Professsor A C Grayling
Writer, philosopher, and distinguished supporter of Humanism, born 1949

"I believe in the good life - and by "good" I don't mean prissy and puritanical. I think having fun, sex, travel and all those things are a rich part of the human experience. Our lives are less than a thousand months long and to make the best of it we need to have fun, form strong friendships and make the best of the gifts we have."
A C Grayling in an interview in The Independent on Sunday, 8/4/07

Anthony Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Supernumary Fellow of St Anne's College . A philosopher who believes that philosophy should emerge from its ivory tower and play useful role in society, Grayling is happy to engage publicly with the problems of contemporary society. He is involved in UN human rights initiatives, is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum, helped lawyers acting for Diane Pretty, and has written and spoken for freedom of speech and secularism and against faith schools . In December 2001 he wrote in The Guardian : “’ faith -based’ schools…are inherently and intrinsically divisive... Expecting immigrant communities to begin as good guests and end as good friends...requires greater mutual knowledge and contact ­ of the kind that comes principally from mixed secular schooling...”   He has written for The Times, the Financial Times, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Economist, Literary Review, New Statesman and Prospect. He has been a Booker Prize judge, and also participates regularly in radio and television discussions; as a result he is probably one of Britain ’s best known intellectuals.

In November 2003 he gave the BHA Voltaire lecture “ Enlightenment & Counter-Enlightenment: Then and Now” (click here   for an account of the lecture). He is also an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Association.

Books
His most recent book Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness (Oberon, 2007) is a collection of essays challenging religions: their demands for faith-based schooling and for respect, their frequent claim that atheism is itself a faith position or fundamentalist, and the idea that religion is necessary for an ethical philosophy. He argues instead for a set of values based on reason, reflection and sympathy, taking his cue from the great ethical tradition of western philosophy.

He has written and edited many other books on philosophy and other subjects; those of particular interest to humanists include:
Moral Values (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998)
The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life [Introduction] (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001)
The Reason of Things (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002)
What is Good? : The Search for the Best Way to Live (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003)
The Mystery of Things ( Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003)
Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age (2003)
The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century ( Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005, Phoenix, 2006)
Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life Without God ( Oxford University Press, 2005)
The Form of Things ( Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006)  

Articles
Amongst A C Grayling's many articles, humanists may find these particularly interesting:
"Believers are away with the fairies", Daily Telegraph , 26/3/07
The milk of humanist kindness , Comment is Free …, Guardian 21/11/06
“Reason lost” , Comment is Free …, Guardian , August, 2006
“Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?” ,   Comment is Free …, Guardian , May 2006
”Religious radicals want to limit our freedoms, so to curb free speech is to give them exactly what they want” New Statesman Essay , July 2005
” Two words of warning: Northern Ireland” on faith schools in the TES , July 2005

" Keep God out of public affairs ", Observer , Sunday August 12 2001

" Don't leave morals to the madmen ", Guardian , Wednesday March 22 2000

“Despite superficial appearances of a resurgence in religious belief, we are actually witnessing the death throes of faith” ( Prospect on-line, November 2006), an article contradicting the idea that “we are witnessing an upsurge in religious observance and influence… the outcome is not in doubt. As private observance, religion will of course survive among minorities; as a factor in public and international affairs it is having what might be its last—characteristically bloody—fling.”

See also
http://www.acgrayling.com/
A C Grayling: In search of the Holy Grayling , an interview in The Independent , February 2006 
His humanist "Thought for the Day"  on toleration 


Updated November 2006