Mark Kingwell

Mark Kingwell
Paradoxically, the problems of politics often arise not in the form of a problem of scarcity, but as one of abundance.

Mark Gerald Kingwell B.A, M.Litt, M.Phil, PhD, D.F.A. (born March 1, 1963) is a Canadian philosopher who is professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College. He specialises in theories of politics and culture.

Quotes

The World We Want (2000)

• I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.
  • Preface, p. viii.

• War is smaller in scale than in recent memory, but it is far more ambiguous, intractable, and nasty. Money flows more quickly than ever, but it is still somehow manages to gather and puddle in certain places, for certain people rather then others.
  • Preface, p. viii.

• We tend to think of the problems of globalization and cultural identity as peculiar to our times. In fact they are rooted in ancient problems of civic belonging.
  • Chapter 1, The World We Have, p. 3.

• Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought.
  • Chapter 1, The World We Have, p. 22.

• It wasn't atheism and corruption they feared, but inquiry.
  • Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 26.

• Politics is rather the creation of the best possible polity out of the deep inner needs of its citizenry - who are only some of its members.
  • Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 38.

• Our desires are never wholly transparent, even to ourselves.
  • Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 42.

• But what I mean is not as odd as it might sound - and is by no means intended as the last word on the subject, only the first.
  • Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 68

It wasn't atheism and corruption they feared, but inquiry.

• Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all.
  • Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 77.

• Friendship requires a leap, not of faith but of regard.
  • Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 85.

• Tyranny is abhorrent, freedom benefits all, whereas violence benefits no one for long.
  • Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 90.

• It is only through a devoted attention to the details of objects and faces in the modern urban scene, he argues, that the commodity fetish of capitalism can be effectively dispelled.
  • Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 141.

• Dreams are evidence that we are creatures who produce more meaning than we can ourselves understand.
  • Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 146.

• Socrates was likewise right that pissing people off is how we first, and maybe best, go about the business of provoking thought.
  • Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 159.

• For every apparent gain, in short, we now observe a balancing danger. This is the world we have created.
  • Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 165.

• Paradoxically, the problems of politics often arise not in the form of a problem of scarcity, but as one of abundance.
  • Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 171

But what I mean is not as odd as it might sound - and is by no means intended as the last word on the subject, only the first.

• All social space is suffused with political meanings and agendas, the very stones and walls a kind of testament to the ongoing struggles for liberation and justices.
  • Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 174.

• We are capitalism made flesh.
  • Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 184.

• How doe we create the world we want, rather than a world that just happens to us?
  • Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 207.

• Never before, I suspect, have so many people been so rich to so little purpose.
  • Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 209.

• We don't know what the future will bring, but that's because we are ever in the process of creating it, not because it is an alien force to which we have to submit.
  • Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 222.