150 episodes

From Altruism to Wittgenstein, philosophers, theories and key themes.

In Our Time: Philosophy BBC Radio 4

    • History
    • 4.1 • 22 Ratings

From Altruism to Wittgenstein, philosophers, theories and key themes.

    Condorcet

    Condorcet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-94), known as the Last of the Philosophes, the intellectuals in the French Enlightenment who sought to apply their learning to solving the problems of their world. He became a passionate believer in the progress of society, an advocate for equal rights for women and the abolition of the slave trade and for representative government. The French Revolution gave him a chance to advance those ideas and, while the Terror brought his life to an end, his wife Sophie de Grouchy 91764-1822) ensured his influence into the next century and beyond.
    With
    Rachel Hammersley
    Professor of Intellectual History at Newcastle University
    Richard Whatmore
    Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History
    And
    Tom Hopkins
    Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College
    Producer: Simon Tillotson
    Reading list:
    Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (University of Chicago Press, 1974)
    Keith Michael Baker, ‘On Condorcet’s Sketch’ (Daedalus, summer 2004)
    Lorraine Daston, ‘Condorcet and the Meaning of Enlightenment’ (Proceedings of the British Academy, 2009)
    Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago University Press, 2010)
    Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (eds), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially ‘Ideology and the Origins of Social Science’ by Robert Wokler
    Gary Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1985)
    Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati (eds.), Condorcet: Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
    Kathleen McCrudden Illert, A Republic of Sympathy: Sophie de Grouchy's Politics and Philosophy, 1785-1815 (Cambridge University Press, 2024)
    Iain McLean and Fiona Hewitt (eds.), Condorcet: Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 1994)
    Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment, (Harvard University Press, 2001)
    Richard Whatmore, The End of Enlightenment (Allen Lane, 2023)
    David Williams, Condorcet and Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

    • 50 min
    Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

    Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's ideas on what happiness means and how to live a good life. Aristotle (384-322BC) explored these almost two and a half thousand years ago in what became known as his Nicomachean Ethics. His audience then were the elite in Athens as, he argued, if they knew how to live their lives well then they could better rule the lives of others. While circumstances and values have changed across the centuries, Aristotle's approach to answering those questions has fascinated philosophers ever since and continues to do so.
    With
    Angie Hobbs
    Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
    Roger Crisp
    Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford
    And
    Sophia Connell
    Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London
    Producer: Simon Tillotson
    Reading list:
    J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 1981)
    Aristotle (ed. and trans. Roger Crisp), Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
    Aristotle (trans. Terence Irwin), Nicomachean Ethics (Hackett Publishing Co., 2019)

    Aristotle (trans. H. Rackham), Nicomachean Ethics: Loeb Classical Library (William Heinemann Ltd, 1962)
    Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle: Past Masters series (Oxford University Press, 1982)
    Gerard J. Hughes, Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Routledge, 2013)
    Richard Kraut (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
    Michael Pakaluk, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
    A. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (University of California Press, 1981)
    Nancy Sherman, The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue (Clarendon Press, 1989)
    J.O. Urmson, Aristotle’s Ethics (John Wiley & Sons, 1988)

    • 52 min
    Solon the Lawgiver

    Solon the Lawgiver

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy.
    In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war.
    Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver.
    With
    Melissa Lane
    Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University
    Hans van Wees
    Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London
    and

    William Allan
    Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford
    Producer Luke Mulhall

    • 51 min
    Tycho Brahe

    Tycho Brahe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.
    In 1572 Brahe's observations of a new star challenged the idea, inherited from Aristotle, that the heavens were unchanging. He went on to create his own observatory complex on the Danish island of Hven, and there, working before the invention of the telescope, he developed innovative instruments and gathered a team of assistants, taking a highly systematic approach to observation. A second, smaller source of renown was his metal prosthetic nose, which he needed after a serious injury sustained in a duel.
    The image above shows Brahe aged 40, from the Atlas Major by Johann Blaeu.
    With
    Ole Grell
    Emeritus Professor in Early Modern History at the Open University
    Adam Mosley
    Associate Professor of History at Swansea University
    and
    Emma Perkins
    Affiliate Scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

    • 53 min
    Rawls' Theory of Justice

    Rawls' Theory of Justice

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1921 - 2002) which has been called the most influential book in twentieth century political philosophy. It was first published in 1971. Rawls (pictured above) drew on his own experience in WW2 and saw the chance in its aftermath to build a new society, one founded on personal liberty and fair equality of opportunity. While in that just society there could be inequalities, Rawls’ radical idea was that those inequalities must be to the greatest advantage not to the richest but to the worst off.
    With
    Fabienne Peter
    Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick
    Martin O’Neill
    Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of York
    And
    Jonathan Wolff
    The Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and Fellow of Wolfson College
    Producer: Simon Tillotson

    • 1 hr
    Plato's Atlantis

    Plato's Atlantis

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's account of the once great island of Atlantis out to the west, beyond the world known to his fellow Athenians, and why it disappeared many thousands of years before his time. There are no sources for this story other than Plato, and he tells it across two of his works, the Timaeus and the Critias, tantalizing his readers with evidence that it is true and clues that it is a fantasy. Atlantis, for Plato, is a way to explore what an ideal republic really is, and whether Athens could be (or ever was) one; to European travellers in the Renaissance, though, his story reflected their own encounters with distant lands, previously unknown to them, spurring generations of explorers to scour the oceans and in the hope of finding a lost world.
    The image above is from an engraving of the legendary island of Atlantis after a description by Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680).
    With
    Edith Hall
    Professor of Classics at Durham University
    Christopher Gill
    Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter
    And
    Angie Hobbs
    Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
    Producer: Simon Tillotson

    • 54 min

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