Peter Herbst interviewed by Stewart Harris [sound recording]

Herbst speaks of his family background as Jews in Germany; the first signs of National Socialism; the Nazis breaking into his family home (1933) and threatening his father with internment in a concentration camp; being sent to England as a result of this to complete his education; his education in politics at Haileyburg College (U.K.); how after graduating, without work permit or citzenship he lived cheaply in London; following Dunkirk being arrested and sent to an internment camp in Liverpool and later shipped to Fremantle in 1941; his views of British authoritarianism compared to Australian equalitarianism; volunteering for the Australian Army in 1942 as well as commencing philosophy at University of Melbourne; his life with the Boyd family.

Herbst discusses how he became involved in a pottery business with Arthur Boyd; Melbourne's Art Renaissance period; tutoring at university; taking up a scholarship to Oxford University (1950); his criticism of the philosophical doctrines in vogue at Oxford, particularly scientism; in 1955 he took a lectureship at Gold Coast University in Ghana, resigning when the pervading Communist ideology destroys free inquiry; later the invitation to the Chair in Philosophy at Canberra University College and his acceptance, philosophers in Canberra deeply divided, being been slandered by the feminists, notably Elizabeth Reid, with accusations of chauvinism; the adoption of his two children; his further travels overseas; retiring from ANU to take up work in the environmental movement; his bitter attack on today's consumerism and loss of humanist principles.