Author Archives: Kenan Malik

HOW FAR DOES HUMANITY STRETCH?

July 4, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Earlier this week I posted an essay by Greg Hollin on changing scientific conceptions of human nature and of the ‘social’, and of the way that autism has become ‘window to the soul’. As a coda here is a review I wrote in 2006 of Michael Blastland’s book Joe, about his autistic son. I am struck by how, having read Greg’s work, I might well ask different questions now of the book, and perhaps even look upon it differently. The […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: autism, human nature, morality

HOW AUTISM BECAME A WINDOW TO THE SOUL

July 1, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Gregory Hollin is a researcher at Nottingham University’s Institute for Science and Society whose work explores changing perceptions of autism, both scientific and cultural. He recently wrote a superb essay for the anthropology website Somatosphere which looked at the relationship between the rise of autism as a cultural phenomenon and changing scientific conceptions of human nature and of the ‘social’, and at how these changes have led to the view of ‘the social hole in autism’ as ‘a window to the […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: autism, human nature, psychology, social

A FAIRY TALE BUT, OH, SO FEEBLE

June 28, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Review of A Troublesome Inheritance by Nicholas Wade (Penguin) Jews are adapted to capitalism. The Chinese have evolved to be conformist. Iraqis lack the genetic mechanisms necessary for democracy. It is not difficult to find such claims in the darker recesses of the Internet. It is more surprising, though, to find them at the heart of a much-heralded new book by the former science editor of the New York Times. Yet, not only does Nicholas Wade make these claims, they […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration, Science & Technology • Tags: clash of civilizations, gregory clark, nicholas wade, population genetics, racial science

JOSEPH CARENS RESPONDS ON THE ETHICS OF IMMIGRATION

June 26, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The politics/philosophy blog Crooked Timber organised recently an online symposium on political philosopher Joseph Carens’ book, The Ethics of Immigration. I wrote a contribution; the responses of the other contributors are here. Joseph Carens has now responded to the various arguments: It is an author’s dream for his or her work to receive the sort of wide-ranging, substantive, thoughtful and generous reactions that this symposium on my book has elicited. So, I want to begin by expressing my deep appreciation to Chris Bertram for […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: ethics, immigration, joseph carens

UNPACKING A TROJAN HORSE

June 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is about the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal in Britain. Here are the opening paragraphs; the full version is in the INYT, where it was published under the headline ‘Education should be beyond belief’. Last year, the council in Birmingham, Britain’s second city, received an anonymous document that supposedly advised militant Muslims on how to take over the governing bodies of state-run schools and impose Islamist values on them. Since the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Multiculturalism • Tags: britain, education, faith schools, islam, islamism, religion

WHO DO I THINK I AM?

June 20, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In 2009, London’s Wellcome Collection conducted a series of interviews about the meaning of identity, to coincide with its exhibition Identity: Eight Rooms, Nine Lives, part of an Identity Project season. They were published in a book called Identity and Identification. The interview I gave as part of the project has some bearing on the current debate about British identity and values. So, here is a cut-down and somewhat reworked version of my interview. Who are you? The question ‘Who am […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: britishness, englishness, identity politics, national identity

WHERE DO VALUES COME FROM?

June 17, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a (slightly edited) video of a talk I gave last month at London’s RSA entitled ‘Where do values come from?’. It explores some of the themes in my book The Quest for a Moral Compass. .

