Humanity United: David Livingstone Smith | GP Interview #17

This is the seventeenth in a series of written interviews with thinkers, artists, activists and other luminaries around the world, people whose life’s work resonates with our founding principles.

Our new friend David Livingstone Smith is professor of philosophy at the University of New England. David is an award-winning author who has published nine books, including Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, which won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for non-fiction.

David’s newest book is On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It published by Oxford University Press in July, 2020. His next book, Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, will be published by Harvard University Press in 2021.He lives in New Hampshire with his wife, the philosopher Subrena Smith, and their dog, a beagle mix named Zadie Smith.

GP: What do you mean when you use the word “dehumanization?”

DLS: That’s a great question to begin with, because the word “dehumanization” is used in very many different ways. I use “dehumanization” to mean a kind of attitude towards others — the attitude of…