Ted Honderich

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Ted Honderich (born 1933) is Emeritus Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London. He is a Canadian-born British academic philosopher, of Mennonite origin, who moved to London in 1959 to work with Alfred Ayer. His brother was the late publisher Beland Honderich.

In 1972 he became Reader in Philosophy at University College London, and was Grote Professor from 1988 until his retirement in 1998. He was previously a lecturer there, and has also lectured at the University of Sussex, as well as holding visiting lectureships at Yale University and the City University of New York.

He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.

1 Books
2 Controversy
- 2.1 Selected publications
- 2.2 Articles
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Books

He is the author of Punishment: The Supposed Justifications (1969), Violence for Equality: Inquiries in Political Philosophy (1980) as well as Conservatism (2005), (1991) , and has edited a number of philosophy books, including Essays on Freedom of Action (1973), Social Ends and Political Means (1976) and Philosophy Through Its Past (1984). He has written some notable works concerning free will and the philosophy of mind including: A Theory of Determinism: The Mind, Neuroscience, and Life-Hopes (1990), subsequently republished as the two paperbacks Brain and Mind and The Consequences of Determinism, and his popular How Free Are You? The Determinism Problem (2002), (1993).

[edit] Controversy

Honderich has been involved in controversy since the publication of his book After the Terror in 2002, in which he asks why the events of September 11th were wrong and what terrorism tells us about ourselves and our obligations; he defends a morality of humanity that requires us to think about our lives, and to act up against our democratic governments. The charitable organization Oxfam refused to accept a donation of £5,000 accrued in royalties from sales of the book.

In the book he also writes that "those Palestinians who have resorted to necessary killing have been right to try to free their people, and those who have killed themselves in the cause of their people have indeed sanctified themselves". According to a recent paper produced by Edward H. Kaplan and Charles A. Small, these kind of remarks are anti-Semitic.^[1] Micha Brumlik, a professor of education at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, requested Honderich's German publisher to withdraw After the Terror from circulation, claiming that the passages in question evinced an "anti-Semitic anti-Zionism".^[2]

[edit] Selected publications

On Being Persona Non Grata to Palestinians, Too, CounterPunch, February 19/20, 2005.
After the terror. Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7735-2734-6. Revised and expanded edition.
How free are you? the determinism problem. 2nd ed. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-925197-5.
Philosopher : a kind of life. London : Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-415-23697-5.