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A. C. Grayling

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Anthony Clifford Grayling CBE FRSA FRSL (/ˈɡreɪlɪŋ/; born 3 April 1949) is a British philosopher and author. He was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and spent most of his childhood there and in Nyasaland (now Malawi).[1] In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities (now Northeastern University London), an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, where he formerly taught.[2]

A. C. Grayling
CBE FRSA FRSL
At the 2011 Edinburgh International Book Festival
Master of the New College of the Humanities
Incumbent
Assumed office
2011
Personal details
Born
Anthony Clifford Grayling

(1949-04-03) 3 April 1949 (age 75)
Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia
NationalityBritish
Children3
Residence(s)Central London, England
Alma materUniversity of Sussex (BA, MA)
University of London (BA)
Magdalen College, Oxford (DPhil)
Signature
Websiteacgrayling.com
Philosophy career
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
ThesisEpistemological Scepticism and Transcendental Arguments (1981)
Doctoral advisors
Main interests
Epistemology, history of ideas, humanist ethics, logic, metaphysics
Notable ideas
Criticism of arguments for the existence of God

Grayling is the author of about 30 books on philosophy, biography, history of ideas, human rights and ethics, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), Wittgenstein (1992), What Is Good? (2000), The Meaning of Things (2001), The Good Book (2011), The God Argument (2013), The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (2016) and Democracy and its Crises (2017).

Grayling was a trustee of the London Library and a fellow of the World Economic Forum, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.[3] For a number of years he was a columnist for The Guardian newspaper,[4] and presented the BBC World Service series Exchanges at the Frontier[5] on science and society.

Grayling was a director and contributor at Prospect magazine from its foundation until 2016. He is a vice-president of Humanists UK, honorary associate of the National Secular Society,[6] and Patron of the Defence Humanists.[7] His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophical logic and he has published works in these subjects.[3] His political affiliations lie on the centre-left, and he has defended human rights and politically liberal values in print and by activism.[8] He is associated in Britain with other New Atheists.[9] He frequently appears in British media discussing philosophy and public affairs.[10] In his book, Democracy and Its Crisis, Grayling argues that voting systems must be reformed to prevent certain results, such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.[11][12]

Early life and education

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Son of Henry Clifford and Ursula Adelaide Grayling (née Burns),[13][14] Grayling was born and raised in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), within the British expatriate enclave, and raised there and in Nyasaland (now Malawi)[1] where his father worked as manager[15] for the Standard Bank.[16] He attended several boarding schools, including Falcon College in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), from which he ran away after being regularly caned.[17] His first exposure to philosophical writing was at the age of twelve, when he found an English translation of the Charmides, one of Plato's dialogues, in a local library.[16] At age fourteen, he read G. H. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy (1846), which confirmed his ambition to study philosophy; he said it "superinduced order on the random reading that had preceded it, and settled my vocation".[18]

Grayling had an elder sister Jennifer and brother John.[19] When he was 19 years old, his elder sister Jennifer was murdered in Johannesburg. She had been born with brain damage, and after brain surgery to alleviate it at the age of 20 had experienced personality problems that led to emotional difficulties[19] and a premature marriage. She was found dead in a river shortly after the marriage; she had been stabbed. When her parents went to identify her, her mother—already ill—had a heart attack and died. Grayling said he dealt with his grief by becoming a workaholic.[20]

After moving to England in his teens, he spent three years at the University of Sussex, but said that although he applauded their intention to educate generalists, he wished to be a scholar, so in addition to his BA from Sussex, he also completed one in philosophy as a University of London external student.[21] He went on to obtain an MA from Sussex, then attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was taught by P. F. Strawson and A. J. Ayer, obtaining his doctorate in 1981 for a thesis on Epistemological Scepticism and Transcendental Arguments. A part of that thesis is published as The Refutation of Scepticism (1985) and its themes are further developed in Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge (2008).[22]

Career

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Grayling lectured in philosophy at Bedford College, London, and St Anne's College, Oxford,[2] before taking up a post in 1991 at Birkbeck, University of London, where in 1998 he became reader in philosophy, and in 2005 professor.[23] In addition to his work on Berkeley, philosophical logic, the theory of knowledge, and the history of ideas,[24] the latter including (as chief editor) the four-volume The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy,[25] he wrote and edited several pedagogical works in philosophy, including An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (3rd ed., 1999)[26] and the two volumes Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject (1995)[27] and Philosophy: Further Through the Subject (1998).[28]

In his philosophical work, Grayling connected solutions to the problem of scepticism in epistemology with the questions about assertability and the problem of meaning in the philosophy of language and logic. A principal theme in his work is that considerations of metaphysics, which relate to what exists, has to be kept separate from the two connected questions of the relation of thought to its objects in the variety of domains over which thought ranges, and the mastery of discourses about those domains, where a justificationist approach is required.[29]

