 Felly, dyfodol, mas gwaith, dyfodol. A llunio'n gweithio arall iawn ac yn ôl i chi. Gweithio'n gwneud o Mark Oakley, a mae'n gweithio'n gwneud yng Nghymru gyda'r cathedral Cwthedrall. Ac mae erioed yn gweithio'n gweithio'r Cwthedrall Cwthedrall Cwthedrall Cwthedrall, yn ein pryd am fy nghymbeithio ddiwedd yma yng ngyrsgwyr bwrdd o 18 mlynedd. Llywodraeth, mae'n gwybod i'r cyd-dwylliant i'r cyd-dwylliant o'r cyd-dwylliant yn ymdillodol yng Nghymru, sy'n gwybod i'r cyrcaf o ddynod, dymogriadau a'r gwblwch. Mae populism yn cael ei ddweud o'r cyd-dwylliant o'r cyfrifio ar hyn o'r cyfrifio sy'n cyfrifio ar hyn o'r cyfrifio. Dysgu, ychydig i ddefnyddio i ddefnyddio i'n meddwl yn y gweithio arall, o'r sgwylio'r ddechrau o'r busplau i ddechrau i ddau'r anodau a'r anodau. A'u byddwch yn Brexit o'r anodau o'r anodau argyflwys, o'r meddwl yn y meddwl o'r anodau o'r anodau o'r anodau o'r anodau, o'r anodau o'r anodau o'r anodau o'r anodau o'r anodau, ond society, digon regener psyche a mental health we can feel overwhelmed by what's around us. And yet there is also a stirring of goodwill and a growing sense that we can do better with many people rising to that challenge. We do not have to accept the way things are. There are alternatives. And the growing willingness to explore them is surely a source of enormous hope. When things seem to be getting worse, it's an opportunity to re-establish what is truly important. As individuals it's not what we have that matters but how we use it for the whole. At the national level it is about how we use markets and government to serve everyone. We need of course to work together to empower all members of society to have a voice in making decisions about a shared future and more important still we need a vision for our common life that transcends what we own and what we do and prioritises what we value and how we want to live together. And why all this at St Paul's? Well St Paul's is obviously a place of Christian worship. You can still smell the incense from the evening service and it has a long tradition of taking learning seriously. For centuries it has been a place of public debate, a place that believes in the power of words, ideas and the human will to work together for constructive change. We try to do this in a spirit of hospitality that welcomes people of all faiths and none to come together and be inspired by each other to promote the things that matter for our shared humanity. And in much the same vein the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently published a book entitled Reimagining Britain, Foundations for Hope. In it he writes that the common good is the sharpest and most uncomfortable challenge to our financially centred society. Together this event, the Archbishop's book and the events and conversations that will come about are intended to encourage people to discover both the power and the imagination we have to have to rise to the challenge. In addition to welcoming each and every one of you and before I welcome our main speaker I need to make an apology for Professor Fran Tonkis who appears in your programme but sadly who's not well and cannot be with us. We wish her a very speedy recovery. So I am absolutely delighted to welcome our main speaker for this launch Professor Michael Sandell who is here on a return engagement having last spoken here at St Paul's in 2012. You have a full biography of Professor Sandell in your programmes. I will say only that Michael Sandell teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. He's been described as the most relevant living philosopher, a rock star moralist and currently the most popular professor in the world. In this country he has of course delivered the BBC wreath lectures and currently his BBC series The Public Philosopher which explores the ethical issues lying behind the headlines with participants from over 30 countries. And that's why we have young people from many different walks of life on the stage with him. Tonight's event is slightly unusual for St Paul's Institute and the Cathedral as we're simultaneously holding an event and recording it for a BBC Radio 4 episode of the Public Philosopher programme which will be broadcast at 9am and 9.30pm on March 27. It'll also be available on iPlayer or as a podcast. We will try to make this as seamless as possible but as you are effectively watching a recording occasionally our speaker may have to make some comments for the use on the recording over and above what he's saying to you or do a slight retake. Mobile phone roaming can interfere with the recording so please would you be kind enough now to turn yours off or to put it on to aeroplane mode. Offenders will be asked to stand in the corner for 15 minutes with their hands on their heads. So the evening will run as follows. Michael will debate with those on stage and with Dr Graham Tomlin who is the Bishop of Kensington whom we are also very delighted to welcome here tonight. Michael will also talk with people in the front of the audience and at the end after the event there will be books for sale and a signing at a book table up here by the stage. So would you please now join me in welcoming Professor Michael Sandell. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Michael Sandell. Welcome to this episode of The Public Philosopher. This time we come to you from St Paul's Cathedral a magnificent sacred space that is also a remarkable place of civic gathering and liberation. Our question is one of the hardest questions of contemporary politics. What has become of the common good? After decades of globalization and rising inequality have we lost sight of what it means to be a citizen? Prime Minister Theresa May has suggested as much. Too many people in positions of power, she said, behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with people down the road. If you believe you're a citizen of the world, she said, you're a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what the very word citizenship means. Well, what does citizenship mean? What do we owe one another as citizens? And what are the competing conceptions of community to which the common good refers? To explore these questions we have gathered here on the stage of St Paul's Cathedral under the magnificent dome, a group of about 80 university students. I'd like to begin by putting to them the following question about a recent development in Germany. In Essen, Germany, there is a food bank, it's a charity. And the demand for the services of the food bank were very high. The food bank decided to deal with the very high level of demand by saying that priority would be given to Germans, to needy Germans over needy foreigners and refugees. This prompted debate within Germany. And it's a question I'd like to put to our students here on the stage at St Paul's. What's the right thing to do? Was it right or wrong for the German food bank to give preference to Germans over foreigners? How many, let's first begin by taking a survey by the show of hands. And I'd like to take the survey on the stage as well as in the audience. How many think it was right for the German food bank to give preference to needy Germans over foreigners? Raise your hand. A small handful of people. How many think it was wrong? Both on the stage and in the audience in St Paul's, the overwhelming majority have raised their hand saying it's wrong. Let's begin with someone who thinks it's wrong. Why is it wrong to give preference for the German food bank to give preference to needy Germans? Why is that wrong? Yes, tell us your name. We'll get you a microphone. Tell us your name again. My name's Nimra. I think it's wrong because it's given power to one nationality over another nationality. And it's determined that one particular identity is worth more than another. Who else thinks it's wrong? Thank you for that. Who else thinks it's wrong? Yes, tell us your name. Hi, my name's Mojua. Yeah, going on from that point, I'm not really comfortable with Germans as well. Without saying they feel superior to people, I think they need to be more in that conversation. Do you think by giving preference to needy Germans, they are saying that Germans are superior as a people? They are saying they deserve priority and consider the historical context a little bit uncomfortable with it. Who else? How did you vote? You think it's wrong? My name's Delfine. I think it's actually reductionist to say it's wrong right. I think what you need to remember is the nation's state values. If you were running the food bank, what policy would you take? Well, I think it's more a case of obviously helping those in need who actually need it regardless of nationality, but the nation's state, including any institution within it, will protect its own sovereign nationals. Should it? That's a different question. Well, that's our question. Yes, what do you say? I think that there are people who could be foreigners that needed more. So I would give priority for those who are in more need, even if they're not Germans. So the test, and what's your name? Constanza. Constanza? Your test, if you ran the food bank, you would try to determine if the people queued up for help. Who are the hungriest? Yes, who are the hungriest? The most needy. The most needy? Yes. Regardless of nationality. Those of you who think it's wrong to give preference in the German food bank to Germans, is that how you would decide based on need? Yes? All right, let's hear now from someone who said that it was right for the German food bank to give preference to needy Germans over others. You've heard the arguments against. How would you reply? Yes. Hi, my name's Mohammed, and I get the idea of, you know, give it to those in need and that's who needs it most. And in theory that works. But I think there seems to be a pressure against nation for protecting itself when it's intrinsically the most human thing to do, as much as we want to be unnecessarily good and unnecessarily malevolent. For example, if I have a family and I have food, do I give it to my son, or do I give it to a homeless guy out there? Technically, he needs it more than my son has eaten like free time today. It's not wrong for someone to do that in their family, so I don't really see why it's wrong for a nation to do it to themselves. If you have finite resources, I can understand why you'd want to give it to your own people because it's the most human thing to do, whether that's