Philosophy & Ethics | Pandaemonium

WHEN MONUMENTS FALL

September 12, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This is the opening section of my essay in the New York Review of Books‘ NYR Daily on the statues debate. Read the full article on NYR Daily. “We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act—an act which is to go into history.” So said the great nineteenth-century former slave and staunch abolitionist Frederick Douglass at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., in 1876. “That we are here […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: abraham lincoln, black lives matter, boris johnson, confederate statues, edward colston, emancipation memorial, frederick douglass, iconoclasm, racism, statues, toppling statues, winston churchill

RACE, CLASS AND WHITE PRIVILEGE: A RESPONSE

August 30, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. The political philosopher Chris Bertram published two posts last week on Crooked Timber, the philosophy and social science blog, the first challenging critiques of the concept of “white privilege”, the second arguing that certain claims about race and class are irrational. As I was one of the targets of these articles (Chris linked to one of my posts as exemplifying the problem, and we had previously debated the issue on Twitter), this is a response. (It has been published on […]

Categories: Class, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, chris bertram, inequality, police killings, racism, school exclusions, white identity, white privilege, working class

FAIRNESS IS A POLITICAL JUDGMENT, NOT A THING IN ITSELF

August 25, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on algorithms, political judgments and fairness, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 23 August 2020, under the headline ‘The cruel exams algorithm has laid bare the unfairness at the heart of our schools’. . What children know and too many politicians seem not to: a few years ago, the psychologists Alex Shaw and Kristina Olson ran an experiment in which they told young children about two boys, Dan and Mark, who had cleaned up their […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: algorithms, boris johnson, british politics, education, fairness, michael gove, ofqual, scottish qualifications authority

HIROSHIMA AND THE MORALITY OF VICTORS

August 11, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the morality of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 9 August 2020, under the headline ‘Don’t let the victors define morality – Hiroshima was always indefensible’. ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ So said Curtis LeMay after America obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs in August 1945. LeMay was no bleeding-heart liberal. The US air force chief of staff who […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: a bomb, chester nimitz, curtis lemay, douglas macarthur, eisenhower, harry truman, hiroshima, japan, john dower, manhattan project, martin harwit, nagasaki, nuclear weapons, racism, robert mcnamara, second world war, war crimes, william leahy

CULTURE WARS CAN MAKE YOU BLIND TO SOCIAL CHANGE

June 23, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how the fog of culture wars can obscure the degree to which societies have become socially liberal, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 21 June 2020, under the headline ‘Culture wars risk blinding us to just how liberal we’ve become in the past decades’. ‘Prime minister Boris Johnson stirs culture war over Churchill statue.’ So ran a recent New York Times headline. The Washington Post agreed. As ‘counter protesters’ took to the streets to ‘protect’ statues and as controversy […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: black lives matter, british politics, culture wars, immigration, racism, social liberalism, statues, usa, working class

IDENTITY POLITICS: THE INTERVIEW

June 13, 2020 by Kenan Malik

Last year, I gave an interview to the philosopher Stine Jensen, for a series she was making for the Dutch TV company Human on the politics of identity called Dus Ik Volg (‘So I Follow’). The programme in which I appear is broadcast this Sunday, and here’s a video of the whole of my interview uncut (including the coughing fit…).

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: identity politics

A HUMAN NECESSITY NOT A PROFIT-MAKING MACHINE

June 9, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the dysfunctional pharmaceutical market, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 7 June 2020, under the headline ‘If drug firms take public funds they must make their finds available to all’. ‘It’s tragic that we won’t have a vaccine ready for this epidemic,’ Peter Hotez told a US congressional committee in March. Tragic, because we could possibly already have had one. Hotez is director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the Texas Children’s Hospital. In 2016, he and his team […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: astrazeneca, cepi, coronavirus, gavi, global south, jenner institute, just treatment, market ideology, medical research, msf, nationalisation, oxford university, peter hotez, pharmaceutical companies, sars, vaccine nationalism, vaccines, wellcome trust, world health organization

VIKTOR FRANKL’S SEARCH FOR MEANING

May 26, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Viktor Frankl’s existentialism,, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on deserving and undeserving migrants.) It was published on 24 May 2020, under the headline ‘What the lessons from Auschwitz teach us about the choices we make’. ‘To speak about the meaning and value of life may seem more necessary today than ever.’ It’s a quote that might have been plucked from any number of op-eds over the past couple of months. […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: auschwitz, choice, existentialism, holocaust, human agency, human nature, man's search for meaning, meaning, responsibility, social, vienna, viktor frankl, yes to everything

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMAN JUDGMENT

May 19, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the difference between human and artificial intelligence, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the return of football in Germany.) It was published on 17 May 2020, under the headline ‘For all its sophistication, AI isn’t fit to make life-or-death decisions’. Artificial intelligence is searching for the drugs to combat Covid-19. It enabled the pandemic to be tracked and information about it to be synthesised. It is diagnosing patients, triaging them, and identifying those in […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, brian cantwell smith, coronavirus, human nature, judgment, reckoning