PhilosophyOverdose

A few clips of various philosophers discussing Aristotle's ethics and virtue ethics in general and how, unlike both utilitarianism and Kantianism, it involves no formula or criterion for right action. The speakers featured include Julia Annas, Nicholas Smith, Martha Nussbaum, Bernard Williams, and Stephen Toulmin. These clips both come from a program on Virtue Ethics from the 1990s series The Examined Life. #Philosophy #Ethics #Aristotle

This is a program on the life and thought of Friedrich Nietzsche from a 1999 series called "Human All Too Human". #philosophy #nietzsche

This comes from the Examined Life series. #philosophy #politicalphilosophy

Thelma Z. Lavine delivers a few lectures on Plato as part of a televised lecture series called 'From Socrates to Sartre, A Historical Introduction to Philosophy'. Note, the music has been edited out. 00:00 Shadow & Substance The Republic; the Socratic Method: the Allegory of the Cave - Plato the synthesizer of the previous conflicting philosophies of the Greek world. The pre-Socratic philosophers: Heraclitus and Parmenides; the Sophists. The dialogue form. The Socratic method. Book I of the Republic as instance of Socratic method applied to question; What is Justice? Confusion and failure of the discussion. Plato's metaphysics and its expression in the Allegory of the Cave and its contemporary relevance. 28:07 Opinion vs Knowledge Theory of Knowledge - Opinion verses Knowledge. What is true knowledge and how is it reached? Plato's theory of knowledge. The Divided Line: diagram of four states of development of knowledge. Plato's theory of Forms. The idea of the Good. Contemporary significance of Plato's rationalistic theory of knowledge. Implication for art, common sense, religion, empirical science, mathematics. The meaning of "dialectic." The idea of the Good. 56:13 The Three Part Man Tripartite Soul & Contemporary Psychology - Plato vs the Sophists; Plato's immutable ideas vs contemporary cultural & ethical relativism. Analysis of idea of Justice. The idea or essence of man. Theory of the tripartite soul. Relation to contemporary psychology, especially Freud. The charioteer and two horses. The man, the lion, and the dragon. Plato's ethics; "Justice" in the soul. The highest good is the life of reason. Virtue is knowledge. 1:24:13 The Ideal State Plato's Politics: The Republic modeled on the tripartitate soul and its justice. The three classes of society, their education for their tasks. The producers, the administrators & warriors, the philosopher-kings. Noble Lies. The status of women. "Getting and spending:" the life of the masses. The disciplined, ascetic communal life of the guardians. The planned breeding of a superior guardian class. Political absolutism. Criticism of absolute truth. Who guards the guardians? The charge of totalitarianism. #philosophy #plato #socrates #epistemology

In this program, John Searle discusses the life and thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein with Bryan Magee. This is from the 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Wittgenstein #BryanMagee

In this program, John Passmore discusses the philosophy of David Hume with Bryan Magee. This is from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Hume #BryanMagee #Epistemology

In this program, Sidney Morgenbesser discusses the three classical American pragmatists (i.e. Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey) with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #BryanMagee #Epistemology

In this program, A. J. Ayer discusses the work of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and modern logic with Bryan Magee. This is from the 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Bryanmagee #BertrandRussell #Epistemology

In this program, Anthony Kenny discusses Medieval Philosophy with Bryan Magee. This is from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #BryanMagee

Michael Ayers discusses the thought of the two great classical empiricists, John Locke and George Berkeley. This is from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Epistemology #BryanMagee #Locke

In this program, Bernard Williams discusses the thought of René Descartes with Bryan Magee. This comes from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Bryanmagee #Epistemology #Descartes

A program on the nature and philosophy of time from a number of years ago. #Philosophy #Time #Science #Metaphysics

An introductory discussion of Immanuel Kant's epistemological views. #Philosophy #Kant #Epistemology

In this program, Hubert Dreyfus and Bryan Magee discuss the thinkers Husserl and Heidegger, as well as the movements of phenomenology and existentialism. This comes from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers. Edmund Husserl was a 20th-century German philosopher, best known for founding phenomenology, a philosophical movement and methodology of examining the underlying structure of experience. Martin Heidegger was also a 20th-century German philosopher, best known for his contributions to phenomenology and existentialism. Existentialists take human existence and the human condition to be a fundamental issue. They tend to be radical individualists who privilege our lived experience and choice. They focus on themes such as: freedom, authenticity, the individual, meaning, anxiety, alienation, death, dread, the absurd, contingency, and nihilism. They are often also suspicious of any fixed, pre-determined human nature, objective/universal values, and abstract philosophical systems. Some of the most important existentialist thinkers (or at least thinkers associated with existentialism) include Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, and Simone de Beauvoir. (My Description) #Philosophy #Heidegger #BryanMagee #Husserl

