Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Philosopher known for using sharp intellect to critique Western liberal presumptions and challenge comfortable certainties.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:02Your purpose in writing and broadcasting is to encourage readers and listeners to really think about what they think. How do you know if you're being effective?
Oh, it's not one way at all, really. My writings do tend to provoke strong responses. And I can see when I've touched a nerve in the strong, sometimes virulent, reactions of many of my critics. Many of them have said that I, for example, they would say, don't believe in anything. I'm a kind of nihilist. I'm just critically and negatively and destructively attacking other views. But I don't think that's true at all. I have a clear and strong and in its own terms hopeful view of the world. Not optimistic, hopeful. They're different.
Presenter asks
13:39At a philosophical level, what's your view of the grammar school system?
The grammar schools enabled an unusual degree of social mobility in society, and they also enabled talent which was spread out in a variety of communities and parts of society to achieve more of its potential. But of course they cast a shadow on anyone who didn't succeed in getting through the Eleven Plus, who wasn't selected. And I suppose my view at the level of philosophy, so to speak, is that they illustrate a very uncomfortable truth, which is that there are practically no good aspects of human institutions that don't come with a shadow. In other words, part of the faith in improvement that people have nowadays is that you can have the good without the bad, you can have the light without the shadow. You can't. I think they did have benefits, but I don't think history can be rolled back and they can be revived in any simple way. Too many things have moved on.
No, I would want to have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, great works of the English language, but my book would be a collection of poetry called The Palm at the End of the Mind, which is one of the last poems written by the poet who, to my mind, was the greatest English-speaking twentieth century poet, the American Wallace Stevens. One could read it forever, and I suppose, just in case I wasn't picked up on the island, I'd need to read it forever.
The luxury
A limitless supply of marmite. And perhaps find some leaves I could spread it on.
Presenter asks
18:35When you first met Isaiah Berlin, why did he capture you?
He captured me and my imagination as well as my scholarly interests partly by his well-known capacity for conversation. You couldn't talk to him for more than five minutes without him saying something which was arresting and would stay in the mind for a long time. But there was another reason which was that he had actually lived through some great historical conflicts and played a part in them. For example, he had worked in the British Embassy in Washington during the Second World War and talked to me about witnessing the two Russian revolutions… the one that he liked, which was the First Revolution, the Menshevik Revolution, he said everyone was very happy. Then six months later there was the Bolshevik Revolution, and at that time he witnessed some scenes that filled him with a horror of violence. I mean, he was only a little boy, but he witnessed them.
Presenter asks
23:01Where do you sit politically now?
Nowhere.
Presenter asks
26:26Why do you like cats so much?
Yeah. Well, they're beautiful and they're a kind of mixture of tranquility and sudden energy, which I admire very much. But also, I admire them and enjoy being with them partly for their differences from human beings. Cats enjoy their lives without needing to turn them into stories. Human beings, very often, because they see their lives as stories, they want to create the story that is to come. But we know that's very difficult unless you're really writing a book.
Presenter asks
32:19How do we live a good life simply?
You follow your best impulses and you reason about them as to their consequences and for the people you care about and the things you care about. But you follow the impulses that are best in you and that's all that can really in the end be said about it.
“The human predicament is hopeful because the very absence of any such reasons evokes the best things in human beings, which are stoicism, self-assertion against fate, resisting aspects of one's environment or even of the human situation itself that thwart human fulfilment.”
“There are practically no good aspects of human institutions that don't come with a shadow. In other words, part of the faith in improvement that people have nowadays is that you can have the good without the bad, you can have the light without the shadow. You can't.”
“If you didn't fit in or if your ambitions or your goals or what you wanted to do with your life weren't feasible in that fairly tight community, you left”
“Politics is a difficult business. What politics is, is the search for partial remedies to recurring human evils.”
“Cats enjoy their lives without needing to turn them into stories.”
“You follow your best impulses and you reason about them as to their consequences and for the people you care about and the things you care about. But you follow the impulses that are best in you and that's all that can really in the end be said about it.”