The value we assign to speed is, without doubt, one of the defining traits of our time. Speed has gone from being a supplementary property that serves to relativise distance, increase leisure and denote importance, to being a commodity in its own right. From food to information, speed has made our lives shallower, more divided, more visceral, yes, more convenient, but also less reflective.

Whereas we are not without those political prophets who remind us of the virtues of slowness – from Henry David Thoreau to Wendell Berry, from Hannah Arendt to Pierre Bourdieu, from Sheldon Wolin to the ‘Slow Food Movement’ – in our time such warnings are dismissed as futile in the face of inexorable technological progress. And yet the integrity and intelligibility of our moral lives may well hinge on our capacity to remember that slower is most often best.

This program was originally broadcast on 14 June 2017.