Piers Benn (born 1962) is a British philosopher. His research interests include

medical ethics Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. T ...

philosophy of religion Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known Text (literary theo ...

, and the philosophy of psychiatry.

Life and career

Benn grew up in Blackheath, southeast London, with parents June, a romantic novelist, and David Wedgwood Benn, a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

producer and Russian specialist. David was a brother of Labour politician

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician and political activist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabine ...

. Piers was educated at Eltham College in Mottingham until 1980 and gained his B.A. Hons. degree (First Class) in Philosophy & Modern Languages from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

(Magdalen College, 1984). He received his PhD in philosophy ("Human Death: its Nature and Significance") from Birkbeck College,

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

, in 1992. He has taught at the University of St. Andrews,

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

, Imperial College London, and

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

.Members of the Humanist Philosophers' Group, BHA
/ref> As of 2015, he is a visiting lecturer at

Heythrop College Heythrop College, University of London, was a constituent college of the University of London between 1971 and 2018, last located in Kensington Square, London. It comprised the university's specialist faculties of philosophy and theology with soc ...

in London and an adjunct professor at the London Centre of Fordham University New York. He has also written articles in various journals and appeared on British media. His 1997 book, ''Ethics'', re-issued by Routledge in 2000, is a textbook for undergraduate courses. The book is both an introduction into the subject and a substantive argument in favour of the neo-Aristotelian view of the objectivity of moral claims. His 2011 book, ''Commitment'' is one of the books in Acumen Press' Art of Living series.

Views

Benn was among the 43 signatories of a 2002 letter sent to

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...

, expressing alarm at the teaching of

creationism Creationism is the faith, religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of Creation myth, divine creation, and is often Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific.#Gunn 2004, Gun ...

in British state-funded schools. Commenting in '' New Humanist'' in 2002, Benn suggested that people who fear the rise of

Islamophobia Islamophobia is the irrational fear of, hostility towards, or hatred against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general. Islamophobia is primarily a form of religious or cultural bigotry; and people who harbour such sentiments often stereot ...

foster an environment "not intellectually or morally healthy", to the point that what he calls "Islamophobia-phobia" can undermine "critical scrutiny of Islam as somehow impolite, or ignorant of the religion's true nature", encouraging "sentimental pretence that all claims to religious truth are somehow 'equal', or that critical scrutiny of Islam (or any belief system) is ignorant, prejudiced, or 'phobic'"."On Islamophobia-phobia"
'' New Humanist, Vol.117, Issue 2 (Summer 2002)''

Bibliography

* ''Ethics'', Fundamentals of Philosophy series, McGill-Queen's University Press / UCL Press, 1997 (hardcover), (paperback, 1998),

Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...

, 1997 (paperback), (hardcover), (

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Al ...

) * "How Should We Treat the Dead?", in ''Thinking about Death'', British Humanist Association (2002) * ''Commitment'', (Art of Living series), Acumen Press 2011.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Benn, Piers Living people 21st-century British philosophers Alumni of Birkbeck, University of London Academics of the University of Leeds Academics of the University of St Andrews Academics of Imperial College London Academics of King's College London People educated at Eltham College 1962 births People from Blackheath, London Piers