The Philosophy Channel

This episode explores the striking idea that “God is dead” — not only in Nietzsche’s philosophy, but already in Hegel’s early work Faith and Knowledge. For Hegel, the “death of God” is not an atheist slogan but a...

This episode explores the very beginning of Hegel’s Science of Logic: the concept of pure being. Hegel asks us not to think about concepts, not to analyze how concepts are used, but to think the concept itself. Pure...

In this opening lecture, we begin our journey into Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, a book that isn’t a textbook or a treatise, but a dramatic story of consciousness learning what truth really is. Hegel challenges us to...

Wonder is the fundamental experience of philosophy insofar as it is a will to truth. We want to understand and know the world as it is in itself—kath'auto—and not merely as it appears to us in our use of things. Truth...

In this episode, we dive into one of the sharpest confrontations in modern philosophy: the clash between Emmanuel Levinas and G.W.F. Hegel. The debate centers on one essential question: can ethics truly break the...

The title of the second chapter of Philosophy as Conversation is "Between Hegel and Nietzsche." This theme was already announced in the first chapter: we need to understand the fundamental issues that arose in the 19th...

The relationship between religion and philosophy reaches an intensity and complexity in Maimonides' work that has hardly any precedent within the Jewish tradition. His thinking stands at the intersection of revelation...

In this episode, I discuss the first chapter of my book Philosophy as Conversation (1994). I explore why modern philosophy is often described as being “in crisis” and place that crisis in the context of...

In this episode, we explore a big philosophical question behind the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: what actually makes a political community legitimate? We start with Hegel, who argues that a true state is the embodiment...

In this reflection, I look back on my book Philosophy as Conversation, published more than thirty years ago. At the time, I felt both proud and uncertain — proud that Het Spectrum published it, and uncertain because the...

In 1994 verscheen mijn boek "Filosofie als Gesprek" in de Aula-reeks van Het Spectrum. Het was een poging mijn gedachten over de aard van de filosofie samen te vatten in een boek dat ook praktische aanwijzingen gaf hoe...

This episode explores how states respond to traumatic attacks through the lens of Hegel’s political philosophy. For Hegel, the state is not just a political structure but the living reality of ethical life — the place...

There are moments in history when the language of treaties and borders suddenly reveals its fragility—when the promises states make to one another are tested not on paper but in the lives of real people. Ukraine’s story...

In this episode, we explore Ukraine’s struggle through a Hegelian lens, not as a distant geopolitical crisis but as a profound contest over the very meaning of political life. What happens when a people’s ethical...

Hegel’s concept of reflection-in-itself is the key to understanding how Essence differs from mere Being. While Being is immediate and fleeting, Essence is self-mediating—it negates immediacy, repels itself outward, and...