In Our Time: Philosophy

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While l...

Socrates in Prison

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's Crito and Phaedo, his accounts of the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC as he waited to be executed by...

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

14 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the...

Philippa Foot

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010). Her central question...

Panpsychism

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that some kind of consciousness is present not just in our human brains but throughout the universe, right d...

Condorcet

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-94), known as the Last of the Philosophes, the intellectuals in the French Enlightenment wh...

The Theory of the Leisure Class

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America’s Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Th...

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's ideas on what happiness means and how to live a good life. Aristotle (384-322BC) explored these almost two...

Elizabeth Anscombe

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1956 Oxford University awarded an honorary degree to the former US president Harry S. Truman for his role in ending the Second World War. One philo...

Solon the Lawgiver

20 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democrac...

Mercantilism

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, between the 16th and 18th centuries, Europe was dominated by an economic way of thinking called mercantilism. Th...

Tycho Brahe

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.I...

Rawls' Theory of Justice

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1921 - 2002) which has been called the most influential book in twentieth century p...

Plato's Atlantis

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's account of the once great island of Atlantis out to the west, beyond the world known to his fellow Athenians, ...

Hegel's Philosophy of History

23 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) on history. Hegel, one of the most influential of the modern phi...

Comenius

16 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech educator Jan Amos Komenský (1592-1670) known throughout Europe in his lifetime under the Latin version of h...

Charisma

14 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of charismatic authority developed by Max Weber (1864-1920) to explain why people welcome some as their legi...

The Arthashastra

31 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Sanskrit text the Arthashastra, regarded as one of the major works of Indian literature. Written in the st...

Walter Benjamin

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosop...

Plato's Gorgias

25 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Plato's most striking dialogues, in which he addresses the real nature of power and freedom, and the relationsh...

Iris Murdoch

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999). In her lifetime she was most celebrated for her novels such as...

Kant's Copernican Revolution

03 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the insight into our relationship with the world that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) shared in his book The Critique of Pur...

Marcus Aurelius

25 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, according to Machiavelli, was the last of the Five Good Emperors. Marcus Aurelius, 121 to 180 AD, has lon...

Mary Astell

05 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) has been described as “the first English feminist”. Born in Newcastle in relatively poor circumstances...

Deism

08 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that God created the universe and then left it for humans to understand by reason not revelation. Edward Her...

Rousseau on Education

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) on the education of children, as set out in his novel or treatise Emile...

Bergson and Time

09 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and his ideas about human experience of time passing and how that dif...

Authenticity

14 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what it means to be oneself, a question explored by philosophers from Aristotle to the present day, including St Augus...

Aristotle's Biology

07 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable achievement of Aristotle (384-322BC) in the realm of biological investigation, for which he has been ca...

Hope

22 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of hope. To the ancient Greeks, hope was closer to self-deception, one of the evils left in Pandora's b...

The Fable of the Bees

25 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) and his critique of the economy as he found it in London, where private vices were cond...

Montesquieu

14 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) whose works on liberty, monar...

Tocqueville: Democracy in America

22 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his examination of the American democratic system. He wrote De La Démocratie en...

Augustine's Confessions

15 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Augustine of Hippo's account of his conversion to Christianity and his life up to that point. Written c397AD, it ha...

Sun Tzu and The Art of War

01 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas attributed to Sun Tzu (544-496BC, according to tradition), a legendary figure from the beginning of the Iron...

Cicero

25 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas developed by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) to support and reinvigorate the Roman Republic when, as it tra...

Kant's Categorical Imperative

21 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to define the difference between right and wrong by applyi...

Plato's Republic

29 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Is it always better to be just than unjust? That is the central question of Plato's Republic, discussed here by Melvyn Bragg and guests. Writing in c3...

Roger Bacon

20 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The 13th-century English philosopher Roger Bacon is perhaps best known for his major work the Opus Maius. Commissioned by Pope Clement IV, this extens...

Seneca the Younger

23 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca the Younger, who was one of the first great writers to live his entire life in the world of the new Roman empir...

Hannah Arendt

02 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She developed many of her ideas in ...

Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

12 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's On The Genealogy of Morality - A Polemic, which he published in 1887 towards the end of his working life a...

Zeno's Paradoxes

22 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In a programme first broadcast in 2016, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher from c490-430 BC whose paradoxes were...

Sovereignty

30 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the idea of Sovereignty, the authority of a state to govern itself and the relationship between the sov...

The Muses

19 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Muses and their role in Greek mythology, when they were goddesses of poetry, song, music and dance: what the Greek...

Simone de Beauvoir

22 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential w...

Utilitarianism

11 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

A moral theory that emphasises ends over means, Utilitarianism holds that a good act is one that increases pleasure in the world and decreases pain. T...

Al-Ghazali

19 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Ghazali, a major philosopher and theologian of the late 11th century. Born in Persia, he w...

The Wealth of Nations

19 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Adam Smith's celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations. Smith was one of Scotland's greatest thinkers, a ...

Phenomenology

22 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss phenomenology, a style of philosophy developed by the German thinker Edmund Husserl in the first decades of the 20th c...

Truth

18 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of truth. Pontius Pilate famously asked: what is truth? In the twentieth century, the nature of tru...

Zen

04 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Zen. It's often thought of as a form of Buddhism that emphasises the practice of meditation over any particular set of...

The Philosophy of Solitude

19 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of solitude. The state of being alone can arise for many different reasons: imprisonment, exile or ...

Weber's The Protestant Ethic

27 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Published in 1905, Weber's essay proposed that...