right or wrong can be argued against. Your name is? Mohammed. Mohammed says, think of the analogy of a family. If your child were hungry and some stranger's child was even hungrier, would it be wrong to feed your own child? That's a pretty powerful challenge. Who has a reply to that? Yes. Hi, thanks. My name is Jacqueline. I think something that we need to recognize is that Germany has allowed as accommodated people, given them the right to live in Germany that aren't Germans. So think of EU nationals. Do they not deserve the support of the community through the food bank? So long as Germany lets them in in the first place, they have to treat them on a par at the food bank with other Germans, what do you say? Hi, my name is Ramsay. I think on top of that, it largely depends on the influences which, for example, Germany may have had on those people. So in, for example, a family, if the father decided to kill the father of another child in another family who ends up being needy, the priority may end up in feeding that child before his own because he's had an influence on that family and so his obligation may alter. And so in terms of Germany, if they've influenced other nations, then arguably that might justify them having to balance the system out in terms of giving to all needy. So if the refugees are Syrian refugees as many are in this community of Essen, if Germany is implicated in the conditions that led the Syrians to flee their country, they have to look after them. Is that the idea? That's one idea. That's my idea. That's the idea I'm trying to say. And if not, if they simply admitted refugees whose condition they didn't contribute to creating? Then it depends how far back you can kind of track it. So at least in this example, then I would say that Germany, as a Western power, as a power that has a role in the wider international community, they have an obligation and they've influenced the dynamic which exists now in Syria and so the refugees fall under their obligation in that light. But only if the country is implicated in creating the conditions, does it need to treat them as equals to its own citizens. Sure. Yes. Hello, my name is Ute from Germany. I think it is very dangerous in the context of Germany to talk about racial issues to decide who we give something to and who we don't. If we take the analogy of the family, are we a family in Germany or are we a family as human beings and any other human being who is in front of us or brother or sister. And so I think especially in Germany with an upcoming very strong right populism wing, we should be careful of dividing people in races. So you reject the analogy of nations to families. You reject the analogy of nations to families. The relevant family here is the family of humanity, you think. I agree with the analogy, but not with the definition of who is my brother and my sister or my mother or my father. And the answer to that question is not my fellow German, but my fellow human being. I think as soon as we have someone in front of us who needs help, it is our brother and sister. So not German is not what matters. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, especially in Germany. And I think we have a lot of experience in doing it wrong. Could I press you on this for the follow-up? Could I press you a little bit on this? Yeah, go ahead. Suppose we weren't talking about a food bank. Suppose we were talking about benefits, welfare payments by the state. Should the German state, or let's talk about Britain, should the British taxpayers allocate benefits on the basis of human need or on the basis of who is a British citizen? I think that it depends on the kind of benefits and that we would have to define allocation mechanisms which are fair to, in general, fair. Basic income support for poor people, let's say. As long as this person is in Britain on a legal basis, or even on an illegal basis if that person is about to die, then I think there should be support. But the question is benefits for British people many receive that over years. And I'm not saying that we don't need to solve the refugee crisis and find mechanisms of making those people maybe return or have a better condition or not have benefits anymore because they get integrated, they get educated, they take on jobs and pay taxes themselves. Who would like to take on the example of benefits? Now, moving beyond the food bank, actually let's take a vote on this one to see whether people have a different view. Basic income support for the poor, a safety net, benefits funded by the taxpayers now, not a charity as in the food bank case. How many think that British taxpayers have an obligation to provide benefits only to British citizens, not to other people? Raise your hand if you think that. That the British taxpayer has an obligation to provide benefits for poor Britons but not others. And how many think the British taxpayer has an obligation to provide income support to anyone, let's say, who finds himself or herself in Britain, regardless of that person's citizenship status, or, for that matter, legal status? They are there, they are in need. How many think that? I can report to our listeners that the majority on the stage say the second and also quite a number in the audience at St Paul's. Who disagrees? Who thinks that the eligibility for benefits from income support should go only to British citizens, not anyone who happens to be in need? Yes. Hi, my name is Hamad. I don't disagree with the point whole-heartedly, but I would contest the notion somewhat. Just as you would not begrudge a mother for feeding her child first as compared to a stranger's child, you should not begrudge the state or even the British taxpayer for wanting their tax to be directed first and foremost to the legitimate citizens of Britain. So you're drawing on the analogy of the family. And what about the argument that the relevant family here is a family of humankind? I talk about, well, I mean that is a very lovely and almost idealistic notion, but I would pose that up to the question of whether that fits with practicability. I mean, if we concede that we have a notion of a global citizenship, are we not saying that, well, the states that do exist at present are what, in some way irrelevant? No, we accept that they are relevant in the sense that concepts such as citizenship do exist for the exact purposes of protecting those domiciled within a particular state. And so with that practical side considered, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that a state has a prerogative to place their citizens first and foremost as a priority. What do you say? Hi, my name's Park. I think part of the problem with some of the discussion has been that we're really taking for granted our definition of the state and of citizenship and we're also not considering the ethics of migration that are playing into this kind of thing. We need to consider whether or not the state does in fact have a right to exclude and does in fact have a right to exclude certain people from citizenship. And what do you think about that? I think the state, well, I mean, I have worries about the legitimacy of the state anyway, but I don't think that we should, I don't think we have a moral right to exclude others from participation in the state or from physically being here and I think that plays into some of these arguments. So you think morally speaking, it's wrong to have restrictions of any kind on immigration. There should be open borders, morally speaking. Yeah. And holding that position, you would say that the benefits should, how did you vote on the benefits question? I vote they should go to everyone, not just protesters. So you, and what's your name? Park. Park. Park. So you hold a thorough going universalist idea about borders, citizenship and benefits. Yeah. And what about, what do you say, Park, to the arguments we've heard voice, that within a family, surely a parent has a right in it, maybe an obligation to give special concern to his or her child. Do you disagree with that? Yeah. You do disagree with that. Partly in virtue of the business I hold on that, I feel like I am somewhat committed to actually take that strong stance and say that you don't have, I don't see, I mean I have particular problems with the family as a concept anyway. I think we should sort of critically re-evaluate how it factors into our society and I worry about the family being used as an analogy with the state, but I do think that we have obligations. I do think we have high obligations to every individual. I don't think it's that we have lesser obligations to people overall, but I don't think it's right to value the family as being the ultimate decider in who your obligations are to. So I want to bring Amad back in who raised just now the example of the family. Both of you stand up so that you can address one another. Now, Amad, you just heard Pak say that even a parent favouring his or her needy child over somebody else's needy child is in effect a kind of prejudice. It's a morally illegitimate prejudice, right Pak? Okay, yeah. What do you say? I can definitely see the perspective being brought forward, but I think that puts us at odds with, that puts morality and biology at odds almost because we have an inherent affinity to our own family. A mother has an inherent affinity to her own child. She will, I mean it's evident in animals, it's evident in humankind that a mother will protect her children for the most part even to her death, even place the child's survival and well-being over her own. So to deny that for a universal notion of placing everyone at equal footing whilst it sounds absolutely wonderful on paper is I'd say at odds with our very nature. I'd be very reluctant to take a reductionist stance and try and reduce morality to biology. I think there's plenty of things that we see in human society that just simply can't be reduced to biology. I see your point about instincts and that kind of thing but I'm also very cautious of reducing my moral stances to my emotional instincts and I think that we should be, whilst they can inform where our sort of preferences tend to lie I don't think we should use them to do our moral world-building. And notice, Paak extends this from families to the nation whose borders she considers morally arbitrary. Am I right? What do you say to that? But I think there'd be a lot more or I would argue, I think there's an