Progress
Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss progress. As man has grown in years and knowledge, has he also progressed in terms of happiness and a true understanding of the human condition? It was the Enlightenment which gave birth to the idea of the possibility of progress. The biblical account of time which had held sway until the eighteenth century was replaced by a conceit which put Man, not God, at the centre of the story of progress. But do we still believe in that story? Have we reached the end of history and the culmination of man鈥檚 evolution? Was the Argentinean writer Jorge Louis Borges right when he said 鈥淲e have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is!鈥. Can our moral progress keep up with our material progress, be sober in a technologically inebriated world, be in any way more than a fig leaf covering the untameable old Adam whose tragedy - more Greek than Christian - has made and marred this century? Is there such a thing at all as moral progress, or have Darwin and Freud between them cut it out of the conceit of homo sapiens? With Anthony O鈥橦ear, Professor of Philosophy, University of Bradford; Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst and author of Darwin鈥檚 Worms.
Last on
Broadcasts
- Thu 18 Nov 1999 09:02成人论坛 Radio 4
- Thu 18 Nov 1999 21:30成人论坛 Radio 4
Featured in...
Philosophy—In Our Time
From Altruism to Wittgenstein, philosophers, theories and key themes.
In Our Time podcasts
Download programmes from the huge In Our Time archive.
The In Our Time Listeners' Top 10
If you鈥檙e new to In Our Time, this is a good place to start.
Arts and Ideas podcast
Download the best of Radio 3's Free Thinking programme.
Podcast
-
In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.