What’s the essence of being human? According to the 20th-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, existence precedes essence. In other words, ‘I am what I do.’ This, thought Sartre, makes life an anguish-inducing experience as every one of our choices becomes a statement about what we think humanity should be. ‘Condemned to be free,’ each one of us must act as if the whole world is watching.
videoEthics
What’s an idea worth? How prominent thinkers have understood intellectual property
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videoThinkers and theories
The prison abolitionist who dares to envision a world without ‘unfreedoms’
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videoMathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
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videoKnowledge
Why David Deutsch believes good explanations are the antidote to bad philosophy
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‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations
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videoHistory of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
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