argument to be made for the productivity and progress of a nation that displays self-determination. And what I mean to say by this is that if a nation concedes that it has pride and a priority for its own citizens and a national sentiment towards the progress of itself and if that sentiment rather than a universal acceptance of everybody being on equal footing if actually the converse sentiment of a self-determination and pride is instilled within nations throughout the world well then we will see progress throughout the world. The contrary stance to that is, well if we have open borders and everybody on equal footing well we know that evil exists, we know that those with ill intent exist, we know that regimes that are oppressive on people do exist even in today's world. And so to concede that everybody is on equal footing would be turning a blind eye to the realities of the world. All right, but I want to take up your point. You speak of pride and self-determination. Do you think we need a sense of belonging to a particular place to a country or to a family in order to give expression to pride and self-determination? Very much so. Not to say that that should prejudice you to any other nation but you should at least have that innate desire to want to progress your own nation. Park. So I still take issue with the idea that the nation state as it exists is something that should always exist as it does and I think just because something is the way it is I don't want to make it like it is to fallacy basically. I'm worried about taking something from the way it has been and saying well it should always be like that. I also think I take issue with, I think to pretend even that the nation state or that for instance Britain represents all of its British citizens even I think is a bit disingenuous because I think if you look at the participation in politics it is not representing the majority of people in this country and I think we have to seriously consider like how states are actually representing the communities they claim to represent. Yes. Hi my name is Olya and I would like to add an extra layer to that about pride and self-determination. Would you say that nations that have this pride and self-determination they might be more likely to offer help or aid or benefits to others because they have capacity to do so? So now we're talking about a lens that's coming from the western world who have the extra means to do so and then in comparison looking at other nations who cannot offer even help to their own people and provide benefits for their own citizens or they're oppressed. So it's the question of are they self-determined and is it pride to offer it to others to show how wealth and how progressive you are? So if I understand you and tell me your name again. Olya. Olya, if I understand you are you suggesting building on the invocation of pride and self-determination that a sense of national pride and collective self-determination can actually contribute to greater sense of responsibility to help others in need. Is that what you're suggesting? Yes. You must be sympathetic to that thought. All right. Yes, in the back. To follow that up, I also think that the idea that we identify with other people is a basic precondition to us willing to express solidarity with people or to support people where we have any large-scale redistribution between rich and poor then that does actually rest on the idea that there's something shared in common and also in strong institutions like trade unions which again rest on attachment to a place or an industry or some sort of community. So I think the idea that we should be kind of universalise everything and have obligations to everything undercuts any sort of support you could ever have to redistribute in that way. You think that redistribution and generosity presupposes solidarities or more particular kinds. But why? Tell us your name. My name's Nick. Nick, why do you think... Let me put the question again. Why do you think, Nick, that generosity and the willingness to help those in need presupposes solidarity or loyalty to a particular group or identity such as a nation? Because to do that you require the support of people paying more taxes which will go to universal services or to be redistributed in a way that will support other people rather than people just seeing themselves as a sort of atomised individual floating in abstraction. Well, Pak, those are fighting words. Atomised individuals floating in abstraction. Nick says, will not be very generous types. How would you reply? So I would say that a lot of the work that is done actually does exist outside the state and does happen beyond the state. And I think solidarity is very often they actually built very much against what the state would rather happen. If you look at work that happens with grassroots refugees groups, for instance in Lambeth, there's Lambeth refugees welcome who have lobbied the council to provide to welcome 23 refugee families into Lambeth and have helped provide houses and that's been very much separate from the state. That's people grouping together in a community and taking action. And also examples of, for instance, how the LGBTQ plus community has organised with solidarity and has links with different groups. I don't think that we should be relying upon the state to do the hard work for us in a sense. And I think that often the state will actually push back against the harder work that needs doing. I want to turn in our audience in St. Paul's to David Goodheart who has distinguished between people from somewhere and people from anywhere. You've heard the debate that we've been having on the stage and the debate has already identified two competing philosophical approaches to generosity. A willingness to help those in need. There's the view that says we need to think of ourselves as fellow human beings above all in universal or cosmopolitan terms. And then we've heard from those who say, no, we need more particular identities and solidarities to prompt generosity. What do you think? How do you react to what you've just heard? I think we have an extremely unrepresentative group of British people in this wonderful cathedral. But what do you think? I want to know what you think. How do you evaluate these arguments? I'm a weak cosmopolitan in the morally quality of all human beings but I don't think we have the same obligation to all human beings. I think our obligations are primarily to our families and our friends that roll out from that to our neighbourhoods and our nations and then to all of humanity. The charity begins at home but doesn't end there. And why do you think that we have stronger obligations to those closest to us than to those further away? Why do you think so? Partly, as was said earlier, it's partly sort of functional, biological, but also I think for... Why morally do we have a greater obligation to those closest to us? Well, I think for the world to work we have to behave in that way. For the nation state, the nation state is the root essentially of our freedoms, of our welfare or all the things that we most want politically and morally in some ways, you know, democratic accountability, redistribution between classes, regions, generations, this happens essentially at the level of the nation state. And if the nation state has no emotional support behind it, I mean that this is the point that Theresa May was making with her citizens of nowhere, if it doesn't have the support even of the powerful and the influential and the rich and we're all diminished by that. Thank you for that, yes. My name is Alex. I just wanted to go back on this point about the state. I mean you said how it was in Lambeth Council they were able to house 23 families. Well, the state of Germany took in over a million refugees and that came out of that collective sense, I'm not an expert, but I believe of guilt for how they treated the Jewish people before and that only came out of that collective feeling of guilt that you get by being part of a broader community. You also talk about what is important, I agree, but I mean you have got to work with the way that things are and if you don't appeal to what actually will motivate people then you won't get the outcomes that you want. So both you, Alex and David Goodhart just now have pointed to what will actually motivate people and you both suggested that what motivates people begins at least with those closest to us. We care most about them and so morally we should build upon that de facto motivation but morally speaking is that a concession to prejudice, Alex? I don't think it's a concession to prejudice because I don't think it's necessarily prejudice to believe that you've got certain greater obligations to those that you identify more with but I have often wondered that when I'm reading your book you would give the examples and say which do you prefer so I'd like to throw the question back to you for example you're giving the example of Israel helping the Jews in Ethiopia correct and then you said what do you think and I'd like to throw that question back to you and say what do you think? Well we'll get there we'll get there we're working our way towards some of these questions what do you say? Hi my name is Nate I'm really troubled by this acceptance of the nation state as a positive and good thing and a positive influence on the world fundamentally in my view the nation state is an oppressive concept in that by focusing your energy on only helping the select few that is within your nation state you're ignoring your obligation to everybody else and what I would say is about this concept of solidarity and our sort of willingness to help people coming from solidarity with that person is if you walked past a person on the street and they were dying you wouldn't walk past them just because you don't know them and you have no personal desire to help them you would help them because it's the right thing to do and it's the morally correct thing to do and then following on from that I would say why would you wait until the point where they're dying before you're willing to help them if you're able to help them at any point before that you have a moral obligation to do that and I think anything else it's not actually a willingness to help it's self-gratification if the only people that you're willing to help are the people that you know and the people that you like it's just about making yourself feel good not about actually helping other people What's your name again? Nate, I'm from the Young Greens You're from? The Young Greens Here's the question then We commonly distinguish between benefits or income support for fellow citizens and humanitarian assistance or foreign aid for people in need who live elsewhere Are you suggesting, Nate, that morally speaking there is no real difference between the two? Yes I think there is a useful distinction in that you give the money to the people who are closest to the people in need so that decisions can be made by those who know how that money can be used but there's not actually a moral distinction for the reason why you're supposed to help these people it's just a functional useful difference So morally speaking your obligation to help your needy child let's say is no different from your moral obligation to help a needy child in Bangladesh Well absolutely not and you also have to think how needy are they is your child needy because they need a new toy Let's say they are comparably needy Morally speaking the obligation is the same Yes Who disagrees with Nate and can say why Who disagrees with Nate on this Yes Nate my name is yours I to go into your example of finding someone dying on the on the street I think in that particular example it's probably right you have an obligation to help someone like that but it's a balance of both severity and principle so for instance let's say there's someone on the street struggling from alcoholism with a lot of problems gets into poverty my own brother who is struggling from alcoholism and gets into poverty as well first of all I think I would help my brother just because I have a personal collection with him but morally and morally as well because I believe that you have a particular obligation to care for your family in this regard but that's what well that's what Nate rejects Yes that is what Nate rejects So what's the basis of that special obligation The basis of that special obligation I mean I know the point about biology has already been mentioned but I think part of the obligation is about the effectiveness because I would know my brother a lot better as well so I would be in a lot better I have a lot more information about my brother than I have about a guy in the street I don't know so therefore that it's a closer surrounding position to help but the moral claim on you is no different or is it I think the moral claim is different because the effectiveness is better anyway so the difference I can make is greater Yes Hi I'm Tamara I wanted to agree with this point because I feel that if we think about social contract with relationship to what is citizenship I feel that we can say that the unit of citizenship is a nation as a very basic unit is important because if you have any kind of disadvantage then you can easily fall back to your nation if we think in terms of just getting rid of any kind of unit of nation then basically everyone is so individualistic that you cannot really rely on anyone else and I feel that if you have a nation behind your back you can easily say that you can back up nation state with this kind of social contract because then if you have any kind of problem then people of the nation can help you Hi my name is Drushti and I most definitely reject the idea of a nationality based welfare and I and let me ask or let me pose these questions to students themselves that how is it that you would identify groups in need most people here are grad students would you call yourselves people in need of welfare or would you find that you are often struggling with finances or it's a stress that you face on a regular basis I think if you ask yourself that question it will go a long way in answering answering this dilemma as to whether need should be defined or prioritized on the basis of nationality and your answer is that it should not be because let's say lots of people here are coming to these countries to study in the liberal democratic universities in these spaces to come and engage and somehow collectively also progress progress like the common motives we have as mankind but at the same time you are paying these large sums of money you are spending a large amount of your money in these same economies so does that not make you entitled to certain welfare for that what about companies in hiring we have been talking about giving help whether a food bank a charity or taxpayer funded benefits are they different in principle from foreign aid what about companies hiring policies should British companies give preference in hiring to British workers how many say yes on the stage only about half a dozen people say yes in the audience in St Paul's how many people say yes British companies should give preference in hiring to British workers how many say yes very few hands are going up how many say no that companies should hire British companies without regard to national origin in St Paul's in the audience and on stage lot more people think they should not give preference why those of you who think they should what would be your reason yes my name is Jake I think there is something here to be said for the principle of reciprocity and the idea of people who have given a lot to a certain sort of system of cooperation over a period of time tend to expect something in return for the fact that they have sacrificed themselves so through the form of paying tax by complying with laws et cetera so I think that kind of idea underpins a lot of sort of sentiment about why people should be sort of entitled to greater benefits by virtue of the fact that they have contributed to the system of cooperation to do outsiders they are part of a society part of a society a community a certain people make contributions and so they should their fellow citizens have a special responsibility for them as do companies hiring in their country quite a basic moral intuition I think the idea that if you give something you deserve something in return the idea of reciprocity over time within the framework of a community Jake what do you say hi my name is Sam I think kind of ignoring even the kind of moral side of it is that firms shouldn't have to argue about this kind of moral responsibility of the firm like a firm should hire people based on how productive they are going to be for the firm which will benefit society as a whole in general and we go back to kind of the social contracts thing the firm by being in the country has entered into the social contract which allows them to hire who they want and their profits will circulate back so even ignoring the morality if you only hire British people anyway what do you say hi my name is Tija when thinking about social contracts in this context I think that a lot of this is about who is being allowed into this contract and more than half of the people who are unemployed in Britain the young people unemployed in Britain at the moment are from ethnic minority backgrounds and is that all because they're not contributing to the economy in the same way I don't think so I think that a lot of that is because that the system is deeply entrenched in privilege How did you vote on the hiring the British companies should they hire British citizens give a preference in hiring to British citizens? No I don't think so because I think that even citizenship in itself is a privilege and that our skills should be what foster our ability to be employed Thank you Yes I'm Sabrina and I just think at this point I just wanted to bring luck into the debate and I think it's relevant to the previous question about benefits and the question about hiring and I just want to ask whether people think that your kind of social and biological characteristics of where you're born over which you have no control or kind of don't deserve whether you think that that should determine whether or not you should receive any kind of assistance how well your life should plan out and what opportunities in life are available to you and so you're suggesting Sabrina that if luck goes into who is it British citizen in the first place then it's not they're doing why should that be the basis for preference of any kind and how could that ever be fair and how could that be fair is there someone on the stage who has an answer to Sabrina's question who can explain I wonder if I could turn to the audience Jesse Norman will get you the microphone what do you what do you say to Sabrina stand up so we can see you thanks thank you Michael what do I say to Sabrina about luck or about what aspect of the debate Sabrina is saying there should be no British company should not give hiring preference to British workers because being a British citizen in the first place is a matter of luck why should that be the basis of any kind of moral preference whether in hiring or whether in the receipt of benefits or for that matter help of any kind at the food bank are you struck by the the strong I think it's fair to say this pretty strong cosmopolitan universalistic conceptions of the common good that we've been hearing articulated thus far I am struck by that there are some big words we need to come back to one of them was reciprocity another is giving and the responsibilities that go with receiving a gift and the sense of duty that comes in a family from being the recipient of an inheritance and within a society for being the recipient of inheritance and that feeling that people have bind them together and places them under duty and obligation to pass something on to others within that society and therefore the context we're talking of is not merely one of receipt and of right but of duty and obligation as well and you you think there is something in the analogy that we've heard between duties associated with family membership and duties associated with national identity and citizenship I think what is interesting about the analogy is that it forces us to ask the question who are we what is the we we're talking about and is that the family is that the community is that the nation and does it go wider than that and it seems to me the argument that you're really probing at all those levels but the real question is who is the we and for me inevitably the we is about culture and society as much as it is about economics and as it were free trade Do you mind staying there for a moment Jesse while I call on Pak and Sabrina together who've made this very strong case for a