The Big Ideas podcast: Guy Debord’s ‘society of the spectacle’
Published in 1967, Guy Debord's book La Société du Spectacle ("The Society of the Spectacle") is nothing less than a radical attack on modern society, in which, in Debord's words, "being" had declined into a state of "having", and "having" merely mea...
The Big Ideas podcast: Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’
One of the most frequently quoted – and hotly debated – passages in modern philosophy appears in Section 125 of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Gay Science. It's worth quoting in full:God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we co...
The Big Ideas podcast: Friedrich Kittler’s computer wars
When Friedrich Kittler, the German philosopher of media and technology, died in October this year, it wasn't a big international story – in fact, the Guardian published the only obituary in the Anglophone press.In Germany Kittler's death made bigger ...
The Big Ideas podcast: Plato’s ‘just society’