Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Author: BBC Radio 4 February 10, 2022 Duration: 50:32

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most celebrated thinkers of the twentieth century. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, critic, historian, an investigator of culture, a maker of radio programmes and more. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. The rise of the Nazis in Germany forced him into exile, and he worked in Paris in dread of what was to come; when his escape from France in 1940 was blocked at the Spanish border, he took his own life.

With

Esther Leslie Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London

Kevin McLaughlin Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies at Brown University

And

Carolin Duttlinger Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson


Melvyn Bragg and a panel of academic experts gather each week to explore the vast landscape of human thought on In Our Time: Philosophy. This long-running BBC Radio 4 series, a cornerstone of the network's intellectual offerings, approaches profound ideas not as dusty relics but as living conversations that have shaped our world. Each episode focuses on a single philosopher, a pivotal movement, or a foundational concept, building from the basic principles to the deeper complexities. You'll hear informed discussion and spirited debate that clarifies without oversimplifying, making centuries of thought accessible and relevant. The scope is deliberately broad, tracing connections from ancient inquiries into ethics and existence to the modern puzzles of logic and language. Rather than offering quick answers, this podcast provides the context and clarity needed to genuinely engage with questions about knowledge, self, and society. It’s an invitation to sit in on a nuanced, thoughtful dialogue that assumes curiosity rather than prior expertise, reminding us that these enduring debates are, in every sense, still very much in our time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

In Our Time: Philosophy
Podcast Episodes
The Ontological Argument [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:11
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Ontological Argument. In the eleventh century St Anselm of Canterbury proposed that it was possible to prove the existence of God using reason alone. His argument was ridiculed by…
Scepticism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:09
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Scepticism, the idea that it may be impossible to know anything with complete certainty. Scepticism was first outlined by ancient Greek philosophers: Socrates is reported to have said…
Al-Kindi [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:53
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Arab philosopher al-Kindi. Born in the early ninth century, al-Kindi was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and supervised the translation of many works by…
Neoplatonism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:57
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Neoplatonism, the school of thought founded in the 3rd century AD by the philosopher Plotinus. Born in Egypt, Plotinus was brought up in the Platonic tradition, studying and reinterpre…
Moses Mendelssohn [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:18
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of the eighteenth-century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. A prominent figure at the court of Frederick the Great, Mendelssohn was one of the most significant thin…
Heraclitus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:57
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Writing in the 5th century BC, Heraclitus believed that everything is constantly changing or, as he put it, in flux. He expressed this thought…
The Continental-Analytic Split [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:06
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Continental-Analytic split in Western philosophy. Around the beginning of the last century, philosophy began to go down two separate paths, as thinkers from Continental Europe expl…
David Hume [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:10
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the philosopher David Hume. A key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Hume was an empiricist who believed that humans can only have knowledge of…
Malthusianism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:01
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Malthusianism.In the eighteenth century, as expanding agriculture and industry resulted in a rapid increase in the European population, a number of writers began to consider the implic…
Cogito Ergo Sum [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:18
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy: "Cogito ergo sum".In his Discourse on the Method, published in 1637, the French polymath Rene Descartes wrote a sentence which remains…