cosmopolitan ethic and the two of them if the two of you would stand up speak directly to Jesse Norman and see if you can persuade him I think first on the point of reciprocity and being able and kind of the mutual reciprocity between citizen and state I think partly maybe you presume an ability to reciprocate in terms of access to employment access to ways to participate fully in society which perhaps you presume the state provides and I'm not sure whether one the state provides the opportunity to participate and to I'm not I'm not sure whether we need a certain baseline level of capabilities and resources to be able to actually participate in this relationship of reciprocity Pak So I would follow on from that point also in saying that it implies that you have some sort of choice in entering into this contract with the state which I would say we don't I mean the alternative of course would be opting out and going up in a cave so I think the state can have instrumental value but I think that it does assume slightly that the state is legitimate and that we've consented to being a contract with it and I think that the state can have obligations to you but you don't necessarily have obligations to the state on the culture point because I think that's an interesting point in terms of well how do we define a we how do we have a community and then the impacts that has an individual identity but I would say that I'd be particularly cautious of deferring to national identity and deferring to citizenship as being the marker of whether or not that's an identity can be part of especially when there are plenty of British citizens like myself that just simply don't identify with the concept of being British and who are not represented within mainstream British culture gosh so I suppose my view would be very simple which is as a matter of fact I do believe in a state that is positively empowering of people and does reach out to those who may be marginalised or disadvantaged and seek to give them the status and the dignity to be able to participate fully to the extent of their capabilities so I fully I would as it were come back at the first lady who spoke on the second one I must say I think that whether or not we have chosen to be who we are we are bound by an obligation that comes from having been the recipient of something extraordinary which is the society we live in and we may try to disavow that but if we disavow it then the question comes back do you also disavow the obligations, the responsibilities that come with that society and often you find that those who would disavow it actually would like to embrace the aspects of history that they wish in that culture as well I'm reminded listening to this debate of a passage from the 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who said do we want people to be virtuous let us begin then by making them love their country but how can they love it if their country means nothing more to them than it does to foreigners allotting to them only what it cannot refuse to anyone that's an argument on your side of the position Jesse, yes? I'd be extremely reluctant to be associated with an argument by Jean-Jacques Rousseau I wanted to make it difficult for you he's an ally here I'm grateful in very few things is Rousseau an ally my view on this is that if he is promoting a decent awareness of commonality then that is important but in fact in Rousseau's case he is often taken to be promoting a general will which would obliterate some of the fine aspects of society that make it so valuable and worth living in thank you for that yes, back on the stage go ahead it's a great issue with how we've been talking about the obligations of people and obligations of the state for example of refugees and instead of talking about for example also how refugees not having citizenship status is the ultimate form of rightlessness not having any rights, not having citizenship effectively are the same thing what kind of claims do they have instead of talking about obligations how do we fulfill the claims that people have by the virtue of being humans and not just humans but humans who have been stripped of their rights altogether alright so that's an issue that arises with special force in the case of refugees what about the obligations of the British companies I don't want to leave that alone most people say on the stage most people say it's wrong for British companies to give preference in hiring to British workers who who thinks it's alright for a British company to give preference to British workers we've heard from from Jake an argument to do with the reciprocity that arises when people participate over time in a community so Jake has made that argument is there someone else who has an argument along these lines yes hiya, I'm Scott I don't necessarily believe that it is right but I can totally understand the economic argument that companies may choose to employ mainly British workers seeing as being a British person in Britain you have a higher likelihood of living in this country for a long period of time and giving back into the local economy and so you allow a greater economic interest in the long term than you would by employing a foreign national yes I think there's an interesting geographical question behind this as well I think we're often times thinking about skilled labour within Britain but British companies resort to developing countries for the vast majority of the labour that actually powers the country's economies so as a geographer who works in Bangladesh looking at the garment industry for example you see the masses of people who's very inexpensive labour is what allows us to buy cheap goods and yet they have no path to citizenship on the basis of their labour but you're raising a challenge to those who say British companies should give preference to British workers are you suggesting that if one thinks that then we have to call into question outsourcing correct and what do you think do you think that companies that outsource labour to Bangladesh because it's cheaper the textile industry for example is that wrong well being an American with what's happening presently in my country about the idea of America first with a president who also outsourced labour for his own garment company and yet says well the reason I did this is because of international economics and because you know that's just the way the world works but I don't think that that's fate I don't think it's destiny or needs to be that way there's certainly an argument to be made on clothing but the average person perhaps who's shopping at a large well known inexpensive retailer maybe there's other alternatives rather than relying just on cheap labour do you think that do you think it's patriotic maybe even a patriotic duty Rebecca to for British citizens to buy British produced goods or for Americans to buy American is that a patriotic obligation it's not that so much is the idea of demanding fair wages that if they you know international labour is what's contributing to cheap goods here is to say that I'm willing to pay a higher price for goods that are made abroad to avoid child labour for example if global capitalism leads companies to create factories in low wage countries say Bangladesh does that suggest that capitalism is unpatriotic I have many thoughts about capitalism but perhaps we should turn to somebody else who has a view about that what do you think I think by its very nature like due to this accumulation by dispossession that knows no national borders inherently in capitalism capitalism doesn't want doesn't want to know borders because opportunities to increase do not know borders capitalism you said doesn't want to know borders or to recognize them is that a good thing about capitalism or a bad thing excuse me is that a good or a bad thing about capitalism that it doesn't want to know or recognize borders morally good morally bad depends who is implicated like who's the lives implicated within those borders what does decisions implicated for people's lives we've been talking though about citizenship national citizenship presupposes borders knowing them recognizing them considering them to be morally relevant if capitalism resists borders or doesn't want to recognize borders does that mean that corporations are citizens of nowhere yes because it's profitable and is that a good thing or a bad thing that corporations be citizens of nowhere I personally think it's a bad thing it's a bad thing and on the question of borders for the movement of people we've been talking here about the movement of capital you think that there should be restrictions on immigration because borders matter there too but we cannot compare the movement of people fleeing injustice with the movement of capital looking to expand itself my name is Elizabeth I would say that companies recognize borders when it's profitable for them it's not about a moral question for them if you look at the companies that build factories and occupy territories in Palestine it's not about a moral question for them what does or doesn't make them money and how do you think it should be how do you think companies should conduct themselves should they give preference in hiring to citizens of their own country no they shouldn't they should be citizens of nowhere companies ideally yes but my point is that they aren't acting morally they're acting where the profit is back to Jake sorry Alex hello I think it's morally fantastic that capitalism doesn't pay much attention to borders I mean I grew up in Singapore it's a country that's got rich on providing cheap exports and it enables people all across the world millions of them hundreds of millions in China for example to get rich and lead lives that they couldn't have imagined before so I think often it's a bit parochal to say well is this bad for us I mean we need to look at the bigger picture and see how beneficial it is to other people as well I'd say that it's kind of difficult to pin it on the system I mean because the decisions that people make are what to buy in capitalism of their own so if everyone wants to buy British say then they could within the capitalist system but as a whole people chasing whatever's cheapest I think has done wonders for Asia where I grew up so I'm in favour you're in favour we've been talking about special obligations to citizens of one's own country whether with a charitable food bank or