Conservatism Key Political Thinkers

Edmund Burke – In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sjqyn

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke.Born in Dublin, Burke began his career in London as a journalist and made his name with two works of philosophy before entering Parliament. There he quickly established a reputation as one of the most formidable orators of an age which also included Pitt the Younger.When unrest began in America in the 1760s, Burke was quick to defend the American colonists in their uprising. But it was his response to another revolution which ensured he would be remembered by posterity. In 1790 he published Reflections on the Revolution in France, a work of great literary verve which attacked the revolutionaries and predicted disaster for their project. The book prompted Thomas Paine to write his masterpiece Rights of Man, and Mary Wollstonecraft was among the others to take part in the ensuing pamphlet war. Burke’s influence shaped our parliamentary democracy and attitude to Empire, and lingers today.

Edmund Burke on the sublime (A History of Ideas, BBC Radio 4)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02b8t1k

Some things that move us are beautiful, others are sublime. But the sublime moves us more profoundly than the beautiful. See how Edmund Burke tied the experience of the sublime to the possibility of pain and how the idea went on to influence the artistic Romanticism movement.

Thomas Hobbes – In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003k9l1

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued: “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man”. For Hobbes, the difference between order and disorder was stark. In the state of nature, ungoverned man lived life in “continual fear, and danger of violent death”. The only way out of this “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” existence, he said, was to relinquish all your freedom and submit yourself to one all powerful absolute sovereign. Hobbes’ proposal, contained in his controversial and now classic text, Leviathan, was written just as England was readjusting to life after the Civil War and the rule of Oliver Cromwell. In fact, in his long life Hobbes’ allegiance switched from Charles I to Cromwell and back to Charles II. But how did the son of a poor clergyman end up as the most radical thinker of his day? Why did so many of Hobbes’ ideas run counter to the prevailing fondness for constitutionalism with a limited monarchy? And why is he regarded by so many political philosophers as an important theorist when so few find his ideas convincing? With Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge; David Wootton, Professor of History at the University of York; Annabel Brett, Senior Lecturer in Political Thought and Intellectual History at Cambridge University.

Thomas Hobbes – Great Lives (BBC Radio 4)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018csyq

Thomas Hobbes: the writer and psychologist Steven Pinker joins Matthew Parris to discuss the life of the great English philosopher. Noel Malcolm from All Souls College, Oxford provides the expert analysis.
Power and violence are themes of the discussion of Hobbes who, Steven Pinker argues, was “perhaps the first cognitive psychologist.” Although he was born in the late sixteenth century, we are fortunate to have some rich biographical description of Hobbes thanks to his contemporary and friend, the writer John Aubrey.
Now, the word Hobbesian is often used to describe a world in which life is “nasty, brutish and short.” But Professor Pinker suggests Hobbes was actually “a nice man, despite the fact his name became a rather nasty adjective.

Thomas Hobbes and Civil Disobedience (A History of Ideas, BBC Radio 4)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskp

Criminologist David Wilson looks at 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his “social contract” theory. Hobbes argued that the only way to secure peace was for everyone to give up their personal freedom and agree to be ruled by a “sovereign”. Otherwise, he said, life was liable to be “nasty, brutish and short”, with everyone at war with everyone else.

In fact, none of us has actually signed a contract to give up our freedom, so what if we disagree with what the state wants to do? David looks at the case of the “naked rambler”, Stephen Gough, who is currently in Winchester prison because he refuses to wear clothes in public. Gough benefits from the protection of the state, so is he obliged to stick to social norms as his part of the bargain?

David also looks at “bitcoins” – the digital currency that operates outside the control of any government. Is bitcoin world a libertarian utopia, or a reminder of what Hobbes was talking about: that without someone to lay down the law, you end up with violence and rampant criminality?

Aynd Rand, author and philosopher (Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01m182q

Why is Ayn Rand the author and philosopher, hugely popular in the late 1950’s and 60’s finding favour amongst the political right? Should parents be allowed to rely on their religious beliefs to stonewall medical opinion on what’s best for their child? The biologist and science writer Aarathi Prasad on how Science is redesigning the rules of sex’. Plus British Glamour since 1950 a spectacular display of more than 60 ball gowns at the V&A. And Annabel Loyd shares the secrets of a great picnic.

Ayn Rand (History Hour, BBC World Service)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04x9br8

An influential “objectivist” philosopher, a political assassination in Colombia, the deportation of Estonians to Siberia, the killing of King Faisal and the courageous submariners of World War 1.