Sartre

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

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

No Exit (Huis Clos) is one of Jean Paul Sartre’s most interesting existentialist short stories. The book is the source of one of Sartre’s most celebrated phrases: “Hell is other people”.  

Sartre brilliantly emphasises that hell is not so much a specific place, but ...

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential work, The Second Sex, her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men. Published in 1949, it was an immedi ...  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 ...

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of solitude. The state of being alone can arise for many different reasons: imprisonment, exile or personal choice. It can be prompted by religious belief, personal necessity or a philosophical need for solitary contemplation. Ma ...  Show more