Recorded on Sunday 21 October 2013 at the Battle of Ideas festival at the Barbican in London ‘Ideas are the cogs that drive history, and

understanding them is half way to being aboard that powerful juggernaut

rather than under its wheels’. AC Grayling

Society seems woefully lacking in Big Ideas, and we seem to crave new

thinking. In Britain, great hopes rest on the legacy of the Olympics,

but however inspiring the sporting excellence we all witnessed, is it

realistic that a summer of feel-good spectacle can resolve deep-rooted

cultural problems, from widespread disdain for competitition to

community fragmentation? In America, Mitt Romney has pledged to pit

substantial ideas against the empty ‘yes, we can’ sloganeering of Barack

Obama, with his running mate Paul Ryan dubbed the ‘intellectual’

saviour of the Republican Party, but can they really deliver? Europe,

once the home of Enlightenment salons, is now associated more with EU

technocrats than philosophes. Looking to the intellectual

legacy of the past is considered out of pace with an ever-changing

world. We seem estranged from ideas associated with important moments in

history - the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the American and French

Revolutions. Can even a basic idea like free will survive the challenges

of neuroscience and genetics? When the internet offers information at

the click of a mouse, what’s the point of pedagogy?

Some contend intellectual life has rarely been healthier; after all

today’s governments appoint economists, philosophers and scientific

advisers to positions of influence, and the fashion for evidence-based

policy puts a premium on academic research. Nevertheless, the emphasis

is on ‘what works’ utility and short-term impact rather than open-ended,

risky ideas. Often data is passed off as Truth, and Socratic dialogue

replaced by rows over conflicting evidence. The scramble for the next

Big Idea seems to have replaced the creative and painstaking development

of ideas. It’s as though serious ideas can be conjured up in

brainstorming sessions or critical-thinking classes. But think-tanks

kite-flying the latest outside-of-the-box, blue-skies-thinking speak

more to pragmatism and opportunism than following in the tradition of

Plato. Ideas become free-floating, divorced from their origins, and take

on any meaning one cares to ascribe to them. Hence freedom can mean

protection, its defence leading to illiberal regulations; equality can

mean conformity and sameness; tolerance becomes a coda for indifference,

and individualism denotes little more than selfishness.

Where apparently novel concepts catch on, from sustainability to

fairness, identity to offence, they are often little more than

fashionable sound-bites. Other ideas are even described as dangerous;

those who espouse the ‘wrong’ ideas branded as modern-day heretics. But

can we ever hope to approach the truth if we stifle dissent? Is

intellectual life on the wane? Is it conservative to cling to old ideas,

or if we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants, are we doomed to stand

still ? Might truth seeking be more important than the Truth?Speakers:Andrew Keenentrepreneur; founder, Audiocafe.com; author, Digital Vertigo: how today's online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting usProfessor Ivan KrastevChairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in ViennaDr Ellie Leereader in social policy, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture StudiesRob Riemenwriter and cultural philosopher; founder & president, Netherlands-based Nexus Institute; author, Nobility of Sprit: a forgotten ideal and The Eternal Return of FascismChair:

Claire Fox

director, Institute of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze