Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

So Christopher Hitchens is gone. He died in harness having just published feisty rebuttal to Nietzche aphorism that whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Like a lot of people, I often found I disagreed with him, particularly during the early years of the Bush administration. But I consistently admired his will to reason and particularly the way in which he bravely followed the consequences of his reasoning. He was a journalist with a philosopher’s aspiration to truth and honesty which is rare these days, even among philosophers.
Vanity Fair and the Guardian each have a fine memoriam and Vanity Fair has a nice collection of his rejoinders on video.