Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: 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,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: 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,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: 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....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Does science explain the world, or does it simply describe it? Can science ever be truly objective? What is the boundary between science and non-science? Does nature have laws? This program seeks to answer questions such as these through the insights of Princeton University's Daniel Garber; Hilary Putnam, of Harvard University; and Barry Loewer, of Rutgers University. Ranging from the Physics...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005