Bishop Berkeley

20 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of George Berkeley, an Anglican bishop who was one of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth c...

Plato's Symposium

02 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Plato's Symposium, one of the Greek philosopher's most celebrated works. Written in the 4th century BC, it is a di...

Ordinary Language Philosophy

07 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. Wit...

Pascal

19 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests begin a new series of the programme with a discussion of the French polymath Blaise Pascal. Born in 1623, Pascal was a bri...

Epicureanism

07 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Angie Hobbs, David Sedley and James Warren join Melvyn Bragg to discuss Epicureanism, the system of philosophy based on the teachings of Epicurus and ...

Bertrand Russell

06 Dec 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872 into an aristocratic family, Russell is widely ...

Simone Weil

15 Nov 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Born in Paris in 1909 into a wealthy, agnostic Jewish fami...

The Ontological Argument

27 Sep 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Ontological Argument. In the eleventh century St Anselm of Canterbury proposed that it was possible to prove t...

Scepticism

05 Jul 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Scepticism, the idea that it may be impossible to know anything with complete certainty. Scepticism was first outl...

Al-Kindi

28 Jun 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Arab philosopher al-Kindi. Born in the early ninth century, al-Kindi was heavily influenc...

Neoplatonism

19 Apr 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Neoplatonism, the school of thought founded in the 3rd century AD by the philosopher Plotinus. Born in Egypt, Plot...

Moses Mendelssohn

22 Mar 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of the eighteenth-century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. A prominent figure at the court of...

Heraclitus

08 Dec 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Writing in the 5th century BC, Heraclitus believed that everything is co...

The Continental-Analytic Split

10 Nov 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Continental-Analytic split in Western philosophy. Around the beginning of the last century, philosophy began t...

David Hume

06 Oct 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the philosopher David Hume. A key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Hume...

Malthusianism

22 Jun 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Malthusianism.In the eighteenth century, as expanding agriculture and industry resulted in a rapid increase in the...

Cogito Ergo Sum

28 Apr 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy: "Cogito ergo sum".In his Discourse on the Method, published in 16...

Free Will

10 Mar 2011

Contributed by Lukas

In the 500th edition of the programme, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophical idea of free will.Free will - the extent to which we are ...

Maimonides

15 Feb 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of Maimonides.Widely regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period, Ma...

Aristotle's Poetics

27 Jan 2011

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics. The Poetics is, as far as we know, the first ever work of literary theory. Written in the 4th...

Daoism

15 Dec 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daoism. An ancient Chinese tradition of philosophy and religious belief, Daoism first appeared more than two thous...

Logic

21 Oct 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of logic. Logic, the study of reasoning and argument, first became a serious area of study in the 4th ...

Edmund Burke

03 Jun 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the eighteenth-century philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke.Born in Dublin, Burke began his...

William James's 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'

13 May 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' by William James. The American novelist Henry James famously made London his h...

William Hazlitt

08 Apr 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt. Hazlitt is best known for his essays, which ranged in subject matter from Shake...

Ibn Khaldun

04 Feb 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn K...

The Frankfurt School

14 Jan 2010

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Raymond Geuss, Esther Leslie and Jonathan Rée discuss the Frankfurt School.This group of influential left-wing German think...

Mary Wollstonecraft

31 Dec 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary ...

Pythagoras

10 Dec 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor and Ian Stewart discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his fo...

Schopenhauer

29 Oct 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests AC Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile and Christopher Janaway discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.As a ra...

St Thomas Aquinas

17 Sep 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, works and enduring influence of the medieval philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas with Martin Palmer, John Ha...

Logical Positivism

02 Jul 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg discusses Logical Positivism, the eye-wateringly radical early 20th century philosophical movement. The Logical Positivists argued that ...

Baconian Science

02 Apr 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Patricia Fara, Stephen Pumfrey and Rhodri Lewis join Melvyn Bragg to discuss the Jacobean lawyer, political fixer and alleged founder of modern scienc...

The School of Athens

26 Mar 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The School of Athens – the fresco painted by the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael, for Pope Julius II’s privat...

Thoreau and the American Idyll

15 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Anti-slavery activist and passionate environme...

The Consolations of Philosophy

01 Jan 2009

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the consolation of Philosophy. In the 6th century AD, a successful and intelligent Roman politician called Boethius fo...

Aristotle's Politics

06 Nov 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important works of political philosophy ever written - Aristotle’s ‘Politics’. Looking out acros...

Godel's Incompleteness Theorems

09 Oct 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an iconic piece of 20th century maths - Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. In 1900, in Paris, the International Cong...

The Translation Movement

02 Oct 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest intellectual projects in history - the mass translation of Greek ideas into Arabic from the 9th ce...

Miracles

25 Sep 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the parting of the Red Sea, the feeding of the five thousand and the general subject of miracles. Miracles have been p...

Materialism

24 Apr 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Materialism in Philosophy – the idea that matter and the interactions between matter account for all that exists and...

Kierkegaard

20 Mar 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.In 1840 a young Danish girl...

The Social Contract

07 Feb 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract and ask a foundational question of political philosophy – by what authority does a government go...

Camus

03 Jan 2008

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Algerian-French writer and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Shortly after the new year of 1960, a powerful...

Avicenna

08 Nov 2007

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Persian Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. In the city of Hamadan in Iran, right in the centre, there is a vast mausol...

Guilt

01 Nov 2007

Contributed by Lukas

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss morality by taking a long hard look at the idea of guilt. The 18th century politician and philosopher Edmund Burke wa...