Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Philosopher who compares morality to plumbing and has been called the foremost scourge of scientific pretension.
On the island
Eight records
it's about moral philosophy. It is the reluctant cannibal, and it's about what happens in a cannibal tribe when a child starts not obeying its elders and questioning the existing values.
Peter Schreier and András Schiff
My father, who had quite a good baritone voice, used to sing some baritone songs, and this one I think is ever so good because it's both very ... very jolly and very sad
Every summer there's a great Binot, as there is at most schools, and the Binot included a sort of ballet taking place. And the ballet which was being rehearsed all my last summer at school was Pierre Gynt. ... this theme of Solbig's song has remained with me ever since.
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (Lyke-Wake Dirge)
it's the bit where you're told what'll happen to you after death if you don't do charitable good things in this life, you will get a pretty bad time.
The Ring of the Nibelungs (Analysis)
This is a product of a real enthusiasm for opera, which my husband Geoffrey had and which I shared ... if you look at the myths in any literal sort of way, you can scarcely keep from laughing. And I think Anna Russell has explained extremely well how this works.
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas TallisFavourite
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
I have no special excuse at all for bringing it in. I just think it's an absolutely splendid and very soothing piece of music.
Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
My husband played the cor anglais as well as the oboe, so we used to hear this rather splendid thing pretty frequently.
The Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave)
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink
by good luck, my son Martin and I went to Fingel's Cave, and it is absolutely wonderful. ... we were dumbfounded.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:15Are these titles [such as the foremost scourge of scientific pretension] that you enjoy or take some pleasure in?
no, I get a little worried when people talk of me as an instrument of destruction. It's really not entirely fair. Um I think the trouble is that the destructive things I say are rather simple, and when it comes to construction that's always more difficult and more complicated.
Presenter asks
2:02What characterizes the idiotic doctrines that you attack?
Well, I think that they are extreme and overconfident. They usually have some sense in them but are being exaggerated and people are over advertising them as the cure for everything. I mean the notorious example is that I got very upset about the uh Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene. ... if you use such a word as selfish, inevitably you set going tremendous natural simplification.
Presenter asks
4:53Can you pinpoint the moment when philosophy first came into your life?
Well, I have the notion that I first heard the name. One uh thing that struck me very much when I was quite small, five or six. ... my father explained that uh the parson who had been there before had been sitting at his study window and he'd seen an elm tree begin to sway to and fro. And that elm tree had finally fallen the other way, and this was the root that remained. So, as my father commented, being a philosopher, he just sat still and waited. Well, I thought that's rather splendid, you see. to learn to do that.
The keepsakes
The book
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James
This is five hundred pages long. It's bound full of excellent stories about people's different religious attitudes and what got them into them and out of them, and the thoughts that he has about them are jolly interesting.
The luxury
my sons have pointed out to me that I'd better have a solar w hot water system. I think that endless hot water.
Presenter asks
9:58What do you remember about going to Vienna in 1938?
I went arrived on the first of March and on March the fourteenth Hitler came in and so there one was in Vienna with the stormtroopers going ... I saw the crowds in the Ringstrasse all yelling Seek Heil, Seek Heil and doing their Hitler salutes. And uh Jewish shops were being smashed ... yes, it was horrible, yeah.
Presenter asks
14:45Was it ultimately an advantage that there weren't so many men around at Oxford during the war?
Well, um, it caused it to be much easier, I think, for us to get our mou our mouths open and speak um in in classes. And you see, I think that this is why a number of us who were up at Oxford at that time have made ourselves known in philosophy.
Presenter asks
18:11Why did you leave Oxford, and what did you think of the atmosphere there?
I think what was going on in moral philosophy in Oxford at that time was terribly narrow. And at that time, if you raised questions ... which were actually moral questions about what it was fair to do in the world ... you would have been told that this was not philosophy. This phrase it is not philosophy, or has nothing to do with philosophy, was constantly used and was used to sideline these immediate practical topics.
“I think the trouble is that the destructive things I say are rather simple, and when it comes to construction that's always more difficult and more complicated.”
“if you use such a word as selfish, inevitably you set going tremendous natural simplification. And people did like it. We are beguiled ... particularly if they're melodramatic, you see, if they sound exciting like that. And it it lays a responsibility, I think, on all of us who are writing not to oversimplify.”
“the way the animals behaved was actually not the rather ludicrous sort of way in which we tend to assume that they behave, that the wolf is wicked and the rat is vicious and so forth, but much more um complicated and much more like ourselves. So this seemed to put us much more in the world, you see. I had not been aware of it, but I'd had a thought that we were sort of away above the natural world and not screwed onto it. And I began to think that we were screwed onto it.”
“If we can go back to my aquarium, we look through all sorts of different windows and through some of them this large fish sometimes called God is visible and through others he is not. ... my feeling is that the personal God I do not personally meet, but I know a lot of people do. And I think this is a puzzling and mystifying fact, but as most of those who are much concerned with him say, he is a mystery, and you shouldn't be surprised that you don't exactly get the hang of it.”