Concept

Bernard Crick

Overview

Sir Bernard Rowland Crick (16 December 1929 – 19 December 2008) was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views can be summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He sought to arrive at a "politics of action", as opposed to a "politics of thought" or of ideology, and he held that "political power is power in the subjunctive mood." He was a leading critic of behaviouralism.

Crick is today popularly remembered for having written the first version of the controversial Life in the UK test, a requirement to obtain British citizenship but criticised since its inception for its factual errors and misrepresentations.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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1. All these causes lead Parliaments to betray the people, consciously or unconsciously; and it is no wonder if they have produced a certain aloofness from democratic theory in the more vigorous champions of labor.

   Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom

   States what Bernard Crick is.

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2. The belief that thought and its communication are now free simply because legal restrictions which once obtained have been done away with is absurd. Its currency perpetuates the infantile state of social knowledge.

   John Dewey, The public and its problems

   States what Bernard Crick is.

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3. The necessities which initiate government, themselves prescribe the actions of government. If its actions do not respond to the necessities, they are unwarranted. The authority of law is, then, by the hypothesis, derived; and can never transcend the authority of that from which it is derived. If general good, or welfare, or utility, is the supreme end, and if State enactments are justified as means to this supreme…

   Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics

   Close in meaning to Bernard Crick; the term itself is not named.

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Philosophers who discussed Bernard Crick

• Michael Oakeshott

Related ideas

• BBC News
• George Orwell
• The Observer
• Labour Party (UK)
• The Guardian
• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of Glasgow
• London School of Economics
• Birkbeck, University of London
• Edinburgh

Opposing perspectives

• London School of Economics

Place in the tradition

Part of Relativism.

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