Philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein will deliver the 2015 Shelley Lecture, organised by the British Humanist Association (BHA), in Oxford on 2 December.
Rebecca, recently awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal by President Obama for her work to popularise philosophy, will speak on ‘The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature’.
Since at least the time of Plato, philosophy and literature have been engaged in a fierce debate over which is better, referred to as the ‘ancient quarrel’. Philosophers have argued that literature trespasses on their territory by getting people to arrive at philosophical conclusions without having first ‘reasoned’ their way to them. Plato intensified the quarrel by proposing that in his utopia the best of the poets would first be praised… and then escorted to the nearest border! And yet from its earliest origins, the language of philosophy was one carved out by poets.
For humanist poet Percy Shelley, for whom the BHA Shelley Lecture is named, it is poets who are ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world’ – the driving force behind social progress – and not philosophers. Whose side should we take – Plato’s, or Shelley’s?
Now in Oxford, in 2015, Rebecca Goldstein, a past recipient of the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year Award, will weigh up the arguments on either side of this age-old clash of ideas.
BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson said, ‘As a novelist and a philosopher, Rebecca Goldstein straddles both sides of this “ancient quarrel”, which makes her uniquely qualified to settle the debate once and for all – we can but hope – in our 2015 Shelley Lecure. The Examination Schools in Oxford are just a stone’s throw away from where Shelley wrote his famous pamphlet ‘The Necessity of Atheism’ early in his poetic career, and we hope to see a large audience gather there on 2 December to take in Professor Goldstein’s significant contribution to this millennia-old debate.’
Tickets cost £10 for the general public and £9 for BHA members and students.You can purchase yours at humanists.uk/shelley2015.
Notes
The British Humanist Association (BHA) is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity.
The Shelley Lecture, held as part of the British Humanist Association programme of annual lectures, explores Humanism and humanist thought as expressed through literature and culture.