Category Archives: Philosophy & Ethics

IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY: THREE INTERVIEWS

November 18, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a collection of three interviews that I have recently given on issues of identity and diversity. The first is a short video interview I gave at the Riksantikvarieämbetet (Swedish Heritage Board) conference on the ‘Struggle for Cultural Identity’, which I addressed last week. The second is an interview on Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion and Ethics Report on diversity and multiculturalism in Europe. The final interview is with the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, which I have loosely translated from […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: cultural diversity, free speech, identity politics, islam, left, multiculturalism, muslims

FROM THE ARCHIVES: IGNATIEFF ON BERLIN

August 28, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my series of old book reviews that I am publishing while I am away in South Africa, here is my review of Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Isaiah Berlin, originally published in the Independent on Sunday, 25 October 1998. Review of Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life Independent on Sunday, 25 October 1998 In the autumn of 1951 Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay in the Jewish Chronicle putting the case for Zionism. Until the founding of Israel, he observed, no Jew […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-semitism, human nature, isaiah berlin, israel, liberalism, michael ignatieff, palestine, pluarlism, ts eliot, zionism

FROM THE ARCHIVES: SCRUTON ON PESSIMISM

August 19, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my series of old book reviews that I am publishing while I am away in South Africa, here is my review of Roger Scruton’s The Uses of Pessimism, originally published in the Observer, 6 June 2011. Review of Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism: And the Dangers of False Hope Observer, 6 June 2010 Two voices echo through Roger Scruton’s new book: those of Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott. A nation, wrote Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, ‘is a partnership between those who […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: conservatism, edmund burke, michael oakeshott, optimism, pessmism, roger scruton, thomas paine

HISTORY AND THE MAKING OF THE INDIVIDUAL

July 27, 2015 by Kenan Malik

In May, I took part in a discussion on ‘Individualism’ organised by the Ax:son Johnson Foundation and the British Academy. The starting point of the discussion was Larry Siedentop’s book Inventing the Individual, which argues that the modern liberal idea of the individual was created in the work of Christian theologians. It is a view about which I am skeptical, as I observed in my review of Siedentop’s book. Larry Siedentop spoke at the event; other speakers included Angelica Gooden, […]

Categories: History, Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: antigone, aristotle, brecht, christianity, enlightenment, equality, greek philosophy, individualism, jonathan israel, larry siedentop, modernity, plato, radical enlightenment, the reformation

EVIL AND THE ISLAMIC STATE

July 16, 2015 by Kenan Malik

‘The problem of evil’, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1945, ‘will be the fundamental question of postwar intellectual life in Europe.’ The historical and moral significance of contemporary jihadism is miniscule when compared to that of the Holocaust and the Final Solution. And yet jihadism has raised again the question of evil. Not evil in the sense of genocide but as expressed through acts of barbarity so inhuman that they are difficult to comprehend. The barbarism of Islamic State, in particular, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-humanism, anti-imperialism, evil, freedom struggles, hannah arendt, identity politics, islam, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, left, marc sageman, morality

ON FREEDOM AND FREE WILL

May 21, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This review of Julian Baggini’s Freedom Regained and John Gray’s The Soul of the Marionette is published in the summer 2015 edition of New Humanist. From Tunisia to Tibet, from Russia to Kurdistan, from Syria to the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo – the quest for freedom is central to people’s lives, a quest so vital that many are willing to give their own lives to ensure its success. For many intellectuals, however, freedom is but an illusion, a self-serving […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: determinism, free will, freedom struggles, gnosticism, human agency, john gray, julian baggini, materialism, morality, sam harris

HISTORY, MORALITY AND THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

April 19, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback. And, to accompany the new edition. I am publishing a number of extracts from the book. This extract, from Chapter 19, ‘Confucianism, Communism and the Clash of Civilizations’, sets out many of the themes of the book against the background of the changing balance of power between China and the West. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from my Pandaemonium bookstore. From […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: china, chinese philosophy, clash of civilizations, confucianism, herder, history of moral thought, jiang qing, martin jacques, morality, romanticism, samuel huntington, universalism, west

