In a conversation moderated by Simon Longstaff, historian Joya Chatterji and Stephen Fry discuss whether the age of Enlightenment is truly coming to an end. They share varying Enlightenment narratives that cross geographical, cultural and class borders and challenge the attempt to define an era of history as linear, with a definitive start and end point.

Delve even deeper into the speakers and themes discussed in this episode:

Stephen Fry: The Hitch (FODI 2018)
Niall Ferguson: Post Populism (FODI 2018)
Big Thinkers: Immanuel Kant, Jean-Paul Satre, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Buddha & Confucious.

Download transcript here.

There is a powerful anger in the non-Western world.

Joya Chatterji

Why can’t we see properly? There’s something we’re missing. We need light to shine upon us and to shine upon the world so that we can connect things up and know.

Stephen Fry

@stephenfry

Joya Chatterji

Joya Chatterji is a Professor of South Asian History. She taught International History at the London School of Economics for several years, taking up a post at the University of Cambridge in 2007. She served as Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies at Cambridge and was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Modern Asian Studies for over a decade. An author of several groundbreaking books and essays, she is a Fellow of Trinity College, the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.

Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director and all-round national treasure. Fry has written and presented several documentary series, contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, appears frequently on radio, reads for voice-overs and has written four novels, three volumes of autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and More Fool Me, and three books on Greek mythology: Mythos, Heroes and Troy.

Sydney-based writer Tasnim Hossain records her written take on the meandering histories of Enlightenment discussed by Joya Chatterji and Stephen Fry, and the experimental sounds of the first known recordings of the human voice. Music is composed from sounds found in the archives of firstsounds.org, and recordings taken from a museum of mechanical music (fairgroundfollies.com).

Joya Chatterji & Stephen Fry - There is no beginning

Joya Chatterji

Stephen Fry

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