Categories: History, History of moral thought, Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ancient greece, ethics, history of moral thought, humanism, kenan malik's books, modernity, religion, talks

CALLING LONDON, EDINBURGH AND AMERICA

June 14, 2014 by Kenan Malik

News on talks that are coming up, possibly coming up and moving. . London My London Philosophy Club talk next week has been moved back from Thursday 19th (when England are playing Uruguay in the World Cup) to Tuesday 17th. I would have sacrificed football for philosophy but the organisers decided that it was not worth risking an empty room. However exciting it might be to listen to me talk of Confucius or Kant or Original Sin, it might be a […]

Categories: Kenan Malik • Tags: talks

IGNORANCE, DISHONESTY AND JOHN GRAY

June 12, 2014 by Kenan Malik

John Gray, former Professor of European Thought at the LSE, last week reviewed The Quest for a Moral Compass for the New Statesman, for which he is the lead reviewer. (The review is not online but I will try to include it in my next round-up of commentary on my book.) It was what you might call a ‘scorched earth’ review. The Quest for a Moral Compass is, Gray claimed, a ‘rationalist fairytale’ from which ‘all of the repugnant and troubling […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought • Tags: john gray, kenan malik's books

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE DEATH OF GOD

June 10, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk I gave last week at the Bruno Kreisky Foundation in Vienna. It is part of a series of lectures the Foundation is organising on the ‘Enlightenment and its legacy’. . 1 No Enlightenment philosophe talked of the ‘Death of God’. The ‘Death of God’ is a nineteenth century phrase, which we know of today largely through Nietzsche (though it was not Nietzsche who coined it). ‘God is dead’, as he put it The […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: 1848 revolutions, atheism, christianity, comte, death of god, enlightenment, french revolution, hume, jonathan israel, locke, marxism, morality, nietzsche, positivism, racial science, radical enlightenment, reason, reformation, spinoza

DEBATING IMMIGRATION, ETHICS AND OPEN DOORS

June 4, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The politics/philosophy blog Crooked Timber, is organising an online symposium on political philosopher Joseph Carens’ book, The Ethics of Immigration. I published my contribution last week. These are links to the other contributions so far. Carens himself will respond in time, and all contributions will be published as an e-book. . Chris Bertram Some worries about Carens’s democratic consensus One difficulty I have in thinking about how to discuss the work in a symposium such as this is in finding […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: ethics, immigration, joseph carens

BIG SKIES, BLEAK VIEWS

June 1, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I love marshlands. Big skies, vast horizons, stretched perspectives, forgotten history recorded in lost villages and abandoned buildings, bleakness and beauty, natural and human, intertwined. These are photos from three marshes in southern England – the Norfolk Broads, mainly along the River Ant, the Romney Marshes in Kent, and the Isles of Sheppey and Grain along the Thames estuary. More photos are on my photography website Light Infusion and on Flickr and 500px. . The Norfolk Broads . The Romney Marshes […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: photos

ON THE ETHICS OF IMMIGRATION

May 29, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The politics/philosophy blog Crooked Timber, is organising an online symposium on Joseph Carens’ superb book, The Ethics of Immigration. The opening post was by Chris Bertram. Others will post their responses through this week. This is my contribution to the symposium. I will publish a post next week with links to all the various symposium posts. Joseph Carens will himself respond in time to the symposium, and all the contributions will eventually be bundled into a e-book. I will publish […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: david goodhart, ethics, immigration, joseph carens, michael walzer, populism

FIRST WORD ON THE QUEST

May 26, 2014 by Kenan Malik

These are the early reviews of The Quest for a Moral Compass – and very heartening they are too. You can read the opening section of the book, and a talk I gave about it at the Glasgow Aye Write Festival. And you can buy the book from the Pandaemonium bookshop. I will publish later reviews in time. . Anthony Kenny, Literary Review , May 2014 Kenan Malik invites his readers to consider the following questions. Can the mind be understood scientifically, […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought, Kenan Malik • Tags: history of moral thought, kenan malik's books

CLR JAMES AND ME

May 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is an interview, about what CLR James means to me, that I gave to the BBC History Magazine, for its ‘My History Hero slot’. It is published in the June issue of the magazine. For more discussion of CLR James and his significance, see my essay ‘CLR James, Frantz Fanon and the meaning of liberation’. . When did you first hear about CLR James? In my teens. The experience of racism, and the struggle against it, introduced me to […]

Categories: History, Justice & Liberties • Tags: clr james, freedom struggles, marxism