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Language
English
Description
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...
Language
English
Description
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...
3) Kierkegaard
Language
English
Description
This program explores the worldview, writings, and anguished life of the 19th-century existential philosopher and critic Søren Kierkegaard. Rejected by his contemporaries and society (a society that he himself repudiated in his writing) Kierkegaard spurned Hegelian philosophy in favor of a belief in the supremacy of personal authenticity and self-determination. This and his "leap of faith" had an undeniable influence on literature, psychoanalysis,...
Language
English
Description
In this program with world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee, A. J. Ayer, who played a major role in introducing logical positivism to England, explains the movement, its purpose, and its effect on current philosophical trends. Ayer also discusses its founders-members of the Vienna Circle of the 1920s-who based their theories on logic and science.
Language
English
Description
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? 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...
Language
English
Description
He was a philosopher, paleontologist, Jesuit priest-and far more than the sum of these disparate labels. Illuminating the life and work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this program examines his origins, his difficulties with Catholic orthodoxy, and his legacy as a major contributor to the "living Earth" theory. Interviewing scientists and religious leaders influenced by Teilhard, the program describes his anthropological achievements and explains concepts...
Language
English
Description
The Apostles' Creed begins with the words "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth." This program explores the concept of God as an all-powerful being and explains how his supremacy is understood by the Christian Church. Theologians discuss the role of love and humility in God's omnipotence; the puzzle of determinism and free will; God as the source of all that exists; life's origin as purposeful creation and not random chance;...
Language
English
Description
It is a creative impulse as old as humanity itself: to depict life faithfully, accurately, in words or images. This program shows how that impulse led to Realism - a widespread artistic movement, born in the latter half of the 19th century, which rejected pretense, distortion, and sentimentality. Incorporating interviews with art historians and literary scholars, the program explores the sociopolitical origins of the phenomenon in the 1848 Revolution...