Free Thinking Essay: Speaking Truth to Power in the Past and Present
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2018
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
From Monarchs to Presidents. Joanne Paul on satire, flattery and document leaks in the C16 and C17 centuries and the relevance of strategies for telling truth to those who hold power over us now. Five hundred years ago a miscalculation on this front could leave you without a head. Today, the personal stakes may not be as high, but globally, we’ve never had so much to lose. Renaissance historian and New Generation Thinker Dr Joanne Paul, from the University of Sussex, takes us back to the 16th and 17th century techniques for challenging the establishment and the writings of Gegorge Puttenham, Thomas More and Sir Thomas Elyot and debates over the merits of flattery versus honesty, and whether it was better to lead or to compel.
Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.2 | Hello, I'm Shahid Abari. |
| 0:34.1 | I'm one of the presenters of Freethinking Am your host today. |
| 0:36.7 | Thank you for coming to hear this essay. |
| 0:39.3 | These essays are being delivered by the new generation thinkers. And the new generation thinkers are part of a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 along with the Arts and Humanities Research Council. |
| 0:51.3 | And the object of that scheme is to encourage academics to disseminate their |
| 0:56.1 | research on radio. |
| 0:58.9 | This is the BBC. |
| 1:04.6 | I think I was about nine or ten the first time I tried to get involved in politics. |
| 1:14.6 | I had spent weeks collecting signatures for a petition about something. |
| 1:18.6 | Honestly, I can't now remember what it was. |
| 1:21.6 | But I do remember the anguish and frustration when the hastily scribbled note came back from the MP's secretary, |
| 1:28.3 | on a small card, not even a full A4. The MP gets many of these petitions, and we'll try to look |
| 1:35.3 | into the issue. My little heart was broken. I had wanted to change the world. It's a feeling, |
| 1:42.3 | unfortunately, most of us can relate to, and as 2018 begins, it may be a more |
| 1:47.5 | pressing issue than ever. How do we, in this current political climate, make our voices heard? |
| 1:53.8 | How do we speak truth to power, as the French 20th century philosopher Foucault put it? |
| 2:00.4 | Foucault was drawing on a pamphlet written by the |
| 2:02.5 | Quakers in the 1950s, as well as a classical idea, the concept of Parisia, or Frank speech, |
... |
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