Hello,
The THoMS Committee very much hope that you and your family are as well as can be expected during this global enforced Covid-19 lockdown.
As you will have assumed, this years Symposium has been cancelled and will be rearranged for next year – there are too many cancelled events in Malmesbury that are hoping to be held in the latter half of 2020 it would be difficult to slot our event in and also for our speakers to be available if we could get a date
I’ve had a trawl on the BBC Radio 4 Sounds website for Hobbes-related programs and put this list together for some “light” listening which should be accessible wherever you are in the world:
- Moral Maze – Isolation (March 2020)
- Malmesbury: The Philosophy Town (2011)
– Malmesbury PhilosophyTown Festival was the predecessor of the Hobbes Symposium Day - In Our Time – Hobbes (2005)
– Professor Quentin Skinner has been a speaker PhilosophyTown/Symposium events - Great Lives – Thomas Hobbes (2005)
– Professor Sir Noel Malcolm has also been a speaker at our Hobbesian events - A History of Ideas – Thomas Hobbes and Civil Disobedience (2015)
There are also publicly available lectures from Gresham College, City of London, and you may also find some interesting lectures that refer to Hobbes https://www.gresham.ac.uk/search/?terms=Hobbes (I’ve not had chance to check any out yet)
And finally today I was sent a recent Guardian newspaper article written by David Runciman, Professor of Politics at Cambridge University, entitled Coronavirus has not suspended politics – it has revealed the nature of power in which he finished his article with the following which I hope he wont mind me including as it reminds us that things could be more ghastly:
“We are a long way from the frightening and violent world [the English Civil War] that Hobbes sought to escape nearly 400 years ago. But our political world is still one Hobbes would recognise.”
Best wishes and please keep healthy!
Rhiannon
– THoMS Social Secretary