Date/Time
Date(s) - 02/08/2026
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
The Rose Battersea
On Sunday 2nd August 2026 at 12:30. Dmitry Usenco will speak on Age and wisdom. See Dmitry’s notes below
In this talk, I am going to share my experience of participating in the philosophical debate (the so-called ‘Philosophy Row’) between two teams representing Oxford and Cambridge respectively (not the universities proper but rather their further education programs). The event that took place in Oxford on 20 May 2026. The subject debated was ‘Do we get wiser as we get older?’
As a relatively long-term member of the Oxford Philosophical Society, I was obviously part of the Oxford team (meet an ‘Oxford Owl’). As the average age of our team turned out to be considerably older that that of our opponents, we decided – quite logically, so that we are not suspected of being partial or prejudiced – to argue for the negative answer, i.e. that we DO NOT get wiser with age. The debate ended in our LOSS by a slight margin of votes among the Zoom attendants of that meeting (the votes of the audience physically present in the Oxford Quaker Meeting House divided exactly 50/50). However narrow the margin, it always hurts to be a loser – and it hurts six times as much so to lose as a six-member team. (The only other time I had experienced something similar was when our school team lost at volleyball to another at an interschool competition – some 40 years before, but the bitter taste of failure was immediately recollected).
It may seem strange, therefore, that I should feel like reviving that rather traumatic experience and reliving the events of that shameful night (‘Alas! One night’s disgrace! / Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold’ Robert Browning). However, there are a few reasons for which I believe that the traumatic can be made into the cathartic:
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- Firstly, I did not manage to present my prepared defence in full. It happened because I deliberately chose to dedicate some time it to responding to what we had just heard from the first speaker of the opposite team (and I was the first to speak for Oxford). In its full version, my speech would have been built around three key quotes from rather heterogeneous sources: the Gospel, Cyrano de Bergerac’s Empires of the Moon, and Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’. I managed to quote only the Gospel and was stopped short from quoting from the inimitable piece by Cyrano which contains one of the earliest and at the same time most eloquent arguments in favour of youth’s superiority over old age in European literature. No wonder – each of us had only 6 minutes for everything. I hope, therefore, to expand on this topic a little bit more in this talk, taking advantage of its more generous time allowance.
- Secondly, I find the very fact that such debate was held to be a sign of the times. Its subject (i.e. youth vs old age) keeps re-emerging in the intellectual history of mankind whenever it is felt that the conventional wisdom of an older generation is inadequate to tackle the wind of change. In other words, I would like to touch upon the sociological aspect of this whole affair, which I hope should be of some interest.
- Thirdly, I would like to give a brief account of the debate itself which, I hope, should also be quite entertaining and instructive at the same time. The chief lesson to draw from our loss is that team interaction could be more important than individual brilliance. (Always remember the battle of Agincourt!)
- Finally, I feel bound to say at least a few words on ‘what my own opinion is’ on the subject of the debate, i.e. whether I really believe that youth is superior to old age in wisdom, even though I feel quite sceptical whether anything positive can be said on this matter in the age of postmodernism. But perhaps by that stage of our discussion, I will bore you enough to be permitted to slip into an imperturbable epoché and instead of voicing my own opinion invite my audience to share at least some of their views on this extremely broad subject.
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We meet in The Rose Battersea, 74-76 Battersea Bridge Road, London SW11 3AG but the meeting will also be on Zoom for details see SLPC Zoom Meeting
We always welcome new speakers. If you would like to give a talk on a philosopher or a philosophical topic please contact Adrian Carter at southlondonphilosophy@gmail.com