But the European Union does not have a concept of national identity. It was set up to abolish that idea, not to abolish German national identity because that was trying to save itself.
We live in an extremely anxious age in which the core of our beliefs has been undermined to a great extent by scientific thinking.
In art it is always as though the question is what the work of art is really about.
The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.
I’ve always taken the view that works of art are not just things that we enjoy. They can convey truths about the world more vividly and to greater effect than ordinary philosophical prose can because they don’t just deal in ideas but show the emotional reality of them.
Anyone can lie. One need only have the requisite intention – in other words, to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, by contrast, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included.
Politics is a matter of day-to-day improvisation, and it often seems as though the major parties are guided only by the desire to stay in office and not by any philosophy that might justify their doing so.
Life at home wasn’t very good and I had really left by the time I was 16 and didn’t go back until after Cambridge when I went to look after my mother when she was dying.
Fashion makes me laugh.
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