Both Remain and Leave campaigns are equally culpable for the toxic mixture of ill feeling and scare tactics that has defined the build up to Thursday’s referendum, writes Benjamin Tallis. A British citizen who has spent most of his working life on the continent, Tallis bemoans how these dismal campaigns have obscured the fact that, for all its faults, the European Union remains the world’s most successful liberal project.
Raymond Tallis
is a British philosopher, humanist, poet, novelist, cultural critic and retired medical doctor. His latest book is Aping mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (2011).
Articles
Fighting the wrong battle
A crisis of liberal democracy, not migration
The hostile response of central and eastern European heads of state to the prospect of accepting Syrian refugees is emblematic of the parlous state of liberal democracy in the region, say Michal Simecka and Benjamin Tallis. Europe must avert a deepening East-West divide.
Neurological and Darwinistic strands in the philosophy of consciousness see human beings as no more than our evolved brains. Avoiding naturalistic explanations of human beings’ fundamental difference from other animals requires openness to more expansive approaches, argues Raymond Tallis.