Episode 71, Plato's Apology: Socrates on Tria...

Hey, it's Jack here – I'm currently in the snowy hills of Switzerland, recording this from the back of my campervan, so forgive the audio quality. (It won't be like this beyond the introduction.) I've been busy producing new content for YouTube, with some exciting conversations c ...  Show more

The meaning of life is, as Albert Camus put it, the most urgent question in philosophy – the one on which everything else depends. Yet, when Western philosophy looks to answer this question, it paces up and down the same old libraries – the same shelves filled with the same assum ...  Show more

The Last Days of SocratesA Philosophy book by Plato that is divided between 4 partsEuthyphroTakes place just before Socrate's trial is about to beginThe ApologyPlato uses his dialogues to tell the story of the trial of Socrates as he energetically defends himself against the char ...  Show more

Socrates was a famous opponent of the Sophists, the teachers of rhetoric instead of truth - and yet, in his legal defense, he employs the techniques of rhetoric and displays a mastery of oratory. In a society that distrusted irony and regarded it as a form of dishonesty, Socrates ...  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

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