The very fact that, for millennia, philosophers have given deep thought to the problem of selfishness is good evidence that it’s an enduring part of the human condition. But how can we recognise when it’s truly a problem within ourselves? And how might we endeavour to overcome it? This cleverly animated short from TED-Ed surveys how a wide range of famed thinkers viewed selfishness across the ages. Ultimately, the piece zeroes in on the ideas of the 20th-century philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, who believed that overcoming selfishness required cultivating an expansive form of love centred on acknowledging the reality of the world beyond oneself.
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
video
Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
11 minutes
video
Biology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
9 minutes
video
Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes
video
Political philosophy
Beyond the veil – what rules would govern John Rawls’s ‘realistic Utopia’?
6 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes
video
Architecture
The celebrated architect who took inspiration from sitting, waiting and contemplating
29 minutes
video
Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes
video
Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
4 minutes