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Michael Dummett: a philosopher's philosopher Updated: 2012-02-12 06:35:00 Description: Michael Dummett, one of the greatest English philosophers of the twentieth century, died late in December at the age of 86....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy and the Environment Updated: 2012-02-05 06:35:00 Description: In a world of environmental crisis, what can philosophy tell us? Who is qualified to pronounce on the subject and how do the institutions of science (peer-reviewed journals the like) help? How do we model the situation in which we find ourselves ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The inconsistency of Hannah Arendt Updated: 2012-01-29 06:35:00 Description: ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The ethics of Kevin Rudd's heart Updated: 2012-01-21 02:35:00 Description: This program was first broadcast on 6 August 2011....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The evil of the Daleks Updated: 2012-01-14 02:35:00 Description: This program was first broadcast on 18 June 2011....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Meeting Martha Nussbaum Updated: 2012-01-07 02:35:00 Description: This program was first broadcast on 20 August 2011....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD How do octopuses think? Updated: 2011-12-31 02:35:00 Description: This program was first broadcast on 9 April 2011....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD An atheist's God: the paradox of Spinoza Updated: 2011-12-24 02:35:00 Description: THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST BROADCAST ON 4 June 2011....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD On authenticity - Beate Roessler Updated: 2011-12-17 02:59:03 Description: Strangers, people from other countries immigrating into our, endanger our authentic culture, destroying what is valuable, good and familiar. But do they and does that idea make any sort of sense at all? And if we can’t talk about the authentici...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The trials and tribulations of private Bradley Manning Updated: 2011-12-10 03:59:16 Description: We’ve heard a lot in recent times about the legal wrangles of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange but there is another Wikileaker facing life in prison who has been given much less attention: Private Bradley Manning. Bradley Manning is accused of leak...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The morality of robo-wars - P.W. Singer Updated: 2011-12-03 02:35:00 Description: These days, you can go to war without shouldering a pack and carrying a rifle: you can take out the enemy’s installations (and, indeed, take out the enemy) just sitting in an office not far from home. But what are the ethics of a war fought for u...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Apology for duplicate podcasts Updated: 2011-11-29 23:32:22 Description: We have just upgraded to a new website, and the move has caused some podcast subscribers to download duplicate mp3s. We apologise for this issue and hope you continue to listen to Radio National podcasts in the future....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-11-26 - Daniel Dennett on human consciousness and free will Updated: 2011-11-25 14:00:00 Description: This week on The Philosopher´s Zone, we meet one of the foremost thinkers of our time. Daniel Dennett is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Described as the great de-mystifier of consciousness, Dennett has been quoted as saying he develope...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-11-19 - The artist and the philosopher - Gustav Klimt and Ludwig Wittgenstein Updated: 2011-11-18 14:00:00 Description: In the last decades of the Hapsburg empire, from 1895 to 194, the city of Vienna was opulent, elegant and daring. A group of radical young artists, architects, writers, musicians, designers and thinkers were busy overturning all the rules. This week...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-11-12 - Pascal's Wager - betting on God Updated: 2011-11-11 14:00:00 Description: This week on The Philosopher´s Zone we´re wagering on God. Well, why not? What have we got to lose? If God doesn´t exist, we lose nothing; if he does, we gain everything. This is the famous argument known as `Pascal´s wager´ after the great seve...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-11-05 - Jewish philosophy: Martin Buber Updated: 2011-11-04 14:00:00 Description: Martin Buber was born in pre-Nazi Austria and emigrated to Israel in 1938 where he spent much of the rest of his life. He grappled with Zionism, Jewish thought, secular philosophy and politics and the result is a body of thought very much based on re...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-10-22 - Jewish philosophy: Moses Mendelssohn Updated: 2011-10-21 14:00:00 Description: Moses Mendelssohn scandalised his more pious fellow 18th century Germans when he said: 'My religion recognises no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths.' This week we look at th...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-10-15 - Jewish philosophy: Maimonides Updated: 2011-10-14 14:00:00 Description: Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, became a hugely important figure in that great era of Moorish cultural flourishing, 12th century Spain (Cordoba). Maimonides adapted the ideas of Aristotle, was a significant influence on Thomas Aquin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-10-08 - Jewish philosophy: Overview part 2 Updated: 2011-10-07 14:00:00 Description: In part two of our introduction we take up the story during the 17th century, with the great European thinker Baruch Spinoza. Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University is again our guide....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-10-01 - Jewish philosophy: Overview part 1 Updated: 2011-09-30 14:00:00 Description: We begin this series with an introduction to Jewish philosophy, from Ancient times onwards - an attempt to explore some of the key thinkers and recurring philosophical questions. Our guide is Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-09-24 - The Mind of Jacques Lacan Updated: 2011-09-23 14:00:00 Description: Jacques Marie Emile Lacan, who died in 1981, was a French psychoanalyst and follower of Freud, but his influence has extended far beyond the boundaries of psychiatry: to philosophy, critical theory, literary theory, sociology, feminist theory, film t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-09-17 - A very American philosophy Updated: 2011-09-16 14:00:00 Description: Pragmatism was a philosophical doctrine devised by Americans and to a large extent for Americans. This week, we examine its origins, the stories of the men behind it, what it means and its enduring significance, not just for America but for the worl...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-09-10 - Zombies and consciousness Updated: 2011-09-09 14:00:00 Description: Zombies have been enjoying a bit of a revival, lately (though perhaps `enjoy´, which implies inner consciousness, is not the word we want here). The Hollywood zombie is a revenge-seeking corpse with a fervent hunger for human flesh, the traditional...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-09-03 - Philosothon 2011 - the first Australasian high school philosophy competition Updated: 2011-09-02 14:00:00 Description: The Philosothon is an event that encourages high school students to investigate ethical and other philosophical questions in the context of `communities of inquiry´. It´s investigative and competitive, and everybody gets to watch the movie Groundho...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-08-27 - The medieval Islamic philosopher Averroes Updated: 2011-08-26 14:00:00 Description: Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, better known in the Latin West as Averroes, is one of the greater thinkers in the Islamic/Arabic tradition. This week we discuss the life and times of Averroes with Peter Adamson, Professor of Ancient and Me...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-08-20 - Meeting Martha Nussbaum Updated: 2011-08-19 14:00:00 Description: This week, we meet one of the foremost philosophers of the age: Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. In a wide-ranging conversation, we discuss emotion and the moral law, how religious ritual aids concentration ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-08-13 - The Philosophical Baby - Alison Gopnik Updated: 2011-08-12 14:00:00 Description: THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST BROADCAST IN JANUARY 2011. Given that we all begin our lives as children, it is perhaps surprising that philosophy has paid such little attention, relatively speaking, to childhood. This week, we meet the American philosopher...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-08-06 - The ethics of Kevin Rudd's heart Updated: 2011-08-05 14:00:00 Description: Inserting of a pig valve into Kevin Rudd´s heart is is not a new medical technique but is it part of a general move towards xenotransplantation? Xenotransplantation is when you take living cells, tissues and organs from one species and transplant th...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-07-30 - The moral judgment of psychopaths Updated: 2011-07-29 14:00:00 Description: Our guest this week says psychopaths are rarely high functioning corporate executives with a taste for downsizing. More often, they are low functioning and far more prone than to violent crime than the rest of the population. Today we explore moral j...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-07-23 - Tree of Life - The cinema of Terrence Malick Updated: 2011-07-22 14:00:00 Description: Terrence Malick is, perhaps, unique: a film director who is well-trained in philosophy and who has published an English translation of a book by the great German philosopher Martin Heidegger. But should we see his movies as philosophical statements? ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 2011-07-16 - The Conservative Marshall McLuhan Updated: 2011-07-15 14:00:00 Description: Since the 1960s, McLuhan famously avoided taking what he called a 'moralistic' stance on the goodness or badness of electric media. But close readers of his major writings are in for a surprise. What emerges is distinctively conservative: tribalistic...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Climate change, geoengineering and the perfect moral storm Updated: 2011-07-09 03:35:00 Description: A perfect storm is an unusual convergence of independently harmful factors whose convergence is likely to result in substantial, possibly catastrophic, negative outcomes. Are we now sailing into a perfect moral storm created by the challenge of clima...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The puzzlement of Ludwig Wittgenstein Updated: 2011-07-02 03:35:00 Description: Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great Anglo-Austrian philosopher, who died fifty years ago this year, often looked puzzled. In fact, puzzlement, about the world and about the concepts with which we try to grasp the world, was to a large extent his stock-in-...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD High school philosophy Updated: 2011-06-25 03:35:00 Description: The Victorian Association for Philosophy in Schools has a vision of schools around Victoria stimulating open and inquiring communities of philosophical exploration, in which students develop the art of questioning and acquire conceptual and reasoning...