Are Cities Important To Philosophy?

Socrates in Athens; Kant in Konigsberg; Hegel in Jena; Russell in Oxford; Carnap in Vienna; Sartre in Paris. Cities, of course, attract cultural production of all kinds to themselves, and the great cities act as magnets for philosophers just as they do for artists, entrepreneurs and chancers. But is there something more to the relationship between philosophy and the city? Has the course of Western philosophy been influenced by its overwhelmingly urban setting?

Dr David Cunningham is Deputy Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at Westminster University and has published scholarly work on diverse topics in cultural theory including philosophy, architecture, literature and music. He joins us for an unusual look at the history of philosophy or, in a town whose residents perhaps often self-identify as “Londoners” more strongly than as “English”, “British” or “European”, a different perspective on urbanism.