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In Our Time: Philosophy

Progress

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 1999

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss progress. As man has grown in years and knowledge, has he also progressed in terms of happiness and a true understanding of the human condition? It was the Enlightenment which gave birth to the idea of the possibility of progress. The biblical account of time which had held sway until the eighteenth century was replaced by a conceit which put Man, not God, at the centre of the story of progress. But do we still believe in that story? Have we reached the end of history and the culmination of man’s evolution? Was the Argentinean writer Jorge Louis Borges right when he said “We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is!”. Can our moral progress keep up with our material progress, be sober in a technologically inebriated world, be in any way more than a fig leaf covering the untameable old Adam whose tragedy - more Greek than Christian - has made and marred this century? Is there such a thing at all as moral progress, or have Darwin and Freud between them cut it out of the conceit of homo sapiens? With Anthony O’Hear, Professor of Philosophy, University of Bradford; Adam Phillips, psychoanalyst and author of Darwin’s Worms.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.

0:09.0

I hope you enjoy the program.

0:11.0

Hello, at the end of the century approaches at a gallop now, we can hear the trumpets

0:16.1

tuning up.

0:17.1

But as man has grown in years and knowledge, has he also progressed in terms of happiness

0:21.2

and a sure understanding of the human condition.

0:24.0

Those who argue that it was enlightenment which gave birth to the idea of the possibility of progress.

0:29.0

The biblical account of time which had held until the 18th century was replaced by a conceit which put man, not God, at the center of the story of progress.

0:37.0

But do we still believe in that story? Have we reached at the end, have we reached what's been called the end of history and the culmination of man's evolution

0:46.0

was the Argentinian writer George Louis Borkez right when he said, we've stopped believing

0:51.5

in progress, what progress that is.

0:54.0

With me to discuss this is Antnew here, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bradford,

0:58.0

an author of After Progress, finding the old way forward,

1:02.0

and the psycho analyst and writer Adam Phillips who's

1:04.6

author of Darwin's Worms which has also been published recently and you're

1:08.9

here can we define terms of little here progress is such a huge concept. Do you want to differentiate between material progress and moral progress?

1:16.0

Yes, I mean obviously over the past few centuries there's been immense progress in science, in technology, in medical developments, material comfort generally,

1:26.2

and also in peaceable and democratic arrangements.

1:31.7

And I think in a way, the Enlightenment, the European Enlightenment, has developed

1:36.8

and extended this idea of progress so that it moves into other areas where I think it's

1:42.0

more questionable.

1:43.6

According to the Enlightenment, negatively, what we have to do is to get rid of superstition,

...

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