In Our Time: Philosophy
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Socrates
27 Sep 2007
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek philosopher Socrates, acknowledged as one of the founders of Western philosophy. Born in 469 BC into the go...
Common Sense Philosophy
21 Jun 2007
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg looks at an unexpected philosophical subject - the philosophy of common sense. In the first century BC the Roman statesman Marcus Tulliu...
Ockham's Razor
31 May 2007
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical ideas of William Ockham including Ockham's Razor. In the small village of Ockham, near Woking in Sur...
Spinoza
03 May 2007
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg discusses the Dutch Jewish Philosopher Spinoza. For the radical thinkers of the Enlightenment, he was the first man to have lived and die...
Popper
08 Feb 2007
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper whose ideas about science and politics robustl...
Anarchism
07 Dec 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder. Pierre Joseph Proudhon famously decla...
Altruism
23 Nov 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss altruism. The term altruism was coined by the 19th century sociologist Auguste Comte and is derived from the Latin “...
Averroes
05 Oct 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle achieving fam...
Mill
18 May 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great nineteenth century political philosopher John Stuart Mill. He believed that, 'The true philosophy is the mar...
Friendship
02 Mar 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of friendship. In Greek and Roman times, friendship was thought of as being an essential constituent of bo...
Relativism
19 Jan 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss relativism, a philosophy of shifting sands. "Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of educating is the ...
The Oath
05 Jan 2006
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the importance of the oath in ancient Greece and Rome, The importance of oaths in the Classical world cannot be overst...
Hobbes
01 Dec 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued: "During the time men live without a common powe...
Pragmatism
17 Nov 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American philosophy of pragmatism. A pragmatist "turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal soluti...
Cynicism
20 Oct 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cynics, the performance artists of philosophy. Eating live octopus with fresh lupins, performing intimate acts in...
Marx
14 Jul 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Karl Marx. "Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains", "Religion is the opium of the peopl...
Beauty
19 May 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss beauty and its qualities."Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."That...
Abelard and Heloise
05 May 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of Abelard and Heloise, a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and scandal, and above all love in the...
Stoicism
04 Mar 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Stoicism, the third great philosophy of the Ancient World. It was founded by Zeno in the fourth century BC and flouris...
The Mind/Body Problem
13 Jan 2005
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the mind/body problem in philosophy. At the start of René Descartes' Sixth Meditation he writes: "there is a great di...
Machiavelli and the Italian City States
09 Dec 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. In The Prince, Machiavelli's great manual of power, he wrote, "since me...
Jung
02 Dec 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary mind of the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. In 1907 Sigmund Freud met a young man and fell into a con...
Rhetoric
14 Oct 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discusses rhetoric. Gorgias, the great sophist philosopher and master of rhetoric said, "Speech is a powerful lord that with t...
The Han Synthesis
14 Oct 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Han Synthesis philosophies of China. In The Analects the Chinese sage Confucius says of statecraft: "He who exerci...
Sartre
07 Oct 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, playwright, and philosopher who became the king of intellectual Paris and a foc...
Politeness
30 Sep 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of Politeness. A new idea that stalked the land at the start of the eighteenth century in Britain, Politenes...
Empiricism
10 Jun 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Empiricism, England’s greatest contribution to philosophy. At the end of the seventeenth century the philosopher Joh...
Heroism
06 May 2004
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what defines a hero and what place they had in classical society. On the fields of Troy a fallen soldier pleaded with ...
Wittgenstein
04 Dec 2003
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, work and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is little doubt that he was a towering figure of the twentieth...
Duty
13 Nov 2003
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of duty. George Bernard Shaw wrote in his play Caesar and Cleopatra, “When a stupid man is doing somethi...
Bohemianism
09 Oct 2003
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century Parisian philosophy of life lived for art. In 1848 the young Parisian Henri Murger wrote of his bohem...
The Art of War
12 Jun 2003
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and philosophy of warfare. The British historian Edward Gibbon wrote: “Every age, however destitute of s...
Originality
20 Mar 2003
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the creative force of originality. How far is it to do with origins, how far with the combination of the discoveries o...
Redemption
13 Mar 2003
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss redemption. In St Paul's letter to the Galatians, he wrote: "Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not ...
The Enlightenment in Scotland
05 Dec 2002
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century. In 1696 the Edinburgh student, Thomas Aitkenhead, claimed theology was...
Freedom
04 Jul 2002
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg considers what it is to be free and how freedom became such a powerful value. Freedom has been a subject of enquiry for philosophers, the...
The Soul
06 Jun 2002
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Soul. In his poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ WB Yeats wrote:An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upo...
The Examined Life
09 May 2002
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss self-examination. Socrates, the Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC, famously declared that "The unexamined life i...
Virtue
28 Feb 2002
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of virtue. When Socrates asked the question ‘How should man live?’ Plato and Aristotle answered that m...
Happiness
24 Jan 2002
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure, or of virtue. It is an old question, and the Roman poet Horace a...
Confucius
01 Nov 2001
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg examines the philosophy of Confucius. In the 5th century BC a wise man called Kung Fu Tzu said, 'study the past if you would divine the f...
Democracy
18 Oct 2001
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins of democracy. In the Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln called it “Government of the people, by the peop...
Existentialism
28 Jun 2001
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss existentialism. Imagine being back inside the bustling cafes on the Left Bank of Paris in the 1930s, cigarette smoke, ...
Evil
03 May 2001
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of evil. When Nietzsche killed off God he had it in for evil as well: In Beyond Good and Evil, he construc...
The Philosophy of Love
29 Mar 2001
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of love. In Plato’s Symposium a character called Aristophanes tells a story about Love. He says that ...
Humanism
08 Feb 2001
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Humanism. On the 3rd January 106 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero, lawyer, politician, Roman philosopher and the founding fath...
Nihilism
16 Nov 2000
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Nihilism. The nineteenth-century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote, “There can be no doubt that...
Laws of Nature
19 Oct 2000
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Laws of Nature. Since ancient times philosophers and physicists have tried to discover simple underlying principle...
Economic Rights
27 Jan 2000
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss economic rights. Is democracy the truest conduit of capitalism, or do the forces that make us rich run counter to the ...
Consciousness
25 Nov 1999
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the problems of consciousness, one of the greatest mysteries facing science and philosophy today. The frustrations, th...
Progress
18 Nov 1999
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss progress. As man has grown in years and knowledge, has he also progressed in terms of happiness and a true understandi...
The Individual
21 Oct 1999
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the concept of the individual. The Renaissance gave birth to the concept of the individual. Shakespeare...
Utopia
07 Oct 1999
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of Utopia. Both the idea of, and the longing for a perfect society have been in our imagination for centur...
Just War
03 Jun 1999
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of a just war. There were theories about a justified or noble war before the birth of Christ, but it was his ...
Good and Evil
01 Apr 1999
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether religion can still be seen as a way of interpreting and judging good and evil in modern western civilisation a...
Feminism
07 Jan 1999
Contributed by Lukas
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important events of the 20th century - the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women. W...
Cultural Rights in the 20th Century
10 Dec 1998
Contributed by Lukas
On the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations in New York, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the c...