A Free Left Blog

Nietzsche gets blamed for a lot of things, not least nihilism and relativism. This is unfair, but life is unfair. As the philosopher John Gray pointed out in a talk at the London School of Economics on 25th February, a writer has little or no control over how others interpret and appropriate their writings, not least if they are dead. On nihilism and relativism, people often misunderstand Nietzsche for having advocated what amounts to these things. But this wasn’t the case. He was rather describing what he thought had happened as historical development, largely from Christianity’s emphasis on truth which undermined itself, and philosophers like Hume and Kant exposing the insecure foundations of religion (and indeed of much positive philosophy). A portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche Martin Heidegger explained in one of his lecture courses on Nietzsche, ‘The phrase “God is dead” is not an atheistic proclamation: it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an even...

I am vain enough to think that my random thoughts are sometimes worth writing down. As a result, at any one time my world is normally drowning in pieces of paper, post-its and pads of scribbled notes on various topics. Many of these notes are on the environment, something I think about a lot but haven’t written many articles about because I feel I don’t feel I’ve found the right language to talk about it without merely replicating the moaning and whingeing characteristic of most writings on it. Perhaps that is because this moaning and whingeing is the most appropriate way; nevertheless I’ve been seeking, perhaps naively, to look beyond this – for a better politics of the environment . Here’s a few of those thoughts anyway - on the environment and other things from rationality to music in the Labour Party . The environment: an afterthought to politics Even though our environment – the world around us – is crucial to our health and wellbeing – it is normally an af...