Speaker:  Professor Quassim Cassam, University of Warwick

Chair: Professor Richard English, Queen's University Belfast

About the Lecture

Professor Cassam will offer an analysis of three varieties of political extremism. Methods extremism consists in the use of extreme methods in pursuit of one’s political objectives. Ideological extremism is a position in ideological space, and ideological extremists are those who endorse an extremist ideology. To be a psychological extremist is to have an extremist mindset, including extremist preoccupations, attitudes, and ways of thinking. Following a discussion of extremism in these three senses, and the relationship between them, he will consider the suggestion that it is acceptable, or even desirable, to be an extremist for justice. This will lead to a discussion of the relationship between extremism and radicalism.

Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis

About the Speaker

Professor Quassim Cassam

Quassim Cassam is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick and an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. He was previously Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, Professor of Philosophy at UCL, and Reader in Philosophy at Oxford University. He was a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford for 18 years and later a Professorial Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. He is the author of seven books, including Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis (Routledge 2021), Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political (Oxford 2019), and Conspiracy Theories (Polity 2019). His research interests include vice epistemology and the philosophy of terrorism and extremism.

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About the Chair

Professor Richard English

Professor Richard English is Director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, where he is also Professor of Politics. His books include Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (2003) and Does Terrorism Work? A History (2016). He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In 2018 he was awarded a CBE for services to the understanding of modern-day terrorism and political history. In 2019 he was awarded the Royal Irish Academy's Gold Medal in the Social Sciences.

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