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From Altruism to Wittgenstein, philosophers, theories and key themes.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ History of philosophy: ancient to modern thinkers • Ethics: virtue, duty, utilitarianism, moral psychology • Political philosophy: justice, sovereignty, democracy, tyranny • Mind and metaphysics: consciousness, mind–body, phenomenology • Economics and social theory: markets, planning, consumptionThis podcast explores major figures, texts, and recurring problems in philosophy, often situating ideas in their historical settings while tracing their influence on later thought. Conversations range from ancient Greece and Rome through medieval Christian and Islamic traditions to Enlightenment debates and twentieth-century European philosophy. Alongside canonical philosophers, it also foregrounds influential writers and public intellectuals whose work crosses into literature, culture, politics, and social theory.
A substantial thread is moral philosophy: what it means to live well, whether moral truths are objective or subjective, and how to judge actions by intentions, consequences, or character. The discussions frequently return to virtue ethics and its modern revivals, to deontological approaches associated with Kant, and to consequentialist traditions such as utilitarianism. Applied and practical questions appear through topics like responsibility, intention, and dilemmas used to test moral intuitions, as well as broader reflections on hope, authenticity, and self-knowledge.
Political philosophy and the theory of the state are another core focus. The podcast examines competing accounts of liberty, justice, authority, and legitimacy, including theories of democracy, sovereignty, the rule of law, and the separation of powers. It also looks at how political ideas emerge in moments of crisis and transformation—revolutionary eras, the rise of totalitarianism, or the pressures of modern bureaucracy and mass media—and how concepts like charismatic authority help explain political loyalty.
The podcast also covers philosophical approaches to knowledge and experience, including phenomenology and debates about mind and consciousness, with attention to the relation between body and mind and to alternative theories such as panpsychism. Episodes often connect philosophy to adjacent disciplines—economics, education, history, and the sciences—through discussions of political economy and critiques of consumer culture, as well as through historical episodes on scientific observation and method. Overall, the series offers guided, expert-led introductions to key arguments, contexts, and enduring questions across the philosophical tradition.
| Episodes: |
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty 2025-Apr-24 59 minutes |
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Socrates in Prison 2025-Feb-20 50 minutes |
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Hayek's The Road to Serfdom 2024-Nov-14 53 minutes |
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Philippa Foot 2024-Jun-13 58 minutes |
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Panpsychism 2024-Feb-22 53 minutes |
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Condorcet 2024-Feb-08 50 minutes |
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The Theory of the Leisure Class 2023-Dec-14 55 minutes |
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Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 2023-Nov-30 52 minutes |
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Elizabeth Anscombe 2023-Jul-20 54 minutes |
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Solon the Lawgiver 2023-Apr-20 51 minutes |
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Mercantilism 2023-Apr-13 57 minutes |
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Tycho Brahe 2023-Mar-02 53 minutes |
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Rawls' Theory of Justice 2023-Feb-16 60 minutes |
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Plato's Atlantis 2022-Oct-20 54 minutes |
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Hegel's Philosophy of History 2022-Jun-23 52 minutes |
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Comenius 2022-Jun-16 56 minutes |
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Charisma 2022-Apr-14 52 minutes |
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The Arthashastra 2022-Mar-31 56 minutes |
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Walter Benjamin 2022-Feb-10 50 minutes |
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Plato's Gorgias 2021-Nov-25 50 minutes |
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Iris Murdoch 2021-Oct-21 54 minutes |
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Kant's Copernican Revolution 2021-Jun-03 53 minutes |
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Marcus Aurelius 2021-Feb-25 52 minutes |
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Mary Astell 2020-Nov-05 51 minutes |
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Deism 2020-Oct-08 48 minutes |
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Rousseau on Education 2019-Oct-10 51 minutes |
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Bergson and Time 2019-May-09 51 minutes |
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Authenticity 2019-Mar-14 50 minutes |
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Aristotle's Biology 2019-Feb-07 50 minutes |
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Hope 2018-Nov-22 53 minutes |
The Fable of the Bees2018-Oct-25 50 minutes |
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Montesquieu 2018-Jun-14 49 minutes |
