Your latest book is called Who Owns the Moon. Who owns the moon?
Well, nobody does and that’s part of the problem. Billions are being invested in exploiting the moon, because there are some very valuable resources there that are in short supply back on this planet. There will be great technological spin offs when there’s settlement on the moon. But I wrote the book because I feel that the regulatory framework that exists for activity out in space is very, very weak.
There’s one UN treaty from 1967, which was really a Cold War treaty about preventing the militarisation of space. It designated the moon as the kind of terra nullius: it’s just anybody’s and if you can get there, you can do what you like there. The moon belongs to nobody, which means it belongs to everybody. But all activity out there should be for the benefit of mankind, not for Elon Musk or the Chinese government.
You’re famous for your amazing head of hair. Have you ever shaved it?
I’ve never shaved it off. I used to get a lot of stick for it when I was younger and it was even longer. People would make jokes about how much product I use on it, which is actually not true - all I use is some salt spray. People think I have whole cupboards full of hair lacquer and god knows what else.
What is the strangest thing you have done for love?
Oh my god. So many. I’m one of those people who loves not wisely, but too well. I’ve been seriously in love half a dozen times in my life. I once fell in love with an English Sinologist and she was going to spend a year working in China. I couldn’t bear the idea of being separated so I went to the Chinese embassy and gave them my CV and suddenly I got an invitation from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to go be a visiting professor there. It was a really, really wonderful year.
What do you do when you can’t get to sleep?
I’m very fortunate in usually not having trouble with that. But if I do, I’ve got a stock set of things that I imagine myself doing. One of them is playing cricket for England - I go through this whole routine where I take a lot of wickets and I make a lot of runs. That’s fantastic. If a fairy godmother turned up and gave me some wishes, one of them would be that I could play international cricket.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Do not to allow yourself to be inhibited by other people’s negative responses. You’re never going to be able to please everybody. There are going to be some people who simply don’t like the cut of your jib.
You know, I use Twitter - I refuse to call it anything else - to complain about Brexit. Somebody once said to me, “I really admire the way you keep moaning about Brexit despite all the trolls having a go at you”. And I said, “What are trolls?” Being a complete tourist in digital land, I didn’t realise people could write to me, so I didn’t see all these horrible things. My god, it is terrible what some people say. But some of them really make me laugh.
Which work of literature, film or music do you return to most?
I’m a great lover of classical and romantic music, anything from Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven. I am a great lover of opera too. A lot of people think, “it’s just a fat guy and a fat lady, how boring”. But I find it deeply moving.
In Madame Butterfly there’s a famous aria called Un bel dì, vedremo, which always makes me weep. Music is the universal language – Schopenhauer pointed out that music was the one art that lifts us all above the level of transcendence into an experience where we feel fully connected with everything in the universe.
What is the oldest thing you own?
A copy of GH Lewis’s A Biographical History of Philosophy, which I bought at the age of 14, so back in the late medieval period. I read it so often that it quite literally fell apart so it’s all taped up and practically unreadable. I got interested in philosophy when I was about 12 and read a translation of Plato’s Dialogues. I was completely bowled over by the fact that these great figures had devoted their lives to try to think these things through. I thought, “That’s brilliant, I’m going to do that.”
If you have to fight a famous person, who would it be, and who would win?
I’d like to fight Boris Johnson. He’s done a lot of harm, a great deal of damage and I very, very strongly object to several things he’s done. And I’d win, there is no question.
Do you prefer to be called Anthony or AC?
My name Anthony spelled with an H, but it is pronounced “Antony”. The name comes from Antonines in Rome - one of the most famous was Marcus Aurelius. Some idiot in the Renaissance thought that maybe the name Antony comes from “anthos” in Greek, which means flower. So if you are an Anthony with an H, you’re a flower, rather than a Roman emperor. I’d much rather be a Roman emperor.
As a philosopher, are you surprised by the questions people approach you with?
I’ve always taken the view that being a philosopher is a license to stick your nose into everything. I’m not just interested in classical philosophical problems, but also political and social issues, and the impact of our tremendous advances in the natural sciences over the last century, which give us a richer understanding of who we are, and how we relate to one another and to our planet. So I tend to get asked about pretty well anything regarded as complicated or problematic. Cab drivers in London tend to ask me what the meaning of life is - I know what it is, by the way.
AC Grayling is speaking at Melbourne Writers’ Festival on 11 and 12 May. His book Who Owns the Moon? is out now in the UK and Australia, and on 7 May in the US.
