Ethical Record Articles

The journal began in 1895 and is produced on an monthly basis. Primarily it has provided abstracts and edited essays of the Society’s Sunday Lectures. It has developed into a showcase journal of the Society’s activities and events at Conway Hall.

Don Liversedge, who has died at the age of 98, was born in Llanelli on 30 June 1917. Soon afterwards his family moved to Addiscombe (Surrey), and then to Bexhill-on-Sea. His father died when he was 14, and his mother opened a guest-house in Bexhill, which Don assisted in running. During the Second World War […]

In the preface to the English edition, Swedish academic Göran Adamson of Copenhagen University points out that he had attended a Fri Debat event in Copenhagen but was unable to attend the following meeting – which was attacked by an Islamist in February 2015 that led to his colleague Finn Nørgard being murdered. Some 40,000 […]

“I write as a victim …….to modernity” says Dominic Kirkham. “As one who was brought up a Roman Catholic, received all my education in Catholic institutes, becoming a teacher and then – after seemingly interminable years at a seminary – being ordained as a priest, and spending nearly thirty years in a religious order, the […]

Free Inquiry invited its readers to submit autobiographical essays describing ‘the life-stance odysseys that had led them to their present positions of secular humanism or atheism’. An earlier and well-known exponent of this type of writing was Bertrand Russell’s essay Why I am not a Christian. The editors received forty-two essays, with titles ranging from […]

Introduction: The term Political Economy has been expunged from contemporary discourse; politics and economics are regarded as separate, specialist subjects. However, like wealth and power, the two are inextricably linked. This was well understood in the past: most great thinkers were polymaths, eg. Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci. Today we have “specialists” and information is […]

When was once upon a time is an investigation into myth, including religions and, as the title suggests, fairy tales as well. The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss wrote, among other things, a four volume work, published between the mid-1960s and 1970s entitled Mythologiques. This was a collection of all the myths of North and South […]

Poverty in Britain is at post-war highs and – even with economic growth – is set to increase yet further. Food bank queues are growing, levels of severe deprivation have been rising, and increasing numbers of children are left with their most basic needs unmet. Based on exclusive access to the largest ever survey […]

Unconditional hospitality is a central idea in contemporary ethical philosophy and it has important implications for psychology. Its political equivalent is the notion of open borders as a utopian critique of nationality and national identity. We can become good hosts by temporarily interrupting the self and our habitual concerns about ‘me’ and ‘mine’ and also by reframing […]

For the Motion – Jon Parker* I have a confession to make……I was a banker. When I say that, what I mean is that I once worked for a bank – along with around 1.2million other people in the UK. Now, there was a time when admitting such a thing would have meant you […]

There is a positive drought sweeping over us, which threatens to create a bleak, desolate and fearful existence. We are blindly falling into oblivion and with each passing day there appears to be no arrest to our descent. News item after news item generates shudders and terrors as we stare fixedly into the stream of […]

Recent advances in automation are stripping out all manner of jobs: not just those of clerks, typists and warehouse workers. Almost any job involving a programmable process is vulnerable. Should we rejoice, and anticipate their emancipation from labour; or should we be very afraid for the basis of our society? Chris Bratcher thinks the latter. […]

IntroductionAs I was preparing this talk I considered what my latest examples might be – this is the part I always have to update as so many new cults come and go. So, the groups I’ve come across this week that fit my definition of a cult are: ISIS, of course, and related Islamist extremist […]

Ethical Record Articles

OBITUARIES – Don Liversedge, 1917-2015

The Trojan Horse: A Leftist Critique of Multiculturalism in the West

From Monk to Modernity – The Challenge of Modern Thinking

The Faith I Left Behind

Hierarchy and the Political Economy

When was Once Upon a Time?

Divided Britain – The Impact of Rising Inequality

Open Borders: Unconditional Hospitality

Bankers are a Force for Good – Debate

Migrants or People?

The Robots are Coming

Cults and Brainwashing: The hidden – and not so hidden – epidemic