Visions of the Good Society
4th Mar 2010; 13:00
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RSA Thursday
Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, and Marx's Communist Manifesto are universally acknowledged classics of Western political thought.
But how strong are the core arguments on which they base their visions of the good society that they want to bring into being?
One of Britain’s most eminent sociologists, W.G. Runciman visits the RSA to argue that all three were irredeemably naive in their assumptions about how human societies function and evolve, and how human behaviour could be changed.
Yet despite this, Runciman insists that Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto remain great books. Born of righteous anger and frustration, they are masterfully eloquent pleas for better worlds.
Speaker: W. G. Runciman is a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and author of The Social Animal; The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection and Great Books, Bad Arguments (Princeton University Press, 2010)
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