benefits funded by taxpayers or the conduct of companies in hiring and lurking in this discussion just beneath the surface are competing conceptions of what community means is the highest moral community the community of humankind undifferentiated by family or neighbourhood or nation or are there meaningful sources of community that should matter morally that are short of humanity as such I'd like to come at this from a different direction by asking how our students on the stage identify themselves and I would like to ask put the question in the following way would you agree or disagree with the following statement I have more in common with other students in my university regardless of nationality than I do with people in the place where I grew up how many agree with that statement how many disagree with that statement here we have more or less an even distribution of opinion now what I'd like to get at is the moral status of the commonality you feel whether with your fellow university students or the people in the places with whom you grew up so let's see who agrees and who disagrees with this question the normative question in an ideal world we would think of ourselves not as British or French or German or Chinese but simply as fellow human beings how many agree how many disagree here we have a roughly even distribution but I think the majority in favor of the universal cosmopolitan view and what about in the audience in response to that statement how many agree that in an ideal world we would think of ourselves not as British or French or German or Chinese but simply as fellow human beings how many agree with that and how many disagree the majority in St Paul's Cathedral agree but a substantial minority disagree of those who I want to hear from someone who disagrees here on the stage why do you disagree with that statement why is that not the idea tell us your name so I'm Tyler and I'm a pretty committed cosmopolitan but I'm a cosmopolitan not on the basis of stripping everyone of their identities but on the basis of acknowledging those identities and also acknowledging responsibility across places of origin and ethnicity nation etc so you believe these more particular identities are essential components of the kind of cosmopolitan ethic you would favor what do you say I think the question of like a more localized identity is incredibly important to use the university example I have more in common I think with the people I grew up with because we have a common shared experience that's rooted in a sense of place what I have in common with people who I go to university with is that we will likely have the same socio-economic background upon graduation we will probably go into sort of graduate white college jobs I don't want my bonds between people around me to be mediated by what class I am in terms of capital I wanted to be something more than that mediated by a sense of place and belonging and I get that from the town city I grew up in which is Liverpool far more than I do than the fact that I happen to be thrown into my university and I am a cosmopolitan guy who loves my university but I don't want my bonds to be mediated by capital I think the discussion we've had says that I don't think most people in this audience do want bonds to be mediated by capital and yet the meaningful sense of place we get from where we grew up on ideas of nations seems to be resisted but I think those two ideas are actually in conflict with each other and what's your name? Peter and where did you grow up Peter? Liverpool and why do you think your identity with the place where you grew up and the people you knew there why do you think that that's a more important source of your identity than the people then the profession you may enter into because A, there's just the fact that I was there at the most format of time of my life but I think beyond that people from Liverpool we have a specific accent we all know the same parts of the city that are fun to drink in we have we listen to the same music we all sort of grow up with the Beatles and these cultural touchstones and these ideas of self and place come from that and that's far more important to me than the profession you end up in What do you say? I just like to my name is Jacqueline I just like to add to that, I think that the bonds that we form with the people that we grow up with with the communities that we grow up in they're not trivial and I think that what you're talking about growing up in Liverpool and if we're closer to the people that we go to school with I mean who are we as individuals I think comes from our values and where do those values come from and I think at least for me maybe I'm flawed in thinking this but I definitely think I share more with my faith community and with my community back home than with a broad array of the international student body that is at the campus that I go to I think it's a really tricky question because of course in our identity there's both our interests that in a way draw due us to the university we go to but also the self-identity of the place you grew up in and as an Italian especially I feel it really strongly but I would like to reflect on the university as a place and I think that the most important thing is the mixture between these two things that in a way helps and encourage intercultural communication because university can actually help to make different cultures and different voices kind of like meld together and mix together in order to in a way create something new and something interesting among these different cultures that in a way get together and can really like explain the complexity of our world and so how did you vote on whether the ideal world is one where we overcome these national differences I think that I voted for like in a way overcome the national differences but I think that in order to overcome the national differences there should be like a mixture of different experiences and different culture and different backgrounds Yes Hi my name is Jason I think in an ideal world we should not think of and I do not agree that an ideal world should be one that everyone is sick as equal or have equal interests or everything is equal I think that in an ideal world basically because we are human we have intrinsically different values different preferences it is natural to evolve into different groups or even nationality if you believe so I think that in an ideal world there would be lots of different groups of people and the community itself is equally important in a sense that we allow people of different preferences to get together or from other natural preferences that we would need as a human being so I think that would be something that I would uphold I want to turn to Bishop Graham Tomlin you've been listening to this discussion I'd be interested to know in general what you make of it but especially on one of the philosophical and perhaps even theological conceptions that seem to be at stake here when there we've heard many articulate the view that the ideal we should aim at is to overcome the particular ties or sense belonging some might even say prejudice associated with particular identities including national identities whereas others have been making the argument that we need particular communities that they are not mere prejudices that they're analogous some say to the family that they should be affirmed whether for reasons of reciprocity or rooted identities we're edging up to the big question about whether the common good ideally is universal or whether the common good is irreducibly plural and particularist what do you think I think it's been a fascinating debate to listen to those two different perspectives that have come through in so many different ways and I guess the debate really has been around the local and the universal and how we value the local and how we value the universal and I guess one question that's come to me as I've been listening is that old statement that it's often easier to love humanity than to love your neighbor that in general it's easier to love the human race but actually in religious terms as a Christian I hear the words of Jesus saying your call is to love your neighbor in other words the thing about neighbors is that you don't choose your neighbor it's the person who happens to be in front of you you think of the parable of the good Samaritan it's the story of the person who is in the street in front of you and the two religious people pass by and it stops and actually helps so with that in mind I'm just thinking about the local and the universal why the local is is important is because why is it do you think harder to love the neighbor than to love humanity why is that? because your neighbor is often difficult your neighbor is not always easy to love but that's the person right next to you it's the person in the desk next to you at work it's the person who lives in the house next door it's the person you meet at the bus stop every day and that's not someone you choose and it seems to me that the importance of the local and that commitment to a local community whatever that may be it may be a family, it may be a neighbourhood it may be a city, it may be whatever that's quite important partly because variety and diversity is good we don't want everything to be exactly the same everybody to be exactly the same but also because it seems to me that those kind of commitments that we have over a long period of time to the same group of people actually cultivate virtues that make society work better if you have to try and keep on loving the same group of people over a period of time it cultivates patience and forgiveness and honesty and the ability to be a little bit humble because you kind of make mistakes and you get things right and so on and it's that sort of development of virtue that enables a society to work at the same time we need the universal as well if all we have is mere locality, mere difference then we're locked into it it seems to me that if essentially conflictual view of the world where if everything is just difference and there is no commonality no kind of unity to any sense of what it means to be the human race therefore we begin to end up with a view of the world where we're almost inevitably going to be in conflict one another because we don't have any common identity and value so I think that you know we need both the local and the universal and that's