I am aware that the notion that there is “only interpretation” has spread far and wide and has legitimised appeals to suspicion and resentment that feel no obligation to answer to reality. It is bizarre to confuse the profound difficulties that can arise in the attempt to determine truth for there being no truth. I encounter people who interpret the first amendment – the right to freedom of speech – as meaning they have the right to believe what they prefer to believe, which therefore has full standing as truth. This is not a basis for rational discussion. We have to resist the great temptation to embrace our own preferences over what we might learn from a disciplined objectivity. – Guardian, 21 January 2017
(Edinburgh, August 2016)
Paul Hodson 