The Great Philosophers

The Great Philosophers is a 1987 BBC television series presented by Bryan Magee. There were 15 episodes, in each of which Magee interviewed a noted philosopher.

In this series, Magee discussed the major historical figures of Western philosophy with fifteen contemporary philosophers. The series covered the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, among others, ending with a discussion with John Searle on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Extensively revised versions of the dialogues of The Great Philosophers are available in a book of the same name.^[1] DVDs of, and streaming rights to, the series are sold to academic institutions^[2] and episodes are available to stream to those with access to the Alexander Street academic database.^[3] Neither this series, nor Magee's 1978 series Men of Ideas, are commercially available to home users but most of the episodes from both are freely available on YouTube.^[4] The theme played over the opening credits comes from the third movement of Symphony No. 8 (Shostakovich).

1. Myles Burnyeat on Plato
2. Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle
3. Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy
4. Bernard Williams on Descartes
5. Anthony Quinton on Spinoza and Leibniz
6. Michael R. Ayers on Locke and Berkeley
7. John Passmore on Hume
8. Geoffrey Warnock on Kant
9. Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx
10. Frederick Copleston on Schopenhauer
11. J. P. Stern on Nietzsche
12. Hubert Dreyfus on Husserl, Heidegger and Modern Existentialism
13. Sidney Morgenbesser on The American Pragmatists
14. A. J. Ayer on Frege, Russell and Modern Logic
15. John Searle on Wittgenstein

• Men of Ideas, a similar BBC television series presented by Magee in 1978

• The Great Philosophers at the BFI's Screenonline
• Audio (MP3) files of interviews