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Mark Kingwell Quotes

Mark Gerald Kingwell is a Canadian professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College. He specialises in theories of politics and culture.

Kingwell has published twelve books, most notably, A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, which was awarded the Spitz Prize for political theory in 1997. In 2000 Kingwell received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, for contributions to theory and criticism. He has held visiting posts at institutions including: University of Cambridge, University of California at Berkeley, and City University of New York where he held the title of Weissman Distinguished Professor of Humanities.

He studied at the University of Toronto, editing The Varsity through 1983 to 1984 and the University of Toronto Review from 84-85. He received his BA degree from St. Michael's College with High Distinction in 1985, his MLitt degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1987, and both his M.Phil and PhD degrees from Yale University in 1989 and 1991 respectively. He was married to Gail Donaldson in 1988. The marriage ended in divorce in 2004. In 2018 he was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.Kingwell is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, the literary quarterly Descant, the political monthly This Magazine and The Globe and Mail's books section. He was also a drinks columnist for the men's magazine Toro. He was formerly a columnist for the National Post, and a contributing editor of Saturday Night. He frequently appears on television and radio, often on the CBC, and is well known for his appearance in the documentary film The Corporation. He has delivered the George Grant, Harold Innis, Marx Wartofsky and Larkin-Stuart memorial lectures.

Kingwell’s work has been translated into ten languages, and he lectures to academic and popular audiences around the world. From 2001 to 2004, he was chair of the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum. His work on philosophy, art, and architecture has appeared in many leading academic journals and magazines, including The Journal of Philosophy, The Philosophical Forum, Ethics, Political Theory, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Utne Reader, Adbusters, The Walrus, Harvard Design Magazine, Canadian Art, Azure, Toronto Life, The Globe and Mail, and National Post.

He describes himself as a social democrat and a "recovering Catholic." According to the Canadian Who's Who 2006, he also enjoys running, baseball, basketball, jazz, films and pop music. He has two brothers: Sean and Steven. Wikipedia  

✵ 1. March 1963
Mark Kingwell photo
Mark Kingwell: 21   quotes 0   likes

Famous Mark Kingwell Quotes

“War is smaller in scale than in recent memory, but it is far more ambiguous, intractable, and nasty. Money flows more quickly than ever, but it is still somehow manages to gather and puddle in certain places, for certain people rather then others.”

Mark Kingwell

Preface, p. viii.
The World We Want (2000)

“Never before, I suspect, have so many people been so rich to so little purpose.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 209.

“It wasn't atheism and corruption they feared, but inquiry.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 26.

“We tend to think of the problems of globalization and cultural identity as peculiar to our times. In fact they are rooted in ancient problems of civic belonging.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 1, The World We Have, p. 3.

“It is only through a devoted attention to the details of objects and faces in the modern urban scene, he argues, that the commodity fetish of capitalism can be effectively dispelled.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 141.

“Paradoxically, the problems of politics often arise not in the form of a problem of scarcity, but as one of abundance.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 171

Mark Kingwell Quotes

“Dreams are evidence that we are creatures who produce more meaning than we can ourselves understand.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 146.

Dreams , Understanding

“Socrates was likewise right that pissing people off is how we first, and maybe best, go about the business of provoking thought.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 159.

People , Business

“We don't know what the future will bring, but that's because we are ever in the process of creating it, not because it is an alien force to which we have to submit.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 222.

Future

“All social space is suffused with political meanings and agendas, the very stones and walls a kind of testament to the ongoing struggles for liberation and justices.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 174.

Justice

“Friendship requires a leap, not of faith but of regard.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 85.

Friendship , Faith

“How doe we create the world we want, rather than a world that just happens to us?”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 207.

World

“Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 1, The World We Have, p. 22.

Books , Nature , Falseness

“For every apparent gain, in short, we now observe a balancing danger. This is the world we have created.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 165.

World

“Tyranny is abhorrent, freedom benefits all, whereas violence benefits no one for long.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 90.

Freedom

“But what I mean is not as odd as it might sound - and is by no means intended as the last word on the subject, only the first.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 68

“I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.”

Mark Kingwell

Preface, p. viii.
The World We Want (2000)

Idea

“Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 3, Virtues And Vices, p. 77.

Fools

“Politics is rather the creation of the best possible polity out of the deep inner needs of its citizenry - who are only some of its members.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 38.

“We are capitalism made flesh.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 184.

“Our desires are never wholly transparent, even to ourselves.”

Mark Kingwell

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 2, Rights And Duties, p. 42.

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