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Tocqueville: Democracy in America 2018-Mar-22 50 minutes |
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Augustine's Confessions 2018-Mar-15 47 minutes |
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Sun Tzu and The Art of War 2018-Mar-01 48 minutes |
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Cicero 2018-Jan-25 49 minutes |
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Kant's Categorical Imperative 2017-Sep-21 49 minutes |
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Plato's Republic 2017-Jun-29 48 minutes |
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Roger Bacon 2017-Apr-20 50 minutes |
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Seneca the Younger 2017-Feb-23 51 minutes |
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Hannah Arendt 2017-Feb-02 47 minutes |
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Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality 2017-Jan-12 48 minutes |
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Zeno's Paradoxes 2016-Sep-22 46 minutes |
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Sovereignty 2016-Jun-30 47 minutes |
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The Muses 2016-May-19 45 minutes |
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Simone de Beauvoir 2015-Oct-22 46 minutes |
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Utilitarianism 2015-Jun-11 43 minutes |
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Al-Ghazali 2015-Mar-19 44 minutes |
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The Wealth of Nations 2015-Feb-19 46 minutes |
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Phenomenology 2015-Jan-22 46 minutes |
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Truth 2014-Dec-18 42 minutes |
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Zen 2014-Dec-04 45 minutes |
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The Philosophy of Solitude 2014-Jun-19 47 minutes |
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Weber's The Protestant Ethic 2014-Mar-27 50 minutes |
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Bishop Berkeley 2014-Mar-20 47 minutes |
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Plato's Symposium 2014-Jan-02 42 minutes |
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Ordinary Language Philosophy 2013-Nov-07 41 minutes |
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Pascal 2013-Sep-19 41 minutes |
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Epicureanism 2013-Feb-07 42 minutes |
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Bertrand Russell 2012-Dec-06 42 minutes |
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Simone Weil 2012-Nov-15 42 minutes |
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The Ontological Argument 2012-Sep-27 42 minutes |
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Scepticism 2012-Jul-05 42 minutes |
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Al-Kindi 2012-Jun-28 41 minutes |
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Neoplatonism 2012-Apr-19 41 minutes |
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Moses Mendelssohn 2012-Mar-22 42 minutes |
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Heraclitus 2011-Dec-08 41 minutes |
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The Continental-Analytic Split 2011-Nov-10 42 minutes |
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David Hume 2011-Oct-06 42 minutes |
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Malthusianism 2011-Jun-22 42 minutes |
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Cogito Ergo Sum 2011-Apr-28 42 minutes |
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Free Will 2011-Mar-10 42 minutes |
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Maimonides 2011-Feb-15 42 minutes |
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Aristotle's Poetics 2011-Jan-27 42 minutes |
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Daoism 2010-Dec-15 42 minutes |
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Logic 2010-Oct-21 42 minutes |
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Edmund Burke 2010-Jun-03 42 minutes |
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William James's 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' 2010-May-13 42 minutes |
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William Hazlitt 2010-Apr-08 41 minutes |
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Ibn Khaldun 2010-Feb-04 42 minutes |
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The Frankfurt School 2010-Jan-14 42 minutes |
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Mary Wollstonecraft 2009-Dec-31 41 minutes |
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Pythagoras 2009-Dec-10 41 minutes |
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Schopenhauer 2009-Oct-29 42 minutes |
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St Thomas Aquinas 2009-Sep-17 42 minutes |
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Logical Positivism 2009-Jul-02 42 minutes |
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Baconian Science 2009-Apr-02 42 minutes |
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The School of Athens 2009-Mar-26 42 minutes |
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Thoreau and the American Idyll 2009-Jan-15 42 minutes |
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The Consolations of Philosophy 2009-Jan-01 42 minutes |
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Aristotle's Politics 2008-Nov-06 42 minutes |
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Godel's Incompleteness Theorems 2008-Oct-09 42 minutes |
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The Translation Movement 2008-Oct-02 42 minutes |
