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History
In Our Time
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Thursday 9.00-9.45am
repeated 9.30pm
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.
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In Our Time
PRESENTER
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg
"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 ..."
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Thursday 19 May 2005
Beauty
BEAUTY

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"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
That was John Keats' emphatic finale to his Ode on a Grecian Urn. It seems to express Plato's theory of aesthetics, his idea that an apprehension of beauty is an apprehension of perfection and that all things in our shadowy realm are botched representations of perfect 'forms' that exist elsewhere. Beauty is goodness and, for Plato, the ultimate of all the forms is 'The Good'.

But does beauty really have a moral quality? And is it inherent in things, or in the mind of the observer? How much influence have Plato's ideas had on the history of aesthetics and what has been said to counter or develop them?

Contributors

Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick

Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London

Julian Baggini, Editor of The Philosophers' Magazine

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In Our Time
Thursday 9.00-9.45am, rpt 9.30-10.00pm. Melvyn Bragg explores the history of ideas. Listen again online or download the latest programme as an mp3 file.
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