THE MORAL CAMERA

April 11, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback. And, to accompany the new edition, I will be, over the next few weeks, running extracts from the book. This first extract is from Chapter 18, ‘The search for ethical concrete’, and looks at neuroscientist Joshua Greene‘s idea of morality as existing in two modes – automatic and manual. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from my Pandaemonium bookstore. From The […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: history of moral thought, joshua greene, kantianism, morality, peter singer, trolley problem, utilitarianism

OUT NOW IN PAPERBACK!

April 2, 2015 by Kenan Malik

. The Quest for a Moral Compass is now out in paperback! You can read reviews of the book. And you can buy it from most bookshops, from Amazon or via my Pandaemonium bookstore. The US version of the paperback will be published later this year. . ‘This is intellectual history in the grand manner, in the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, written with the same clarity, accessibility and narrative verve as the master himself…We are all […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ethics, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books

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

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PLAYING GOD?

March 16, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my article on mitochondrial transfer, published last month in the International New York Times under the headline ‘The Three-Parent Baby’s First Step’. The British Parliament can be an archaic, backward-looking institution, wedded to tradition, and not known for taking a revolutionary stance. Yet its members have just made a groundbreaking decision, one that no other legislature has so far been willing to contemplate. They approved legislation that makes Britain the first country formally to […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics

FIVE TALES OF GOOD AND EVIL

March 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Today being World Book Day, I am publishing five extracts from my book The Quest for a Moral Compass, that explore five books from the ancient and medieval worlds, some well-known, some almost forgotten, but all of which have helped shape our thinking about right and wrong, good and evil – Homer’s Iliad, a foundation stone of Ancient Greek culture; the Mahabharata, the first of the two great epics of Hinduism; Mozi, the only work we have of ancient China’s […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: book of job, chinese philosophy, christianity, greek philosophy, hay ibn yaqzan, history of moral thought, homer, ibn tuff, iliad, islamic philosophy, judaism, mahabharata, mo tzu, morality

WHAT’S IMMORAL ABOUT ALLEVIATING SUFFERING?

February 23, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the New York Times is on the debate about ‘three parent babies’, published in the NYT under the headline ‘The Three-Parent Baby’s First Step’. Here are the opening paragraphs. You can read the full article in the NYT. The British Parliament can be an archaic, backward-looking institution, wedded to tradition, and not known for taking a revolutionary stance. Yet its members have just made a groundbreaking decision, one that no other legislature has so far been willing to […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: biotechnology, britain, ethics, mitochondrial transfer, playing god, three parent baby

RIGHT AND WRONG IN THE MODERN WORLD

December 25, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Better than a sermon on Xmas day… a discussion of the history of morality, and of the state of contemporary moral thinking, with Philip Petit and Natasha Circa on Australia’s ABC Radio. http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2014/12/sea_20141220.mp3 For more discussions on morality see my talks on ‘Where do values come from’ at London’s RSA and ‘Without a moral safety net’ at the Glasgow Aye Write Festival. Or just get my book, The Quest for a Moral Compass. The image is a […]

Categories: History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: greek philosophy, history of moral thought, kenan malik's books, modernity, morality, religion

REVIEWING THE QUEST

December 2, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a round-up of the latest reviews of The Quest for a Moral Compass. On my Books page are all the reviews so far. You can buy the book from the Pandaemonium bookshop in Britain and the USA. Jonathan Israel New Humanist, Winter 2014 There could be no more daunting intellectual task than setting out to write a history of moral thought from the ancient Greeks until now. Yet there is no neater way of combining philosophy, religion, intellectual […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History of moral thought, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: christianity, enlightenment, history of moral thought, islam, jonathan israel, kenan malik's books, marxism, morality, radical enlightenment, religion