Guilt

Guilt

Author: BBC Radio 4 November 1, 2007 Duration: 42:14

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss morality by taking a long hard look at the idea of guilt. The 18th century politician and philosopher Edmund Burke was once moved to comment: “Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.”Guilt is a legal category but also a psychological state and a moral idea. Over the centuries theologians, philosophers and psychologists have tried to determine how it relates to morality, reason and the workings of the mind? The answers seem to cut deeply into our understanding of what it is to be human.With Stephen Mulhall, Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New College, Oxford; Miranda Fricker, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Oliver Davies, Professor of Christian Doctrine at King’s College London


Melvyn Bragg and a panel of academic experts gather each week to explore the vast landscape of human thought on In Our Time: Philosophy. This long-running BBC Radio 4 series, a cornerstone of the network's intellectual offerings, approaches profound ideas not as dusty relics but as living conversations that have shaped our world. Each episode focuses on a single philosopher, a pivotal movement, or a foundational concept, building from the basic principles to the deeper complexities. You'll hear informed discussion and spirited debate that clarifies without oversimplifying, making centuries of thought accessible and relevant. The scope is deliberately broad, tracing connections from ancient inquiries into ethics and existence to the modern puzzles of logic and language. Rather than offering quick answers, this podcast provides the context and clarity needed to genuinely engage with questions about knowledge, self, and society. It’s an invitation to sit in on a nuanced, thoughtful dialogue that assumes curiosity rather than prior expertise, reminding us that these enduring debates are, in every sense, still very much in our time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

In Our Time: Philosophy
Podcast Episodes
Maurice Merleau-Ponty [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de…
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Duration: 50:50
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's Crito and Phaedo, his accounts of the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC as he waited to be executed by drinking hemlock. Both works show Socrates preparing to die in the wa…
Hayek's The Road to Serfdom [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:16
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the way Britain was running its wartime economy would not work in peaceti…
Philippa Foot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:12
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010). Her central question was, “Why be moral?” Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, Foot spent her l…
Panpsychism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:59
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that some kind of consciousness is present not just in our human brains but throughout the universe, right down to cells or even electrons. This is panpsychism and its proponents…
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Duration: 50:31
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The Theory of the Leisure Class [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:32
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America’s Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not go…
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:01
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…
Elizabeth Anscombe [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:45
In 1956 Oxford University awarded an honorary degree to the former US president Harry S. Truman for his role in ending the Second World War. One philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919 – 2001), objected strongly. She argue…
Solon the Lawgiver [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 51:20
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…