What has the cautionary tale of Ernst Nolte to do with the study of philosophy? It suggests to me that a thorough training in philosophy does not necessarily inoculate a student from holding false and even dangerous views. Nolte was well-versed in ancient and modern philosophy, read several languages and wrote his PhD thesis on Marx. His philosophical background was reflected in the self-consciously obscure language of “transcendence” in which he cloaked what proved to be unsavoury ideas and prejudices. He applied Hegelian dialectics to the study of fascism: the Action Française was the thesis, Italian Fascism the antithesis, and German National Socialism the synthesis; the result, Three Faces of Fascism, was for many years a standard text on student reading lists. His interpretation of the first half of the 20th century as “the European Civil War” has also found echoes. Nolte may have been as bad a philosopher as he was an historian, but he mastered the power of both professions to dominate our consciousness.

Philosophy, then, is not some kind of moral panacea. Its influence can be bad as well as good. Of course, Nolte might have become a Nazi apologist even without Heidegger’s indoctrination. In any case, people disagree about the whether such influences amount to “corruption of youth”: few would now defend the decision of the citizens of Athens to put Socrates to death. My daughter does not need Peter Singer to teach her the virtues of veganism, because she has already reached the conclusion that farming and killing animals for food cannot be ethically justified. But if she had not previously taken this view, and Singer had persuaded her to be a vegan, we as her parents might have worried about whether she was safe under his tutelage. In his new book, clearly aimed at a lay readership including students, he defends adult sibling incest, the cloning of human beings, and the euthanasia of disabled infants. All Singer’s arguments about bioethics may be summed up in one sentence: “We have no obligation to allow every being with the potential to become a rational being to realise that potential.” Yet elsewhere in the book, he argues against allowing the extinction of our species because if we do, “we will have blown the opportunity to create something truly wonderful: an astronomically large number of generations of human beings living rich and fulfilling lives, and reaching heights of knowledge and civilisation that are beyond the limits of our imagination.” Only a few rigorous pessimists, such as Arthur Schopenhauer or his South African disciple David Benatar, could disagree. Yet these future generations are only potential human beings, towards whom, according to Singer, we have no obligations. Why should we care about the future of our civilisation if we don’t think human life here and now necessarily matters? And what does it say about the philosophical community that Singer is now its most popular representative?

Despite all these doubts about whether philosophers really are fit guardians of posterity, I’m quite sanguine about placing my daughter in their hands for the next three years. You can’t beat seeing how philosophy is done — let alone doing it yourself. I have never forgotten the thrill of giving a paper to A.J. “Freddie” Ayer’s seminar at Oxford. I also enjoyed chairing a Standpoint Dialogue between Peter Singer — who is personally likeable, however outré some of his views — and the theologian Nigel Biggar. Intelligent students can decide for themselves whether their minds are being opened or closed by what they hear in the lecture hall and seminar room. A little modesty from the professors, though, would not come amiss. Philosophers today want to change the world; the point of them, though, is to try to understand it.