If we're to live well together we must first learn to live well with the dead, says Timothy Secret.

At traditional Chinese funerals money, and sometimes paper effigies of goods like washing machines and aeroplanes are burned so that the dead might be adequately equipped in the afterlife. To the Western onlooker this can feel strange but Timothy Secret believes we have something to learn.

For Confucius, the Chinese teacher and thinker, respect for and obedience to your parents is one of the most important rules to follow in life and Frances Wood, an expert in Chinese history and society explains why this applies even after their death: observing proper mourning rituals and then honouring your ancestors through twice yearly grave tending.

Darian Leader, a psychoanalyst, sets out how Western attitudes towards mourning and the dead have become disrupted veering between the two extremes of determined "closure" and "moving on" on the one hand and excessive obsession with the dead on the other.

Producer: Natalie Steed.

Professor Angie Hobbs asks if the key to harmonious living could be found in Plato's Republic where he proposes that the ideal state be run by philosophers and not by those who seek power for their own ends.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Is a Free Market the vital foundation of a fair, dynamic and creative society? The father of economics, Adam Smith certainly thought so. Since the publication of 'The Wealth of Nations' in 1776 Smith's thoughts on trade and money-making have come to be seen as the theoretical foundations of a rational and rather uncaring form of pure capitalism.

Economist, Dame Kate Barker is keen to put the soul back into Smith, revealing the staunch moral principles that underlined his view of a fair and just capitalist society. She wants to measure today's markets against the standards set by the sage of the Scottish Enlightenment. Would Britain's markets in groceries, homes or financial services bring a smile to Smith's stern visage?

Kate is joined in her quest by Smith's latest biographer Jesse Norman, by housing market analyst Yolande Barnes and by Christine Tacon, the government's grocery market regulator.

This is part of a week of programmes examining how we should live together.

Professor Justin Champion examines Locke's theory of Toleration through the inhabitants of Spitalfields past and present. He goes to Brick Lane whose famous mosque was built as a Huguenot Church and became a synagogue before becoming the centre of Bengali life in London. He meets the Bishop of London, himself of Huguenot descent and local politician Abdal Ullah to discuss religious tolerance then and now

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Rene Descartes, one of the most influential philosophers ever, thought the mind was like an open book that could be read by the light of reason. So there was nothing that we could not access or examine in our own minds. In fact Descartes argued that consciousness was the mind - there was nothing beyond it. Now we see the mind as a labyrinthine cellar full of bric-a-brac and untapped rooms of which consciousness is merely one - and a small one at that. Barry Smith charts this change and explains some of the contemporary thinking about consciousness.

Philosopher Jules Evans explores Jung and the shadow inside all of us. With archive contributions from Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud; plus fantasy writer Juliet McKenna and Mark Vernon, author of Carl Jung: How to Believe.

Writer AL Kennedy on Existentialist ideas about the individual. Jean Paul Sartre argued that, for humans, 'existence preceded essence'. This means that there is no blueprint or template from which to work - humans are free to make themselves up as they go along. Being an individual comes from the way you negotiate this freedom and the choices you make in the face of it.

Neuropsychologist Paul Broks asks how we can be sure we're the same person as we were yesterday. The philosopher John Locke thought it depended on what we could remember: if we could remember something happening to us, then we were the same person as the person it happened to. But is that true?

What if our memories could be downloaded and then uploaded into another body? Would that new person be the same as us? And if so, how much would we care if the body we now inhabit was destroyed? These sci-fi philosophical thought experiments can make us rethink our concept of personal identity and maybe even our attitudes towards death. In the end, is there really a self at all, or are we just a bundle of mental states and events?

Presenter: Paul Broks

A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices.

Each week Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking 'What does it mean to be me?'

Helping him answer the question are philosopher Barry Smith, neuropsychologist Paul Broks, writer A L Kennedy and philosopher Jules Evans.

For the rest of the week Jules, Paul, Alison and Barry take us further into the history of ideas about the self with programmes of their own. Between them they will examine Descartes idea 'I think therefore I am', ask what role memory plays in ideas of the self, discover how stories and myths burrow into our unconscious, and ask whether there's more to existentialism than wearing black and pondering deep thoughts.

Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

Historian Alice Taylor explores the idea of justice through history, through the lens of power. Who holds the power? Who SHOULD hold the power? Who does that power serve? And who should it protect?

One way in which the justice system can remove the power of a citizen is by locking them up, but there are strict laws about how and when that can be done. The writ of Habeas Corpus, part of our legal system almost since the time of Magna Carta, is designed to protect subjects from being imprisoned unlawfully. But who this writ really serves is a more complicated question. Alice follows the legal and historical trail to find out who really decides what justice is.

Producer: Emily Knight.