Talking Politics: HISTORY OF IDEAS

A special episode in which David answers some of the audience's questions about the second series of History of Ideas. From how he chooses which writers and works to talk about, to whether Boris Johnson is the ultimate Benthamite and whether the idea of a pleasure machine isn't - in fact - totally rational. We really enjoyed making these podcasts for people to enjoy during lockdown. To support History of Ideas and Talking Politics, you can become a member by clicking here. For £3 a month, you can enjoy Talking Politics without adverts in the middle of the discussions. Thank you for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) was designed as a rebuttal to Rawls but it was so much more than that. It offered a defence of the minimal state that appealed to the writers of The Sopranos and a vision of utopia that appealed to the founders of Silicon Valley. David explores what Nozick wanted to achieve and identifies the surprising radicalism behind his political minimalism.Recommended version to buy Going Deeper:Robert Nozick, The Examined Life (1989)Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (1991)Stephen Metcalf, ‘The Liberty Scam’, Slate (2011)[Video] Shelly Kagan, 'Hedonism and Nozick's Experience Machine' (from Open Yale Courses) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is one of the founding texts of modern feminism and one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It covers everything from ancient myth to modern psychoanalysis to ask what the relations between men and women have in common with other kinds of oppression, from slavery to colonialism. It also offers some radical suggestions for how both women and men can be liberated from their condition.Recommended version to buyGoing Deeper: Madeline Gobeil, ‘Simone de Beauvoir, The Art of Fiction No. 35,’ The Paris Review (1965)Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails (2016) Kate Kirkpatrick, Becoming Beauvoir (2019) [Audio]: Simone de Beauvoir, In Our Time  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (1932) has been hugely influential on the left as well as the right of political debate despite the fact that its author joined the Nazi Party shortly after its publication. David explores the origins of Schmitt’s ideas in the debates about the Weimar Republic and examines his critique of liberal democracy. He asks what Schmitt’s distinction between friend and enemy has to teach us about democratic politics today.Recommended version to buyGoing Deeper: Jan-Werner Mueller, A Dangerous Mind: CarlSchmitt in Post-War European Thought (2003)Tamsin Shaw, ‘William Barr: The Carl Schmitt ofOur Time,’ New York Review of Books (2020)Chang Che, ‘The Nazi Inspiring China’s Communists,’ The Atlantic (2020)(Audio): Carl Schmitt on Liberalism  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s masterpiece The Genealogy of Morality (1887) sets out to explain where ideas of good and evil come from and why they have left human beings worse off. He traces their origins in what he calls the slave revolt in morality. David examines the ways Nietzsche’s story unsettles almost everything about modern social conventions and leaves us with the troubling question: what can possibly come next?Free version Recommended version to buyGoing deeper:John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are (2018)Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (2018)Alex Ross, 'Nietzsche's Eternal Return,' The New Yorker (2019)(Audio): In Our Time, 'Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (2017) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) by the former slave Frederick Douglass was the second of his three autobiographies and the one that contained his most radical ideas. In this episode David explores how Douglass used his life story not only to expose the horror of slavery but to champion a new approach to abolishing it. The name for this approach: politics.Free version of the textRecommended version to buy Going deeper.....David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018)Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (1997)Colum McCann, TransAtlantic (2013)(Audio): Jamelle Bouie, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Rebecca Onion, 'Who Should Tell the Story of American Slavery?' (2015)  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (also known as the Second Discourse) tells the story of all human history to answer one simple question: how did we end up in such an unequal world? David explores the steps Rousseau traces in the fall of humankind and asks whether this is a radical alternative to the vision offered by Hobbes or just a variant on it. Is Rousseau really such a nice philosopher?Free online version of textRecommended version to purchaseGoing deeper…Leo Damrosch, Jean Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005)David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Rousseau’s Dog (2007)Pankaj Mishra, ‘How Rousseau predicted Trump’, The New Yorker (2016)(Audio) In Our Time, The Social Contract Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) became associated with the triumph of liberal democracy at the end of the twentieth century. But was Fukuyama really a triumphalist? David explores what Fukuyama had to say about the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy and asks whether his analysis still holds true today. What have we learned about the modern state from its history? And can it, and we, really change now?Recommended version to purchase: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241960240.htmlGoing Deeper:Paul Hirst for the LRB on ‘Endism’Fukuyama at the 2020 Munich Security ConferenceFukuyama on the 2016 presidential electionLouis Menand, ‘Francis Fukuyama Postpones the End of History,’ The New Yorker.Talking Politics with Fukuyama  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who both experienced and analysed the impact of colonial violence. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961) he developed an account of politics that sought to channel violent resistance to colonialism as a force for change. It is a deliberately shocking book. David explores what Fanon’s argument says about the possibility of moving beyond the power of the modern state.Free online version of the text:http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdfRecommended version to purchase: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/573/57385/the-wretched-of-the-earth/9780141186542.htmlGoing Deeper:Megan Vaughan for the LRB on Fanon and psychiatry in North AfricaFrantz Fanon, Toward the African revolution: political essaysFrantz Fanon, Black skin, white masks (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008).(Video) Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers [film] (1966)Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Preface’, in Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2001)Alice Cherki, Frantz Fanon: a portrait, Nadia Benabid, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) was written during the Second World War but Hayek was really worried about what would come next. He feared that wartime planning would spill over into the peacetime economy and destroy hard won freedoms. David explores where Hayek’s fears came from and asks why he worried that democracy would only make the problem worse. He also considers what makes Hayek such a politically influential and divisive figure to this day.Free online version of the text:https://archive.org/details/TheRoadToSerfdom/page/n7/mode/2upRecommended version to purchase: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-road-to-serfdom/f-a-hayek/9780415253895Going Deeper: Geoffrey Hawthorn on Hayek and his overcoat for the LRB F.A. Hayek, ‘Individualism: True and False’ Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The iron cage of liberty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)Stephen Metcalf in The Guardian, ‘Neoliberalism: The Idea that Swallowed the World’ Hayek vs. KeynesMatt Ridley, The rational optimist: how prosperity evolves (London: Fourth Estate 2011) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) was a defining text of the movement for Indian independence from British colonial rule. It also articulated a radical new idea of politics in a modern context – peaceful protest or non-violent resistance. David explores the wider legacy of Gandhi’s ideas and asks what Gandhi’s withering attack on ‘machine’ politics means for the politics we have today.Free online version of the text:https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf Recommended version to purchase: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/gandhi-hind-swaraj-and-other-writings-2nd-edition?format=PBGoing Deeper:Stephen Haggard on Gandhi for the LRBM.K. Gandhi, An autobiography: or the story with my experiments of truth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001).Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1915-1948Talking Politics with Ramachandra Guha on Gandhi’s politicsBhikhu Parekh, Gandhi: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).Martin Luther King, ‘My Trip to the Land of Gandhi’E.M. Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835/40) can claim to be the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written about America. David discusses what Tocqueville was expecting when he went to see American democracy for himself and what he actually found. Tocqueville was amazed and impressed by the American way of doing politics, but his fears about how its democracy might go wrong remain as prescient as ever.Free online version of the text: Volume 1 and Volume 2Recommended version to purchase: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Democracy-America-Essays-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447601Going Deeper:In Our Time on Tocqueville’s Democracy in AmericaHarvey C. Mansfield, Jr, Tocqueville: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)Annette Gordon Reed, ‘America’s Original Sin: Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy’Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: prophet of democracy in the age of revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).Talking Politics American History series on the 15th and 19th amendment Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the most remarkable books in the history of ideas. A classic of early feminism, it uses what’s wrong with the relationship between men and women to illustrate what’s gone wrong with politics. It’s a story of lust and power, education and revolution. David explores how Wollstonecraft’s radical challenge to the basic ideas of modern politics continues to resonate today.Free online version of the text: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420Recommended version to purchase: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/wollstonecraft-vindication-rights-men-and-vindication-rights-woman-and-hints?format=PB Going Deeper:In Our Time on Mary Wollstonecraft Wollstonecraft in the Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophySylvana Tomaselli, Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)Virginia Woolf on Mary WollstonecraftEdmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in FranceJane Austen, Sense and Sensibility Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.