In this video, we cover the life and philosophy of one histories darkest and most comprehensive philosophers, the original pessimist, Arthur Schopenhauer.
In this video we argue that the pursuit of happiness is a futile endeavor, and that we should aim to live a meaningful life instead. We also explore how to cultivate meaning.
A few clips of Professor Christopher Janaway discussing the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer. This comes from an episode of the Essay on Wagner’s Philosophers. I thought it provided a good overview of Schopenhauer’s general philosophy
In this video we examine what it means to live authentically and the importance of doing so.
Nietzsche’s basic ideas about ethics.
What is the best life we can live? How can we cope with whatever the universe throws at us and keep thriving nonetheless? The ancient Greco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism explains that while we may not always have control over the events affecting us, we can have control over how we approach things. Massimo Pigliucci describes the philosophy of Stoicism.
Institutions—governmental, religious, financial, even revolution itself—have a way of turning stale and sour. “Thank God for the history of the heretics and the blasphemers. That’s my crowd,” says Dr. Cornell West. Quoting from some of history and literature’s greatest thinkers and doers, West presents a poetic lecture on the role of hope in America’s past and its future, and how to make your voice matter. This video was filmed at the Los Angeles Hope Festival, a collaboration between Big Think and Hope & Optimism, a three-year initiative which supported interdisciplinary academic research into significant questions that remain under-explored. For more from Dr. Cornell West, head to http://www.cornelwest.com.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt in this BBC episode of In Our Time. Hannah Arendt developed many of her ideas in response to the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century, partly informed by her own experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany before her escape to France and then America. She wanted to understand how politics had taken such a disastrous turn and, drawing on ideas of Greek philosophers as well as her peers, what might be done to create a better political life. Often unsettling, she wrote of ‘the banality of evil’ when covering the trial of Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust. The guests are Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Modern Literature and History at the University of East Anglia; Frisbee Sheffield, Lecturer in Philosophy at Girton College, University of Cambridge; and Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University London.
Always Question Authority 