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The evil of the Daleks Updated: 2011-06-18 03:35:00 Description: They are among the most loved, or most feared, villains in science fiction. But what is it that makes Daleks such great baddies? What constitutes evil and why do the Daleks represent a very specific idea about rationality and morality? This week, we ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Who was Plotinus? Updated: 2011-06-11 03:35:00 Description: He believed in the One, a fundamental principle of the universe. He believed in the Intellect and the Soul. He also thought that matter was evil. This week, the Philosopher's Zone enters the strange world of Plotinus, a great philosopher who kept the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD An atheist's God: the paradox of Spinoza Updated: 2011-06-04 03:35:00 Description: This week on The Philosopher's Zone, we meet Spinoza's god, which might seem an odd thing to do. Baruch Spinoza, one of the greatest philosophers of his day, was expelled from the Amsterdam synagogue in 1656 because of his unorthodox religious views....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Anime - the philosophy of Japanese animation Updated: 2011-05-30 03:35:00 Description: This program is a REPEAT - it was first broadcast on 16 October 2010....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Japanese philosophy - a short overview Updated: 2011-05-23 03:35:00 Description: This program is a REPEAT - it was first broadcast on 9 October 2010....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Hume and God Updated: 2011-05-14 03:35:00 Description: Hume would probably not have owned up to being an atheist but he was certainly sceptical of the claims of religion. In particular, he was dubious about the miracles. If somebody claims to have witnessed a miracle, which is more likely, that a miracle...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Hume on sentiment and morality Updated: 2011-05-07 03:35:00 Description: Hume insisted that reason alone cannot be a motive to the will and that moral distinctions must therefore be derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame). It is essentially a very social theory of m...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Hume on cause, effect and doubt Updated: 2011-04-30 03:35:00 Description: The sun rose today and it has risen on every morning that we know about. But is that a reason for thinking that it will rise tomorrow? Hume thought not and today we examine the reasons for his scepticism....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The life of David Hume Updated: 2011-04-23 03:35:00 Description: A conversation with Roderick Graham, Hume's most recent biographer, about how a boy brought up in rural Scotland became a major figure in European thought...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Free Will and the Courts Updated: 2011-04-16 03:35:00 Description: Suppose I had committed a quick robbery or even a murder on the way in to work. I'd end up in court, of course, and here's my plea in mitigation of my offence: I couldn't help it, your honour, because I am genetically predisposed to wrong-doing. Don'...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD How do octopuses think? Updated: 2011-04-09 03:35:00 Description: How do animals think? Do they have consciousness? If your answer to that question is 'yes', you're probably thinking of your pet dog. But dogs are easy: they're domesticated, they more of less co-evolved with us. Apes are easy too: they're our cousin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD At the movies with Gilles Deleuze (part 2) Updated: 2011-04-02 02:35:00 Description: This week, The Philosopher's Zone goes to the movies. In the second of two programs devoted to the great French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we examine what he had to say about cinema. He was one of the first philosophers to turn their attention to fi...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Who was Gilles Deleuze? (part 1) Updated: 2011-03-26 02:35:00 Description: Gilles Deleuze, who died by his own hand in 1995, was one of the most influential and prolific French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. He wrote influentially not just on philosophy, but on literature, film, fine art and the e...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Age of Innocence Updated: 2011-03-19 02:35:00 Description: Innocence is a good thing, isn't it? It's certainly better than guilt, but our idea of what constitutes innocence may be a construct, and it may be a construct that we project onto the weakest amongst us, children. Do we want to think of children as ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Robert Boyle - God, atoms and alchemy Updated: 2011-03-12 02:35:00 Description: If you did physics at school, or beyond, you might be familiar with Boyle's law, first propounded by the Honourable Robert Boyle in 1662. But Boyle was interested in much more than the pressure of gases. He called himself a 'Christian virtuoso' and d...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Sound of Music Updated: 2011-03-05 02:35:00 Description: What do we mean when we say that the hills are alive to the sound of music? Isn't the point not that music has sound but that it is sound? And does this mean that the source of the sound - the singer, the violinist, the guitarist - doesn't, from a mu...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Julian Assange Conspiracy - Networks, power and activism Updated: 2011-02-26 02:35:00 Description: The object of Wikileaks is to dismantle the conspiracies that, according to its founder, rule the world. But what is a conspiracy and are you part of one? According to Assange, it's possible to be a member of conspiracy without even knowing that you ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Julian Assange and the rise of nerd supremacy Updated: 2011-02-19 02:35:00 Description: This week Jaron Lanier -- composer, performer, computer scientist, philosopher and pioneer of virtual reality -- gets seriously sceptical about somebody a lot of people think of as a hero: Julian Assange. The Internet, according to Lanier, was influe...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid Qutb Updated: 2011-02-12 02:35:00 Description: The Society of the Muslim Brothers, otherwise known as the Muslim Brotherhood, has been banned in Egypt for many years. Nevertheless, after the recent upheavals, the Brotherhood was among the opposition groups invited to talk with Vice President Omar...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The philosophy of wine - aethetics, taste and smell Updated: 2011-02-05 02:35:00 Description: Can a wine really have notes of chocolate, truffle and violets? Can wines be feminine, pretentious or cheeky? Can wines express anything? Or, more philosophically, are the senses of taste and smell as structured as sight? What is the role of metaphor...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Philosophical Baby - Alison Gopnik Updated: 2011-01-29 02:35:00 Description: Given that we all begin our lives as children, it is perhaps surprising that philosophy has paid such little attention, relatively speaking, to childhood. This week, we meet the American philosopher and psychologist Alison Gopnik, who argues that in ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Yes, but how do you know? Scepticism and philosophy Updated: 2011-01-22 02:35:00 Description: THIS PROGRAM FIRST AIRED ON 5 JUNE 2010....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Kurt Gödel and the limits of mathematics Updated: 2011-01-15 02:35:00 Description: THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST AIRED ON 20 FEBRUARY 2010....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Nietzsche and the will to power Updated: 2011-01-08 02:35:00 Description: THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST AIRED ON 22 MAY 2010....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Alexander McCall Smith and the philosopher detective Updated: 2011-01-01 02:35:00 Description: THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST AIRED ON 13 FEBRUARY 2010....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A philosophical history of Russia Updated: 2010-12-25 02:35:00 Description: THIS PROGRAM FIRST WENT TO AIR ON 24 JULY 2010....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Bah humbug - Why Ebenezer Scrooge is actually a man of principle Updated: 2010-12-18 02:35:00 Description: Ebenezer Scrooge is one of the few people you are allowed to hate at Christmas, or at least you're allowed to 'dislike' what he stands for. Miserly and lacking in empathy, Scrooge is essentially a joyless, friendless, humourless, lonely old man. But ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Athenian philosopher Epicurus Updated: 2010-12-11 02:35:00 Description: born in 341 BC, Epicurus set up a philosophical school which was unusual for its time - it allowed women and slaves to join. He also developed ideas about pleasure and the good life, but would likely turn in his grave were he to know how the term 'Ep...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Hegel and Hegel's God Updated: 2010-11-27 02:35:00 Description: This week, in another trek through the luxuriant and fascinating jungle that is the thought of one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, we turn to Hegel's god and look at Hegel as a rational mystic....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Mystery of Hegel Updated: 2010-11-20 02:35:00 Description: His thought was hugely influential and hugely difficult. The philosopher Bertrand Russell once described him as the single most difficult philosopher to understand. He was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Though he enjoyed relative fame during his life...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Art Instinct - evolution and aesthetics Updated: 2010-11-13 02:35:00 Description: Peacocks have tails; we have art. Dennis Dutton, Professor of Philosopher at the University of Canterbury, argues that art is a form of costly display designed to attract members of the opposite sex. But there's more to it than that: the arts take us...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The human machine: Julien Offray de La Mettrie Updated: 2010-11-06 02:35:00 Description: Are you body and soul, mind and matter, or is it matter all the way through? Sounds like a modern sort of question, but in fact it was asked and answered -- at least to his own satisfaction -- way back in 1748 by the French physician and philosopher ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Doing good and causing harm: Euthanasia and the doctrine of double effect Updated: 2010-10-30 02:35:00 Description: A study of Australian surgeons found that 36% of reported giving drugs at doses higher than necessary to relieve suffering, but also aware that this would hasten the death of the patient. This week, with euthanasia back on the public agenda, The Phil...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Best of all possible worlds - Steven Nadler Updated: 2010-10-23 02:35:00 Description: In 1672 a German secret agent arrived in Paris and the result was fierce philosophical debate. The secret agent was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and he locked horns with two lesser-known but formidable thinkers: Antoine Arnauld and Father Nicolas Malebr...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Anime - the philosophy of Japanese animation Updated: 2010-10-16 02:35:00 Description: Japanese animation is not just for children. It can be dark, incredibly violent and sexually explicit. But does it represent a distinctly Japanese worldview? And is it philosophical? Yes and yes, according to Jane Goodall from the University of Weste...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Japanese philosophy - a short overview Updated: 2010-10-09 02:35:00 Description: Since the 5th century, Japanese philosophy has assimilated and adapted foreign philosophies to its native worldview: picking and choosing ideas about self, government and social order from Confucianism, Buddhism and Western thought. But does this mis...