![Anthony Clifford Grayling believes Britain's withdrawal from the EU can be stopped because the result of the referendum ...](/content/dam/images/g/v/o/j/7/x/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gvoj4t.png/1494307532583.jpg)
British philosopher Anthony Clifford Grayling, better known as A.C. Grayling, is adamant that philosophy must be useful and to that end has brought his intellect to bear on everyday topics as diverse as religion and friendship.
As well as being a prodigious author (he has written 35 books), he runs his own private college, contributes to Britain’s quality press and regularly appears on television, including our own Lateline and Q&A; on ABC TV.
When BOSS caught up with the vegetarian atheist in Australia it was to talk about war, but Grayling was also keen to talk about Brexit.
Grayling has two books coming out in 2017. The first, War, examines the concept of war and asks whether the outcomes of conflict can be achieved without bloodshed.
The second is Democracy and Its Crisis, which will be out in September. “I wrote it in white heat in response to what’s happening with Brexit and [US President Donald] Trump,” he says. “Both those things are incredibly worrying.”
Grayling, 68, passionately believes Britain should not leave the European Union despite a referendum result to the contrary.
Crisis can be averted
To advance the cause, he’s been going around the UK talking to groups of angry but determined people who voted to remain.
Britain’s moves to leave, he believes, can be stopped because the result of the referendum is legally non-binding, and there is a chance that a political coalition could avert a crisis.
Unsurprisingly, his views are attracting the ire of those who want to leave, but he is no stranger to criticism. When he announced he was founding a private college in 2011, he was taken to task for being an elitist because the annual fee is £18,000 ($30,500).
One critic described it as a nauseatingly awful idea, while former colleagues claimed it was an assault on public education. Since then the New College of the Humanities in London has got on with the business of educating students. The small numbers allow the college to provide the kind of one-to-one interactions universities cannot deliver.
“My kind of college creams off all those people who are really enthusiastic about education and really want to talk to others, sharing ideas,” he says.
Business, it seems, is not an area of especial interest to him and he sidesteps questions about the changing nature of capitalism and leadership. Eventually we get round to his current book, War. Given the rising tensions between the United States and North Korea, it’s a subject of increasing pertinence.
Side effect v innate
War, Grayling writes, is a side effect of our social and political activities. If it were a result of our innate human nature, then mankind is doomed. However, by viewing war as a byproduct of culture there is a possibility that armed conflict can be avoided.
Grayling’s optimism goes further. There are some aspects of war that bring benefits to communities. “The benefits of war are a major national effort to solve a problem or deal with a problem, a sense of solidarity, of people coming together and being willing to put their shoulders to the wheel for the common good; those characteristics are very familiar in wartime,” he says.
Technology advances in wartime because research gets more resources than it does in peacetime. As well, war can end intractable conflicts and stop the spread of malevolent ideologies.
“If only we could do that in peacetime. It would really help us do things like climate change and inequality and injustice and poverty and education,” says Grayling.
If we are going to avoid war, he says, we have to stop romanticising it through art and in the news. We should show the horrors; people should be shocked, he says: “Let the TV news footage show people what blood and guts is like because the mass of the population don’t get confronted with the realities of war and have no sense that our own side is doing this to women and children.”
Commerce’s vital role
At the same time we mustn’t demonise the military. “[Senior military staff] are all, to a man and a woman, against war because they’ve seen what it does to people,” he says.
Commerce also plays a vital role in preserving peace. “Trade and co-operation are sovereign prophylactics for war,” he writes.
The EU has been an outstanding example of this, he writes. It’s a form of co-operation that resulted in mutually beneficial relationships among nations that had been at each other’s throats for centuries.
He does believe extraordinary individuals can change the world. “If somebody like Nelson Mandela were to arise on either side of the Israel-Palestine conflict that could resolve that conflict.”
War: An Enquiry by A.C. Grayling, Yale University Press, $37.99.
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