Regular Skreeworld followers will know how highly we regarded the scourge of idle thinking. Many times his reasoning came to differ from mine yet he always kept my attention, always taught me to buck my ideas up. The Canadian debate with Tony Blair 'Is Religion a Force for Good?' is still there on You Tube and should be required viewing for anyone interested in the God debate. Indeed it should be watched by anyone interested in debating. It wasn't so much that he wiped the floor with Blair intelectualy that I found so impressive, it was how he respected Blairs points, how even whilst suffering from terminal cancer his mental strength shone through. At the end, when asked which of Blairs arguments he found most convincing he proceeded to inform Blair of better arguments for his case.
After this debate it was common knowledge that Hitchins was facing the last stage of his life. His memoir of the year before reads like a premonition as he begins with a mistaken programme comment on his death. Jeremy Paxmans last interview with Hitchins finds Paxman in unusually humble mode. One suspects that this is out of intelectual respect saved only for the very smart rather than any consideration for his terminal decline. Arrogant religious bigots offered to pray on his behalf, others claimed that cancer was nemesis for his blasphemy and wondered if he would repent on his deathbed. The horror of hearing this appalled me yet I feel is reflective on how Hitchins reasoning undermined their faith.
What seems to have inspired feelings in so many over his death is a consensus that Hitchins was of a different time and that the world is a far emptier place for his passing. In times where people comment on Darwin, Freud, Einstein, Marx without ever having read their work. In a time where reading about these great writers work is deemed sufficient to comment, these days of google and wikipedia, the loss of Hitchins and his ilk is serious for us all. We may not have commentators so steeped in reading, so embroyled in intelectual history. To read what he did and wrote will never convey the depth of the place from which he spoke.
Truth is the ultimate strength and you can aim for no better than that.
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