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Extended Mind Updated: 2010-10-02 03:35:00 Description: Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? Some philosophers are now arguing that thoughts are not all in the head. The environment has an active role in driving cognition; cognition is sometimes made up of neural, bodily, and environm...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The responsible scientist - John Forge on ethics in pure science Updated: 2010-09-25 03:35:00 Description: The bomb that exploded above Hiroshima in 1945 was the product of many of the greatest scientific minds in the world and we're still arguing about the moral implications of what they did. But that's just the start of it. Today, technological advances...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in Afghanistan Updated: 2010-09-18 03:35:00 Description: This week, with the Afghan parliamentary elections about to take place, The Philosopher's Zone explores philosophy in Afghanistan, both within the universities and informally in the broader culture. Is there a philosophical tradition that managed to ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Thinking about other cultures - Anita Herle Updated: 2010-09-11 03:35:00 Description: Philosophy is a way of grasping our visible and invisible social world. But there is another way, and it's called anthropology, which studies the way in which various human cultures extend their grasp. This week, we take a philosophical look at what ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Being a person in West Africa - Ajume Wingo Updated: 2010-09-04 03:35:00 Description: When the President of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda said that Margaret Thatcher was "truly a person," what on earth did he mean? He was invoking a concept central to the philosophy of the Akan people of West Africa. This week, we look at what it means to be ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Spoilt for choice or spoilt by choice? Renata Salecl Updated: 2010-08-28 03:35:00 Description: Now that Australia has made its choice - sort of - The Philosopher's Zone looks as the very idea of choice. Much more than previous generations, we can pick and choose where we live, how many children we have or don't have, what type of bread we woul...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The philosophy of astronomy - Simon Schaffer Updated: 2010-08-21 03:35:00 Description: What is the ideology that propels scientists to go to so much trouble? Think, for example, of the hazards involved in a voyage from Europe to our part of the world in the 18th century. Why would you go to all that effort just to observe the transit o...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy on the campaign trail Updated: 2010-08-14 03:35:00 Description: Tony Abbott has been admiring cows at the Brisbane Show, Julia Gillard has, it's said, been patronising Mark Latham by brushing him down the front, but is there anything ideological happening in this election? This week, we go in search of political ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Criminal responsibility and the rational mind Updated: 2010-08-07 03:35:00 Description: The criminal law defines a range of public wrongs and it provides for those who commit such wrongs to be called to answer for them through the criminal process of trial and punishment. We also allow for a number of conditions which mute or nullify ou...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Leo Strauss - philosophy's mystery man Updated: 2010-07-31 03:35:00 Description: According to some commentators, there was a mysterious, dark presence lurking behind the Bush administration. He was, said his critics, elitist, illiberal and anti-democratic. He encouraged American's leaders in imperialist militarism, neo-conservati...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A philosophical history of Russia Updated: 2010-07-24 03:35:00 Description: This year marks the centenary of the death of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy wrote works of fiction that had considerable philosophical depth. In fact he thought his most famous book, War and Peace, was not a novel at all but an exam...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD It's all about me, the philosophy of self part 2: The Quiz Updated: 2010-07-17 03:35:00 Description: This week it's all about me and it's all about you as we explore a few perspectives on philosophy of self. And be sure to take a look at our quiz first as it forms the basis for this week's discussion....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD It's all about me, a forum on the philosophy of self Updated: 2010-07-10 03:35:00 Description: This week it's all about me and it's all about you as we explore a few perspectives on philosophy of self. And more personally still, do you have a consistent principle that guides your life? Or are you philosophically all over the shop?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Politics of Painting - John Barrell Updated: 2010-07-03 03:35:00 Description: Whether it's an installation by Damien Hirst or a painting by John Olsen, these days we do not quite know how to talk about art. Whether we're artists, art critics or philosophers, there is no agreed language. But this was not always the case. In the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Derrida - the father of deconstruction Updated: 2010-06-26 03:35:00 Description: Did you know there's a recipe out there for deconstructed Caesar salad? Or that you can buy a pair of deconstructed jeans? But deconstruction is not really about ripping the hems or serving all the ingredients separately instead of together in a bowl...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD China's Confucian future Updated: 2010-06-19 03:35:00 Description: Today we find out whether the most influential philosophical tradition in China, Confucianism, is making a comeback in the world's largest nation. Professor Daniel Bell from Tsinghua University in Beijing says the political future of China is up for ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Confucius - A very Chinese philosopher Updated: 2010-06-12 03:35:00 Description: Three of the greatest teachers in history never wrote a book. They were Socrates, Jesus Christ and Confucius. As part of Radio National's China Week, The Philosopher's Zone is looking at one of them: Confucius. He was one the most Chinese of thinkers...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Yes, but how do you know? Scepticism and philosophy Updated: 2010-06-05 03:35:00 Description: This week, we meet Stephen Hetherington, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, who believes that sceptical thinking is one of the most authentic forms of philosophical thinking there is. Scepticism isn't just any old refusal t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Enlightened eccentrics in the age of reason Updated: 2010-05-29 03:35:00 Description: This week, we're revisiting one of the greatest epochs in the history of philosophy. It lasted more than a hundred years from the seventeenth century and the whole length of the eighteenth. It was called the Enlightenment, its heroes were Hume, Kant,...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Nietzsche and the will to power Updated: 2010-05-22 03:35:00 Description: Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a preacher who came to despise Christianity. He was a scholar of the Greek and Roman classics who became better known as a philosopher. And he was a philosopher whose ideas -- rejecting the idea of pity, embracing t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The philosophy of mathematics Updated: 2010-05-15 03:35:00 Description: You can count from one to two, from two to three and so on without end. You know that you're not going to run out of numbers to count but how do you know? Did we make all these numbers up, do they obey the laws that we set down, or do they exist in s...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The philosophy of illness - Havi Carel Updated: 2010-05-08 03:35:00 Description: Philosophers have paid a lot of attention to death but rather less to illness. Yet illness is an almost universal human experience and can make us think deeply about who we are and what our relationship is to our bodies and to the world we live in. T...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ethics in the classroom - an alternative to scripture and non-scripture classes? Updated: 2010-05-01 03:35:00 Description: Should children taking non-scripture classes in primary school be offered an ethics course instead? In NSW, ten schools have just begun a ten week trial of ethics for children not taking religious education. We're joined by one of the creators of the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Universal Genius - Gottfried Leibniz Updated: 2010-04-24 03:35:00 Description: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is known as the last "universal genius". In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, he made important contributions to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, as well as mathemati...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Confronting Theory Updated: 2010-04-17 03:35:00 Description: These days, if you go to university to study humanities or media studies, you will encounter something called theory. It's a bit philosophical and a bit French and it maintains that there is no universal human nature and that science cannot be truly ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Cultural Capital - the story of Pierre Bourdieu Updated: 2010-04-10 03:35:00 Description: He was a poor boy from a poor home, and being a poor boy from a poor home was important to his thought. Before the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu died eight years ago, he was the most quoted social scientist alive, and the most lauded public inte...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Watch and the Watchmaker: Philosophy and Intelligent Design Updated: 2010-04-03 02:35:00 Description: It's an old question: could there be a watch without a watchmaker? In other words, could there be a universe without a god who made it? These days, the proponents of what is known as Intelligent Design argue that there must have been a designer and t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What are the odds? Philosophy and probability Updated: 2010-03-27 02:35:00 Description: There's no getting away from probability. If you're worried about global warming, there'll be somebody out there to tell you the chances of a significant increase in temperature over the next few years. Then there are crime rates, the probability of ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A.C. Grayling - A Very Public Philosopher Updated: 2010-03-20 02:35:00 Description: This week, a conversation about the role of the public intellectual with A.C. Grayling, one of Britain's foremost philosophers and public intellectuals. An extraordinarily wide-ranging writer, Grayling has written plays, he's written works of technic...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The liar's paradox and other philosophical absurdities Updated: 2010-03-13 02:35:00 Description: What I am telling you is false. But if I tell you that what I am saying is false and it is false, then what I am now saying is true, but if it's true then to say that it's false is false. Join us today as we go around in paradoxical circles with Pete...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD In defence of the Enlightenment Updated: 2010-03-06 02:35:00 Description: The Enlightenment, that great ferment of ideas in eighteenth-century Europe, has its enemies today on both left and right. This week, we hear a talk from the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, author of the recently published 'In Defence o...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Seeing Red - Perception, sensation and consciousness Updated: 2010-02-27 02:35:00 Description: You are in a darkened lecture hall looking at a patch of red projected onto a screen in front of you. What's involved in "seeing red"? This week, we meet the philosopher and psychologist Nicholas Humphrey who uses the phenomenon of seeing red as way ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Kurt Gödel and the limits of mathematics Updated: 2010-02-20 02:35:00 Description: Kurt Gödel was one of the foremost mathematicians and logicians of the 20th century, best known for his famous incompleteness theorem, which tells us that there are mathematical 'blind spots': parts of mathematics that traditional methods of proof c...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Alexander McCall Smith and the philosopher detective Updated: 2010-02-13 02:35:00 Description: This week, a conversation with writer Alexander McCall Smith. He's best known for his series of novels about Precious Ramotswe and her No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana. However, McCall Smith is also the creator of Isabel Dalhousie, a traine...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The right to property and the right to health Updated: 2010-02-06 02:35:00 Description: Is it morally permissible to impose strong patent protections where doing so prices important new medicines out of the reach of many poor people? This week on The Philosopher's Zone, Thomas Pogge, professor of philosophy at Yale University, talks abo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Albert Camus and The Absurd Updated: 2010-01-30 02:35:00 Description: 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the French-Algerian novelist Albert Camus, who died in a car crash at the age of just 46....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Thinking about the lives of the great thinkers Updated: 2010-01-23 02:35:00 Description: Ray Monk from the University of Southampton in the UK is something unusual in philosophers of the English-speaking world: he's a biographer. This week, he tell us about the challenges of writing the lives of Bertrand Russell and of the great Ludwig W...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The unhappy family of Ludwig Wittgenstein Updated: 2010-01-16 02:35:00 Description: Sometimes it's easy to forget that long dead philosophers had families; a world beyond the cocoon of their thinking and writing; a life with all the joy and sadness and conflict that a family can provide. The 20th century Viennese philosopher's famil...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Philosopher and the Novelist Updated: 2010-01-09 02:35:00 Description: This week, we look at a philosopher and at a novelist, and we find out what the one had to say to the other....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Romantic Movement and rock music Updated: 2010-01-02 02:35:00 Description: Romantic ideas and philosophy live on in certain strains of modern rock music, according to this week's guest, Craig Schuftan, author of Hey Nietzsche - Leave them kids alone. David Bowie, The Cure, The Smiths, Queen, and more contemporary bands like...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy and The Wealth of Nations, PJ O'Rourke Updated: 2009-12-26 02:35:00 Description: Adam Smith is known today as the father of economics, but he was, by profession, a philosopher. His book The Wealth of Nations is an attempt to apply philosophy to the world of money-making and commerce. This week, we dip into his great work with the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A tribute to Isaiah Berlin Updated: 2009-12-19 02:35:00 Description: Isaiah Berlin was born in Russia a hundred years ago, on 6 June 1909. He grew up to be a distinguished philosopher, a great historian of ideas - tracing the origins and vicissitudes of liberal thought over the last few centuries - and an eloquent def...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A tribute to Claude Levi-Strauss Updated: 2009-12-12 02:35:00 Description: Claude Levi-Strauss, the great French anthropologist died not long ago, just a few weeks short of his 101st birthday. We look at his work and find out why he was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD How political idealism threatens civilisation Updated: 2009-12-05 02:35:00 Description: In the eighteenth century, advanced thinkers took up the idea that society was imperfect and that what you do with imperfections is get rid of them. The result was that the growth of large radical projects aimed at transforming things - the French Re...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD From Athens to Baghdad - Greek meets Arabic philosophy Updated: 2009-11-28 02:35:00 Description: This week, we follow the journey of the classics as they spread from Greece to the Arab world and beyond. At a time when Europe still hadn't got its act together philosophically speaking, Arabs were busily translating and debating the ideas of Aristo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Aristotle after Aristotle Updated: 2009-11-21 02:35:00 Description: Just a few centuries after their deaths, Plato was thought questionable while his pupil Aristotle was all but canonised: there was almost a fear of criticising him. Everybody used his logic and Christians were drawn to him by his arguments about a fi...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Seneca - philosophy and tragedy Updated: 2009-11-14 02:35:00 Description: Lucius Annaeus Seneca popularised the philosophy of the Stoics, the Greek Hellenistic school. This week, Rick Benitez from the University of Sydney examines Seneca's teaching that contentedness is achieved by a simple, unperturbed life in accordance ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Therapy of Desire - Epicureans and Stoics on the good life Updated: 2009-11-07 02:35:00 Description: Can philosophy be practical and compassionate? Can it exist for human beings and not just for its own coldly logical reasons? This was a question asked by the philosophers of the Hellenistic age, that's the period following Aristotle, who died in 322...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Human cures and animal sacrifices Updated: 2009-10-31 02:35:00 Description: This week Denise Russell from the University of Wollongong argues that animals held for experimental purposes are in the same moral condition as human beings held as slaves. Secrecy and the status of science protect these practices from critical scru...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Beethoven and the modern Updated: 2009-10-24 02:35:00 Description: Music can make us happy or sad, it can present us with fascinating complex patterns, but can it make us think? Ludwig van Beethoven believed that it could and this week we look at his relationship to the philosophy of his day and his legacy to the mo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What would Karl Marx think? Updated: 2009-10-17 02:35:00 Description: Commodities, capitalism and computers. At a time when the Berlin Wall has fallen but Wall Street is decidedly shaky, a self-described lapsed Marxist takes us through some of the key philosophical and practical ideas of Karl Marx and argues for what i...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Gandhi and philosophy - the centenary of Hind Swaraj Updated: 2009-10-10 02:35:00 Description: One hundred years ago the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi took a boat from London to South Africa. Over ten days he wrote a long essay that for the first time melded his ideas about civilisation, violence, truth and the aims of life into a ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD In search of civilisation Updated: 2009-10-03 03:35:00 Description: This week we polish up a tarnished idea and ask whether it's really as tarnished as all that. The idea is civilisation and our guide to it is the Melbourne philosopher John Armstrong, author of a new book called In Search of Civilization: Remaking a ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 'I can't go on, I'll go on': Samuel Johnson and the Stoics Updated: 2009-09-26 03:35:00 Description: Three hundred years ago this month, the great Samuel Johnson was born. He was a lexicographer, a poet, an essayist, a heroically good man and a tortured depressive. But was he also a philosopher? This week, we look at Johnson and at the ancient Stoic...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Forging ahead - the philosophy of authenticity, fakes and forgers Updated: 2009-09-19 03:35:00 Description: If a painting, a sculpture or even a recording of a musical performance has been widely admired, has given delight to many, and is then revealed to be a forgery or a copy, why reject it? The object itself hasn't changed, so what has? When he find out...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilisation: 50th anniversary Updated: 2009-09-12 03:35:00 Description: Exactly fifty years ago, a 33-year-old Frenchman named Michel Foucault completed what would become one of the most influential works on the history of psychiatry: Madness and Civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. The book made a p...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD John Stuart Mill's On Liberty: 150th anniversary Updated: 2009-09-05 03:35:00 Description: This year, we're celebrating the 150th birthday of Darwin's Origin of Species, but that wasn't the only significant book to be published in 1859. That year also saw the publication of On Liberty by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. It's a str...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What makes a world class philosophy department? - The case of Melbourne University Updated: 2009-08-29 03:35:00 Description: We're often told that, when it comes to philosophy, Australia is punching above its weight. A country as small as ours ought not to be producing so many fine philosophers as we have. But have those days come to an end? Over in Chicago, the Philosophy...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Power, prejudice and the murder of Stephen Lawrence Updated: 2009-08-22 03:35:00 Description: In London in 1993, a black teenager named Stephen Lawrence was fatally stabbed by a small gang of white teenagers. His friend Duwayne Brooks was a witness but the police failed to take his testimony seriously. When someone speaks but is not heard bec...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The epistemology of blogging Updated: 2009-08-15 03:35:00 Description: Blogging has changed the way in which people acquire knowledge and justify their beliefs. But are these changes good or bad? Do we know more and do we know differently as a result of blogging? And is it all beneficial for democracy? Some philosophers...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Are ethicists ethical? Updated: 2009-08-08 03:35:00 Description: If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behaviour, then you might expect professional ethicists to behave especially well. So why are books on ethics more likely to be stolen from university libraries than other books? Why don't people who s...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Philosopher and the Wolf Updated: 2009-08-01 03:35:00 Description: For more than ten years, Mark Rowlands, currently professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, lived with his pet wolf, Brenin. This week on The Philosopher's Zone, he talks about their shared life and what it has to tell us about how we view ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Governance and the Yuck Factor Updated: 2009-07-25 03:35:00 Description: In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama expressed an ambition to bridge the divide between predominantly conservative 'red states' and predominantly liberal 'blue states' and to unite all Americans in a common purpose of remaking the nation ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Rebirth of Nature Updated: 2009-07-18 03:35:00 Description: In the seveteenth century, the great French philosopher Rene Descartes devised a picture of the world in which we are isolated egos dwelling in a world of lifeless matter with creates life by its motion....