Imperfection is either a half-empty bottle or a half-full one: we can just as well argue that our relative experience justifies a degree of objectivity as that it shows all facts or all values to be irredeemably subjective. But most Western philosophers throughout history seem to have assumed that imperfection is a half-empty bottle – often with disastrous results.

For both Batman and the Joker, violence overthrew a coherent picture of the world without installing a replacement; they share this realisation and arebound together in an effort to make sense of it. Like violators of the tabernacle or visitors in Oz, each has glimpsed behind the curtain of appearances.

One generation can hand on to the next not only its traditions but its unrealised ideals. So you can have a radical communitarianism as well as a conservative communitarianism, but I didn’t really get that voice in Britain, whereas you tend to get that voice in America.