Existentialism and Ways of Seeing
Kirsty Wark discusses freedom and authenticity with Sarah Bakewell, Frances Borzello, Sunil Khilnani and Stuart Franklin.
On Start the Week Kirsty Wark asks how we make choices about freedom and authenticity - questions that preoccupied Paris intellectuals in the 1930s. Sarah Bakewell looks back at one of the twentieth century's major philosophical movements - existentialism - and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it. Sartre and de Beauvoir may have spent their days drinking apricot cocktails in cafΓ©'s but Bakewell believes their ideas are more relevant than ever. The historian Sunil Khilnani reveals the Indian thinkers who didn't just talk about philosophy but lived it, and the photographer Stuart Franklin, famous for the pictures of the man in Tiananmen Square who stopped the tanks, discusses the impulse to record and preserve these moments of action. The art historian Frances Borzello looks at the female artists who chose the freedom to present themselves to the world in self-portraits.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
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Photo Credit: 'Tank Man' by Stuart Franklin
Kirsty's Start the Week Selfie
Sarah Bakewell
is an author.
At the Existentialist CafΓ©: Freedom, Being & Apricot Cocktails is published by Chatto & Windus.
Sunil Khilnani
is Avantha Professor and Director of the India Institute at King's College London.
Incarnations: India in 50 Lives is published by Allen Lane and the accompanying Radio 4 series is available on the .
Stuart Franklin
is a photographer.
The Documentary Impulse is published by Phaidon.
Frances Borzello
is an art historian.
Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits is published by Thames & Hudson.Credits
Role | Contributor |
---|---|
Presenter | Kirsty Wark |
Interviewed Guest | Sarah Bakewell |
Interviewed Guest | Sunil Khilnani |
Interviewed Guest | Frances Borzello |
Interviewed Guest | Stuart Franklin |
Producer | Katy Hickman |
Broadcasts
- Mon 28 Mar 2016 09:00Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
- Mon 28 Mar 2016 21:30Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
Podcast
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Start the Week
Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday