Paul Strathern

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Descartes in just one hour.

Descartes was the first modern philosopher. His scepticism led him to doubt all certainties, until finally he arrived at his famous maxim 'I think therefore I am'...

Between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Enlightenment, Europe lived through an era known as the Age of Reason. This was a period which saw advances in areas such as art, science, philosophy, political theory and economics.

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Foucault in just one hour.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault set about his task rather like a historian. After painstaking research, he concluded that knowledge and power were intimately...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Neitzsche in just one hour. Philosophy has always been dangerous for philosophers; Friedrich Nietzsche made it dangerous for everyone. His ideas presaged a collective madness which was to ravage Europe throughout the...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Machiavelli in just one hour. Niccolò Machiavelli’s work remains misunderstood – synonymous with wicked scheming and underhand politics – nearly 350 years after his death. His philosophy of statecraft was...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Socrates in just one hour. Socrates is widely renowned as one of the founders of Western philosophy, despite the fact that his ideas survive largely through the work of his pupil Plato. Socrates’ dialectic – a...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Aristotle in just one hour. The philosophy of Aristotle dominated Western thought for over a thousand years. He had a mind that mastered all disciplines from mathematics to politics and had a continuing impact on...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Wittgenstein in just one hour.

Ludwig Wittgenstein saw himself as ‘the last philosopher’. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished. A superb logician, Wittgenstein...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Schopenhauer in just one hour.

Arthur Schopenhauer, the ‘philosopher of pessimism,’ makes it clear that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. However, if the world is...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Derrida in just one hour.

Jacques Derrida’s ‘deconstructionism’ is nothing less than an effort to destroy all ‘writing’ by demonstrating its inevitable falsehood. The writer writes...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Locke in just one hour.

Much of Locke’s thought we would now regard as common sense. One of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers; his philosophy was to lay the foundations of...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Berkeley in just one hour.

Berkeley’s philosophy denies the existence of matter. According to his work, there is no material world, only our own experience. So when you don’t see something...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Spinoza in just one hour.

Spinoza’s brilliant metaphysical system was derived neither from reality nor experience. Starting from basic axioms (assumptions), by means of a series of geometric...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Leibniz in just one hour.

Leibniz was the first great German philosopher to produce an all-embracing philosophical system. He came to the remarkable conclusion that space and time do not exist –...

Philosophy for busy people who are always on the go but have always wanted to read up on certain figures in history that have shaped the way we think and live.
Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Heidegger in just one hour.

One of the two major...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Hume in just one hour.

Hume reduced philosophy to ruins, denying the existence of everything except our actual perceptions themselves. The world is nothing more than part of my consciousness...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of J.S. Mill in just one hour.

John Stuart Mill is remembered today as the leading exponent of Utilitarianism, arguing that our aim in life must be the attainment of pleasure and the minimizing of...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Hegel in just one hour.

With Hegel philosophy became very difficult indeed – even the great man himself conceded that ‘only one man understands me, and even he does not.’ His dialectical...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Aquinas in just one hour.

Thomas Aquinas remains the unacknowledged maestro of Scholasticism – the static, cumulative philosophy of the medieval period. More a method of learning than pure...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Rousseau in just one hour.

In Rousseau we encounter a walking ego, a naked sensibility – his arguments are both deeply stirring and deeply inconsistent. Yet whilst his contemporaries Kant...