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Philosopher and the Novelist Updated: 2009-07-11 03:35:00 Description: This week, we look at a philosopher and at a novelist, and we find out what the one had to say to the other....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy - The great divide (Continental / Analytic) Updated: 2009-07-04 03:35:00 Description: This week, we examine a division in the philosophical world, between what's called analytic philosophy, as practised in the English-speaking world and the Nordic nations, and continental philosophy. If you're an analytical philosopher, all that Frenc...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Is philosophy irrelevant to science? Updated: 2009-06-27 03:35:00 Description: Scientists get on with the job – they do stuff with test tubes or with computers – but can philosophers help them? Do they need help and, if so, do they think they need help? This week, we examine what philosophers of science talk about and what ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Romantic Movement and rock music Updated: 2009-06-20 03:35:00 Description: Romantic ideas and philosophy live on in certain strains of modern rock music, according to this week's guest, Craig Schuftan, author of Hey Nietzsche - Leave them kids alone. David Bowie, The Cure, The Smiths, Queen, and more contemporary bands like...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A conversation with Isaiah Berlin Updated: 2009-06-13 03:35:00 Description: Last week, we commemorated the centenary of the birth of the greatest British philosopher and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin. This week, we raid the ABC archives for a long interview in which Berlin talks about human freedom: are we free and, if w...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A tribute to Isaiah Berlin Updated: 2009-06-06 03:35:00 Description: Isaiah Berlin was born in Russia a hundred years ago, on 6 June 1909. He grew up to be a distinguished philosopher, a great historian of ideas - tracing the origins and vicissitudes of liberal thought over the last few centuries - and an eloquent def...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Happiness Machine Updated: 2009-05-30 03:35:00 Description: Philosopher Caroline West believes the word 'happiness' should be abolished because it has become a catch all for such a wide variety of states of being and ways of living that it has lost all meaning. But where to from there? What are our alternativ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Jekyll and Hyde and criminal responsibility Updated: 2009-05-23 03:35:00 Description: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published in 1886. It was hugely successful and has given us one of the archetypes of our time, but what does it have to tell us about our attitudes to guilt? Was Dr Jekyll a murderer or does the fact tha...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Thinking about the lives of the great thinkers Updated: 2009-05-16 03:35:00 Description: Ray Monk from the University of Southampton in the UK is something unusual in philosophers of the English-speaking world: he's a biographer. This week, he tell us about the challenges of writing the lives of Bertrand Russell and of the great Ludwig W...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The unhappy family of Ludwig Wittgenstein Updated: 2009-05-09 03:35:00 Description: Sometimes it's easy to forget that long dead philosophers had families; a world beyond the cocoon of their thinking and writing; a life with all the joy and sadness and conflict that a family can provide. The 20th century Viennese philosopher's famil...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The philosophy of the quantum spook Updated: 2009-05-02 03:35:00 Description: Does physics offer us a fuzzy picture of a clear reality or a clear picture of a fuzzy reality? In 1947, Albert Einstein told Max Born -- a great physicist and the grandfather of Olivia Newton-John -- that he couldn't accept quantum theory because it...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy and The Wealth of Nations, PJ O'Rourke Updated: 2009-04-25 03:35:00 Description: Adam Smith is known today as the father of economics, but he was, by profession, a philosopher. His book The Wealth of Nations is an attempt to apply philosophy to the world of money-making and commerce. This week, we dip into his great work with the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ideals and dirty hands - C.A.J. Coady Updated: 2009-04-18 03:35:00 Description: What's wrong with moralism in politics? Can you be moral and advocate morality while at the same time being aware of your own moral failings? Can you at the same time be an idealist and a realist? And what about dirty hands? Do the supreme emergencie...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Getting down to reality: Raymond Geuss Updated: 2009-04-11 03:35:00 Description: Lenin divided people into two kinds: 'who' and 'whom'. For him, the important question in politics was who does what to whom? But is this grimly realistic view of power neglected by philosophers with too much of an interest in justice, equality, righ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Hypatia of Alexandria - a philosophical martyr Updated: 2009-04-04 02:35:00 Description: Hypatia of Alexandria was beautiful and clever, and, as far we know, never did anybody any harm, so why was she torn to pieces by an angry mob, armed (so some stories tell) with oyster shells? This week, we look at the woman and the heritage of what ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Voice in the wilderness: RG Collingwood Updated: 2009-03-28 02:35:00 Description: RG Collingwood -- philosopher, archaeologist, historian -- was a man difficult to place, who felt very much an outsider in the philosophical world at the time of his death in 1943. Yet, today what he was interested in is very much like the sort of th...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Understanding and blame while the money runs out Updated: 2009-03-21 02:35:00 Description: It's not a good time to be a big noise in banking or the motor industry, but who are the really guilty parties here and do the media help us to understand what's going on? Can business ethics enable us to draw lines between culpability, incompetence ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Talking to the animals Updated: 2009-03-14 02:35:00 Description: You can talk to the animals till the cows come home but will they talk back? Perhaps they do and you just don't get the message. Either way, the fact that animals don't seem to possess language has, since ancient Greek times, encouraged the view that...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD A rear view of Alfred Hitchcock Updated: 2009-03-07 02:35:00 Description: A rear view of Alfred Hitchcock is a view that takes in what lies behind and beneath. And what we find is a profoundly pessimistic, though not hopeless, view of the world and a keen interest in the way we see it. How do we interpret what we see? And ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Providence lost? Updated: 2009-02-28 02:35:00 Description: 'Providence' is not a word of which we make much use these days. For us, it tends to be a synonym for good fortune or perhaps a sense that somebody is watching over us. But what is providence if it isn't whatever deliveries you a prize in the lottery...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Burning issues: the ethics of firefighting Updated: 2009-02-21 02:35:00 Description: You're a firefighter and you have a choice: do you save the old person, who's relatively easy to save, or do you go for the child when your attempt might not be successful and you might lose your own life trying? Fire fighting has been much on all ou...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Charles Darwin - The Philosopher's Zone and All in the Mind Special Updated: 2009-02-14 02:35:00 Description: The human animal is a complex beast - we mate, fight, emote, and socialise in curious ways. Charles Darwin's theories continue to provoke controversy over how and why we behave the way we do. Join leading evolutionary scientists and philosophers in t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in the mountains - Arne Naess Updated: 2009-02-07 02:35:00 Description: Arne Næss, who died in January just a couple of weeks short of his ninety-seventh birthday, was a great mountaineer and part of the history of twentieth-century philosophy. He started out as a member of the great philosophical school the Vienna Circ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Radical hope Updated: 2009-01-31 02:35:00 Description: Jonathan Lear, author of Radical hope - ethics in the face of cultural devastation, takes us through the story of an American Indian nation, the Crow, and their last great chief, Plenty Coups. Plenty Coup died an old man in 1932, having lived through...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Gavagai! Updated: 2009-01-24 02:35:00 Description: This week, we continue our look at translation by examining the extreme case of radical translation. How do you translate from a language which has no connection with yours and of which you do not speak a single word, and what does all this have to d...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in another tongue Updated: 2009-01-17 02:35:00 Description: Philosophy aspires to universal truths but it has to do so in a particular language. How does the language in which philosophy is expressed affect what can and cannot be said, and how does translation affect our understanding of it? This week, we ask...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Islam and philosophy - Tariq Ramadan Updated: 2009-01-10 02:35:00 Description: The holy Koran is held by Muslims to be the literal word of God, and if you've got that, who needs philosophy? This week we put that question to the distinguished and controversial Muslim thinker Tariq Ramadan, who tells us that Islam not only needs ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Emergence of Science, Part 2 Updated: 2009-01-03 02:35:00 Description: Why did the great scientific revolution occur in the West and not in China or the Arab-Islamic world? This week, in the second part of an interview with Stephen Gaukroger from the University of Sydney, we find out why it happened, where it happened a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Emergence of Science, Part 1 Updated: 2008-12-27 02:35:00 Description: In the twenty-first century, science doesn't just explain the world, it dominates the world. Religion, art, human relationships, history -- we expect them all to be explained in scientific terms....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Doing without a ruler: in defence of anarchism Updated: 2008-12-20 02:35:00 Description: The word derives from the Greek; it means 'without a ruler' and the idea is that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Merleau-Ponty and the lived body Updated: 2008-12-13 02:35:00 Description: 2008 is the centenary of the birth of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He was a friend of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and a man who wanted to get philosophy back to its basics and the physical reality of the lived body. This ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Teaching children to be philosophers Updated: 2008-12-06 02:35:00 Description: How young is too young to think philosophically? Philosophers like Philip Cam from the University of New South Wales say there's no developmental reason why primary school age children can't be taught to think and to reason, and that developing these...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Martha Nussbaum - Part 2 - Thinking about Animals Updated: 2008-11-29 02:35:00 Description: We'd don't put pigs on trial and gazelles don't sue lions, so it looks as though it doesn't make sense to talk about animal rights. But can we do what we like with them or should we recognize not just that they have interests— such as an interest i...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Martha Nussbaum - Part 1 - The Social Contract Updated: 2008-11-22 02:35:00 Description: How much of your personal liberty would you be prepared to give up in exchange for drains that work and trains that run on time? The idea of the social contract has been with us for many centuries now. It embodies the idea that society is a trade-off...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Scapegoats and sacrifices - Rene Girard Updated: 2008-11-15 02:35:00 Description: Have you ever found that you didn't want something until you noticed that somebody else wanted it? Were you picked on at school, or were you one of the pickers on? Welcome to the world of the French thinker Rene Girard, who claims that desire needs t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The philosophy of cold hard cash Updated: 2008-11-08 02:35:00 Description: There's not much money in philosophy, but then there's not much philosophy in money, either. In classical times and the Middle Ages, philosophers were often interested in money (in thinking about it, that is) but since then they've tended to ignore t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The John Anderson lectures Updated: 2008-11-01 02:35:00 Description: John Anderson, the famous and inflential professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney from 1927 to 1958, taught on a wide range of topics, from the ancients to the moderns. This week, we find out what he had to say about the Greeks and about p...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Karl Popper and the logic of the market Updated: 2008-10-25 02:35:00 Description: Karl Popper was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century and a great advocate of scientific rationality, but what happened when he turned his attention to the more disorderly world of politics and economics? This week, we look at Pop...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Why Asian philosophy? Updated: 2008-10-18 02:35:00 Description: For a long while, Western philosophy has had little to do with the philosophical traditions of India and China. A common view amongst Western philosophers was that all thought in the Asian traditions was not philosophy, but religion or mysticism. But...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Bailouts, capitalism and the financial markets Updated: 2008-10-11 02:35:00 Description: We are now faced with the seemingly incongruous situation of having an industry that sings the praises of capitalism, and the free markets wanting the state to come in and help prevent its own losses. We'll also find out about the division between mo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Music and the Enlightenment Updated: 2008-10-04 03:35:00 Description: The age of a great movement of ideas, the Enlightenment, was also a great age of music: Bach and Handel, Mozart and Haydn. But how did Enlightenment thinkers reflect on music and how does their belief in progress relate to our views of art today?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD 'It's alive!' Frankenstein, science and philosophy in the Romantic period Updated: 2008-09-27 03:35:00 Description: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is more than just the story of a man bolting together his own creature from bits of pre-loved human beings; it's a serious examination of the science and philosophy of its day. This week, we look at the ideas behind the bo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The ethics of keeping your mouth shut - the case of the buried bodies Updated: 2008-09-20 03:35:00 Description: This week The Philosopher's Zone looks at what happens when lawyers know more than they are able to tell. What should you do when ethical duty collides with personal morality? We'll take an infamous American murder trial from the 1970s as our case st...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Justify my love Updated: 2008-09-13 03:35:00 Description: The finely tuned minds of philosophers become curiously blunt and obtuse when the turn their attention to love. Can we talk philosophically of love? Do we love people for their qualities? If so, why we go on loving them when those qualities change? T...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Sayyid Qutb and Islamist ideology Updated: 2008-09-06 03:35:00 Description: This year marks the 25th birthday of Al Qaeda and its particular brand of Islamist ideology and philosophy. So this week The Philosopher's Zone explores the life and times of a man who greatly influenced al Qaeda and the modern Islamist movement: the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Light from the North - The Scottish Enlightenment Updated: 2008-08-30 03:35:00 Description: Much of the modern world was created in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The Scottish Enlightenment was more than just the Scottish branch of that great eighteenth-century European movement of ideas known as the Enlightenment: it was essentially Scot...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Worrying about China Updated: 2008-08-23 03:35:00 Description: To the outside world, China might look a self-confident, if pushy, country. But how confident are Chinese intellectuals after a century of tumultuous history? This week, we examine the state of critical inquiry in China, what Chinese intellectuals do...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Uprootedness and national conflicts Updated: 2008-08-16 03:35:00 Description: The French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil identified the basic human need for roots as crucial. Uprootedness and disapora in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians have shaped the narratives about the past and the future on both ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Objective truth Updated: 2008-08-09 03:35:00 Description: For a long time now, it has been fashionable to say that what science offers is not a true mirror of nature but a distorting mirror, reflecting our presuppositions, prejudices and politics. But can we take the criticisms on board while still maintain...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Stoics at war Updated: 2008-08-02 03:35:00 Description: Recent philosophical debate on war has focused on the idea that you don't just have to fight by the rules; you also have to be fighting in a just cause. But does this ignore much of the moral context of a soldier's life. What binds comrades in arms t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Literature, law and ethics - The case of Billy Budd Updated: 2008-07-26 03:35:00 Description: A visiting legal ethicist talks to us about why a novella by Herman Melville, involving mutiny and an execution at sea, has become required reading for those interested in the intersection of literature, law and ethics....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Damned if you do and damned if you don't Updated: 2008-07-19 03:35:00 Description: What happens if you're in one of those situations where you're faced with a choice and, whatever you choose, it's going to be a bad choice? This is what's known as a moral dilemma, but do moral dilemmas actually occur in real life? Moral philosophers...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Taking God for granted (or not) Updated: 2008-07-12 03:35:00 Description: Some people take God (or, at least, God's existence) for granted; their belief comes from faith. But some of them still think that they can learn from philosophers. This week, we meet somebody who teaches philosophy to evangelical Protestant students...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD John Gray at the Writers' Festival - Part 2 Updated: 2008-07-05 03:35:00 Description: The celebrated British philosopher and political theorist John Gray discusses the ways in which the Utopian aspirations of the secular left and right reflect the Christian heritage of Western political thought. From Stalinist Russia to contemporary I...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD John Gray at the Writers' Festival - Part 1 Updated: 2008-06-28 03:35:00 Description: The celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray is one of Britain's most prominent thinkers. In such books as Straw Dogs and Black Mass, he argues that apocalyptic religion has returned as a major force in global conflict....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Egalitarianism and fairness Updated: 2008-06-21 03:35:00 Description: Australia prides itself on its egalitarianism, but what do we mean by 'egalitarianism'? Is it about treating everybody alike or just about treating like cases alike? Does inequality matter if nobody gets hurt? It is about fairness, and can we talk ab...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The only good philosopher is a dead one Updated: 2008-06-14 03:35:00 Description: Or the only truly tested philosophy is that of a dead philosopher. When the philosopher dies, the philosophy is put to the test. Does is still seem valid? Or does it fade into irrelevance in the face of eternity? From the Sydney Writers' Festival, a ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ethics in the public realm - Bill Henson and drug-resistant tuberculosis Updated: 2008-06-07 03:35:00 Description: This week, The Philosopher's Zone looks at a couple of current, public ethical issues. It's said that the photographer Bill Henson, whose images were recently seized by the police, didn't intend to produce pornography. Does this mean that the images ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Mai '68 Updated: 2008-05-31 03:35:00 Description: In May 1968, the universities of France and Germany erupted. There were protests, there were sit-ins, there were riots and, among students of philosophy, there was a total rejection of the older generation. Jean-Paul Sartre found himself outflanked f...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Suicide - To be or not to be (part 2) Updated: 2008-05-24 03:35:00 Description: In the second part of our philosophical study of suicide, we look at how attitudes to the act altered when religion began to feature less in philosophers' views of the subject and the focus turned to the autonomy of the individual: it's your life so ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Suicide - To be or not to be (Part 1) Updated: 2008-05-17 03:35:00 Description: Suicide has been a focus of philosophical examination in the West since at least the time of Plato, and for good reason. It raises a lot of difficult questions. What makes behaviour suicidal? Is suicidal behaviour rational and - the question that has...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Practical philosophy and speculative fiction Updated: 2008-05-10 03:35:00 Description: The philosophy of Vedanta, which derives from the ancient Hindu Scripture, aspires to scientific knowledge about how life is to be lived. This week, we examine its claims. We also look at a new novel that asks what might happen if the work of Plato w...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Doing without a ruler: in defence of anarchism Updated: 2008-05-03 03:35:00 Description: The word derives from the Greek—it means 'without a ruler'—and the idea is that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished. This week we are looking at anarchism and why it has mostly played a minor role in pol...