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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Enlightenment Voices: Diderot

The Essay: Enlightenment Voices: Diderot: Part 3

Diderot

Part 3 Enlightenment Voices

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Kate Tunstall introduces Diderot's Letter on the Blind.

In a series on the philosopher Diderot, Kate Tunstall introduces his Letter on the Blind, which posed important questions about human life with which we still grapple today.

Kate Tunstall introduces Diderot's Letter on the Blind, which asked, in the 18th century, philosophical questions about human life with which we still grapple today. 

How do we know what we know, or what we think we know? Why do people have different ideas about the world, and how can we judge them? What are the origins of the universe? Is there any proof of the existence of God? These are questions which still preoccupy us today, but Dr Kate Tunstall, who teaches French at the University of Oxford, is fascinated by how the great French thinker and activist, Denis Diderot, asked them in the age of the Enlightenment. In this evening's Essay, she introduces his early work, Letter on the Blind, which starts with the eighteenth century fascination with cataract operations and goes on to explore what answers blind people can give sighted people about the meaning of life.

The Essay: Enlightenment Voices

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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Series introducing great scientists, thinkers and activists of the European Enlightenment

Series introducing the great scientists, thinkers and activists of the European Enlightenment

Series exploring the life and work of French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot

Series exploring the life and work of French philosopher Denis Diderot, the inspirational driving force behind the greatest publishing enterprise of the Enlightenment, the Encyclopdie

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