what's come out of this debate as you've been working with the communities affected by Grenfill which of these ethics if we can call them that have you found to be the most powerful it's very fascinating that both of them have come out very strongly the Grenfill community in North Kensington is a very very diverse community ethnically, religiously it's a very religious community in many ways it's very very diverse and in a sense what's actually been surprising out of that is that out of those diversities you get this kind of deep Islamic community in that area you get some deep Christian communities there you get some secular communities as well and that you've had those and out of those sort of moral visions out of those particular communities that I think over time have cultivated these ways of life these virtues have come coming together to support that community at the same time and I think Grenfill in its origins was a kind of failure to listen to our neighbor it was a failure to listen to the cries of people who really needed the help of the wider community but also it's been kind of the local communities it's been the kind of neighborhood associations it's been the churches the mosques are the very ones that have come forward to support that community yes thank you for that I'd like to see if some of the students would like to respond to what you've said hi my name's Karthig I think there's a there's like a fundamental difference between obligations to people who we really know like our family and our friends and people who are in our immediate neighborhood and then the obligations to this kind of imagined community that's like Britain Britain consists of 60 million people most of whom I'll never meet in my life I mean I can see why I would have obligations to the people I meet every day or the people who I'll meet regularly in my community my friends my family I don't see that that means I have to accept that I have obligations to 60 million people of Britain who I'll never meet over and above the obligations I have to all of humanity who I'll never meet yes toward the back yes I'm Tom and I think we've discussed a lot today about the nation state and these abstract ideas of Britain and countries and we actually haven't discussed as much of what the bishop was raising about local communities and local actors and actually when you go out into the country you see that people that are doing the most work in community and local bodies are volunteers local people in your churches your community groups, WIs those kind of things that is where most of the time the effort is being put into supporting local communities and local people and I think that's something that we've kind of missed today is actually that a lot of the stuff that is done is not this abstract national level it's people on the ground both in the UK and around the world there are eight organisations and non-state actors and individuals and how did you vote on the question first tell me your name again Tom how did you vote on the question of whether in an ideal world we would overcome differences of nationality for that matter of faith and simply think of one another as human beings how did you vote on that I voted that we can overcome that but I think I think there's kind of both that you can have both that you can be British and also recognise solidarity with people across the world you can have solidarity locally and internationally at the same time and there doesn't need to be a one or the other yes hello my name is Joshua and I just wanted to start by saying I think it's only appropriate in St Paul's Cathedral that we brought in a religious perspective so thank you Bishop for your words I myself also am a believer and a follower of Christ and I think one of the challenges I have in this conversation is identity so my citizenship where is my citizenship founded is it rooted in a nation state is it rooted in my identity and my belief in God is it rooted in my role as a husband and the different functionalities that I play and I think one of the things I appreciated about it was Tom your last perspective I was thinking about the local concept is idealistically we all would view ourselves as human we treat all as equal but the challenge is that right now where am I currently placed and I'm currently placed in London so if I'm here in London why not do my best to have an influence in the space that I've been given in the current moment and I think if we all thought that way it would make the world a little bit smaller in that sense thank you hi I'm Christine well I think ideally the idea of national identity should be dissolved identity is a very fluid concept so it depends on where you are at the moment and your interactions with other people for example I'm from Hong Kong so I have a Hong Kong identity but at the same time I studied here so I identified myself as a student studying in UK and especially because identity is so fluid and it would change over time with your experience that's why I think actually if you just anchor your identity on a nation is it will create many problems because it's like the idea of nation itself is like it's related to power like paradynamics or discourse but like at the same time like national identity is also important or like when we were discussing whether companies should employ British citizens or like welfare is an issue between like private and public interests yes in the back hi my name is Topi I think I have an interesting perspective on this debate because I didn't become a British citizen until 2007 when I was nine and to say that on an arbitrary day before the state's obligations to me or my obligations to the other 60 million people in this country suddenly changed is to say that I entered into some sort of moral contract with people at the age of nine which doesn't seem to make too much sense you know I think that coming back to the point about locality it's all well and good to say that you know you don't choose your neighbours and that you owe something to the people who are around you every single day but I think that takes a slightly anachronistic view of what we mean when we say local I think when we say that obligations to other people closest to us when I'm talking about family I think that ignores a lot of people again like me whose families do not live close to them only my brother lives in this country the rest of my family are spread all over the globe I think lots of people would agree that I still have an obligation to that family over and above what I would have to a British citizen above what I would have to reason may for example so how do we reconcile that in this debate how do we say we want to protect who's nearest to us we want to protect who's British we want to protect all those people who we see and meet every day but at the same time we want to unfurr the carpet of generosity and of provision based on need in my perspective I think going back to the very very first question you know is I must eat whether it's from a German citizen whether it's from a refugee no matter who it is I'm training to be a doctor and I'm training to work in the NHS where care is delivered based on clinical need and I think when we talk about giving things to people or hiring people all these sorts of deciding upon who should receive and who should we deny I think that the premise of who needs most is an unfallible one so need in the case of medical care should be the primary factor in allocating medical care and I did actually want to bring up the fact that that's no longer the case in this country that in the 23rd of October in 2017 new regulations came into force meaning that hospitals are now obliged to make sure that everyone using the NHS has British residency that they have a British passport and obviously that's led to a lot of racial profiling because how do you decide who to ask right who looks British how do we decide who is we let me ask you that and tell me your name again I'm Toppy Toppy let me ask you this you're training to be a doctor when you become a doctor will you feel and you became a British citizen at age nine you said do you feel a special obligation to practice medicine in Britain not for the fact that it is Britain no and why is that I would much prefer to work in a system that provides socialised medicine for all my complaints about the NHS we are very lucky to have it we are very lucky to work in a system where no yes I think I would feel rather differently about being a doctor in the US for example or for other countries where medicine isn't provided in quite the same way it is here all right thank you for that I want to put I want to put a quote from an Enlightenment philosopher to our students on the stage into our audience in Saint Paul the way the Enlightenment philosopher responded a little bit before the fact to Theresa May's conception of citizenship here's what Montesquieu said about the questions we've been debating if I knew something useful to me but prejudicial to my family I would reject it from my soul if I knew something useful to my family but not to my country I would try to forget it if I knew something useful to my country but prejudicial to Europe or useful to Europe but prejudicial to humankind I would regard it as a crime because I am a person before I am a Frenchman or rather I am a Frenchman or rather I am necessarily a person while I am a Frenchman only by chance was he right how many agree with Montesquieu on that how many agree on the stage a lot of hands are going up how many disagree viewer number of hands why do you disagree why is Montesquieu wrong I am an American American identity is important to me and I think that there is a value to the nation state and that the purpose of the nation state is to serve the people who are most in need and that the nation state can protect vulnerable populations and that there is value in difference and diversity of opinion and that I voted as well to the opposite on the previous question which was that in the ideal world are we all sort of one monolithic human sort of identity and I think that there is a value to local communities because local communities create diversity of values which creates a stronger human bond thank you, what do you think I think the various dynamics that were described in that quote between the nation between and Europe and also between the individual and the family are actually