Category Archives: Human

ON SCIENCE, MORALITY AND BEING HUMAN

March 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I took part in a discussion at the Cambridge Science Festival last week on ‘The science of morality’. Others taking part were Ray Tallis, Pater Cave and Alasdair Coles. I have here mashed up my introductory and concluding comments. Every year, I give a lecture to theology students on why I am an atheist. It is essentially a primer on why we don’t need God to explain the universe or to ground morality. And in talking of morality, I take […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: atheism, human nature, humanism, morality, religion, sam harris

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ON CIVILIZATIONS

August 26, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Another review from the archives while I am away, the last hopefully before normal service resumes on Pandaemonium. This is a review of Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s Civilizations, first published in the Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2000. ‘It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization.’ So wrote Victorian anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1877 classic Ancient Societies. According to Morgan, savagery, barbarism […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Human • Tags: civilization, fernandez armesto, human nature, progress

THERE BE MONSTERS

July 11, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The philosopher John Gray, in his review of my book The Quest for a Moral Compass, claimed that I ‘airbrush, Soviet-style’ all ‘repugnant and troubling elements of rationalism’ that I ‘prefer not to know’ about ‘sleazy side of rationalism’, such as racial science or the history of slavery. It is a strange claim given that the thread that runs through virtually all my work has been the paradoxes of modernity, and the contradictions within rationalism and liberalism. Hence two books of […]

Categories: History, Human, Race & Immigration, Science & Technology • Tags: apes, blumenbach, buffon, edward tyson, great chain of being, kenan malik's books, linnaeus, racial science, scientific classification

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

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

HOW HUMAN IS CULTURE?

December 8, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my exchange of letters with Peter Singer on ape rights, here is an edited (and slightly extended) transcript of a talk I gave at ‘Do You Humans Own Culture?‘, a discussion on apes, humans and culture based around primatologist Andrew Whitten’s research, organized in 2002 by the Royal Society and the British Academy. The other participants were Andrew Whitten himself, Patrick Bateson and Caroline Humphrey. The key themes here of how we should conceive of the […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: ape culture, apes, culture, enlightenment, franz boas, human agency, human nature, michael tomasello, romanticism

HUMAN RIGHTS AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

December 5, 2013 by Kenan Malik

The Nonhuman Rights Project, an organization founded by Massachusetts lawyer and animal rights activist Steven Wise, has this week filed a series of lawsuits in New York demanding that chimpanzees be granted ‘legal personhood’. The lawsuit seeks to extend the concept of habeas corpus to chimpanzees, drawing an analogy with one of the most famous anti-slavery cases, that of James Somerset in 1772, an American slave who had been taken to London by his owner, escaped, was recaptured and was being held in chains on a […]

Categories: Human, Justice & Liberties • Tags: animal rights, apes, human nature, morality, peter singer, rights

FROM THE VAULTS: BLANK SLATES AND STRAW DOGS

July 25, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my series of old essays and talks about human nature that I have not previously published on Pandaemonium, this is a review of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate and John Gray’s Straw Dogs. It was first published in Prospect, October 2002. Review of The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker and Straw Dogs by John Gray, Prospect, October 2002 The psychologist Geoff Miller has called it a ‘paradigm shift’: the restoration of human nature into discussions of human behaviour, political […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: antihumanism, darwinism, evolutionary psychology, human agency, human nature, humanism, john gray, steven pinker

FROM THE VAULTS: ON FREEDOM AND FREE WILL

July 21, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for the next few weeks, I am raiding the vaults, as it were, for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. This is a review of Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves, first published in New Statesman, February 2003 Review of Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett, New Statesman, 10 February 2003 Humans are physical beings with evolved brains and evolved minds. Humans are also moral agents with consciousness and will. How should […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: daniel dennett, free will, human agency, human nature

FROM THE VAULTS: THE MYTH OF MARS AND VENUS

July 17, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Continuing, while I am away, my series of old essays and reviews on the theme of human nature, this is a review of Deborah Cameron’s The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different languages?, first published in the Sunday Telegraph, November 2007. Review of The Myth of Mars and Venus by Deborah Cameron, Sunday Telegraph, 4 November 2007 My four year old daughter, like many girls of her age, has become obsessed by all things […]

Categories: Human, Science & Technology • Tags: evolutionary psychology, human nature, language, sex differences

FROM THE VAULTS: SO YOU THINK YOU ARE HUMAN?

July 14, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for the next few weeks, I am raiding the vaults, as it were, for old material not published here before, mainly on the theme of human nature. This is a review of Felipe Fernández Armesto’s So You Think You Are Human?, first published in New Statesman in April 2004. Review of So You Think You are Human? by Felipe Fernández Armesto, New Statesman, 5 April 2004 There is an episode of Star Trek in which Data, the android who would be […]

Categories: History, Human • Tags: civilisation, human nature, progress

FROM THE VAULTS: STONE AGE POLITICS

July 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for the next few weeks, but rather than abandon Pandaemonium, I thought I would again raid the vaults, as it were, for old material that I have not published here. So, for the next few weeks, I have dug out essays, reviews, talks and broadcasts, broadly on the theme of human nature. Back in 2001, I gave a series of three talks on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour entitled ‘Man, Beast and Politics’ that explored the political impact […]

Categories: Human, Politics, Science & Technology • Tags: darwinism, evolutionary psychology, francis fukuyama, human nature, matt ridley, peter singer, sociobiology

FROM THE VAULTS: DISSECTING JOHN GRAY’S ANATOMY

April 11, 2013 by Kenan Malik

As I am away this week, I am republishing some old material that has not previously appeared on Pandaemonium. This is a review of Gray’s Anatomy, a selection of writing from the philosopher John Gray, It was first published in the Times in April 2009. On the eve of the Iraq war, John Gray published an essay in the New Statesman entitled ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing Torturers in Liberal Democracy from Being Abused, and for Recognizing their Benefit to the Public (with Apologies […]

Categories: Human • Tags: freedom struggles, human nature, john gray, liberalism, progress, utopianism

SPLIT BRAIN, SPLIT VIEWS – DEBATING IAIN MCGILCHRIST

February 24, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Iain McGilchrist has written a response to my post about his book The Master and his Emissary and about the RSA workshop that discussed it. Since it is a long reply, Iain asked me whether I could publish it as a post, rather than as a comment, which I am happy to do. I have appended my own response at the end. (And just to avoid any confusion, while I have set up the discussion in the form of two open […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: debates, human agency, iain mcgilchrist, neuroscience, ray tallis, reason