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 ...Show more
Socrates in Prison
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 ...Show more
One of France's most celebrated writers was killed in a car crash on 4 January 1960. Author of The Outsider and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Albert Camus was famous for his exploration of the alienation and absurdity of human existence. Lucy Burns presents archive me ...Show more
Albert Camus (1913-1960) was born in Algeria to French parents. After his father died in World War I, when Albert was still an infant, the family was reduced to impoverished circumstances, forced to move in with relatives in an apartment without electricity or running water. From ...Show more
Albert Camus was a prolific French-Algerian philosopher and author who contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as Absurdism. He is also considered to be an existentialist.This video explores his main ideas: The Absurd, Revolt and Rebellion, as well as his most notable wor ...Show more
‘There is no sun without shadows, and it is essential to know the night,’ the words of Albert Camus, a writer whose exploration of the absurd nature of the human condition made him a literary and intellectual icon. Camus was born in Algeria but is celebrated in France as one of i ...Show more