Philosophy Subject Guide

Bryan Magee—world-renowned author and professor—and Sir Isaiah Berlin, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and biographer of Karl Marx, answer fundamental questions such as "What is philosophy?" "Why does it matter?" and "Why should anybody be interested in it today?" A BBC Production. (46 minutes)

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 topics in ancient philosophy such as freedom and fate, permanence and change, happiness, the nature of the cosmos, and the immortality of the soul. Concepts as articulated by key figures including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and the Milesian and Eleatic philosophers—in combination with quotations drawn from Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Physics, and other influential sources—make this program an excellent tool for building a solid understanding of Western philosophy. (51 minutes)

This program examines the ideas of the medieval philosophic theologians, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas. World-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Oxford medieval philosopher Anthony Kenny discuss Aristotelian logic as the basis of Aquinas’ thought, and dispute charges that medieval philosophy merely reinforced extant Christian views. Logical methods employed by Aquinas are discussed as precursors of the scientific methodology of later philosophers, such as Descartes. A BBC Production. (45 minutes)

During the 16th century, a new breed of thinker arose, equal parts philosopher and scientist, that threw off the received wisdom of the past and started afresh. In this program, Paul Guyer, of the University of Pennsylvania; Rutgers University’s Colin McGinn; and Princeton University’s Kwame Anthony Appiah and Daniel Garber address the major philosophical currents of that era—and the explosive controversies surrounding them. Bacon’s Novum Organum, Descartes’s “Discourse on the Method,” Hobbes’ Leviathan, Spinoza’s Ethics, and other germane works are cited. (42 minutes)

The impact of continental philosophy has been tremendous, infusing the humanities with a strange brew made up of energy and insight combined with absurdity and meaninglessness. This program delves deeply into concepts and thought processes that fueled the inquiries of the era’s major exponents: Hegel’s dialectic, Marx’s dialectical materialism, Kierkegaard’s lone individual standing before God, Nietzsche’s declaration that God is dead, Husserl’s intentionality, Heidegger’s Dasein, and Sartre’s assertion that people are condemned to be free. Illuminating commentary is offered by Merold Westphal, of Fordham University, and Alexander Nehamas, of Princeton University. Excerpts from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Heidegger’s Being and Time are included. (48 minutes)

A century after its inception, analytic philosophy continues to clarify issues through argumentation, analysis, and logical rigor—and to parse out the phenomenon of language. This program scrutinizes the founding of analytic philosophy, the rise of logical positivism, the rejection of metaphysics, and the advent of linguistic philosophy through Russell’s Principia Mathematica, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Willard Van Orman Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” the Vienna Circle’s manifesto, and other seminal works. Penetrating commentary is provided by Harvard University’s Hilary Putnam, Rutgers University’s Colin McGinn, and USC’s Scott Soames. (49 minutes)

The mysterious relationship between the mind and the body is avidly being researched by today’s cognitive scientists. This program seeks to understand the mind/matter dichotomy through the eyes of some of history’s keenest philosophers, including Descartes, Wittgenstein, Leibniz, Mill, Gilbert Ryle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Thomas Nagel, and John Searle. Three of today’s leading lights in this intriguing branch of philosophy—Colin McGinn and Brian McLaughlin, both of Rutgers University, and NYU’s Ned Block—share their views as well. Descartes’s Meditations, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, and Quine’s “Mind and Verbal Dispositions” are consulted. (47 minutes)

Moral philosophy lies at the heart of today’s most heated issues—abortion, human cloning, assisted suicide, financial conflicts of interest, and environmental stewardship. In this program, Harvard University’s Frances Kamm; Rutgers University’s Larry Temkin; and Richard Sorabji, honorary fellow at Wolfson College, the University of Oxford, describe the three major categories of ethics: metaethics; applied ethics; and normative ethics, including virtue theory, divine command theory, utilitarian theory, and duty theory. Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, and Mill’s Utilitarianism are considered, along with the contributions of Epicurus, Hume, Bentham, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, John Rawls, and others. (50 minutes)

This program travels from Plato’s cave to Gettier’s papier-mâché 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? Deconstructing the principles of epistemology are Rutgers University’s Alvin Goldman and Peter Klein and Princeton University’s Alexander Nehamas and Daniel Garber. Their insights, in combination with incisive excerpts from Aristotle’s De Anima, Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, Locke’s An Essay on Human Understanding, Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, illuminate the complexity of “truth.” (46 minutes)

Systematic thought about the true nature of things is the very foundation of philosophical reasoning: idealism and materialism…realism, nominalism, and conceptualism…the noumenal and the phenomenal…logical positivism, emergentism, and modal realism. In this program, Rutgers philosophers Brian McLaughlin, Barry Loewer, John Hawthorne, Ted Sider, and Dean Zimmerman discuss the nature of this most ancient branch of philosophy, exploring concepts of causation, time, necessity, and possibility and contemplating the big questions of “Who am I?” and “Where am I?” In the process, they reference the works and theories of Aristotle, Plato, William of Ockham, Hume, Kant, Mill, Leibniz, and others. (43 minutes)

As a tool for characterizing rational thought, logic cuts across many philosophical disciplines and lies at the core of mathematics and computer science. Drawing on Aristotle’s Organon, Russell’s Principia Mathematica, and other central works, this program tracks the evolution of logic, beginning with the basic syllogism. A sampling of subsequent topics includes propositional and predicate logic, Bayesian confirmation theory, Boolean logic, Frege’s use of variables and quantifiers, Gödel’s work with meta-mathematics, the Vienna Circle’s logical positivism, and the Turing machine. Commentary by Hilary Putnam, of Harvard University; NYU’s Kit Fine; and Colin McGinn, of Rutgers University, is featured. (43 minutes)

What do modern art, a symphony, and a documentary film have in common? They all require aesthetic considerations. This program presents the ideas of key figures in the shaping and understanding of aesthetics—from Plato, Francis Hutcheson, and Kant to Leon Battista Alberti, Stendhal, and Tolstoy—and addresses pivotal writings, including Aristotle’s Poetics and Morris Weitz’s “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics.” Columbia University’s Arthur Danto and Princeton University’s Alexander Nehamas offer keen insights into the interactions between artist, artwork, and audience as they have evolved over the centuries. (51 minutes)

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 centuries of discourse that started with The Republic. This program focuses successively on the pivotal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick to elucidate the thinking that underpins the West’s conceptions of good and bad government. Commentary by Ronald Dworkin, of New York University, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, of Princeton University, is featured. (46 minutes)

n this program, world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Hilary Putnam of Harvard examine current philosophical thought that dismisses the primacy and infallibility of mathematical logic and the scientific method. Modern thinkers, such as Einstein, are credited with introducing interpretive logic into their scientific theories. A BBC Production. (46 minutes)

This program explores three major areas of philosophical inquiry into religion: religious epistemology, or the exploration of the rational grounds for religious beliefs and, in particular, the existence of God; the metaphysics of religion, which inquires into the nature of God; and theodicy, which examines the philosophical implications of the presence of evil in the world. Commentary by Alvin Plantinga, of the University of Notre Dame; Fordham University’s Merold Westphal; Dean Zimmerman, of Rutgers University; and Richard Sorabji, of King’s College London, is featured. Readings from Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, and other essential texts are included. (44 minutes)