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Sartre and the existential choice: ‘In fashioning myself, I fashion humanity’
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.
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
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Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
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Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
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Human rights and justice
Can providing humanitarian aid be illegal? A troubling case from the US-Mexico border
17 minutes
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Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
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Personality
A ‘dumpster archeologist’ reconstructs strangers’ stories via what they’ve discarded
14 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
A Japanese religious community makes an unlikely home in the mountains of Colorado
9 minutes