NEW ACROPOLIS
Inducted in 2026
Why it is in the collection
Sustaining, year after year, a teaching of philosophy in a practical key, without leaning on eye-catching formats or the news cycle, takes an uncommon conviction. This channel does it: one person, one subject, the time it takes. The formal plainness is consistent with what is being taught.
We include it for the quality of its expositions of the classics. Framing the ring of Gyges as a question about what we would do if no one were watching, or reading Machado de Assis to separate being from seeming, are well-made pedagogical exercises: they start from a specific text and end in a decision the listener could make tomorrow.
We state plainly that this is the channel of an organisation with a doctrine of its own, and listeners should know that. Even so, the material gathered here deals with authors and questions that belong to everyone, and does so in a way that requires no prior agreement to be of use.
About this channel
This is the channel of Nova Acrópole in Brazil, the Brazilian branch of an international organisation devoted to philosophy, culture and volunteering that is present in many countries. The material is in Portuguese and gathers lectures, classes and documentaries produced by the organisation itself, with contributions from various speakers connected to its schools.
The content revolves around practical philosophy, understood as something that must translate into conduct. There are classes on the ring of Gyges and what Plato teaches about genuine honesty, a synthesis of Confucian doctrine, expositions of Stoicism and the active acceptance of fate, and of what Seneca says about life and friendship. Taoism is treated in its relation to traditional Chinese medicine, alongside Machado de Assis's theory of the medallion as a portrait of being versus seeming, the Indian fable of the stonecutter as a reflection on the meaning of work, and directly moral questions such as the courage to acknowledge one's own errors, or the weight of the past and the end of victimhood. To these are added a philosophical documentary on the nature of the good, an extended class on creativity, and reports on the organisation's social projects.
The format is mostly the filmed class, with no effects or showy editing, a speaker developing a subject for as long as it takes. Visitors should know that this is the institutional channel of a school with its own doctrine and method, and that the material is aimed first at spreading that approach to philosophy. Within that frame, the expositions of classical authors are clear, orderly and accessible to someone with no prior training.