In this program, J. P. Stern discusses the life and thought of Friedrich Nietzsche with Bryan Magee. This comes from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Nietzsche #BryanMagee

Professor Geoffrey Warnock discusses the life and thought of Immanuel Kant in a discussion with Bryan Magee in this program. This comes from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Kant #BryanMagee

Peter Singer discusses the thought of Hegel and Marx with Bryan Magee in this 1987 television series on the Great Philosophers. Hegel was an important and influential 19th century German philosopher, best known for his dialectic, absolute idealism, and historicism, among various other things. The Hegelian dialectic is the process in which everything changes, based on the triad: thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Hegel's idealism rejected the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself and instead embraced a monistic vision of the world in which everything forms an organic, interconnected, rational whole. Nothing is true or real except the whole. Not only a thinker of totality, Hegel was a historicist thinker who rejected the notion that ideas are static and fixed (e.g. the concepts of human nature and morality, as well as the concept of reason itself). Things can only be understood by understanding their historical context, which, for Hegel, is a process which changes and develops, having an underlying meaning or significance. So not only is there history in reason, but there is reason in history. For Hegel, history progresses towards its endpoint of ever greater freedom, driven by constant conflict and struggle for such freedom via the dialectical process. Like Hegel, Marx also was an influential German thinker. As a young or left Hegelian, he adopted much of Hegel's system, but substituted a kind of materialism for Hegel's idealism. This meant that rather than ideas underlying everything and driving historical change, it was the material and economic conditions which determine one's ideas, culture, and historical development. (My Description) #Hegel #Marx #Marx #BryanMagee

Bryan Magee and Anthony Quinton discuss the 17th-18th century philosophers Spinoza and Leibniz in this episode of the series on the Great Philosophers. Both Spinoza and Leibniz were rationalists who developed elaborate philosophical systems out of only a few basic principles of reason, but ended up with quite different views. Spinoza was a monist and pantheist. He identified everything with one substance, what he called "God or Nature", and understood everything as a mere aspect or mode of this great unity of existence. Thus, there is ultimately only one true entity or being for Spinoza. He rejected any personal conception of God, as well as free will and purpose within nature, leading many to think of him as an atheist. Leibniz, on the other hand, embraced plurality in his system. He posited an infinite array of indivisible substances that he called "monads" which were immaterial, incorporeal, mind-like points or atoms. These were taken to be fundamental, making Leibniz something of a panpsychist or an idealist. The existence of matter was taken to be derivative, a mere appearance of something ultimately mental or quasi-mental in nature. Like Spinoza, he was also a determinist who thought everything had to have a complete explanation, leaving no genuine room for objective randomness or chance. And he also agreed with Spinoza that there were innate ideas and knowledge which we possessed prior to any sensory experience of the world. Both thinkers went on to have a huge influence on other philosophers, as well as on many important scientists. (My Description) #Philosophy #Spinoza #BryanMagee #Leibniz

Frederick Copleston and Bryan Magee discuss the work of the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in this 1987 program. Schopenhauer is perhaps most famous for his extreme pessimism. Seeing the world as something horrific and bleak, he urged that we turn against it. As a follower of Immanuel Kant, he took space, time, and causality to be, not things-in-themselves, but categories of the mind through which we interpret and make sense of things. However, in contrast to Kant, Schopenhauer argued that reality must ultimately be one, a single unified whole which essentially involves "Will". There are several remarkable things about him, including the fact that he was the only major Western philosopher to draw serious and interesting parallels between Western and Eastern thought, as well as being the first major philosopher to openly identify as an atheist. He had a significant influence on many great thinkers and artists, including Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, and Wagner. The arts were particularly important for Schopenhauer as well, not only because he thought they give us a glimpse into the underlying reality, but because they help us to escape our individuality and thus the inherent suffering and meaningless absurdity of existence. (My Description) #Philosophy #Schopenhauer #BryanMagee

Martha Nussbaum discusses the thought of Aristotle with Bryan Magee in this program. This comes from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Aristotle #BryanMagee

In this program, Myles Burnyeat discusses the thought of Socrates and Plato with Bryan Magee. This comes from a 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. #Philosophy #Plato #Socrates #BryanMagee

Some wonderful Schopenhauerian prose from LibriVox and read by D.E. Wittkower. Chapters: 00:00​ Intro 00:21​ On the Sufferings of the World 33:58​ On the Vanity of Existence 46:44​ On Suicide 1:00:55​ Immortality: a Dialogue 1:12:10​ Psychological Observations 2:04:43​ On Education 2:23:10​ Of Women 2:59:35​ On Noise 3:12:14​ A Few Parables #Philosophy #Schopenhauer #Pessimism

Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston debate the existence of God in this famous radio debate from 1948. Copleston here presents the argument from contingency, which is a kind of cosmological argument for God's existence. It is now in the public domain. Note, the audio has been greatly improved.