Sometimes in the winding hours, travelling or staking out a story with a crew and a producer, we turn to playing Desert Island Discs, choosing our eternally changing eight bits of music we would take in our shipwrecked condition.
But over time I have come up with a variant: Mandela’s High Table. Which eight people in public life would you sit at dinner with Nelson Mandela?
Ever since I came up with the idea, I have always found myself saying, “Amartya Sen would have to be one of my three ‘must haves’.” Trouble is, I can never remember who the other two would be.
Last night, after Channel 4 News, I found myself chairing an event with Professor Sen at London’s Southbank Centre. The Purcell Room was packed to capacity – the organisers said they could have sold the event twice or three times over.
The unchanging Sen was talking about his book The Idea of Justice, a philosophical treatise on the philosophy of justice. It is a work he has been formulating for over 40 years. It is a natural fit with his life’s work on the economics of poverty that earned him the Nobel prize in 1998.
There is something both daunting and challenging about intersecting with one of the world’s great intellectuals. The remarkable thing about Amartya Sen is that despite the scale and quality of his output down the years, he remains an amazingly accessible, humane and witty member of the human race.
Whatever anyone may argue about the dumbing down of public discourse, last night was an event which displayed an enthusiastic plurality of thought and debate.
The questioning came from diverse quarters and illustrated that whatever people may feel about the media’s representation of public debate and interest, there is an intellectual life “out there” that I would argue has rarely existed on such a scale before.
It is played out in book festivals and events on a daily basis across the UK. I detect it too even here on this site and on many others.
The unanswered question is: at what point will this discourse infect the conduct of public life in the UK?
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“Sometimes in the winding hours, travelling or staking out a story with a crew and a producer” At your age?!
Having been weened on Rawls ” Justice as fairness” it is difficult to get off the Wittgenstein “rules as rails .”
But to be honest, if I were to relive and think about the original Roy Plumley’s “desert island discs” I would be thinking more about “The Last Supper” and the practicalities of survival would counter any deep thoughts of justice.
I was most struck by the word ‘debate’. The process allows opinion to be shaped and changed….there are no absolutes..
Accepting, for example, that there should be no change in the UK’s intrusion in Afghanistan is an absolute..
The process of informed and common sense human debate will change actions in Afghanistan.
Unsurprisingly, history is littered with narrow political figures that have been blinded by aspiration.
I offer no apology in urging public debate to instruct our ‘public life’ , Government and Opposition alike to extract forces from Afghanistan.
Out There! What is your opinion?
And?
Name, not eight people’ but a single individual that would sit at dinner with Nelson Mandela?
OK Jon…’Hack’ always required..!
Intellectual discourse is generally exclusive to societies well versed in such thought and open to views from all quarters…the so called Socratic dialectic. Unfortuantely, in most of the world and even in some western nations, such thoughts and debate are as alien as snow in the Sahara.
In the UK, and even more so in the USA, while the masses remain oblivious to what’s really happening around them, the chattering classes, now bound by liberal political correctness, often participate in rather shallow one sided debates, preaching to the choir.
The answer then to the question is; As with most things it all depends, as James Carvell said,” on the economy stupid.”
The discourse has to create a movement…the movement has to become accepted. Yet history shows that most modern day mass movements only become accepted when they are seen to be economically advantageous to capitalism.
Hi Dan…I get where you are…in other terms I have offered the same perspective about the pointless conflict between one culture and another.
When there exist, no shared values or culture, the conflict becomes stalled and there is no movement, just more death.
But you have offered help….’create a movement’..this is a more hopeful approach and implies communication and respect as key elements that we should all embrace…
Talk’s good….
There is a strong intellectual life in this country and it is as lively and fascinating as it has ever been. The shame is that the media is now so focussed on the lowest common denominator that this fruitful and necessary strata of our community is never going to achieve exposure. Thus, the really useful debates will remain a minority exercise.
Politicians won’t change this – they too are obsessed with sound bite communication.
Most state schools have been politicised as part of the process of social engineering and will never cope with free thinking again.
