomena such as ideology nationalism and fundamentalism. The acceptance of incertitude inclines us more to the acceptance and celebrations of diversity, and the creativity of imagining other ways of being. These preoccupations are a recurrent theme in the book.