very interesting the source answers the question when to the nation state actually come we've heard a lot of quite interesting and intriguing talk about this establishing the idea of the nation state but in a sense it's a corollary of the very more much fundamental ideas of human affinity it's born out of the family that went to the tribes and without going too much into the anthropology of it I think if we're trying to disestablish that we are working to an extent against the idea of human affinity and I think that's something to be cautious about yes I think that one thing is identity which is undeniable but the other thing is fairness and how the straight treat with fairness everyone and I don't think identity is a cost for equal treatment for the state I mean yes my name's Tom a lot of the things we've been discussing have been predicated on the idea of need and I think we came back to that with Topi talking about being a doctor and I wonder how far need can be contextualised I think if we look historically we could say that need does have a contextual basis for instance we have a need for cleanliness today that was perhaps not a need but I want to stick with the passage the moral claim of Montesquil we've covered the issue of need who who agrees with him who agrees with him yes it's Oliver right Oliver you agree with Montesquil my name is Ute I agree that because the way I understood is that we can have our identity but if we do harm to another level we retract from the decision or the action we have taken right so I think in a way I hope I understood right but if we today live in a globalised world our actions go beyond where we live and beyond our national state but we are still responsible for our actions and that is why I think we need to not mutually exclude identity as we have done it like do we want to be local or do we want to be international I think that is not really possible yes there's been a lot of talk about identity and that being rooted in your national identity and I think what we also need to remember is not everybody identifies with their national identity I live in a country that voted for Theresa May and voted for David Cameron twice that voted for Brexit and would probably legalise death penalty if they could I find all of those things abhorrent but I don't identify with those but I want your view on Montesquil's philosophy that universal identities are higher than particular identities what do you think sure and I find because of all of those things I find people in Europe much more uncommon than what I find with people in my country often because I find many of the things that my country has decided to do abhorrent I think that my name is Zach by the way I think that both in the discussion we've been having tonight and in Montesquil's quote we've seen basically a number of monolithic identities or monolithic ideas, monolithic blocks and there hasn't been enough of a discussion about how these ideas or these identities evolve with time so if I could possibly posit there's been this focus so far on the state in particular and our loyalty to the state and morality is flowing either from that or in rejecting that can we imagine for a second the state as being a norm and norms evolve through time let's look at the dimension of time here for a second so if it evolves through time and morality is achieved through the pursuit and achievement of peace and or order then there are a couple of things we need to know norms need to be buttressed and reinforced to a certain extent but at the same time be flexible enough in order to evolve so right now that means we need to have some sort of identity related to the state and some sort of loyalty and inculcate that but at the same time be flexible enough to create a more globalized world thank you Montesquil's idea that universal loyalties and allegiances are higher morally than more particular ones, pot? so I think we have to remember that we're considering moral ideas here so when you endorse a cosmopolitan universalist idea you're not necessarily saying that identities wouldn't exist you're saying that we shouldn't base our moral judgments on things which are arbitrary so that's what the quote is getting at so we should base things on necessary conditions which is that we are all people and if you take a rights based approach you have rights in virtue of being persons that should be not eroded or changed based on your identity which isn't to say that identity wouldn't be a big part of the individual but that we shouldn't use that to make decisions but I also want to say that I want to be cautious in making a very ahistorical approach on things like that so what do you think there's particularly the history of colonialism, patriarchy that kind of thing, we should be aware of these things when dealing with the needs of others yes thank you, I'm Timothy and to add on this I'd like to say that our world today is very different than the alignment's world in that there is the ecological catastrophe and that calls for cooperation and to precisely overcome this kind of realistic understanding of the world where we are competing against orders or referring ourselves to bounded communities so if we are to survive we need precisely to refer to this shared fate that we do have yes I also think it comes down to the way we affect things even if we place universal goods above local ones so we agree that universal goods are things like food and clothing and shelter and all the rest of it the way you can affect that tends to be at the local level the institutions that can actually affect these moral goods that can provide the things that we morally would like them to provide these are primarily going to be local institutions based around this sense of place and belonging in a local area be that a city, a town or a country and I think that's the common good is universal we want universal things to happen we want good things to happen to everyone but I think the way we affect that is through this idea of locality alright well we've heard some powerful arguments for universal or cosmopolitan conceptions of identity and community and we've heard little less frequently on this stage but powerfully none the less arguments that more particular identities and forms of community including families and nations in localities, neighborhoods matter morally and are not just a matter of prejudice to be overcome I've been pressed I think by Alex to say what I think I'd start with that passage from Montesquieu we've been discussing one of the logical implications of that universalist or cosmopolitan ethic of Montesquieu is that it's not so easy to account for the moral weight ever mind of fellow citizens in the nation state but to account for friends if our encompassing loyalties should always take precedence over our more local or particular ones then perhaps the distinction even between friends and strangers should ideally be overcome Montesquieu doesn't shrink from this radical conclusion a truly virtuous man he wrote would come to the aid of the most distant stranger as quickly as to his own friend and then he adds if men were perfectly virtuous they wouldn't have friends it's a striking concession it's difficult it seems to me to imagine a world in which we were all so virtuous that we had no friends only a universal disposition to friendliness the problem it seems to me is not that such a world would be difficult to bring about but that it would be difficult to recognize as a human world the love of humanity is a noble sentiment but most of the time we live our lives by smaller solidarities now this may reflect certain limits to the bounds of moral sympathy but more important it reflects the fact that we learned to love humanity not in general but through its particular expressions to affirm is morally relevant to particular communities that locate us in the world from neighborhoods to nations isn't to say that we owe nothing to persons as persons as fellow human beings at their best local solidarities gesture beyond themselves toward broader horizons of moral concern including the horizon of our common humanity but as we've seen in the politics of the day the backlash against decades of globalization that seemed to consign national identities and allegiances to the dustbin of history as we've seen in the backlash against this tendency people people won't pledge allegiance to vast and distant entities whatever their importance unless they feel those institutions are somehow connected to political arrangements that reflect the identity of the participants we're seeing that today we're seeing that in the reassertion in many places around the world of nationalism with the vengeance all this brings us back to citizenship and the common good the global media and markets that shape our lives seemed to beckon us to a world beyond boundaries and belonging but the civic resources we need to master these forces or at least to contend with them are still to be found in the places and stories the memories and meanings the incidents and identities that locate us in the world that give our lives their moral particularity we've heard discussion here earlier in the debate about pride and self-determination how can that be cultivated and sustained without particular places and allegiances and it's true since the days of Aristotle's polis the civic tradition has viewed self-government as an activity rooted in a particular place a city or a locality or a nation an activity carried out by citizens loyal to that place and the way of life it embodies now today it's different self-government today requires the politics that plays itself out in a multiplicity of settings we've heard that emphasized repeatedly in our debate today for neighborhoods to nations to the world and so the civic virtue distinctive to our time I suppose to negotiate our way among these sometimes overlapping sometimes conflicting obligations and it's also the ability to live with the tension to which these multiple loyalties give rise but to do this requires a morally more engaged debate about community and citizenship and the common good kind to which we have become accustomed requires the kind of debate that we've begun at least thanks to the students on this stage today and so to our participants and audience here in St. Paul's Cathedral and to our listeners thank you for joining me for this episode of The Public Philosopher