Ted Honderich

In January 2011, Honderich wrote a letter to the Guardian on terrorism, in response to details released about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process:

Honderich's book Conservatism begins with a general inquiry into the distinctions between British and American conservatism. He argues that one [British conservatism?] has to do with eternal values and therefore with reform rather than change, a view underpinning Edmund Burke's condemnation of the French Revolution and all conservatives since. Other distinctions [between British and American conservatism or conservatism and other systems?] have to do with the right kind of political thinking and with human nature, with particular doctrines of incentive and reward, and with certain freedoms, including those of private property. Given these distinctions which set conservatism apart from other views, Honderich asks what underlies and brings these distinctions together. What is the rationale or underlying principle of conservatism? The answer he gives is not just that the conservative tradition is selfish. Its self-interest, he argues, does not distinguish it from other political traditions. What does distinguish it, Honderich concludes, is that it lacks a moral principle to defend its self-interest. It is unique in its amorality. Conservatism was enlarged as Conservatism: Burke, Nozick, Bush, Blair? in 2005, and includes Honderich's consideration of whether Britain's New Labour is truly in the conservative political tradition.

Honderich has been involved in controversy since the publication of his book After the Terror in 2002. Honderich arranged with Oxfam in Britain and the publisher of After the Terror, Edinburgh University Press, to have the £5,000 advance on royalties go to the charity, along with more money from the publishers. The Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail suggested that Oxfam was taking money from a terrorist sympathiser, and it then declined the contributions, for which it was judged adversely in the British media. The book was published in a German translation. Micha Brumlik, director of a Holocaust centre and Professor of Pedagogy at Frankfurt University, demanded publicly that the book be withdrawn from sale by the publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag. Despite the declaration by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who had recommended the translation, that the book was not anti-semitic, it was withdrawn from sale. Honderich demanded the dismissal of Brumlik from his professorship, for violation of academic principle. There was a media furore in Germany. The book was retranslated and republished by an antizionist Jewish publishing house, Melzer Verlag.

He has been involved in controversy for his moral defence of Palestinian political violence, despite his justification of the founding and maintaining of Israel in its original 1948 borders.

Following 9/11, Honderich published After the Terror. The author first lays out premises for what he terms the "bad lives" and "good lives", of those living in Africa and in rich countries respectively. With respect to bad lives, Honderich argues that our omissions have resulted in 20 million years of possible living-time lost by a certain sample of Africans. He also considers the creation of Israel in 1948 and records what he describes as the bad lives of Palestinians as a result of what is called the neo-Zionist expansion of Israel since the 1967 war. Honderich asks whether those in the rich societies do wrong in doing nothing about bad lives. He considers natural morality as well as our worked-out or philosophical moralities. Such outlooks as political realism and such ideologies as liberalism and libertarianism are also considered, as is what Honderich calls 'hierarchic democracy'. The Principle of Humanity is used to judge our moral responsibility for the many bad lives, which Honderich tells us is great. The Principle also condemns the terrorist killings of 11 September as hideous. The killings were not rational means to an end that was partly defensible. The West's subsequent attack on Afghanistan is excused. But the taking from Palestinians of at least their freedom in the last fifth of their homeland, historic Palestine, is condemned. Honderich writes: '...the Palestinians have had a moral right to their terrorism as certain as was the moral right, say, of the African people of South Africa against their white captors and the apartheid state'.

Ted Honderich (born 30 January 1933) is a Canadian-born British professor of philosophy, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.

Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich on 30 January 1933 in Baden, Ontario, Canada. An undergraduate at the University of Toronto, qualifying as B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy and English Literature, he came to University College London to study under the logical positivist and Grote Professor A. J. Ayer, graduating with a PhD in 1968. He has since lived in England and become a British citizen. After being a lecturer at the University of Sussex he became lecturer, reader, professor and then Grote Professor at University College London. He was visiting professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Yale and the universities of Bath and Calgary. He is author of many books and articles on such subjects as consciousness, determinism, qualia, functionalism, timings of sensory experiences, psychophysical intimacy, the correspondence theory of truth, Russell's theory of descriptions, time, causation, Mill's On Liberty, John Searle's view of free will and G. A. Cohen's defence of Marx's theory of history. He has also edited several series of philosophy books.