Grayling resigned from Birkbeck in June 2011 to found and become the first master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. In February 2019, Northeastern University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, purchased the New College of the Humanities.[30] He is a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He was a judge on the Man Booker prize 2003[31] and Chairman of the Judges for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.[32] He has also been a judge on the Wellcome Trust Book Prize[33] and the Art Fund prize.[34]

In 2013 he was awarded the Forkosch Literary Prize,[35] and in 2015 he received the Bertrand Russell Society Award.[36] Grayling was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to philosophy.[37]

Public advocacy

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For Grayling, work on technical problems is only one aspect of philosophy. Another aspect, one which has been at the centre of philosophy's place in history, has more immediate application to daily life: the questions of ethics, which revolve upon what Grayling calls the great Socratic question, 'How should one live?'. In pursuit of what he describes as 'contributing to the conversation society has with itself about possibilities for good lives in good societies', Grayling writes widely on contemporary issues, including war crimes, the legalisation of drugs, euthanasia, secularism, human rights and other topics in the tradition of Polemics. He has articulated positions on humanist ethics and on the history and nature of concepts of liberty as applied in civic life. In support of his belief that the philosopher should engage in public debate, he brings these philosophical perspectives to issues of the day in his work as a writer and as a commentator on radio and television.[38]

Among his contributions to the discussion about religion in contemporary society he argues that there are three separable, though naturally connected debates:

(a) a metaphysical debate about what the universe contains; denying that it contains supernatural agencies of any kind makes him an atheist;
(b) a debate about the basis of ethics; taking the world to be a natural realm of natural law requires that humanity thinks for itself about the right and the good, based on our best understanding of human nature and the human condition; this makes him a humanist;
(c) a debate about the place of religious movements and organisations in the public domain; as a secularist Grayling argues that these should see themselves as civil society organisations on a par with trade unions and other NGOs, with every right to exist and to have their say, but no greater right than any other self-constituted, self-selected interest group.

On this last point, Grayling's view is that for historical reasons religions have an inflated place in the public domain out of all proportion to the numbers of their adherents or their intrinsic merits, so that their voice and influence is amplified disproportionately: with the result that they can distort such matters as public policy (e.g. on abortion) and science research and education (e.g. stem cells, teaching of evolution). He argues that winning the metaphysical and ethical debates is already abating the problems associated with (c) in more advanced Western societies, even the US. He sees his own major contribution as being the promotion of understanding of humanist ethics deriving from the philosophical tradition.[39]

Between 1999 and 2002 Grayling wrote a weekly column in The Guardian called "The Last Word", on a different topic every week. In these columns, which also formed the basis of a series of books for a general readership, commencing with The Meaning of Things in 2001, Grayling made the basics of philosophy available to the layperson. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian's "Comment is free" group blog, and writes columns for, among others, the Prospect and New Scientist magazines.

Grayling is accredited with the United Nations Human Rights Council, and is a patron of Humanists UK, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, Patron of the Defence Humanists,[7] was a Trustee of the London Library, and a board member of the Society of Authors and an Honorary Patron of the Philosophy Foundation, a charity whose aim is to bring philosophy to the wider community, and particularly to disadvantaged schools. In 2003 he was a Booker Prize judge[40] and Chairman of the Judges for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.[32] In 2005, Grayling debated with Christian philosopher William Lane Craig on whether God can exist in an evil world.[41][42] Grayling is also a Patron of the right to die organisation, My Death My Decision.[43]

Grayling wrote a book on the allied strategic air offensive in World War II, Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (2006), as a contribution to the debate on the ethics of war.[44][45] In September 2010, Grayling was one of 55 public figures who sent a letter to The Guardian expressing their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.[46] In August 2014, Grayling was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.[47]

A. C. Grayling was one of the contributors to the book, We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, released in October 2009.[48] The book explores the cultures of peoples around the world, portraying both their diversity and the threats they face. Other contributors included not only western writers, such as Laurens van der Post, Noam Chomsky, Claude Lévi-Strauss, but also indigenous people, such as Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Roy Sesana. The royalties from the sale of this book go to the indigenous rights organisation, Survival International.

