 | | | | | | | | |
|
| |
| In Our Time
|  | |  | MISSED A PROGRAMME?
Go to the Listen Again page | |
|
| | | | PROGRAMME INFO | | | |
| | | The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
|
|
| | PRESENTER | | | |
|  | | | | BIOGRAPHY
| | | | | "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
| |
| | |
| PROGRAMME DETAILS | | | |
|  | | HEROISM
Read audience reactions to this programme
On the fields of Troy a fallen soldier pleaded with Achilles, the great hero of the Greeks, to spare his life. According to Homer, Achilles replied,
“Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid.
And born of a great father and the mother who bore me immortal?
Yet even I have also my death and strong destiny,
And there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime,
When some man in the fighting will take the life from me also
Either with a spear cast or an arrow flown from the bow string”.
With that, he killed him. Heroes have special attributes, but not necessarily humility or compassion. How did the Greeks define their heroes? What place did the hero have in classical society and what do modern ideas of heroism owe to the heroes of the golden age?
Contributors
Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick and author of Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Anthony Grayling, Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London
Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge
| | |
RELATED LINKS
| |
| |
|
| | | | |
|
