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. WithRachel Hammersley
Professor of Intellectual History at Newcastle UniversityRichard Whatmore
Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual HistoryAnd Tom Hopkins
Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn CollegeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading 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 WoklerGary 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)

Condorcet

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 SheffieldRoger 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 OxfordAnd Sophia Connell
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of LondonProducer: Simon TillotsonReading 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)

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

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. WithMelissa Lane
Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton UniversityHans van Wees
Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College Londonand
 
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

Solon the Lawgiver

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.

Tycho Brahe

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.  WithFabienne Peter
Professor of Philosophy at the University of WarwickMartin O’Neill
Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of YorkAnd Jonathan Wolff
The Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and Fellow of Wolfson CollegeProducer: Simon Tillotson

Rawls' Theory of Justice

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 UniversityChristopher Gill
Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of ExeterAndAngie Hobbs
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of SheffieldProducer: Simon Tillotson

Plato's Atlantis

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) on history.  Hegel, one of the most influential of the modern philosophers, described history as the progress in the consciousness of freedom, asking whether we enjoy more freedom now than those who came before us.  To explore this, he looked into the past to identify periods when freedom was moving from the one to the few to the all, arguing that once we understand the true nature of freedom we reach an endpoint in understanding. That end of history, as it's known, describes an understanding of freedom so far progressed, so profound, that it cannot be extended or deepened even if it can be lost.WithSally Sedgwick
Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Boston UniversityRobert Stern
Professor of Philosophy at the University of SheffieldAnd Stephen Houlgate
Professor of Philosophy at the University of WarwickProducer: Simon Tillotson

Hegel's Philosophy of History

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech educator Jan Amos Komenský (1592-1670) known throughout Europe in his lifetime under the Latin version of his name, Comenius. A Protestant and member of the Unity of Brethren, he lived much of his life in exile, expelled from his homeland under the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and he wanted to address the deep antagonisms underlying the wars that were devastating Europe especially The Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  A major part of his plan was Universal Education, in which everyone could learn about everything, and better understand each other and so tolerate their religious differences and live side by side.  His ideas were to have a lasting influence on education, even though the peace that followed the Thirty Years War only entrenched the changes in his homeland that made his life there impossible.The image above is from a portrait of Comenius by Jürgen Ovens, 1650 - 1670, painted while he was living in Amsterdam and held in the RikjsmuseumWithVladimir Urbanek
Senior Researcher in the Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of SciencesSuzanna Ivanic
Lecturer in Early Modern European History at the University of KentAndHoward Hotson
Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Anne’s CollegeProducer: Simon Tillotson

Comenius

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of charismatic authority developed by  Max Weber (1864-1920) to explain why people welcome some as their legitimate rulers and follow them loyally, for better or worse, while following others only dutifully or grudgingly.  Weber was fascinated by those such as Napoleon (above) and Washington who achieved power not by right, as with traditional monarchs, or by law as with the bureaucratic world around him in Germany, but by revolution or insurrection.  Drawing on the experience of religious figures, he contended that these leaders, often outsiders, needed to be seen as exceptional, heroic and even miraculous to command loyalty, and could stay in power for as long as the people were enthralled and the miracles they had promised kept coming. After the Second World War, Weber's idea attracted new attention as a way of understanding why some reviled leaders once had mass support and, with the arrival of television, why some politicians were more engaging and influential on screen than others. With Linda Woodhead
The FD Maurice Professor and Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College LondonDavid Bell
The Lapidus Professor in the Department of History at Princeton UniversityAndTom Wright
Reader in Rhetoric at the University of SussexProducer: Simon Tillotson

Charisma

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Sanskrit text the Arthashastra, regarded as one of the major works of Indian literature. Written in the style of a scientific treatise, it provides rulers with a guide on how to govern their territory and sets out what the structure, economic policy and foreign affairs of the ideal state should be. According to legend, it was written by Chanakya, a political advisor to the ruler Chandragupta Maurya (reigned 321 – 297 BC) who founded the Mauryan Empire, the first great Empire in the Indian subcontinent. As the Arthashastra asserts that a ruler should pursue his goals ruthlessly by whatever means is required, it has been compared with the 16th-century work The Prince by Machiavelli. Today, it is widely viewed as presenting a sophisticated and refined analysis of the nature, dynamics and challenges of rulership, and scholars value it partly because it undermines colonial stereotypes of what early South Asian society was like. WithJessica Frazier
Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu StudiesJames Hegarty
Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions at Cardiff University And Deven Patel
Associate Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of PennsylvaniaProducer: Simon Tillotson

The Arthashastra

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more.  Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life. With Esther Leslie
Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of LondonKevin McLaughlin
Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown UniversityAndCarolin Duttlinger
Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson

Walter Benjamin

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Plato's most striking dialogues, in which he addresses the real nature of power and freedom, and the relationship between pleasure and true self-interest.  As he tests these ideas, Plato creates powerful speeches, notably from Callicles who claims that laws of nature trump man-made laws, that might is right, and that rules are made by weak people to constrain the strong in defiance of what is natural and proper.  Gorgias is arguably the most personal of all of Plato's dialogues, with its hints of a simmering fury at the system in Athens that put his mentor Socrates to death, and where rhetoric held too much sway over people.    WithAngie Hobbs
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of SheffieldFrisbee Sheffield
University Lecturer in Classics and Fellow of Downing College, University of CambridgeAndFiona Leigh
Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University College LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

