Classical Greek philosophy
What is "the good," and why is it that one can never step into the same river twice? This program featuring Princeton University's Alexander Nehamas and Richard Sorabji, honorary fellow at Wolfson College, the University of Oxford, addresses core to...
Political philosophy
Who should lead the world's only superpower? When is it acceptable to topple another country's leader? Are personal freedom and national security mutually incompatible? The answers to urgent political questions such as these are informed by 23 centu...
Self in Historical Context (Part One), The
Philosopher Charles Taylor talks about the ways in which the concept of "the self" has changed over time. He begins by talking about Plato and then moves through other major philosophers, including Augustine and Descartes, pointing out that there ha...
Socrates and Plato on Knowledge
According to Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, Socrates thought that for anybody to be an expert in any domain, they had to understand the principles and rules of that domain. The result of this thinking was that Socrates concluded no one knows anything. ...
Socrates, Darwin and the Essence of Things
Philosopher Daniel Dennett discusses the question posed by Socrates about what constitutes the essence of things. He notes that after Darwin and in the wake of modern science in general, the notion that anything has an immutable, ever-lasting essenc...
The Discovery of Time
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin explains that people in different parts of the world who have lived at different times have often had very different conceptions of time. He mentions several, including the notion that processes of time operate in a kind ...
What is Art?: Representational Theory of Art, The
Intriguing works of art have one thing in common.They cannot be ignored. In ancient times, philosophers viewed art as representation, what they called mimesis. Plato saw art as an imitation of our world which itself is a mere imitation of heavenly i...
Human Nature
Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus talks about the ancient view of human nature, which was based on man as a rational animal. Professor Dreyfus describes how that perspective changed in about 1670, when Blaise Pascal wrote that human nature is essentially a...
Epistemology: what we can know
This program travels from Plato’s cave to Gettier’s papier-mache barns while addressing, along the way, questions such as: What does it mean to really know something? How can one know that one knows it? And is seeing the same thing as believing?...
What is Real?: Breaking Through: Finding One's Own Reality
Getting in touch with true reality requires us to break through the time-encrusted schemes accepted by society rather than remain one of the prisoners Plato described in the Parable of the Cave. Cultural forces often encourage passivity, or acceptan...