A Free Left Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the differences between politics and philosophy – and how we confuse the two of them much of the time, treating what are often basic political necessities as matters of theory.     We do that in explaining our own actions, seeking justification after the fact, but also in explaining those of others, criticising them for mistakes in their ‘thinking’ when it is not always evident much thinking has taken place at all. Politics is a domain of decision-making, in the world , not detached from it. It is relentless, continuing day upon day for as long as we interact with others in society. In it, our primary reference point is not detached philosophical reflection and the theories that come out of it, but the immediate world around us, of other people and institutions and the demands they make of us. Of course, theory is embedded in this world. But we do not typically relate to it in a detached, individualised manner – that of the ...

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...

Does it make sense to think about poverty as weakness? For a lefty like me, for whom reading about the staggering poverty and exploitation of the Victorian era did a lot to form and shape my politics, the suggestion can seem like an insult or a slap in the face. But, then again, we live in a different world now: with a welfare state, universal health, education and other services (though of course some of these like legal aid are being slashed back by the present government). Talking about poverty as weakness injects a personal element into the issue that sensitive souls and the poverty industry might recoil against, but I think it can also help us to conceive of   poverty in a better way and address it more effectively. The idea of poverty as weakness is derived from a controversial source. Over the past week or so I have been reading a fair amount of the iconoclastic German philosopher-poet Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings, initially for the weekly philosophy g...