Individual and Social Ethics

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 1949

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The inaugural Reith Lecturer is the philosopher, mathematician, and social reformer Bertrand Russell. One of the founders of analytic philosophy and a Nobel Laureate, he is the author of Principia Mathematica, and the bestselling History of Western Philosophy, written in 1946. His Reith lecture series is entitled 'Authority and the Individual'.

In his final lecture, entitled 'Individual and Social Ethics', he relates social and political doctrines to the individual ethics by which people guide their personal lives. He argues that Man needs a sense of personal morality to guide his conduct, and must learn to be critical of tribal customs and beliefs that may be generally accepted amongst his neighbours. Primitive impulses, he says, can find harmless outlets in adventure and creation. He suggests that Man has always been subject to two miseries: firstly, those imposed by external nature which are now largely diminished by science; and secondly, those that men inflict on each other, such as through war. Russell rejects the argument that human nature demands war, believing instead that the greed for possession will lessen as the fear of destitution is removed from society.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.
0:04.6	This lecture in the series, Authority and the Individual, given by Bertrand Russell, was originally broadcast in 1949.
0:14.0	The Reith Lectures. Bertrand Russell is giving the last of six broadcasts on authority and the individual.
0:21.6	The subject of this final talk is individual and social ethics.
0:26.4	Bertrand Russell.
0:28.4	In this last lecture, I wish to relate social and political doctrines to the individual ethics
0:34.4	by which a man should guide his personal life.
0:39.2	And after the evils we have recognized and the dangers that we have acknowledged, to hold out nevertheless, as resulting
0:44.6	from our survey, certain high hopes for the not too distant future of mankind, which I, for my
0:51.3	part, believe to be justified on a sober estimate of possibilities.
0:57.3	Individual ethics is especially relevant in considering cultural matters,
1:01.6	where diversity is a condition of progress.
1:04.9	Bodies that have a certain independence of the state,
1:07.9	such as universities and learned societies, have great value in this respect.
1:13.2	It is deplorable to see, as in present-day Russia, men of science compelled to subscribe to
1:18.6	obscure antist nonsense at the behest of scientifically ignorant politicians who are able and willing
1:24.4	to enforce their ridiculous decisions by the use of economic and police power.
1:29.3	Such pitiful spectacles can only be prevented by limiting the activities of politicians to the sphere in which they may be supposed competent.
1:38.3	They should not presume to decide what is good music or good biology or good philosophy. I should not wish such
1:46.2	matters to be decided in this country by the personal taste of any prime minister, past, present or
1:52.2	future, even if by good luck his taste were impeccable. But liberty is not merely a cultural matter.
2:01.9	No man is wholly free and no man is wholly a slave.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.