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Miracles 2008-Sep-25 42 minutes |
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Materialism 2008-Apr-24 42 minutes |
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Kierkegaard 2008-Mar-20 42 minutes |
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The Social Contract 2008-Feb-07 41 minutes |
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Camus 2008-Jan-03 42 minutes |
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Avicenna 2007-Nov-08 41 minutes |
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Guilt 2007-Nov-01 42 minutes |
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Socrates 2007-Sep-27 42 minutes |
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Common Sense Philosophy 2007-Jun-21 42 minutes |
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Ockham's Razor 2007-May-31 42 minutes |
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Spinoza 2007-May-03 28 minutes |
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Popper 2007-Feb-08 42 minutes |
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Anarchism 2006-Dec-07 42 minutes |
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Altruism 2006-Nov-23 42 minutes |
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Averroes 2006-Oct-05 42 minutes |
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Mill 2006-May-18 42 minutes |
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Friendship 2006-Mar-02 41 minutes |
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Relativism 2006-Jan-19 28 minutes |
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The Oath 2006-Jan-05 42 minutes |
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Hobbes 2005-Dec-01 28 minutes |
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Pragmatism 2005-Nov-17 42 minutes |
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Cynicism 2005-Oct-20 28 minutes |
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Marx 2005-Jul-14 42 minutes |
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Beauty 2005-May-19 28 minutes |
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Abelard and Heloise 2005-May-05 41 minutes |
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Stoicism 2005-Mar-04 28 minutes |
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The Mind/Body Problem 2005-Jan-13 42 minutes |
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Machiavelli and the Italian City States 2004-Dec-09 42 minutes |
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Jung 2004-Dec-02 28 minutes |
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Rhetoric 2004-Oct-14 42 minutes |
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The Han Synthesis 2004-Oct-14 27 minutes |
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Sartre 2004-Oct-07 42 minutes |
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Politeness 2004-Sep-30 28 minutes |
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Empiricism 2004-Jun-10 28 minutes |
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Heroism 2004-May-06 42 minutes |
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Wittgenstein 2003-Dec-04 42 minutes |
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Duty 2003-Nov-13 28 minutes |
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Bohemianism 2003-Oct-09 42 minutes |
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The Art of War 2003-Jun-12 42 minutes |
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Originality 2003-Mar-20 41 minutes |
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Redemption 2003-Mar-13 28 minutes |
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The Enlightenment in Scotland 2002-Dec-05 27 minutes |
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Freedom 2002-Jul-04 28 minutes |
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The Soul 2002-Jun-06 28 minutes |
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The Examined Life 2002-May-09 42 minutes |
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Virtue 2002-Feb-28 42 minutes |
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Happiness 2002-Jan-24 28 minutes |
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Confucius 2001-Nov-01 28 minutes |
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Democracy 2001-Oct-18 28 minutes |
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Existentialism 2001-Jun-28 27 minutes |
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Evil 2001-May-03 28 minutes |
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The Philosophy of Love 2001-Mar-29 28 minutes |
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Humanism 2001-Feb-08 28 minutes |
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Nihilism 2000-Nov-16 28 minutes |
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Laws of Nature 2000-Oct-19 28 minutes |
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Economic Rights 2000-Jan-27 27 minutes |
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Consciousness 1999-Nov-25 27 minutes |
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Progress 1999-Nov-18 28 minutes |
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The Individual 1999-Oct-21 28 minutes |
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Utopia 1999-Oct-07 28 minutes |
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Just War 1999-Jun-03 28 minutes |
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Good and Evil 1999-Apr-01 28 minutes |
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Feminism 1999-Jan-07 28 minutes |
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Cultural Rights in the 20th Century 1998-Dec-10 28 minutes |