Harvard’s Michael Sandel Launches “The Global Philosopher,” a New Digital Show Exploring Pressing Philosophical Problems

In 2009, Har­vard phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Michael Sandel broke some ground when he made his pop­u­lar course, “Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?,” avail­able online. A course tak­en by thou­sands of Har­vard under­grads sud­den­ly became a course tak­en by tens of thou­sands of life­long learn­ers world­wide.

Since then, Sandel has con­tin­ued speak­ing to a broad­er audi­ence, first cre­at­ing a BBC pod­cast called “The Pub­lic Philoso­pher,” where he “exam­ines the think­ing behind a cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy.” (Down­load the episodes here.) And now comes a new pro­gram, The Glob­al Philoso­pher, which grap­ples with philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems using an inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal for­mat. Accord­ing to the BBC, the show brings togeth­er “60 par­tic­i­pants from over 30 coun­tries using a pio­neer­ing stu­dio devel­oped by [the] Har­vard Busi­ness School, called HBX Live. Each par­tic­i­pant is able to see and speak to every oth­er con­trib­u­tor, as well as to Pro­fes­sor Sandel, repli­cat­ing the expe­ri­ence of a face-to-face debate.” In the first debate, shown above, “con­trib­u­tors from Amer­i­ca, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Mid­dle East dis­cussed the moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for nation­al bor­ders. Hun­dreds more watched a live video stream and took part by send­ing in text com­ments and vot­ing in straw polls.” This is just the first of more planned install­ments. Down the road, you can find new episodes of The Glob­al Philoso­pher here.

via Har­vard Gazette

Relat­ed Con­tent

What’s the Right Thing to Do?: Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course Now Online

Michael Sandel on the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Talks About the Lim­its of a Free Mar­ket Soci­ety

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es