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Morality and political violence Updated: 2008-04-26 03:35:00 Description: War, rebellion and terrorism - together, they constitute a major challenge to the world today. But they also constitute a challenge to morality itself. This week, we talk to the Melbourne philosopher C.A.J. Coady about morality and political violence...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Time for philosophers Updated: 2008-04-19 03:35:00 Description: Time, as we all know, is money, but what else is it? Would it exist if nothing were changing or moving? Does it really have a direction? Are the future and the past real? Will the future be infinite? Was (or is) the past infinite? These and other que...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Steam-age philosophy Updated: 2008-04-12 03:35:00 Description: Two of the inventors of the steam engine differed hugely about the theory behind what they were doing. Did that make a difference to what they did, or does philosophy not matter at all? This week's program stares into the gap between theory and pract...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Queensland - Beautiful one day, metaphysical the next Updated: 2008-04-05 02:35:00 Description: Many Australian trends in philosophy of mind, environmental philosophy, logic and social thought began in Queensland or had a fruitful infancy there. So this week, with the help of Dr Gary Malinas, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Q...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Buffy the Concept Slayer Updated: 2008-03-29 02:35:00 Description: The problem of evil, the nature of knowledge, the moral demands of duty -- all of them big-time philosophical issues and all of them dealt with in one of the most sucessful TV shows of the last decade: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This week, The Philoso...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Islam and philosophy - Tariq Ramadan Updated: 2008-03-22 02:35:00 Description: The holy Koran is held by Muslims to be the literal word of God, and if you've got that, who needs philosophy? This week we put that question to the distinguished and controversial Muslim thinker Tariq Ramadan, who tells us that Islam not only needs ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy and the Natural World - Val Plumwood Updated: 2008-03-15 02:35:00 Description: How do our ideas about the nature of thought and the nature of the human mind affect our view of the environment and of the other beings with whom we share it? This week we ponder on these issues in a program about Val Plumwood, the feminist and envi...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Gavagai! Updated: 2008-03-08 02:35:00 Description: This week, we continue our look at translation by examining the extreme case of radical translation. How do you translate from a language which has no connection with yours and of which you do not speak a single word, and what does all this have to d...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in another tongue Updated: 2008-03-01 02:35:00 Description: Philosophy aspires to universal truths but it has to do so in a particular language. How does the language in which philosophy is expressed affect what can and cannot be said, and how does translation affect our understanding of it? This week, we ask...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Why there's no getting away from beauty... Updated: 2008-02-23 02:35:00 Description: This week The Philosopher's Zone turns its attention to aesthetics, the study of art (and entertainment) and why it affects us in the way it does. What is it that captures our attention in art, and why is there no getting away from beauty?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophers advising government Updated: 2008-02-16 02:35:00 Description: This week two examples of philosophers providing ideas and advice to governments. One has been successful, the other less so. The Australian philosopher Philip Pettit has the ear of the current Spanish president, but what has he achieved? We also loo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Emergence of Science, Part 2 Updated: 2008-02-09 02:35:00 Description: Why did the great scientific revolution occur in the West and not in China or the Arab-Islamic world? This week, in the second part of an interview with Stephen Gaukroger from the University of Sydney, we find out why it happened, where it happened a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Emergence of Science, Part 1 Updated: 2008-02-02 02:35:00 Description: In the twenty-first century, science doesn't just explain the world: it dominates the world. Religion, art, human relationships, history - we expect them all to be explained in scientific terms. How did science acquire this dominance over our way of ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophical love stories Updated: 2008-01-26 02:35:00 Description: This week, Friedrich Nietzsche meets the Frankenstein monster and Simone de Beauvoir hangs out with the Desperate Housewives, in a philosophical look at some stories of attraction and love....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy for lunch Updated: 2008-01-19 02:35:00 Description: Earlier this year, the Australasian Association of Philosophy did something very unusual: it held a press conference. It was a lunch too and as the tables were cleared, I chatted about mind and morals with three philosophers: David Chalmers from the ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Minds and computers Updated: 2008-01-12 02:35:00 Description: Could a computer have a mind? Is our mind a sort of computer? And what do we mean by 'mind' anyway? This week, we talk about these mind-numbing issues with Matt Carter, Fellow of the Philosophy Department at Melbourne University....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in schools Updated: 2008-01-05 02:35:00 Description: Philosophy is about asking childlike questions - how do we know the world exists? How do we know it hasn't just started existing? Why can't we go back in time? So why not teach philosophy in schools? It doesn't happen much in this country (it doesn't...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Molyneux's problem Updated: 2007-12-29 02:35:00 Description: Who was Molyneux and what was his problem? He was an Irish physician of the eighteenth century interested in the psychology of sight and his problem was this: could a person born blind, who knew shapes only by feeling, recognize those shapes by sight...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The music of Hades Updated: 2007-12-15 02:35:00 Description: Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo isn't the first opera, but it is the first great opera. Today, we celebrate its four-hundredth birthday by talking to a philosopher who's also a musician (or a musician who's also a philosopher) about the ideas underlinin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The anatomy of a discovery Updated: 2007-12-08 02:35:00 Description: The great physiologist and anatomist William Harvey died three hundred and fifty years ago this year. In today's Philospher's Zone, we examine the thinking behind his greatest discovery - the circulation of the blood - and reveal the philosophy that ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What's social (and what's just) about social justice? Updated: 2007-12-01 02:35:00 Description: With a new government running the country, can we hope for more social justice, or will there be less of it? This week we ask what social justice is and whether we really need more of it. Also, are museums still places of exploration, discovery and p...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Considering consideration Updated: 2007-11-24 02:35:00 Description: Do you hold doors open for others? Then you're being considerate. Do you let your mobile phone ring during movies? Then you're being inconsiderate. This week we analyse a form of conduct that seems trivial, but helps to keep civilised society togethe...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The dangers of teaching philosophy Updated: 2007-11-17 02:35:00 Description: This week, Tony Coady from the University of Melbourne talks about the establishment of philosophy in Australia and the dangers of teaching philosophy....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy, treason, plot Updated: 2007-11-10 02:35:00 Description: The murder of Julius Caesar, the Gunpowder Plot, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the German generals' plan to kill Hitler, September 11 - history seems to be full of conspiracies, yet the gerat philosopher Karl Popper argued that no major histo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ethics on the Couch Updated: 2007-11-03 02:35:00 Description: Non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, justice - these are supposed to be the ethical principles according to which all clinicians conduct their professional lives. But are they suitable for psychiatry in a global, multicultural envir...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosopher Kings Updated: 2007-10-27 03:35:00 Description: Plato said that in a well-ordered state, philosophers would be kings, but how do philosophers fare when they get their own little kingdom to rule - a university, say, or a faculty or even just a department? This week, Paul Thom, a philosopher and a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Thinking and judging with Hannah Arendt Updated: 2007-10-20 03:35:00 Description: Attending the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the war criminal, the philosopher Hannah Arendt was struck not by his satanic evil but by how unthinking he was. This week Max Deutscher, author of a recent book on Arendt's work, discusses her views on thought...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The great divide Updated: 2007-10-13 03:35:00 Description: There are two philosophical traditions in the Western world: the analytical tradition of the English-speaking nations and the tradition of philosophy as practised in continental Europe. Few philosophers straddle both but Max Deutscher, foundation pro...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The naming of things Updated: 2007-10-06 03:35:00 Description: Much of philosophy is about how we divide the world up - into things, ideas, species, breeds, genera - and the people at the coal-face of this work are the naturalists. This week, we learn about the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, who invented the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Sentimentality from Adam Smith to Alfred Hitchcock Updated: 2007-09-29 03:35:00 Description: In the eighteenth century, the word 'sentimental' didn't mean what we mean; it meant seeing things from somebody else's point of view, which is why there is a line of descent from an eighteenth-century philosopher like Adam Smith to an twentieth-cent...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Morality and restraint Updated: 2007-09-22 03:35:00 Description: There are poor children starving in Africa, so you should really eat up your food, shouldn't you? Perhaps you should, but why are their needs morally more significant than your desire for enjoyment. This week, The Philosopher's Zone looks at morality...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Can environmental philosophy save the world? Updated: 2007-09-15 03:35:00 Description: What can we learn from Easter Island and the collapse of other civilisations? Environmental philosopher, political activist and ecofeminist Val Plumwood believes that we need a new ethics to bring us into harmony with the natural world and perhaps av...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Metaphysics Down Under Updated: 2007-09-08 03:35:00 Description: John Anderson kept the flame of metaphysics alive when most of the English-speaking world would have none of it. He was one of Australia's most influential philosophers though he didn't publish much. Some of his lectures have just been published as a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The strange case of Australian idealism Updated: 2007-09-01 03:35:00 Description: In the early years of the last century, if Australia had a public philosophy it was idealism: the view that ultimate reality was about ideas, not brute matter. It has had an impact in this country that went beyond the academy and now it has almost va...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The strange birth of Idealism Updated: 2007-08-25 03:35:00 Description: The Irish philosopher George Berkeley, born in 1685, was responsible for what it many respects a very strange theory: he thought that matter didn't exist. This week, we investigate, or we think we do....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What is the worst argument in the world? Updated: 2007-08-18 03:35:00 Description: Philosophy is all about arguing, but some arguments are worse than others. In fact, some are so awful that only really intelligent people can believe them. This week we examine some implausible ideas with the help of two connoisseurs of bad arguments...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Paraconsistency: the wilder shores of logic Updated: 2007-08-11 03:35:00 Description: If yesterday was Friday and tomorrow will be Sunday, today must be Saturday - that's logic, right? Not necessarily. This week, in the second part of a talk on modern logic, Greg Restall from the University of Melbourne tells us that things don't alwa...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Logic in Australia Updated: 2007-08-04 03:35:00 Description: Mathematicians use it, computer engineers use it, web designers use it - what is it? It's logical and this week, Greg Restall from the University of Melbourne talks about the most fundamental of philosophical disciplines and why it's, well, fun....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophical love stories Updated: 2007-07-28 03:35:00 Description: This week, Friedrich Nietzsche meets the Frankenstein monster and Simon de Beauvoir hangs out with the Desperate Housewives, in a philosophical look at some stories of attraction and love....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy from a female point of view Updated: 2007-07-21 03:35:00 Description: Across the world, philosophy is a lot like physics - female practitioners are seriously outnumbered by men - and Australia is no exception. However, Australia's feminist philosophers are vibrantly energetic and creative. This week, we learn about the...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Beginning philosophy right here and now Updated: 2007-07-14 03:35:00 Description: This week, we talk to Stephen Hetherington, whose book Self-Knowledge invites us to ask ourselves what, sitting alone in a room, we can claim to know about who we are and the world in which we live. It shows how profound philosophy can emerge from se...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy for Lunch Updated: 2007-07-07 03:35:00 Description: Last week, the Australasian Association of Philosophy did something very unusual: it held a press conference. It was a lunch too and this week, as the tables are cleared, we chat about mind and morals with three philosophers: David Chalmers from the ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD American philosophy or philosophy in America? Updated: 2007-06-30 03:35:00 Description: There is plenty of philosophy in American universities but is there a specifically American philosophy? This week, we look at how white America's reaction to the landscape and the growth of democracy resulted in a distinctive American approach to phi...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in a test tube Updated: 2007-06-23 03:35:00 Description: This week the Cairns Convention Centre was host to the 5th Annual Meeting of International Society for Stem Cell Research. One of the principal speakers this was Insoo Hyun , Assistant Professor of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University in Clev...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007) Updated: 2007-06-16 03:35:00 Description: This week on The Philosopher's Zone we pay tribute to Richard Rorty, the controversial American philosopher who died last week at the age of 75....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What do we know and how do we know we know it? Updated: 2007-06-09 03:35:00 Description: Is it one thing to see a red image in front of you, another to believe that you're seeing a red apple, another to see a red apple and yet another actually to know that you're seeing a red apple? These are the strange questions asked in the branch of ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Finding a new market for philosophy Updated: 2007-06-02 03:35:00 Description: Why teach philosophy in a graduate school of management? Well, that's what Professor Robert Spillane does and it seems to be working, except for those junior Gordon Gekkos who just don't get it. This week, we talk to him about the philosophers who ha...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Shakespeare the philosopher Updated: 2007-05-26 03:35:00 Description: Shakespeare's plays reflect the ferment of the post-Reformation world. New ideas of human nature, the rise of science and the conflict between the bourgeois individual and the old feudal order of rank and duty are played out in the complex psychology...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Ethics of Economic Rationalism Updated: 2007-05-19 03:35:00 Description: Does economic rationalism maximise human happiness? Does it result in equality and does that matter? Does it make for more individual liberty? And, for that matter, what exactly is it? This week, a philosophical look at one of the buzz concepts of th...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Minds and Computers Updated: 2007-05-12 03:35:00 Description: Could a computer have a mind? Is our mind a sort of computer? And what do we mean by 'mind' anyway? This week, we talk about these mind-numbing issues with Matt Carter, Fellow of the Philosophy Department at Melbourne University....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in schools Updated: 2007-05-05 03:35:00 Description: Philosophy is about asking childlike questions - how do we know the world exists? How do we know it hasn't just started existing? Why can't we go back in time? So why not teach philosophy in schools? It doesn't happen much in this country (it doesn't...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Masters of Emotion Updated: 2007-04-28 03:35:00 Description: Masters of Emotion is the title of an exhibition currently on at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery. It is devoted to revealing how the portrayal of emotions has provided a challenge for artists since the time of classical antiquity and, e...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What's wrong with slavery? Updated: 2007-04-21 03:35:00 Description: We all agree that slavery is a bad thing but can we say why? Precisely what rights are being offended and why are they worth defending? So, 200 years since the British parliament voted to abolish the slave trade we ask what exactly is wrong with slav...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy, spirituality and the self - Part 2 Updated: 2007-04-14 03:35:00 Description: Charles Taylor, the distinguished Canadian philosopher, has just been awarded the Templeton Prize, the world's most highly endowed award for intellectual achievement. This week, we hear the second part of his conversation with ABC Radio National's To...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy, spirituality and the self - Part 1 Updated: 2007-04-07 03:35:00 Description: Charles Taylor, the distinguished Canadian philosopher, has just been awarded the Templeton Prize, the world's most highly endowed award for intellectual achievement. This week on The Philosopher's Zone, he talks to ABC Radio National's Tom Morton, a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Molyneux's problem Updated: 2007-03-31 03:35:00 Description: Who was Molyneux and what was his problem? He was an Irish physician of the eighteenth century interested in the psychology of sight and his problem was this: could a person born blind, who knew shapes only by feeling, recognize those shapes by sight...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The many worlds of David Lewis Updated: 2007-03-24 02:35:00 Description: The American philosopher David Lewis was an important and puzzling figure. Many philosophers believe that we can talk about different possible worlds (a world in which John Kerry won the last US presidential election, for example, or a world in which...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Let's get metaphysical Updated: 2007-03-03 02:35:00 Description: Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate nature of reality. It aims to establish what does and does not exist. This week, Professor Mark Colyvan from the University of Sydney, discusses some of the critical metaphysical questions throughout history a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy in the year of the pig Updated: 2007-02-24 02:35:00 Description: Can classical Chinese philosophy address environmental issues or is it too much about family and not about anything else? This week, The Philosopher's Zone looks at what various philosophical schools have to tell us about our relationship with the na...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Philosophy: where to now? Updated: 2007-02-17 02:35:00 Description: This week, Graham Priest, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, asks where philosophy has got to at the start of the 21st century and where it may go from here. What were the major influences that brought us to where we are now, and...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What's the Persian for 'liberal'? Updated: 2007-02-10 02:35:00 Description: In the headlines, Iran is a rogue state ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. Inside, though, things look different: Iranian intellectuals are rediscovering their nation's liberal traditions, and they're doing so by way of the works of western philosophe...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The examined life Updated: 2007-02-03 02:35:00 Description: This week we talk to Dr Vera Ranki, Founding Director of the Examined Life Institute, about the use of classical philosophy as a way of finding out how to live the good life. Ranki seeks to bring philosophy out of the ivory tower and directly into ou...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Utilitarianism Updated: 2007-01-27 02:35:00 Description: Two hundred years after the birth of John Stuart Mill, one of the most famous proponents of the ethical and political theory known as utilitarianism, we talk to its best known modern exponent, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, about the moral ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The question of consciousness Updated: 2007-01-20 02:35:00 Description: This week on The Philosopher's Zone, John Searle, one of the foremost philosophers in the English-speaking world today, discusses the question of consciousness. What is it to be conscious? And is there really a problem here at all?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Do Animals Think? Updated: 2007-01-13 02:35:00 Description: Do animals think? is the title of Dr Clive Wynne's book in which he sets out his views on anthropomorphism and animal consciousness. Are they conscious in the way we are conscious? And, if not, what does consciousness mean for an animal? That's the d...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD |
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