Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Philosopher who combines wide learning with wise argument, using philosophy as a practical tool to explore existence and life's possibilities.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77: II. AdagioFavourite
Yehudi Menuhin, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Rudolf Kempe
this is such a beautiful piece of music and it seems to me to collect up and embrace so many of the things that are very best about the possibility of our human response to the world.
Kinderszenen, Op. 15: VII. Träumerei
One of the great joys of my early life was music, learning music. I started playing the piano about the age of of six, and it's a piece I still play with great enjoyment.
it reminds me very much of those days. It's very evocative of the sixties and those experiences. And it's also, by the way, a song that I say to my wife that I dedicate to her because it's rather apropos.
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60: II. Adagio
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler
this is the fourth symphony, and it turns out to be one of the greatest and most beautiful pieces of music that Beethoven, in my opinion, ever produced.
Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, directed by Bernard Rose
I speak here as a pretty trenchant atheist. It would surprise people to know that I used to go quite often to Evensong at Maudlin just to listen to this delicious music.
Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33: I. Allegro non troppo
I've become a sort of passionate lover of the cello as an instrument, and I've chosen here the first movement of the first cello concerto by Saint Sans
Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2
I associate this piece of music very very much with my father because he was in in particular a lover of the piano, and so my earliest musical memories include among them listening to Chopin waltzes and preludes and nocturnes.
This one always makes me cry because it's such a beautiful piece of music, but it also reminds me of some great experiences that I've had living in the Far East.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:24What happened when you were this twelve year old schoolboy that ignited your interest [in philosophy]?
I came across the collected dialogues of Plato in a little local library … In fact, it was a dialogue called The Carmedies. And it struck me like a hammer blow between the eyes, really, that here was this great name, Socrates, devoting himself to questions about the good, about beauty, about justice, about truth … I think I was hooked from then on.
Presenter asks
2:50You've said previously that you find the idea that we are only here for a brief amount of time invigorating. Explain that to me.
if you think about it, the average human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. … And that means that y you've got to focus on what really matters and then go after that. And then, of course, the pursuit itself is the thing that generates this rich, deep kind of satisfaction that makes for a a truly good life.
Presenter asks
7:28Were you brought up by [your mother] or were you brought up by essentially the nanny or the servants?
I was really brought up by the servants. My parents were rather remote figures, you know, occupied with what they were doing. And one consequence of this remoteness was that when I went to boarding school at the age of seven and thought, because nobody had informed me differently … that my parents would ever come back and collect me, I thought that phase of my life was over and I wouldn't be seeing them again.
The keepsakes
The book
Robert Musil
this is a book that really ought to be better known. For one thing, it's huge, it's three volumes, and the third volume is incomplete. Now there's a challenge what one could sit and try and finish it. It's the kind of book that when you're reading it you find yourself putting down on your knee and wandering off into thought.
The luxury
I know I'm not allowed to take Katie, my wife, which is very sad, so I'm going to have to ask for a very, very good grand piano, and I can get back up to speed with some of the music that I've always loved to play.
Presenter asks
14:49Tell me more about your sister [and her tragic life].
she was completely normal in every other respect, she had a a bad motor tremor. … And being completely normal in in all other respects meant that she was, you know, a prisoner of this condition, and felt it very acutely. … And so my sister went and she had this brain operation, which almost completely cured her. And this in a way was the beginning even of the sort of greater tragedy, because liberated from this enslavement to a disability, she sort of went mad, trying to do what everybody else had done … And she met somebody and within a very short time married him … And it was he who, after they'd been married for about two months, reported that she was missing. … and then eventually her body was found, and she had been murdered.
Presenter asks
28:11Do you drink alcohol and do you take drugs, or do you do those things that people like to do to actually almost shut their minds down?
I've never taken any of the drugs like pot or cocaine or anything like that, really out of fear, because you know, what passes for for my brain is my instrument. And it's there's there's always been an anxiety about doing anything to it that blunts it. So I I don't drink alcohol and I don't take drugs, although I have made myself a promise that if I do reach the age of eighty, I'm going to take up opium then.
“if you think about it, the average human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. If you do the maths, you know, twelve times seventy-two. In fact, it's in the early eight hundreds of of months. And that means that y you've got to focus on what really matters and then go after that.”
“for me the good life i is the life where you're constantly learning, constantly trying to make sense of things, constantly trying to be a good a good partner, a good citizen in this world of ours in one way or another. Because you know, it's not really succeeding with something, but it's trying to succeed, and that is the living of the good life.”
“I think the worst thing that anybody can do is retire, really. It's very, very bad for people. People who retire and don't feel that life is very full and they they don't feel very useful any longer sort of give up too soon. And that that would be a mistake.”