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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.

Available now

43 minutes

Last on

Mon 28 Mar 2016 21:30

Photo Credit: 'Tank Man' by Stuart Franklin

Kirsty's Start the Week Selfie

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 09:00
  • Mon 28 Mar 2016 21:30

Podcast