The Experience of Thinking

John B Thomson
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The Experience of Thinking

From Plato to Martin Buber: 14 talks on major European thinkers, examining their ideas and essential viewpoints in relation to what we can know about the world and the self and how we achieve this knowledge

  1. EPISODE 1

    Plato (427 — 347 BC)

    The theory of forms. The world of spirit accessible to heightened awareness endures. The sense world is transient, a world of becoming. The dialectical method of Socrates.

    1h 1m

  2. EPISODE 2

    Aristotle (384 — 321 BC)

    The idea is imminent in the sense object. Things are actualised in the sense world. This world of becoming is teleological (goal –oriented).

    45 min

  3. EPISODE 3

    Augustine of Hippo (354 — 430 AD)

    The prophet of personality. In his book ‘The City of God’ there are two cities, (1) love of self, contempt of god and (2) love of god, contempt of self. The way of freedom is through the soul’s abyss.

    44 min

  4. EPISODE 4

    Thomas Aquinas (1227 — 1274 AD)

    Philosophy as religion culminated with the Scholastics the greatest of whom was Aquinas. He was a Realist (ideas are real) as distinct from the Nominalists (ideas, names are just labels we apply to everything in the world).

    57 min

  5. EPISODE 5

    Francis Bacon (1561 — 1626), René Descartes (1596 — 1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632 — 1677)

    The 17th century rejected the world views derived from the Greeks. Bacon emphasised a practical not a contemplative approach to nature. He proposed torturing nature to obtain her secrets. Descartes’ statement ‘I think therefore I am’ includes all the inner life, feelings and willing etc. The source of all knowledge is in the mind. Like Descartes Spinoza’s thought was shaped by the New Science. But for him philosophy begins with what is ontological and logical prior I.e. with the divine and nature. These are one.

    44 min

  6. EPISODE 6

    John Locke (1632 — 1704), George Berkeley (1685 — 1753), David Hume (1711 — 1776)

    Locke maintained that all knowledge is acquired and initially from the senses. All forms of nature can be explained mechanically by matter in motion and the impact of one body on another. Berkeley opposed this by denying the existence of inanimate matter and demonstrating that nothing exists save spiritual activity in God’s infinite mind and in human minds. Hume is the supreme sceptic. All our ideas are copied from our impressions. It is not reason which connects our ideas buts habits of mind. However hard we try we can never get away from ourselves and our perceptions.

    57 min

  7. EPISODE 7

    Immanuel Kant (1724 — 1804)

    The outstanding philosopher of the enlightenment. We have seen ideas as above the phenomena, as in the phenomena and now as separate from the phenomena. Kant’s task was to examine how we come to understand the world or rather how the world can be known by us. Having mapped out what is knowable, this world of appearances, he maintained there is an unknowable world of things-in-themselves.

    46 min

  8. EPISODE 8

    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 — 1831)

    His idealist philosophy examines that part of knowledge which is not derived from sense-perception, that is, the truth of the spirit (Geist). In the Phenomenology of Spirit he traces out the development of consciousness. Ideas are not just the product of the mind but permeate the world and constitute the substance of things.

    49 min
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From Plato to Martin Buber: 14 talks on major European thinkers, examining their ideas and essential viewpoints in relation to what we can know about the world and the self and how we achieve this knowledge

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