Category Archives: Philosophy & Ethics

TO IMAGINE, TO HOPE, TO TRANSCEND, TO TRANSFORM

November 11, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the Dhaka Lit Fest, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on a new survey of English dialects.) It was published on 20 October 2019, under the headline ‘Literary festivals are not a luxury, a bauble for the middle classes’. Sadarghat is not a place for the faint-hearted. The river port of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, it’s a microcosm of the city itself – in your face, bursting with life, tumultuous […]

Categories: Culture & Books, International, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: bangladesh, bangladesh war of liberation, daniel baremboim, dhaka, dhaka lit fest, freedom struggles, gaza, kazi anis ahmed, louis kahn

FAILING TO SEE THE DEEPER CAUSES OF SOCIAL TRAGEDIES

November 4, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the shallowness of public debates about social tragedies, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 3 November 2019, under the headline ‘From Grenfell to migrant deaths, we fail to see the deeper causes of tragedy’ The 72 people killed in the Grenfell Tower fire. The 39 migrants who died in a shipping container left in a car park in Purfleet, Essex. Little may seem to connect these two dreadful events except the sense of horror we […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: dany contton, eh carr, fbu, firefighters, flammable cladding, grenfell tower, hein de haas, human traffickers, immigration controls, matt wrack, migrant deaths, people smugglers, purfleet, social tragedies

TO BE TRANSPORTED SOMEWHERE TRANSCENDENT

October 5, 2019 by Kenan Malik

When the US soprano Jessye Norman appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1981, her first choice was Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, with the great African American contralto Marian Anderson. Norman had been ten years old when she first heard that recording. “I listened, thinking, ‘But this can’t just be a voice! A voice doesn’t sound this rich and beautiful,’” she told the music critic Matthew Gurewitsch. Many felt the same about Norman, who died last week. Sumptuous. Voluptuous. Shimmering. Majestic. The descriptions of her voice […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: jessye norman, music, opera, richard strauss

THE RETURN OF UNIVERSALISM TO SOCIAL POLICY

September 30, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debates about universal basic income and universal basic services, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the Naga Munchetty controversy.) It was published on 29 September 2019, under the headline ‘These radical ideas might seem utopian but at least they fire the imagination’. Back in May, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, suggested that if Labour won the next election it would launch pilot schemes for universal basic income (UBI). The aim of […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: andrew percy, guy standing, howard reed, john mcdonnell, jonathan portes, labour party, ubi, ubs, universal basic income, universal basic services, universalism

THE ILLIBERALISM OF THE PHILOSOPHER OF LIBERALISM

September 9, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and the meaning of tolerance, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on politics as drama.) It was published on 8 September 2019, under the headline ‘Why western liberals have long picked the wrong historical hero’. Lost in the library of a small American college has lain a text by one of England’s foremost philosophers that no one knew he had written. ‘Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: catholicism, enlightenment, free speech, jonathan israel, liberalism, locke, radical enlightenment, religious freedom, spinoza, tolerance

THE REAL UNDESIRABLES ARE NOT ON THE STREETS

August 12, 2019 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a couple of weeks, and posting little new material on Pandaemonium, I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a a short piece on homelessness and official attitudes and policies, first published on 7 July 2019. None are so blind as those who would blind others. Mark Field, the Foreign Office minister suspended for grabbing a protester by the throat, has, according to leaked […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: austerity, british politics, homelessness, london, mark field, rough sleeping

THE NECESSITY OF POETRY

August 10, 2019 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a couple of weeks, and posting little new material on Pandaemonium, I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a a short piece on the need for poetry, first published on 12 May 2019, after the announcement of Simon Armitage as the new Poet Laureate. Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: george szirtes, howard nemerov, mean alexander, poetry, simon armitage

A TRIBUTE TO BRYAN MAGEE

August 5, 2019 by Kenan Malik

I am away for a couple of weeks, so am posting little new material on Pandaemonium. I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a. short tribute to Bryan Magee, published on 28 July 2019 under the headline ‘Bryan Magee, the man who loved to put big ideas on the small screen’. You can still watch them on YouTube. Two middle-aged white men (and the occasional woman) spending […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: bryan magee

THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF RACE AND CLASS

July 15, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on race and class in contemporary Britain, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the politics of human fossil finds.) It was published on 7 July 2019, under the headline ‘Working class versus minorities? That’s looking at it the wrong way’. Officials eyeing you with contempt. Police treating you as scum. A sense of being constantly watched and judged by professionals. Living in fear of benefit sanctions. A lack of community facilities. […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, ethnic pay gap, hostile environment, identity politics, migrants, minorities, precariat, race and class, runnymede trust, white working class, working class

SEEING WHAT WE WANT TO SEE

June 10, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how we often interpret the news through the lens of what we want to see, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 9 June 2019, under the headline ‘Fake news will thrive as long we are happy to see only what we want to see’. If a gorilla walked right in front of your eyes, you wouldn’t miss it, would you? Actually, half the country probably would. In a classic 1999 experiment, psychologists Christopher Chabris and […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Photos, Race & Immigration • Tags: assisted dying, central park five, christopher chabris, daniel simons, ethics, euthanasia, fake news, invisible gorilla experiment, noa pothoven, racism, usa, when they see us, wilding

CAN WE ESCAPE SURVEILLANCE CULTURE?

May 20, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the rise of surveillance culture was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the Brexit Party) It was published on 19 May 2019, under the headline ‘As surveillance culture grows, can we even hope to escape its reach?’ Sometimes, it is the very ordinariness of a scene that makes it terrifying. So it was with a clip from last week’s BBC documentary on facial recognition technology. It shows the Metropolitan police trialling a facial recognition […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: cctv cameras, china, facial recognition, police, privacy, smart cities, surveillance, surveillance culture

ON THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS

March 11, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the contemporary significance of Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘the right to have rights’, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the dispute at Parkfield Community School over teaching about gays.) It was published in the Observer, 10 March 2019, under the headline ‘Human rights mean nothing unless we defend real, threatened people’. ‘The right to have rights.’ It’s 70 years since the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined that luminous phrase in an essay in […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: citizenship, discrimination, hannah arendt, human agency, human rights, immigration, lida maxwell, refugees, right to have rights, rights, struggling

SHAMIMA BEGUM AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

February 18, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate over Shamima Begum, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the BBC’s attitude to abortion.) It was published in the Observer, 17 February 2019, under the headline ‘The possibility of redemption is central to a humane society’. How do you solve a problem like Shamima? In February 2015, 15-year-old east London schoolgirl Shamima Begum travelled to Syria with two friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, to join Islamic State. Last […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, War on terror • Tags: citizenship, ethics, islamic state, islamism, jihadi returnees, jihadism, moral responsibility, morality, sajid javid, shamima begum

LEONARDO’S ETHEREAL LINES

February 2, 2019 by Kenan Malik

It is in his drawings, even more than in his paintings, that you truly glimpse the greatness of Leonardo da Vinci. It’s in his drawings that you see the depth of his curiosity, the breadth of his imagination, and the heights of his technical accomplishments. His studies of human anatomy, in particular, still astound. What is particularly extraordinary is his ability to meld scientific precision with a sensuous imagination that makes you look at, and think about, the human body […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: art, leonardo da vinci

THE POLITICS OF THE SPACE RACE

January 7, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the politics of the space race from Sputnik to Chang’e-4, was the main article in my Observer column this week. It was published in the Observer, 6 January 2019, under the headline ‘Power politics always drives space conquest. China’s coup is no different’. Nasa had rejected it as too difficult and costly an undertaking. Last week, China declared ‘mission accomplished’ after landing a spacecraft, Chang’e-4, on the far side of the moon. It was a remarkable endeavour. As the […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics, Science • Tags: chang'e-4, china, cold war, john f kennedy, moon landing, nasa, soviet union, space exploration, space race, sputnik, usa, yuri gagarin