Philosopher Biography

In 1895, William James, the father of American philosophy, delivered a lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?" It was no theoretical question for James, who had contemplated suicide during an existential crisis as a young man a quarter century earlier. Sick Souls, Healthy Minds is a compelling introduction to James's life and thought that shows why the founder of pragmatism and empirical psychology -and an inspiration for Alcoholics Anonymous - can still speak so directly and profoundly to anyone struggling to make a life worth living.

This Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical ideas and political theories belonging to one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Arendt's life informed her work exploring the meaning and construction of power, evil, totalitarianism, and direct democracy. Dana Villa explains how Arendt gained world-wide fame with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, and went on to have a distinguished career as a political theorist and public intellectual.

As a young man, Albert Schweitzer seemed destined for greatness. His immense talent and fortitude propelled him to a place as one of Europe's most renowned philosophers, theologians, and musicians in the early 20th century. Yet Schweitzer shocked his contemporaries by forsaking worldly success and embarking on an epic journey into the wilds of French Equatorial Africa, vowing to serve as a lifelong physician to "the least of these" in a mysterious land rife with famine, sickness, and superstition.

For centuries, Augustine's writings have moved and fascinated readers. With the keen eye of a writer whose own intellectual analysis won him a Pulitzer Prize, Gary Wills examines this famed fourth-century bishop and seminal thinker whose grounding in classical philosophy informed his interpretation of Christian doctrine. Saint Augustine explores Augustine's thought as well as the everyday man who set pen to parchment. It challenges many misconceptions.

Since the publication of The Prince five centuries ago, Machiavelli has been associated with political amorality. But that characterization is unfair. In Be Like the Fox, Erica Benner sets the record straight: far from the ruthless "Machiavellian" henchman that people think he was, Machiavelli emerges here as a profound ethical thinker who fought to uphold high moral standards and restore the democratic freedoms of his beloved Florence.

This small audiobook provides a biographical outline of Plotinus' life and work as described by Porphyry. Also included is an essay by Plotinus on beauty.

The tradition of the Himalayan sages that exists today is an unbroken chain that extends for more than 5,000 years. Undisturbed by the passage of time, this tradition is not concerned with teachings that apply only to a particular era of history or geographical region of the world - its entire emphasis is on the experience of the universal truth of who we are.

A new biography of Karl Marx, tracing the life of this titanic figure and the legacy of his work. Karl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. He died quietly in 1883 and a mere 11 mourners attended his funeral, but a year later he was being hailed as "the Prophet himself" whose name and writings would "endure through the ages." He has been viewed as a philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, even a literary craftsman. But who was Marx? What informed his critiques of modern society?

Howard Lester, a young scientist, becomes obsessed with the problem of death and begins a series of unconventional experiments aimed at increasing human longevity. In the course of their research, Lester and his friend Sir Henry Littleway make a startling discovery: A simple, harmless operation on the brain's prefrontal cortex results in vastly expanded consciousness and mental powers.

Em A vida dos estoicos, Ryan Holiday e Stephen Hanselman apresentam histórias fascinantes de homens e mulheres que se esforçaram para seguir as virtudes estoicas atemporais da coragem, da justiça, da temperança e da sabedoria. Organizado em breves biografias que abordam desde os estoicos mais estudados aos menos conhecidos, este livro lança luz sobre os hábitos de pessoas que viveram essa filosofia e as lições que devem ser aprendidas de suas dificuldades e de seus sucessos.

UG Krishnamurti has been called the ‘anti-guru’, the ‘raging sage’ and the ‘thinker who shuns thought’. UG does not give lectures, has no organizations, does not write books, holds no gatherings and peddles no mantras. Yet he is the most talked-about thinker in India. This biography, that topped best-seller lists for nine months after it was first published, uravels the man who talks of enlightenment as a neurobiological state of being, utterly free of religious, psychological or mystical implications.

Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Revered by great Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years.

Marqués de Sade. Sexualidad, amor y tormento trata sobre el controvertido escritor, ensayista y filósofo francés cuya vida llena de depravación, escándalo y libertinaje lo llevó a ser encarcelado por décadas. Fue durante el encierro que escribió algunas de sus célebres y crudas obras en las que se adentra en la sexualidad, el amor, la perversión, la tortura y el tormento, mismas que representaban un claro desafío a la sociedad de su tiempo.

At the age of eight, Karl Popper was puzzling over the idea of infinity and by fifteen was beginning to take a keen interest in his father's well-stocked library of books. Unended Quest recounts these moments and many others in the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, providing an indispensable account of the ideas that influenced him most. As an introduction to Popper's philosophy, Unended Quest also shines. Popper lucidly explains the central ideas in his work, making this book ideal for anyone coming to Popper's life and work for the first time.

In a series of poignant vignettes, a preeminent historian makes a compelling case for Machiavelli as an unjustly maligned figure with valuable political insights that resonate as strongly today as they did in his time.

Since his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury and his return to academic life (Master of Magdalene College Cambridge), Rowan Williams has demonstrated a massive new surge of intellectual energy. In this new audiobook, he turns his attention to St Augustine. St Augustine not only shaped the development of Western theology, he also made a major contribution to political theory ( The City of God) and, through his Confessions, to the understanding of human psychology.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had dealt a one-two punch to the dynastic system. Confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in this Thuringian village.

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics, he transformed every field of knowledge that he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. When he first divided human knowledge into separate categories, he enabled our understanding of the world to develop in a systematic fashion.

John Dee was one of the greatest scientific minds of his time, but also one of the most controversial. He was a learned man in fields as varied as mathematics and astronomy, centuries before they became formalized fields of study, but he is better remembered for performing magic and alchemy. Instead of astronomy, he became renowned across England for astrology, and he was one of the country’s most notorious occult writers during his life.

Hannah Arendt was a polarizing cultural theorist—extolled by her peers as a visionary and berated by her critics as a poseur and a fraud. Born in Prussia to assimilated Jewish parents, she escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1933. Arendt is now best remembered for the storm of controversy that surrounded her 1963 New Yorker series on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a kidnapped Nazi war criminal. In this comprehensive biography, Anne C. Heller tracks the source of Arendt’s contradictions and achievements to her sense of being a “conscious pariah”.