For Iris Murdoch, selfishness is a fault that can be solved by reframing the world
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.
videoEthics
What’s an idea worth? How prominent thinkers have understood intellectual property
6 minutes
videoThinkers and theories
The prison abolitionist who dares to envision a world without ‘unfreedoms’
16 minutes
videoEconomics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
videoPhilosophy of mind
‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations
3 minutes
videoHistory of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes
videoPersonality
A ‘little thief’ turned career criminal recounts a life on the wrong side of the law
5 minutes
videoVirtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
videoEthics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
5 minutes
videoAnimals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes