The consolation of philosophy and stories
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2020
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Roman statesman Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy around the year 524 when he was incarcerated. It advises that fame and wealth are transitory and explores the nature of happiness and belief. Former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway has been wrestling with the way we understand belief. He joins Professor Seth Lerer and New Generation Thinker Kylie Murray in a discussion chaired by Matthew Sweet.
Richard Holloway's new book is called Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe. Dr Kylie Murray, Fellow in English and Scottish Literature at Cambridge who has identified a Boethius manuscript as Scotland's oldest non-biblical book. Her own book The Making of the Scottish Dream-Vision is out shortly. Seth Lerer is Distinguished Professor and as Dean of Arts and Humanities at UC, Sand Diego and his books include Shakespeare's Lyric Stage, Inventing English A Portable History of the Language, Childrens' Literature A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter and Boethius and Dialogue.
You can find more conversations about religious belief from guests including Mona Siddiqui, Karen Armstrong, Richard Dawkins, Rabbi Sachs in this playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mwxlp And a Free Thinking playlist on Philosophy includes discussions about St Augustine, Nietzsche, Camus, Isiah Berlin, Bryan Magee, Mary Midgely and Iris Murdoch https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000r9b
Producer: Robyn Read
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 out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:36.9 | This is the Arts and Ideas podcast with me, Matthew Sweet, |
| 0:40.4 | and in this episode, we're on Roman Death Row, |
| 0:43.7 | where a masterwork of philosophy is being written. |
| 0:46.6 | Stand by for Boethius after these messages. |
| 0:53.8 | Hi, I'm Amal Rajan, and I want to tell you about a new podcast from the BBC. It's called Rethink. |
| 1:00.3 | The podcast is all about the enormous opportunity we have to change what the future looks like after the coronavirus pandemic. |
| 1:07.3 | We've asked leading thinkers from around the world to give us their three-minute audio essay on the kind of change they want to see, covering issues such as travel, healthcare, homelessness, democracy and humility. |
| 1:18.6 | What kind of change can we expect? Will it be changed for the better? Or will we pick up where we left off as if nothing had happened? |
| 1:26.6 | We created the Rethink podcast to find out. |
| 1:30.5 | It's an opportunity for all of us to consider the kind of change we want to see in our own |
| 1:34.9 | lives and in our societies. |
| 1:37.1 | Subscribe to the Rethink Podcast Now. |
| 1:39.3 | You can find it on BBC Sounds. |
| 1:44.0 | Let me tell you a story about a man named Boethius. |
| 1:48.0 | He's a protagonist for our times because at the point that we join him, which is AD 523, |
| 1:54.5 | he's in lockdown, an experience that has given him space for dreams, for despair, |
| 1:59.7 | and the opportunity to mud wrestle some of the philosophical biggies. |
| 2:04.2 | Like, why does God tolerate or even cause misery and evil in the world? |
... |
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