Tag: radical enlightenment

EQUALITY AND THE GODLESS

May 16, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I have been in Brussels to attend a conference on the Radical Enlightenment, and to interview Jonathan Israel, the keynote speaker, for an essay I am writing about his work and argument. Israel has transformed our understanding of the Enlightenment with his superlative trilogy published over the past decade: Radical Enlightenment, Enlightenment Contested, and Democratic Enlightenment. At the heart of his argument is his insistence that there were two Enlightenments. The mainstream Enlightenment of Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume is the […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: enlightenment, equality, jonathan israel, locke, radical enlightenment, 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

FIVE BOOKS ON MORALITY WITHOUT GOD

September 23, 2011 by Kenan Malik

I was asked by the The Browser, a wonderful, indispensable website that trawls the web and fishes out some of the best writing, to choose, for its ‘Five books’ section, five books (naturally) on morality without God. Here’s my somewhat eclectic list and the interview that accompanies it. Many believers think that the only way to be truly moral is to follow a religion which teaches us morality. How would you respond? One of the great selling points of religions – […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: al-ma'arri, arab literature, camus, dostoevsky, enlightenment, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, god, greek philosophy, human agency, humanism, islam, jonathan israel, plato, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, spinoza

SPINOZA, LOCKE AND THE BATTLE OVER TOLERATION

August 27, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In my recent post on ‘Rethinking the idea of Christian Europe’, I mentioned the debate between the Radical and the mainstream Enlightenment, a debate superbly explored by Jonathan Israel in his books Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested. The mainstream Enlightenment of Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume is the one of which we know and which provides the public face of the Enlightenment. But it was the Radical Enlightenment, shaped by lesser-known figures such as d’Holbach, Diderot, Condorcet and, in particular, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: atheism, christianity, enlightenment, free speech, freedom of worship, jonathan israel, liberties, locke, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, spinoza, tolerance

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