Fintan O’Toole
Kant and the Contemporary Public Discourse
We live at a time when journalism and public discourse are under huge pressure both from the challenges of social media and from the polarization of politics. Can some of Kant’s principles help us to think about the duties of public intellectuals in this atmosphere? This talk suggests that Kant provides a bracing and potent reminder of the often tough imperatives that should guide those of us who take part in public debate.
Fintan O’Toole is a columnist for The Irish Times, and advising editor of the New York Review of Books. He also contributes to the Guardian, The Observer, Foreign Affairs and other international publications. His books on theatre include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. His books on politics include the bestsellers We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland (2021), Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain (2018), and Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (2009). He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, the Orwell Prize, the European Press Prize, and the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism. O’Toole’s History of Ireland in 100 Objects, which covers 100 highly charged artifacts from the last 10,000 years, is currently the basis for Ireland’s postage stamps. He is working on the official biography of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and was named an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023 and elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2024.