In recent years Grayling has been campaigning against the UK Government's response to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum result. In his book, Democracy and Its Crisis, Grayling argues that voting systems must be reformed to prevent certain results, such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.[11][12] Grayling has tweeted that Brexit must be made to disappear like a "nasty, temporary, hiccup, soon forgotten".[49][50]

Personal life

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Grayling lives in central London. He has two children from his first marriage, Anthony Joslin Clifford Grayling and Georgina Eveline Ursula Grayling, and one daughter, Madeline Catherine Jennifer Grayling, from his second marriage to novelist Katie Hickman.[51]

Positions held

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Publications

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  • An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (1982). ISBN 0-389-20299-1
  • The Refutation of Scepticism (1985). ISBN 0-7156-1922-5
  • Berkeley: The Central Arguments (1986). ISBN 0-7156-2065-7
  • Wittgenstein (1988). ISBN 0-19-287676-7
  • with Susan Whitfield. China: A Literary Companion (1994). ISBN 0-7195-5353-9
  • (ed). Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject (1995). ISBN 0-19-875156-7
  • Russell (1996). ISBN 0-19-287683-X
  • The Future of Moral Values (1997), ISBN 0-297-81973-9
  • Philosophy 2: Further Through the Subject (1998). ISBN 0-19-875179-6, ed.
  • The Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt (2000). ISBN 0-297-64322-3
  • The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life (2001). ISBN 0-297-60758-8
    • published in the US as Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age.
  • The Reason of Things: Living with Philosophy (2002). ISBN 0-297-82935-1
    • published in the US as Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God.
  • What Is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live (2003). ISBN 0-297-84132-7
  • The Mystery of Things (2004). ISBN 0-297-64559-5
  • The Art of Always Being Right (2004). ISBN 1-903933-61-7 [Edited T. Bailey Saunders' translation of Schopenhauer's essay The Art of Being Right]
  • Descartes: The Life of René Descartes and Its Place in His Times (2005). ISBN 0-7432-3147-3
  • The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century (2005). ISBN 0-297-84819-4
  • The Form of Things: Essays on Life, Ideas and Liberty in the 21st Century (2006). ISBN 0-297-85167-5
  • with Andrew Pyle and Naomi Goulder (eds). The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy (2006), ISBN 1-84371-141-9
  • Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (2006). ISBN 0802714714
  • with Mick Gordon. On Religion (2007).
  • Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness (2007). ISBN 978-1-84002-728-0
  • Truth, Meaning and Realism: Essays in the Philosophy of Thought (2007). ISBN 978-0-8264-9748-2
  • Towards The Light (2007). ISBN 978-0-8027-1636-1
    • published in the US as Towards the Light of Liberty.
  • The Choice of Hercules (2007).
  • Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge (2008).
  • Ideas That Matter: A Personal Guide for the 21st Century (2009). ISBN 978-0-297-85676-4
  • Liberty in the Age of Terror : A Defence of Civil Society and Enlightenment Values (2009).
  • To Set Prometheus Free: Essays on Religion, Reason and Humanity (2009). ISBN 978-1-84002-962-8
  • Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (2010). ISBN 978-1-4088-0598-5
  • The Good Book (2011). ISBN 978-0-8027-1737-5
  • Friendship (2013). ISBN 978-0300175356
  • The God Argument (2013). ISBN 978-1-62040-190-3
  • Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? (Bloomsbury edition; 2014). ISBN 0-7475-7671-8
  • The Challenge of Things: Thinking Through Troubled Times (2015). ISBN 978-1-4088-6461-6
  • The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (2016). ISBN 978-0747599425
  • War: An Enquiry (2017). ISBN 978-0300175349
  • Democracy and its Crisis (2018). ISBN 9781786072894
  • The History of Philosophy (2019). ISBN 9780241304556
  • The Good State: On the Principles of Democracy (2020). ISBN 9781786077189
  • The Frontiers of Knowledge: What We Know About Science, History and The Mind (2021). ISBN 9780241304563
  • For the Good of the World: Is Global Agreement on Global Challenges Possible? (2022). ISBN 9780861542666

Foreword to other books

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Foreword to Shyam Wuppuluri, N. C. A. da Costa (eds.), "Wittgensteinian (adj.): Looking at the World from the Viewpoint of Wittgenstein's Philosophy" Springer — The Frontiers Collection, 2019.