The newspapers have deteriorated in quality to the point of being alomost totally useless in the business of sustained debate.
That leaves the small units such as you describe. Perhaps it was always so. However, I would like to think that television could bring deep thinking debate into the open much more. I just doubt it can happen.
I think that terminology such as “intellectual discourse” is posited as a self serving excercise to perpetuate the more institutionalised type of education.
Shallow debate ? Preaching? Perhaps a need to be counted and accpeted as a thinking ,human being.
I dont think that the basic human principles which the majority share should be undermined.
Most of us, I believe, are aware of the enormity of responsibility which the government faces in respect of Afghanistan.
Yes, capital interest may be at the forefront of modern ideology, but the power which that represents should not be swept away, without full consideration of a possibility of catastrophic shockwaves ,when we take our defences down. History also elucidates all nations territorial and ‘animal like’ basic instincts.
Whilst the horrors of war and intervention in Aghanistan are real and distressing, it may be pertinent to have insight into an alternative world where that state of flux would create such havoc….well think about.
Hi Margaret……I would return to the word ‘debate’ and the collective interpretation of its meaning.
Your fourth paragraph states:
‘ Most of us, I believe, are aware of the enormity of responsibility which the government faces in respect of Afghanistan. ‘
I do not agree.
The Government of the day chose this course of action believing..we are told.. that….terrorism that might impact within the UK could be dealt with by taking the fight to the perceived enemy within Afghanistan .
Government decision is not mine or yours. I sit outside the responsibility of which you speak.
I am not responsible for Governmental decision and mismanagement.
The reality is, in my opinion, that the Government seeks to justify its actions and decisions on the premise that ‘it is democratically elected’ .
borrowing Geoff (or is it Jeff..must check) Randolph’s catch phrase ‘rubbish’
The Government does not speak for you and me , we are expected to endorse their decisions….the world has changed.
The strongest debate remains the peoples’ debate.
We need an accountable democracy.
I see no such accountability.
The war dead…..they paid the price.
My apologies if my comments appear insensitive. I am sensitive to the losses but cannot
jon its you that is remarkable, have no doubt about it.
Hi acko,
Jon is not remarkable.
His journalism reflects the commitment of many of his contemporaries.
To debate in open is a good thing? Will transcriptions and recordings be made available? I for one would like to read/listen.
Is justice actually relevant today when there seems so little of it, and with the government eroding it each week and taking advantage of their position? I hope so. I think there comes a time when one has to ask the question “What do we have a government for?” I’m not for anarchy, for we do need rules to live by, but it where these rules come from that worries me. What are the guiding principles? A liberal society trying to please everyone is open to abuse and injustice. Just look around. A criminal gets caught, shouts asylum, and cannot go to jail!
Have debate by all means, but please let everyone hear, then the discourse might infect the conduct of public life in the UK.
I’ve read quite a bit of Sen recently and he’s one of those people with whom, while reading, I find myself vocally and loudly agreeing. Other library users tend to find such behaviour disconcerting.
What I find disconcerting, however, is that economists regard his work as anything other than stating the bleeding obvious… It’s THAT fact that reminds me that the world is like the street – the noisiest and heaviest users are people who are generally looking the wrong way…
Jon, your integrity, honesty and quest for truth and justice has been an inspiration to me, and I’m sure many others, in all the years you’ve worked for Channel Four News. To me you are an oasis in the desert and practically single handedly hold the political establishment to account. It does not surprise me to hear that you admire and are inspired by Amartya Sen, long may he continue to inspire you and you in turn will continue to inspire your viewers.
Your unique ability to provide insightful interviews shows you as a man of humility only found in the most sagacious. I believe whole heartedly that you deserve a seat at the table of Nelson Mandela. Please continue your tireless effort we’re counting on you!!
Freeman John Dyson would be someone I would include, partly because of Los Alomos.
[...] and Cornell.” Sen was also recently featured in Jon Snow’s blog on Britain’s Channel 4, Meetings with remarkable men: Amartya Sen. (Snow muses that Sen would be one of eight people he would sit at dinner with Nelson Mandela). [...]
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