“Surprising Ethics”: Interview with William Gildea

“Surprising Ethics” aims to be an accessible philosophy podcast. Can you tell us more about your mission and why you think philosophy should be made more understandable? Do you think podcasts are particularly suitable for this goal?

Sure! I want to provide an exciting space to think about ethics and political values, and to show how received wisdom can be upended by philosophical thinking. I aim to do this by sourcing and discussing some of the most interesting ideas in ethics and political theory – for example, that pleasure is all that matters in our lives, that AIs will have rights, or that envy can be virtuous.

Why should philosophy be more understandable? I think philosophy can help inform public debate. Philosophy is a powerful set of tools for clear, logical thinking, and applied to our personal and collective lives, I think it opens up particularly exciting possibilities. 

And I think we all take philosophical stands every day. For example, every time we buy something, we express and act on values. We seldom articulate these values, but philosophy aims to bring this into the open so that we can reflect and consider what values we think we should have.

And why podcasts? They allow for conversation, and also the chance to hear from different voices quite literally in the form of voice clips. (Some of the episodes are interviews with philosophers, and the others are built around voice clips from philosophers, researchers, journalists and celebrities). Also, podcasts can fit snugly into people’s schedules. Reading is great (I’d be grateful if tech companies would stop prompting us to skip reading and glance at ‘AI summaries’…), but there’s only so much reading we can fit into our day. Personally, I find that podcasts make waking up and washing up so much more manageable…

You are currently a postdoctoral researcher, but you have also worked outside of academia, for an animal rights organisation. Did your philosophical training have an impact on your work? Is engagement with philosophy important, when it comes to practical issues? And is it important to have practical experience in a topic, when you engage with it philosophically?

I think philosophy helped with my NGO work very often, yes. Part of my job was to put forward arguments to policymakers and stakeholders. Philosophy helps you to get underneath the reasons why a given position might be justified, to argue for a view, and to show why an issue matters. It helps one to understand other people’s views better, and to be more charitable to opposing views, so that we’re engaging properly with other people’s views rather than a caricature. (It also helps to figure out which positions are inconsistent, which can be handy!) 

I also would never have even applied for that job were it not for studying philosophy; philosophy showed me I was logically committed to animals’ rights all along (though I said I wasn’t).

Philosophy may not seem all that practical. But sometimes, without clear and logical thinking (which is one view of what philosophy essentially is), we will end up aiming for the wrong outcome in the first place. So, philosophy can help us avoid going in the wrong direction at the very outset.

And yes, I think it’s often important to have practical experience in order to do ethics or political theory. For example, it might be hard to come up with a theory of love without much or any experience of loving anyone. That said, many people do valuable theoretical work that needn’t be deeply connected with on-the-ground events. 

How is your podcast different from other philosophy podcasts?

Surprising Ethics always offers a surprising idea in every single episode. That’s the promise. The whole podcast is rooted in these ‘surprises’, which I hope (!) makes it stimulating.

That’s not to say I always favour some strange view. Not at all. This is for the listener to decide, but often the status quo might be vindicated after all – there can be good reasons why the common view is so common. But I try to focus on very interesting challenges to the status quo, even if we think they ultimately fail.

What exactly does “surprising” mean? How do you address controversial issues?

I guess “surprising” means an idea that is unexpected and intriguing for most people. I aim to take new or left-field ideas and investigate them, or show that familiar ideas that are written off as strange or absurd might just be right after all.

I guess I try to address controversial issues by getting underneath the reasons for and against different views. By getting past assertion and counter-assertion and exploring the underlying assumptions and principles, we can often reach more common ground. I think it’s often important to recognise the reasons why people hold an opposing view, rather than only focussing on the arguments against them.

As a teaser, can you mention a particularly surprising philosophical solution you will explain in your podcast?

Sure! Surprising Ethics episodes have explored the idea that pleasure is the only thing that makes life go well, the claim that we are harmed by having too many liberties and the state should remove many of them for our own good, and the view that animals have rights because humans have rights. 

But to single out one surprising idea, I’ll go with monogamy. We normally think of monogamy as the only ethical or wise relationship structure. I discuss new theories according to which monogamy is morally wrong. 

Normally, people at most claim that polyamory or open relationships are one valid option alongside monogamy. But these philosophers think it’s wrong to be monogamous, so we really ought to be polyamorous or some such. They see monogamy as involving an unjustified threat: we don’t just hope or expect our partners not to have sex or romance outside the relationship. It’s a demand we back up with a threat. 

For these theorists, such demands amount to unjustified restrictions on our partner’s freedom to explore some of the goods of life: intimacy, pleasure, romance. There is an interesting analogy they make to exclusive friendships. We can’t say to our friends: “you can’t have other friends, or else it’s over!” So why is it fine with our partners?

Of course, we can say tons in monogamy’s defence, and maybe monogamy can be vindicated after all, so it’s a super interesting debate. I hope readers of The Pamphlet find Surprising Ethics interesting, and thanks so much to your whole team for asking me these questions and giving me this opportunity.

Finally, to give your readers an idea of what’s to come, I’m looking forward to the episode on the philosophy of New Year’s Resolutions (are they undermining us? What sort of resolutions might lead to fulfilment?), to be released on 27th December 2025. Readers can find and follow Surprising Ethics on almost any podcast platform, by searching “Surprising Ethics” or clicking here.