The Great Philosophers
The Great Philosophers is a TV show on BBC4. The program has been available since 2025. A total of 15 episodes have been broadcast, most recently in November 2025.
Last episode
The Great Philosophers
Bryan Magee discusses the work of British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) with Professor John Searle.
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Bryan Magee discusses the work of German philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) and English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) with Prof Sir Alfred J Ayer.
Bryan Magee and Sidney Morgenbesser discuss the work of the American pragmatists CS Peirce, John Dewey and William James.
Bryan Magee and Hubert Dreyfus discuss the work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and other modern existentialist philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Bryan Magee and his guest, Professor JP Stern, discuss the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
Bryan Magee looks at the work of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) with Prof Frederick Copleston.
Bryan Magee and Peter Singer discuss the work of German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and Karl Marx (1818-1883). He is joined by Peter Singer.
Bryan Magee discusses the work of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) with professor John Passmore.
Bryan Magee discusses the work of English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) and Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) with his guest, Dr Michael Ayres.
Bryan Magee discusses the work of Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German philosopher, with his guest, Anthony Quinton.
Bryan Magee and Bernard Williams discuss the work of French philosopher René Descartes.
Bryan Magee and guest Anthony Kenny discuss the work of the medieval philosophers and the contribution of figures such as St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Martha Nussbaum looks at Aristotle, Plato's star pupil and tutor to the young Alexander the Great, whose philosophy dominated western thought for many hundreds of years.
Myles Burnyeat looks at Plato, the first western philosopher whose written works have survived.