melvourne: The idea that most interests me, or about which i have most to say, is the connection between philosophy and history. For philosophy to know itself, to know what it is a it has to engage with its history. How am i to develop any sort of critical perspective on where i am now, if i don't have some sort of critical distance upon it? So history gives us that tool box for evaluating what i take my freedom to consist in,. And then we'll get going from there. Next it's another chance to hear our shakespeare's sonnets programme. Then on june ninth, we have super nobers, white dwarfs and red giants and
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.
With
Sally Sedgwick
Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Boston University
Robert Stern
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
And
Stephen Houlgate
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson