David Livingstone Smith interviewed by ‘The Guardian’

David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, was recently interviewed by the British daily newspaper The Guardian for an article about the increasing problem of homelessness in England.

The article points out that the problem is getting worse and suggests government officials are doing little to address it.

The article quotes Mark Fields, a British Conservative Party politician, calling a local homeless charity “a magnet for these undesirables to flood into Victoria.”

The Guardian reporter Poppy Noor reached out to Smith because of the award-winning book he authored Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. The book explores how we sometimes depict groups of people as somewhat less than human.

Smith told Noor that partaking in dehumanization makes us feel less guilty.

“When you judge that they are inferior and defective, that relieves us from the burdens of guilt and the threat of compassion,” Smith stated in the article. “Because when you feel it, that means something needs to be done.”

Smith is currently working on two more books on the subject of dehumanization—one to be published by Harvard University Press and the other by Oxford University Press. His paper "Manufacturing monsters: dehumanization and public policy" appeared in The Palgrave Companion to Philosophy and Public Policy.