Argument: 2. Antithesis

Rory Stewart: The Long History of...

BBC

Society & Culture, Philosophy, History

4.6 • 593 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rory Stewart explores the strange human phenomenon of arguing and why it matters so deeply to our lives.

Argument became the way in which we answered the deepest questions of philosophy, established scientific rules, and made legal decisions. It was the foundation of our democracies and the way in which we chose the policies for our state.

Rory grew up believing that the way to reach the truth was through argument. He was trained to argue in school, briefly taught classical rhetoric and he became a member of parliament. But the experience of being a politician also showed him how dangerous arguments can be, and how bad arguments can threaten our democracies, provoke division and hide the truth.

In this episode, Rory explores how modern Europe turned against argument and where arguments go wrong today.

Producer: Dan Tierney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Your time starts now. You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. Absolutely right. So you might like to know that the BBC makes loads of other podcasts. Really? Wow. Many of them are very funny. Which I think means... A hatful of ha-hars. And energy. Even if we do say so ourselves. I agree 100% of us. Find them all on BBC sounds. Just tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Tadus!
0:24.4	I'm on Tadass! Even if we do say so ourselves. I agree 100% with us. Find them all on BBC Sounds.
0:22.6	Just tell us a joke, come on, tell us a joke, tell us a joke, come on, tell us a joke.
0:25.3	Just search comedy on BBC Sounds.
0:27.5	I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in.
0:31.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:36.5	We have a breach of the capital.
0:39.4	Breach on the capital.
0:40.8	To the upper level.
0:42.2	Something is amiss with our democracy.
0:45.0	You'll never take back our country with weakness.
0:48.8	You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
0:51.7	Winning matters more than governing well.
0:55.1	We will never concede.
0:56.8	It doesn't happen.
0:57.9	You don't concede when there's death involved.
1:01.5	Since 2014, from Hungary and Poland to Trump's America and Putin's new Russia,
1:07.8	we seem to have entered a terrifying world of powerful communicators who flout moral
1:13.2	values and inflict an ever more divisive politics on their populations.
1:18.2	We're going to build the war. We have no choice.
1:24.4	You take Donald Trump, on what set of rules of debating should he succeed?
1:31.8	He's completely inconsistent.
	...

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