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‘When others understand the same way that I have, that gives me satisfaction, like a sense of being at home.’
Hannah Arendt is most famous for her landmark book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), which chronicles the notorious Nazi official Adolf Eichmann’s war crimes trial in 1961. Conducted at the height of her influence, Arendt’s unusually candid interview with the German journalist Günter Gaus in 1964 is a revealing window on to her biography, process and worldview. The sprawling conversation covers topics including her youth as a German Jew amid the Nazi Party’s rise; why she eschewed the label ‘philosopher’ in favour of ‘political theorist’; and how her work was driven by a need to understand rather than a desire to make an impact. The discussion provides an appropriately complex portrait of the famed thinker, placing her rigorous intellectual work in the context of her life and times.
Subtitles: Philosophy Overdose
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Metaphysics
Knowing if you’re awake seems simple. Why has it vexed philosophers for centuries?
5 minutes
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History of technology
Master cartography and mythical creatures – the world according to the Catalan Atlas
8 minutes
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Mood and emotion
A century of letters captures the emotions of life in a new city, far from home
21 minutes
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The environment
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning
10 minutes
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Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away
5 minutes
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Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
7 minutes
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Music
Before the Beatles dropped acid, a BBC workshop was creating far-out sounds
6 minutes
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Philosophy of language
For Ludwig Wittgenstein, language is a game, but not a frivolous one
43 minutes