War in the 20th Century

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 1998

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the first programme of a new series examining ideas and events which have shaped thinking in philosophy, religion, science and the arts, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss warfare and human rights in the 20th century. He talks to Michael Ignatieff about the life of one of the 20th century’s leading philosophers, Isaiah Berlin, and to Sir Michael Howard about the 20th century will be remembered; as a century of progress or as one of the most murderous in history. When we see pictures on television of starving people in war torn areas most of us feel we must ‘do’ something. Where does the feeling that we are in some way responsible for our fellow human beings originate historically? How has technology affected the concept of the Just War? And what are the prospects for world peace as we enter the next century? With Michael Ignatieff, writer, broadcaster and biographer of Isaiah Berlin; Sir Michael Howard, formerly Regius Professor of History, Oxford University and joint editor of the new Oxford History of the Twentieth Century.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello and welcome to a new series of programs in which I hope we'll be looking at some of the
0:16.5	ideas and events which have influenced the century.
0:18.7	My guest today are the writer and broadcaster Michael Ignatyev, whose most recent book was called The
0:22.3	Warrior's Honor and whose biography
0:24.1	of Isaiah Berlin, the philosopher, is published this month.
0:27.4	And Sir Michael Howard, formerly Regis Professor of History at Oxford, who's joint editor
0:31.4	of the New Oxford History of the 20th century.
0:34.7	Michael Ignatiev, Isaiah Berlin often used the image of the fox who knows many things,
0:39.2	and the hedgehog who knows one big thing, an image taken from the Greek poet Aikilicus. You said that in his
0:45.0	40s, As I Berlin discovered the big thing that he believed in, and he then pursued
0:48.8	it in his political philosophy. What was that big thing? Well he always thought of himself as a fox, that is, who ran around, who darted, who alluded pursuit,
0:58.0	who knew many things.
1:00.0	In his 40s, I think, as a result of going to Moscow meeting the poet Akmatova, seeing how Russian intellectuals
1:08.9	were being persecuted, Steele entered into him and he saw that he was a committed Western liberal who loathed Soviet
1:17.8	tyranny and the one big thing he knew was the defense of liberty against that kind of utopia, that kind of
1:26.6	totalitarian tyranny.
1:28.9	And then further, that the liberty that he believed in was the liberty of allowing people a chance to make choices, free choices, but choices where you could never be certain that you were right and therefore the choices that you would
1:45.0	make would always involve some kind of loss. That's the kind of central vision.
1:49.7	That's the hedgehog core of what he came to defend for the rest of his life?
1:54.0	Because as you say in your book, he was a fox in his hamlet, it was lunch in Washington and
	...

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