Philosophy discussed

By Academics at BBC Radio Four this is my favourite programme it is called In Our Time hosted by Lord Bragg. You can down load from the Archives here are some topics covered:


Logical Positivism - or is it?

The School of Athens - picturing Greece in Renaissance minds

Thoreau and the American Idyll - America in the Wilderness

The Consolation of Philosophy - a new year's message from Boethius

Aristotle's Politics - a perfect society?


The Translation Movement - Aristotle in Arabic

Materialism - are we living in a material world?

Søren Kierkegaard - fear and trembling in Copenhagen

The Social Contract - Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the Origins of Society

Albert Camus - Rebel with a Cause

Avicenna - wine, women and philosophy

Guilt - what is it good for?

Socrates - the man and the myth

Common Sense Philosophy - "There is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it"


Ockham's Razor - cutting medieval philosophy down to size

Spinoza - believed that God and Nature were the same thing

Karl Popper - his ideas challenged our approach to the philosophy of science

Anarchism - a question of authority?

Altruism - how can evolutionary biology explain it?

Averroes - the battle between faith and reason

John Stuart Mill - one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th Century

Friendship - thinking philosophically about our close companions

Relativism - the battle against transcendent knowledge


Thomas Hobbes and the political philosophy of 'Leviathan'

Pragmatism - a practical philosophy fit for 20th century America

Cynicism - bold and populist, the history of a shocking philosophy

Karl Marx - In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher

Beauty - the philosophy of beauty

Stoicism - the search for inner calm

The Mind/Body Problem - does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind?

Rhetoric - from the original sophists to latter-day demagogues

Jean-Paul Sartre - a man condemned to be free

Empiricism - the English philosophy?


Heroism - do we live in an heroic age?

Wittgenstein - a philosophy of linguistics

Duty - concepts of obligation.

Human Nature - innate or nurtured?

Imagination - just what is it?

Freedom - a principle worth fighting and dying for?

The Soul - the key to our individuality as humans?

The Examined Life - is an unexamined life worth living?

Virtue - is it derived from reason?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_philosophy.shtml

Thanks!

I guess I know what I will be doing this weekend! (And calling me a nerd or a loser will only make me feel more empowered!).

Why would you even be concerned at what anyone else thinks. Just sit back and enjoy the programmes you will learn something and no doubt you will also nod your head sagaciously and agree with the experts.

Enjoy I will, friend! My comment was quite in jest. I am quite proud of my interest in intellectual matters. My wife ribs me gently about being nerdy (wanting to spend time listening to a phlosophy program), and we both make a joke out of it.

It is concerning to me that you suggest that I will doubtless " nod my head sagaciously and agree with the experts." Was that meant as a dig on my intellect? If my grad school profs could not "mold" me to agree with them qua experts, then I doubt a BBC program would experience much success.

I was talking with a friend about this programme yesterday and they told me that the only internet newsletter they subscribe to is Melvyn Bragg's. It includes some of the green room discussion following the programme.

Mate do you have an inferiority complex or what?
I meant agree with them in that the programme is well worth listening to.

Lord Bragg is obviously an intelleeeectuaaaaal. He most certainly does not prescribe to the philosophy of..."Give me liberty or give me death!" No one on this earth is my Lord; I am astounded, maybe naive. Seneca lives!

Arten60,

Thanks for the link!!

Hi Pick
I hope you gain much joy from the programmes I certainly find them stimulating. Here are two more links the first is to the film Waking Life in which Freewill is being discussed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VxQuPBX1_U

This next link if a really amazing talk by American Physicist Tom Campbell who wrote the books called My Big TOE. TOE being an acronynm for Theory Of Everything. Luckily for me the book and the other Scientists who was the catalyst for Tom's work and research called Journeys out of the body by Robert A. Monroe was on my bookshelf. So after watching Tom talk I dusted the book down and began to read it and find it to be very very interesting.
The upshot of Tom's work is that along with a growing number of fellow Scientists including Royal Astronmer Sir Martin Rees the suggestion is that the Universe is a Simulation.
I personally don't like the metaphor I am an idealist and believ this to be a dream world.
However, I have to say the evidence that it is a simulation is very robust.
Please take a look at the talk and give me some feedback.
I am active on Tom's site on his forums and if anyone has any questions I will direct you there and you can ask Tom because he is active there and he does take questions about his research:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akgCb85PG-A

Arten,

No. I don't have an inferiority complex. I think I misread you. "No doubt you will also nod your head sagaciously and agree with the experts." I think you just expressed yourself poorly.

we certainly dont live in heroic age..

Maybe perdondaris you are a Nietzsche fan like myself ;) and the age of the Superhuman is upon us simply because history always repeats itself.

If you like "In Our Time" (I sure do) you may also enjoy "Entitled Opinions", hosted by Robert Harrison from Stanford.

Don't be put off by Harrison's sometimes bombastic opening monologues. The discussions which follow are always excellent.

I don't mind long entries. I do mind long winded entries. I don't know whether yours are long winded; I haven't read them. If you put white space in them, even faking a paragraph where none should be, I'd be tempted to read all the way through.

I actually want to. I normally use my browser full page. I tried reading your posts with the browser narrowed, but the structure of LibraryThing (maybe) kept that from working.

Robert

I second Mr.Durick's plea for paragraphs.

Spinoza -- believed that God and Nature were the
same thing. (#1)

Your (or In Our Time's (?) description of Spinoza's "theology", almost convinces me that it can be adequately described in 9 words. As for previous descriptions of Spinoza, he must be the only philosopher who has been described as both "an atheist" and "a God-intoxicated man".

The blurb on Sartre is curious. I can't confirm or deny it, but it reminded me of Fitzgerald's statement about himself: "one of those who is condemned to be able to see both sides of a question. The world is better after all, looked at through one window." (I don't agree with his conclusion.)

If you believe history does not repeat itself I suggest you check out this:

Timewave Zero with the late Terence McKenna:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtnV25LWFQ8&feature=related

History is a prologue to the present.
Robert Bruce Baird

#20 & 21

Of course time repeats itself. Back in the seventies and eighties we had sci-fi shows like Battlestar Galatica, Bionic Woman, Doctor Who and Knight Rider.

In the last couple of years television has brought us such original shows as Battlestar Galatica, Bionic Woman, Doctor Who and Knight Rider.

"You have watched it before, you will watch it again" thus says the TV Prophets

>#19. The blurb on Sartre is correct, it is actually a quote by Sartre made during the days of Being and Nothingness. It reflects Sartre's belief, at that time, in absolute human freedom, he came to change his position on this due to the influence of Marxism. In his autobiography 'Words' he has almost reached the completely opposite viewpoint, presenting a viewpoint in which we are all victims of circumstances outside of our control.

Persondaris

McKenna was a first class Scientists I fear you are a hopeless case. Goodbye