Men of Ideas

Men of Ideas is a 1978 BBC television series presented by Bryan Magee. There were 15 episodes, in which Magee interviewed noted philosophers.

Overview

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The first episode, "Introduction to Philosophy", saw Magee in discussion with Isaiah Berlin. In subsequent episodes Magee discussed such topics as Marxist philosophy, the Frankfurt School, and modern Existentialism.

During the broadcast run, edited shorter versions of the discussions were published in The Listener magazine.[1] Extensively revised versions of the dialogues within the Men of Ideas series were published in a 1979 book of the same name,[2] now published under the title Talking Philosophy.[3] DVDs of the series are sold to academic institutions with the title Contemporary Philosophy.[4]

Noting that the series "attracted a steady one million viewers per show", The Daily Telegraph hailed the series, and its 1987 'sequel', for achieving "the near-impossible feat of presenting to a mass audience recondite issues of philosophy without compromising intellectual integrity or losing ratings."[5]

Neither this series nor The Great Philosophers, a similar BBC television series presented by Magee in 1987, are available for purchase by home users. Since March 2023, however, all episodes have been made freely available on YouTube.[6] The theme played over the opening credits comes from the overture to Fauré’s Masques et Bergamasques.

Episodes

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  1. "An Introduction to Philosophy", with Isaiah Berlin
  2. "Marxist Philosophy", with Charles Taylor
  3. "Marcuse and the Frankfurt School", with Herbert Marcuse
  4. "Martin Heidegger and Modern Existentialism", with William Barrett
  5. "The Two Philosophies of Wittgenstein", with Anthony Quinton
  6. "Logical Positivism and its Legacy", with A. J. Ayer
  7. "The Spell of Linguistic Philosophy", with Bernard Williams
  8. "Moral Philosophy", with R. M. Hare
  9. "The Ideas of Quine", with Willard Van Orman Quine
  10. "The Philosophy of Language", with John Searle
  11. "The Ideas of Chomsky", with Noam Chomsky
  12. "The Philosophy of Science", with Hilary Putnam
  13. "Philosophy and Politics", with Ronald Dworkin
  14. "Philosophy and Literature", with Iris Murdoch
  15. "Philosophy: The Social Context", with Ernest Gellner

References

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  1. ^ "Whatever happened to the public intellectual?". www.newstatesman.com. 31 January 2017. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  2. ^ Snelgrove, David (1980). "Review of Men of Ideas". Journal of Thought. 15 (1): 103–104. ISSN 0022-5231. JSTOR 42590182.
  3. ^ Magee, Bryan. (2001). Talking philosophy : dialogues with fifteen leading philosophers. Magee, Bryan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192854178. OCLC 47676350.
  4. ^ "Contemporary Philosophy". Films Media Group. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
  5. ^ Obituaries, Telegraph (26 July 2019). "Bryan Magee, author, broadcaster, MP and academic with an unsurpassed ability to render complex philosophical ideas easily digestible – obituary". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 9 September 2019.
  6. ^ "Bryan Magee Interviews - Modern Philosophy: Men of Ideas (1977-1978)". YouTube. 28 March 2023. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
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