Plato's Gorgias

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999).  In her lifetime she was most celebrated for her novels such as The Bell and The Black Prince, but these are now sharing the spotlight with her philosophy.  Responding to the horrors of the Second World War, she argued that morality was not subjective or a matter of taste, as many of her contemporaries held, but was objective, and good was a fact we could recognize.  To tell good from bad, though, we would need to see the world as it really is, not as we want to see it, and her novels are full of characters who are not yet enlightened enough to do that.WithAnil Gomes
Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of OxfordAnne Rowe
Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester and Emeritus Research Fellow with the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston UniversityAndMiles Leeson
Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre and Reader in English Literature at the University of ChichesterProducer: Simon Tillotson

Iris Murdoch

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the insight into our relationship with the world that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) shared in his book The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781.  It was as revolutionary, in his view, as when the Polish astronomer Copernicus realised that Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the Sun around Earth. Kant's was an insight into how we understand the world around us, arguing that we can never know the world as it is, but only through the structures of our minds which shape that understanding.  This idea, that the world depends on us even though we do not create it, has been one of Kant’s greatest contributions to philosophy and influences debates to this day. The image above is a portrait of Immanuel Kant by Friedrich Wilhelm SpringerWith Fiona Hughes
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of EssexAnil Gomes
Associate Professor and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, OxfordAnd John Callanan
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

Kant's Copernican Revolution

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, according to Machiavelli, was the last of the Five Good Emperors. Marcus Aurelius, 121 to 180 AD, has long been known as a model of the philosopher king, a Stoic who, while on military campaigns, compiled ideas on how best to live his life, and how best to rule.  These ideas became known as his Meditations, and they have been treasured by many as an insight into the mind of a Roman emperor, and an example of how to avoid the corruption of power in turbulent times.The image above shows part of a bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.With Simon Goldhill
Professor of Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow of King’s College, CambridgeAngie Hobbs
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of SheffieldAndCatharine Edwards
Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of LondonProducer: Simon Tillotson

Marcus Aurelius

The philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) has been described as “the first English feminist”. Born in Newcastle in relatively poor circumstances in the aftermath of the upheaval of the English Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy, she moved to London as a young woman and became part of an extraordinary circle of intellectual and aristocratic women. In her pioneering publications, she argued that women’s education should be expanded, that men and women’s minds were the same and that no woman should be forced to marry against her will. Perhaps her most famous quotation is: “If all Men are born Free, why are all Women born Slaves?” Today, she is one of just a handful of female philosophers to be featured in the multi-volume Cambridge History of Political Thought. The image above is from Astell's "Reflections upon Marriage", 3rd edition, 1706, held by the British Library (Shelfmark 8415.bb.27)With:Hannah Dawson 
Senior Lecturer in the History of Ideas at King’s College LondonMark Goldie
Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History at the University of CambridgeTeresa Bejan
Associate Professor of Political Theory at Oriel College, University of OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson

Mary Astell

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that God created the universe and then left it for humans to understand by reason not revelation.  Edward Herbert, 1583-1648 (pictured above)  held that there were five religious truths: belief in a Supreme Being, the need to worship him, the pursuit of a virtuous life as the best form of worship, repentance, and reward or punishment after death.  Others developed these ideas in different ways, yet their opponents in England's established Church collected them under the label of Deists, called Herbert the Father of Deism and attacked them as a movement, and Deist books were burned. Over time, reason and revelation found a new balance in the Church in England, while Voltaire and Thomas Paine explored the ideas further, leading to their re-emergence in the French and American Revolutions.With Richard Serjeantson
Fellow and Lecturer in History at Trinity College, CambridgeKatie East
Lecturer in History at Newcastle UniversityAnd Thomas Ahnert
Professor of Intellectual History at the University of EdinburghProducer: Simon Tillotson

Deism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) on the education of children, as set out in his novel or treatise Emile, published in 1762.  He held that children are born with natural goodness, which he sought to protect as they developed, allowing each to form their own conclusions from experience, avoiding the domineering influence of others.  In particular, he was keen to stop infants forming the view that human relations were based on domination and subordination.  Rousseau viewed Emile as his most imporant work, and it became very influential.  It was also banned and burned, and Rousseau was attacked for not following these principles with his own children, who he abandoned, and for proposing a subordinate role for women in this scheme.The image above is of Emile playing with a mask on his mother's lap, from a Milanese edition published in 1805.With Richard Whatmore
Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual HistoryCaroline Warman
Professor of French Literature and Thought at Jesus College, Oxfordand Denis McManus
Professor of Philosophy at the University of SouthamptonProducer: Simon Tillotson

Rousseau on Education

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and his ideas about human experience of time passing and how that differs from a scientific measurement of time, set out in his thesis on 'Time and Free Will' in 1889.  He became famous in France and abroad for decades, rivalled only by Einstein and, in the years after the Dreyfus Affair, was the first ever Jewish member of the Académie Française.  It's thought his work influenced Proust and Woolf, and the Cubists. He died in 1941 from a cold which, reputedly, he caught while queuing to register as a Jew, refusing the Vichy government's offer of exemption.WithKeith Ansell-Pearson
Professor of Philosophy at the University of WarwickEmily Thomas
Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Durham UniversityAnd Mark Sinclair
Reader in Philosophy at the University of RoehamptonProducer: Simon Tillotson

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