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Why Socrates believed that sexual desire is the first step towards righteousness
Can sexual desire lead us to something that transcends the physical act? Socrates seemed to think so. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates recalls the words of his apparent teacher of erotics, the priestess Diotima of Mantinea, who instructed him that lust was the first rung on a ladder leading upwards towards an appreciation of the form of beauty itself and, further, to morality and virtue.
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Art
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Space and time expand, contract and combust in this propulsive animation
5 minutes
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Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
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Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
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Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes