A conversation between the philosopher and the venture capitalist.
Peter Thiel, who had a nomadic childhood as the son of German parents who eventually settled in America, co-founded PayPal, the online payments company, in 1998 at the age of 31. He ran the company, working alongside Elon Musk, until its sale to Ebay in 2002 for $1.5bn. He has since become one of the world’s richest venture capitalists, having been a founding investor in Facebook and SpaceX. He also chairs Palantir, the data-mining company that has ongoing contracts with the British state.
Thiel spoke at the 2016 Republican convention in support of Donald Trump, on whose presidential transition team he served and to whom he donated $1.25m. He has disavowed doing so again.
In October he gave the Roger Scruton memorial lecture in Oxford and spoke with the philosopher and “New Statesman” contributing writer John Gray afterwards. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. They address the question of science – what it is, when it works, how it has been held back – and the delusions of our current cultural moment.
