The late television presenter and everyman philosopher, Bryan Magee, was particularly critical about universities that he felt, often through courses in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE), were churning out unthinking drones and philistine technocrats, people he characterised as having a ‘clever shallowness’. Such people are ‘self-congratulatory, complacent’, combining ‘intelligent self-assurance with blinkeredness’, he wrote.
It’s usually the case that those who know history understand why a united Europe is a foolish and dangerous idea. The clever, self-assured and shallow are incapable of understanding why.
Author Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book "Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times" is published by Societas
