Author, researcher and journalist Karen Armstrong discusses the need to apply Socratic philosophy to the counterproductive ferocity of modern debate. /"A real philosophical debate… conducted in a spirit of malice or hatred will not work," she says.
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Ms. Armstrong describes how Islam, Judaism and Christianity have been diverted from a common moral goal. She is now working with the TED community to build a Compassion Charter. – Chautauqua Establishment
Karen Armstrong is one of the most provocative and original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world. Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun who left a British convent to pursue a degree in modern literature at Oxford. In 1982, she wrote a book about her seven years at the convent, Through the Narrow Gate, which angered and challenged Catholics around the world; her recent book The Spiral Staircase is about her later spiritual awakening after leaving the convent, when she began to develop her iconoclastic view of the great monotheistic religions. She has written more than 20 books on the ideas of what Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have in common and their effect on world events, including the masterful A History of God and Holy War: The Crusades and their impact on the world today. His latest book is The Bible: A Biography. Her meditations on personal faith and religion (she calls herself an independent monotheist) spark discussion – particularly her view of fundamentalism, which she views in historical context as an outgrowth of modern culture.
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