The Soul

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, his popularity has increased among philosophers in ...  عرض المزيد

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's Crito and Phaedo, his accounts of the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC as he waited to be executed by drinking hemlock. Both works show Socrates preparing to die in the way he had lived: doing philosophy. In the Crito, Plato shows ...  عرض المزيد

In this Ancient Egyptian poem, a man talks with his own soul about whether it is better to live or die. Read by Barbara Ewing. Translated by Richard Bruce Parkinson. The poem is known from a single copy, c. 1800 BC, whose beginning is lost. It is a dialogue between a man and his ...  عرض المزيد

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the attempt to define humanity’s part in the natural world. In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Lord Byron wrote:“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society where none intrudes,By the deep Sea, and ...  عرض المزيد

This is our first episode related to our new word studies video on the Hebrew word “Nephesh” which often gets translated as “soul” in English bibles. In Hebrew the most basic meaning of the word is “throat.” Which seems weird to us. So how did we get “soul” from “throat”? T ...

The metaphysics of reincarnation are nothing short of enthralling, from the notion of an immortal soul drifting through myriad life forms to the intimidating Wheel of Samsara with its heavenly and hellish realms. Why does this version of immortality appeal to us? And what, if ...