Social Cohesion and Human Nature

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 1948

⏱️ 29 minutes

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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, Russell's pupils included Wittgenstein, and his most influential work, Principia Mathematica, set out to show how mathematics was grounded in logic. He also wrote On Denoting, one of the most significant philosophical essays of the 20th century, and the bestselling History of Western Philosophy, written in 1946. His Reith lecture series is entitled 'Authority and the Individual'.

In his first lecture, entitled 'Social Cohesion and Human Nature', Russell explores the role of impulses in human nature. He charts the way these impulses have manifested themselves throughout history, from very primitive communities through to more 'civilised' societies.

Transcript

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0:22.4	Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series
0:36.7	Authority and the Individual, given by Bertrand Russell, was
0:40.9	originally broadcast in 1948.
0:44.6	We present the Reith Lectures, an annual series of broadcasts named in honour of the BBC's
0:51.6	first director general and instituted by the BBC as a stimulus to thought and a contribution to knowledge.
0:59.0	The theme of this first series of six wreath lectures is authority and the individual, and the speaker is the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell.
1:10.0	His opening lecture is entitled Social Cohesion and Humanism. And the speaker is the eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell.
1:11.2	His opening lecture is entitled Social Cohesion and Human Nature.
1:17.0	Here is Bertrand Russell.
1:20.6	The fundamental problem I propose to consider in these lectures is this.
1:25.4	How can we combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress
1:31.1	with the degree of social cohesion that is necessary for survival? I shall begin with the
1:37.7	impulses in human nature that make social cooperation possible. I shall examine first the forms that these impulses took in very primitive
1:46.5	communities, and then the adaptations that were brought about by the gradually changing social
1:52.5	organizations of advancing civilization. I shall next consider the extent and intensity of social
1:59.8	cohesion in various times and places, leading
2:03.9	up to the communities of the present day and the possibilities of further development in the
2:08.9	not very distant future. After this discussion of social cohesion, I shall take up the other side
2:16.1	of the life of man in communities, namely individual
2:19.5	initiative, showing the part that it has played in various phases of human evolution,
	...

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