References

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  1. ^ a b Wells, Emma (25 November 2012). "Time and place: AC Grayling". The Sunday Times. ISSN 0956-1382. Retrieved 23 September 2019.
  2. ^ a b Grayling, A C. "Professor A C Grayling". New College of the Humanities. Archived from the original on 20 January 2021. Retrieved 8 January 2019.
  3. ^ a b Biography, acgrayling.com. Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  4. ^ "AC Grayling - Page 7 of 14 - The Guardian". The Guardian.
  5. ^ "BBC World Service - Discovery, Exchanges At The Frontier, Episode 2 - Lawrence Krauss". BBC.
  6. ^ [1] National Secular Society – www.secularism.org.uk 20 June 2019
  7. ^ a b [2] Formerly United Kingdom Armed Forces Humanist Association – defencehumanists.org.uk.
  8. ^ Dianne Pretty – Defending her right to choose how to die " acgrayling.com"
  9. ^ Catto, Rebecca and Eccles, Jane. "Beyond Grayling, Dawkins and Hitchens, a new kind of British atheism", The Guardian, 14 April 2011
  10. ^ Should Britain become a secular state?, 24 March 2013, retrieved 23 September 2019
  11. ^ a b A. C. Grayling (2017). Democracy and Its Crisis. Oneworld Publications. ISBN 978-1786072900.
  12. ^ a b Fraser, Giles (21 September 2017). "The wrong sort of voter? There's no such thing, AC Grayling". theguardian.com.
  13. ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 1906
  14. ^ "Academics".
  15. ^ Who's Who of Southern Africa, vol. 43, Argus Printing and Publishing Co., 1959, p. 751
  16. ^ a b Treharne, Rhys. "The Interview: A. C. Grayling", Varsity, 19 October 2010.
  17. ^ "A C Grayling, the master of positive thinking". www.telegraph.co.uk. 25 January 2012.
  18. ^ Grayling, A.C. Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God. University of Oxford Press, 2002, p. 224.
  19. ^ a b Stanford, Peter (5 March 2016). "AC Grayling: My sister's murder led to my mother's death". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 23 September 2019.
  20. ^ Long, Camilla. "AC Grayling: Is it safe to come out now?", The Sunday Times, 12 June 2011.
  21. ^ Lacey, Hester. "The Inventory: Anthony Grayling", Financial Times, 10 June 2011.
  22. ^ For his teachers, see Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2003), p. 226. For the thesis, see Grayling, A.C. Epistemological Scepticism and Transcendental Arguments. Oxford University Press, 1983.
  23. ^ Debrett's People of Today, 2009, p. 677.
  24. ^ AC Grayling: Academic Interests "acgrayling.com"
  25. ^ Editors A.C. Grayling, Naomi Goulder, and Andrew Pyle "oxfordreference.com"
  26. ^ An Introduction to Philosophical Logic ISBN 0-389-20299-1
  27. ^ Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject (1995). ISBN 0-19-875156-7
  28. ^ Philosophy 2: Further Through the Subject (1998). ISBN 0-19-875179-6
  29. ^ A. C. Grayling, Truth, Meaning and Realism: Essays in the Philosophy of Thought "Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews"
  30. ^ Redden, Elizabeth (14 November 2018). "Northeastern to Acquire London College". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 14 November 2018.
  31. ^ Man Booker 2003 Judges Archived 20 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine,
  32. ^ a b Man Booker 2014 Judges. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
  33. ^ Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2010,
  34. ^ Art Fund prize 2010,
  35. ^ Council for Secular Humanism "Forkosch Awards" Archived 25 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  36. ^ Bertrand Russell Society Award "Bertrand Russell Society" Archived 17 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  37. ^ "No. 61803". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2016. p. N9.
  38. ^ BBC The Big Questions 2013, youtube.com .
  39. ^ Aitkenhead, Decca (3 April 2011). "AC Grayling: 'How can you be a militant atheist? It's like sleeping furiously'". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
  40. ^ "The Man Booker Prize 2003 - The Man Booker Prizes". themanbookerprize.com. Archived from the original on 4 October 2018. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  41. ^ "Suffering". Bethinking.org. 2011. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
  42. ^ "Unbelievable? 5 Jul 2011 – William Lane Craig vs AC Grayling debate on God & Evil". Premier Christian Radio. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
  43. ^ "About Us". mydeath-decision.org. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
  44. ^ Charmley, John (4 March 2006). "Review: Among the Dead Cities by AC Grayling". The Guardian – via www.theguardian.com.
  45. ^ Charmley, John. Methods of Barbarism, The Guardian, 4 March 2006.
  46. ^ "Harsh judgments on the pope and religion", The Guardian, 15 September 2010.
  47. ^ "Celebrities' open letter to Scotland – full text and list of signatories | Politics". The Guardian. 7 August 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  48. ^ Survival International – We Are One.
  49. ^ Barnett, Anthony (6 June 2018). "How to win the Brexit Civil War. An open letter to my fellow Remainers". opendemocracy.net.
  50. ^ Barnett, Anthony (10 April 2018). "To beat the hard right we'll need to change too – a response to Edmund Fawcett". opendemocracy.net.
  51. ^ [3] encyclopedia.com: A C Grayling
  52. ^ "Anthony Grayling has decided not to take office as BHA President".
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Further reading

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A. C. Grayling's voice
Recorded August 2008 from the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs
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