Tag: judaism

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

SATAN’S WORK [GOD AND EVIL, PART 2]

October 16, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the second part of my essay on ‘God and evil’, exploring the problem of evil for Christianity and other monotheistic religions. The first part, which I published on Sunday, looked at the question of Original Sin. This second part examines the idea of Satan, and the tension in monotheistic religions between the idea that God is a necessary bulwark against evil (‘If God does not exist, everything is permitted’) and the fact that belief in God leads many to accept […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: augustine, bible, blake, book of job, christianity, dostoevsky, evil, free will, god, hell, judaism, original sin, religion, richard swinburne, satan

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 13]: NIETZSCHE, NIHILISM AND THE DEATH OF GOD

February 12, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In the series of extracts from my almost-finished book on the history of moral thought, I have reached Chapter 14, which is devoted to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. This extract is from the discussion of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche trained as a philologist, not as a philosopher, and his writing is quite unlike traditional philosophical work, whether the dry, rigorous plodding of an Aristotle or a Kant, or the flights of sometimes barely-intelligible fancy that mark the work […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: christianity, death of god, ethics, greek philosophy, history of moral thought, judaism, kenan malik's books, nietzsche, reason, religion

THE MYTHS OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE

October 20, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I wrote some notes a few months back on Pandaemonium on Rethinking the idea of ‘Christian Europe‘. I reworked that post into an essay, which has now been published in the latest issue of New Humanist. And I’m posting it here, too. UPDATE: The original post (which is much longer than this essay) won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize. In the warped mind of Anders Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utøya earlier this year were the first […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anders breivik, aquinas, christianity, christopher caldwell, dark ages, enlightenment, eurabia, greek philosophy, human nature, jonathan israel, judaism, judeo-christian tradition, modernity, muslim rationalism, original sin, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, western civilization

RETHINKING THE IDEA OF ‘CHRISTIAN EUROPE’

August 19, 2011 by Kenan Malik

UPDATE: this post won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Sciences Prize. In the warped mind of Anders Behring Breivik, his murderous rampage in Oslo and Utoøya were the first shots in a war in defence of Christian Europe. Not a religious war but a cultural one. Breivik acknowledged that he was not religious but, he wrote in his manifesto in a section entitled ‘Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom’: Myself and many more like me do not necessarily […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, christianity, christopher caldwell, clash of civilizations, dante, dark ages, enlightenment, ethics, eurabia, god, greek philosophy, jesus, jonathan israel, judaism, judeo-christian tradition, liberalism, modernity, muslim rationalism, muslims, original sin, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, stoicism, universalism, western civilization