He is interviewed at 3AM, though, unfortunately, the first part of the interview is on a subject on which Singer is really quite feeble, namely, Marx--apparently OUP has issued a new edition of his Marx: A Very Short Introduction and pressed him to do the interview for promotional purposes. Alas, like Michael Tanner's Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction in the same series, Singer's book is not very good as an introduction to the thinker in question (I am referring to the first edition, which I had thought had vanished for good down a black hole of obscurity [at least among Marx scholars]--but nothing in the interview suggests Singer has learned much about Marx in the interim). For anyone wanting a reliable introduction to Marx, Jonathan Wolff's Why Read Marx Today is still the best bet. (For Nietzsche, Peter Kail's forthcoming book will quickly dominate the market as the best short, readable and actually reliable introduction.) The interview does give a flavor of Singer's level of understanding of Marx. I'll discuss a few examples either later this evening or tomorrow, but since I see the interview circulating on social media, I wanted to issue a caveat emptor! Although I'm critical of much of Singer's philosophical work, much of it is clearly worth reading, even for skeptics; the Marx stuff is not.
More soon....
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