Interviewing a Famous Philosopher

Interviewing a Famous Philosopher

Each year, Stance chooses a professional philosopher to interview. To do this, each member of Stance nominates a philosopher, and the team decides as a group which philosopher should be chosen. This year, Stance chose Dr. Kate Manne, a feminist, moral, and social philosopher who works at Cornell University. After the philosopher is chosen, Stance collects the entire body of work of the philosopher, including all books and articles that they have written. Once this is done, the team splits up the author’s work and each member reads a portion and writes summaries of what they have read. After this, all the members of Stance read all of the summaries. From there, the team compiles a list of questions for the philosopher based on the main themes that have been distilled from the works. The team then works to sort through the questions, throwing out repetitive or irrelevant ones, and coming up with an appropriate order in which to ask them. A lead interviewer directs this entire process, and once the team feels ready, the lead interviewer is the one who asks the questions during the interview. Once the interview is completed, the team works to transcribe the interview so that it will be ready for publication.