A Free Left Blog

Speech at the London School of Economics Forum for Philosophy debate , 27th April 2016. I was proposing the motion alongside Dr Gerard Lyons  (economic adviser to the Mayor of London), with journalist Hugo Dixon and Professor of Political Theory Katrin Flikschuh on the other side arguing against. Each panellist had seven minutes to speak, followed by questions from the other side and then questions from the audience. Dr Gerard Lyons making his case for leaving the EU. [This is an amalgam of what I had planned to say in my speech and what I did say – so I missed out some of this in actual delivery while adding some ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ and various other stuff] The whole debate is now available to listen via a podcast here . Hello everyone. I want to start off by emphasising that I’m actually a pro-European. I always have been. I even like an idea of the EU (as  an idea, albeit not the idea). But on the balance I think we should leave the EU. I’m proba...

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...