Democracy and its crisis
Speaking at the Samuel Alexander Lecture, leading British thinker AC Grayling will explore how democracy has been made to fail, and how to put it right. Democracy, as Winston Churchill famously said, is not perfect. Addressing the House of Commons in 1947, he said, ‘No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.’ According to philosopher, prolific author and leading thinker, AC Grayling, Churchill was right.
Democracy is the least bad of all political systems – when it works – but it has been made to fail in at least two of its leading examples in today’s world, the United States and the United Kingdom. Speaking at the 2019 Wesley College Samuel Alexander Lecture, to be held on 12 August, Grayling will investigate how democracy has been made to fail, and how to put it right.
Grayling has written extensively on civil liberties, Humanism and Enlightenment values. He has written extensively on faith and faith in reason, free will, ethics and the importance of self-understanding and choice, even if we do not always succeed in acting as we should. He has also written extensively on Brexit, sovereignty and parliamentary democracy.
Grayling is Master of New College of the Humanities, London, and is its Professor of Philosophy. He is also a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is the author of more than 30 books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas and essays, and has written for the Age, the Australian, the Guardian, the Independent, New Statesman, Prospect magazine, Slate magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Telegraph and the Times.
The Samuel Alexander Lecture honours one of Australia’s greatest scholars and one of Wesley’s most significant alumni. Samuel Alexander was a student at Wesley College in the early 1870s who, after completing his studies at the University of Melbourne and Oxford University, was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Manchester University. He subsequently became one of the 20th century’s most significant philosophers.
The 2019 Wesley College Samuel Alexander Lecture will be presented on 12 August in Adamson Hall at the St Kilda Road Campus.
