Happiness
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether ‘happiness’ means living a life of pleasure, or of virtue. It is an old question, and the Roman poet Horace attempted to answer it when he wrote; ‘Not the owner of many possessions will you be right to call happy: he more rightly deserves the name of happy who knows how to use the gods’s gifts wisely and to put up with rough poverty, and who fears dishonour more than death’. It seems a noble sentiment but for the Greek Sophist Thrasymachus this sort of attitude was the epitome of moral weakness: For him poverty was miserable, and happiness flowed from wealth and power over men, an idea so persuasive that Plato wrote The Republic in response to its challenge. What have our philosophers made of the compulsion to be happy? And how much does this ancient debate still define what it means to be happy today? Are we entitled to health, wealth and the pursuit of pleasure or is true contentment something else entirely?
Guests
- Angie Hobbs
24 episodes
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick - Simon Blackburn
4 episodes
Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University - Anthony Grayling
10 episodes
Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London
Related episodes
-
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
2 Nov, 2023 170 Ethics -
Virtue
28 Feb, 2002 170 Ethics -
Hope
22 Nov, 2018 170 Ethics -
Friendship
2 Mar, 2006 170 Ethics -
The Consolations of Philosophy
1 Jan, 2009 100 Philosophy -
Aristotle’s Politics
6 Nov, 2008 320 Political science -
Plato’s Gorgias
25 Nov, 2021 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy -
Beauty
19 May, 2005 110 Metaphysics -
The Philosophy of Love
29 Mar, 2001 120 Epistemology -
Stoicism
3 Mar, 2005 100 Philosophy -
Nature
10 Jul, 2003 100 Philosophy -
Rhetoric
28 Oct, 2004 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism -
The Examined Life
9 May, 2002 100 Philosophy -
Horace
15 Nov, 2018 870 Latin and Italic literatures -
Freedom
4 Jul, 2002 320 Political science -
Epicureanism
7 Feb, 2013 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy -
Truth
18 Dec, 2014 100 Philosophy -
Authenticity
19 Nov, 2020 100 Philosophy -
Progress
18 Nov, 1999 100 Philosophy -
Plato’s Symposium
2 Jan, 2014 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
Programme ID: p005489g
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005489g
Auto-category: 100 (Philosophy and psychology)