Amazon.co.uk:
I understand that this book grew out of the "Last Word" column
from the Saturday Review section of The Guardian
. How did the column get
started and what was the idea behind it?
AC Grayling:
I'd long wished to write a column, or at least a series of
articles, in the feuilleton tradition, bringing the fruits of philosophy and
the history of ideas into discussions of contemporary concern. The opportunity
to do this in The Guardian
arose when Annalena MacAfee became editor of
its Saturday Review, for she had been editor of the books and arts pages at
the Financial Times
, to which I've been a contributor for many
years.
Amazon.co.uk:
I guess the column makes you one of those fairly rare creatures, a
professional philosopher with a public audience. Would you like to see
philosophy and philosophers having more of a public role?
Grayling:
Yes, because philosophy has a great deal to offer. It has a rich
treasury of ideas and debates to draw upon, and its practitioners are educated
in argument, analysis and evaluation. Not drawing philosophers into public
discussion is like having doctors but not employing them in our hospitals.
Amazon.co.uk:
Do you think that philosophy could occupy in our culture the same
sort of space as music, art or poetry or do you think it ought to play a
different kind of role?
Grayling:
If the suggestion is that music, art and poetry have a kind of
recreational function, as a pleasure or diversion set apart from the main
business of life, then the answer is no, because philosophy is central: it
relates directly to the pressing moral and political problems which force us to
make decisions, choices and laws. But in fact I don't think art and music are
marginal as they concern the quality of our experience as individuals, and its
meaning, helping us to interpret and enrich our experience. Philosophy does
that too, so in this sense I think these activities of higher culture do all
share the same space, and fruitfully interact with one another.
Amazon.co.uk:
The second part of the book is concerned with some of the things
you consider to be enemies to human flourishing and many of them are associated
with religion. Would it be fair to describe you as an aggressive atheist?
Grayling:
I would certainly describe myself as a robust or uncompromising
atheist, and I do indeed think that religious belief has been a massively
negative force in human history, causing great suffering and conflict, and
standing deliberately in the way of most of mankind's efforts at progress,
freedom and flourishing. I tremendously value everything good about the human
spirit--by which I mean our human genius for art and thought, our enjoyment of
beauty, our capacity for love, kindness and fellowship--just as I deeply
deprecate our tendency to greed and cruelty. I ascribe neither of these things
to supernatural agencies beyond the natural world, and see no reason to think
that belief in such things as fairies, goblins, demons, gods and goddesses is
in the slightest justified. But the sociological fact of religious belief is
inescapable, as its awful record of causing human harm; and that is what I
fight against, in hopes of encouraging people to live free of superstition, and
to care about their fellow men out of respect for them, and a desire for human
flourishing.
Amazon.co.uk:
Do you think that science and religion, reason and faith are
necessarily enemies? Can't one be a scientist by day and a priest by night or
vice versa?
Grayling:
Science and religion are direct competitors over all the great
questions about the origin of the universe, the question of what it contains,
the question whether it has an exogenous purpose, and the question of how it
functions. Everything from the various creation myths of various religions to
the logical coherence of the idea of miracles is comprehended here and the most
rudimentary scientific understanding shows that belief in supernatural agencies
and events is nonsense. A simple test demonstrates this: ask yourself what
grounds we have for believing that there are fairies at the bottom of the
garden; consider what tests might be supposed to test the hypothesis that such
things exist; ask yourself how reasonable it would be to organise your life on
the supposition that such fairies exist. The evidential basis of belief in gods
and other supernatural forces is no different from this.
Amazon.co.uk:
George Steiner recently asked questions about art in an atheist
age which I'd like to put to you. "Let us suppose" he said, "that a genuine
atheism will come to replace the aspirin-agnosticism, the 'blowing hot nor
cold' with which our post-modernity is now awash. Let us suppose that atheism
will come to possess and energise those who are masters of articulate form and
builders of thought. Will their works rival the dimensions, the
life-transforming strengths of persuasion we have known?"
Grayling:
Steiner assumes that nothing of any intellectual or artistic value
can be produced by people who are not motivated by some or other religious
motivation. The examples of great intellectual and artistic achievements which
have nothing to do with religious inspiration (think of modern science, for one
such!) is legion, and it is astonishing that even Steiner should have
overlooked it.
Amazon.co.uk:
It's been said that a tradition of accessible literary philosophy
has almost disappeared? I think The Meaning of Things
fits into
this category but which contemporary writers would you recommend to your
readers?
Grayling:
There are quite a few recent and contemporary philosophers who
have written accessibly and even beautifully, aiming at the general interested
reader as well as at the technical specialist:
Bertrand
Russell, AJ Ayer, WV Quine,
Robert
Nozick,
Daniel
Dennett and
Richard
Rorty are just a few names which readily spring to mind. But work
in any genre of any real quality--literary, historical and scientific as well
as philosophical--must all be cited as contributions to the great debate, and
the boundaries between them and philosophy are not hard and fast.
Amazon.co.uk:
What's your next writing project?
Grayling:
I shall shortly be delivering to my publishers a book (title not
yet decided) on mankind's quest for the good, starting with the thinkers of
classical antiquity, discussing religion-based morality, the humanism of the
Renaissance and Reformation, modern ethical debates (that is, from the 17th
century onwards), and contemporary concerns with human rights, environmental
problems and bioethics. The book will also consider some of the contributions
of Eastern philosophers to ethical reflection, for example Buddhism and the
Mohist ethics of the brotherhood of man. Among the chief theses will be the
somewhat Whiggish one that mankind is making progress--painfully slowly--away
from command moralities based on superstitions, to a conception of the good for
mankind based on reason, experience and debate.
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