In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg Folgen

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Materialism in Philosophy – the idea that matter and the interactions between matter account for all that exists and all that happens. We trace the descent of materialism from the ancient Greek philosophers Democritus and Epicurus, to its powerful and controversial flowering in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries as an attack on religion. It’s provocative stuff even today and certainly was in 1770 when Baron D’Holbach published his book The System of Nature. He wrote: "If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them."Materialism was considered so dangerous that every copy of the Baron’s book was condemned to be burnt. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, materialism dominates much of our understanding of the world today. Associated with science and atheism, Materialism has influenced many forms of contemporary human thought from the process of history to the diagnosis of disease and boasts a cast list of devotees including Pierre Gassandi, Thomas Hobbes, the Marquis de Sade and Karl Marx. But what does materialism really mean, how has it developed over time and can we still have free will if we are living in a materialist world? With Anthony Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London; Caroline Warman, Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; Anthony O’Hear, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics. Yeats lived through a period of great change in Ireland from the collapse of the home rule bill through to the Easter Rising of 1916 and the partitioning of the country. In May 1916, 15 men were shot by the British government. They were the leaders of the Easter Rising – a doomed attempt to overthrow British rule in Ireland - and they were commemorated by W.B. Yeats in a poem called Easter 1916. It ends with the following lines: MacDonagh and MacBrideAnd Connolly and PearseNow and in time to be,Wherever green is worn,Are changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.Yeats lived through decades of turbulence in Ireland. He saw the suspension of home rule, civil war and the division of the country, but how did the politics of the age imprint themselves on his poetry, what was the nature of Yeats’ own nationalism, and what did he mean by that most famous of phrases ‘a terrible beauty is born’?With Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford; Fran Brearton, Reader in English at Queen’s University, Belfast and Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry; Warwick Gould, Director of the Institute of English Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ‘the Norman Yoke’ – the idea that the Battle of Hastings sparked years of cruel oppression for the Anglo Saxons by a Norman ruling class. ‘Norman saw on English oak,On English neck a Norman yoke;Norman spoon in English dish,And England ruled as Normans wish.’Taken from Sir Walter Scott’s novel ‘Ivanhoe’, these words encapsulate the idea of ‘the Norman Yoke’ – that the Battle of Hastings sparked the cruel oppression of Anglo-Saxon liberties by a foreign ruling class. Certainly, William the Conqueror proclaimed his power in great castles and cathedrals, turned the church upside down and even changed the colour of scribal ink. But was it really such a terrible time for the Anglo Saxons or was the idea of beastly Norman oppressors and noble Saxon sufferers invented later to shore up the idea of Englishness? With Sarah Foot, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Christ Church, Oxford; Richard Gameson, Professor in the Department of History at Durham University; Matthew Strickland, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow.