Philosopher Biography

Le Meditazioni di Marco Aurelio, un'opera fondamentale della filosofia stoica, offrono un'immersione profonda nelle riflessioni personali dell'ultimo dei "Cinque Buoni Imperatori" romani. Scritto come un diario durante le sue campagne militari, questo testo rivela l'intima lotta di un imperatore con questioni di moralità, destino e virtù. Marco Aurelio, regnante dal 161 al 180 d.C., incarna l'ideale stoico di virtù e saggezza attraverso la pratica dell'autodisciplina, della resilienza e del controllo delle passioni, sottolineando che la vera felicità deriva dall'interno.

"The others form the human being, I depict him; and here I present an individual who is quite poorly formed and whom I would certainly make largely differently if I had to reshape him. But now that's the way he is." This phrase from the famous essays of Michel de Montaigne outlines the character of the author and his work. Montaigne wrote his essays not from a position of certainty but from an awareness of his inadequacy. He thus reveals a level of critical self-reflection that, before his time, was rarely put on paper.

Passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are one of the world's legendary couples. Their committed but notoriously open union generated no end of controversy in their day. Biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Tête-à-Tête magnificently details the passion, daring, humor, and contradictions of a remarkably unorthodox relationship.

Stoicism may be an ancient philosophy, but it is one that has even more relevance to our daily lives now that we are in the modern world. With Stoicism, we learn that we can control some things, such as our emotions and our reactions, and this can help to lead us to happiness. In this complete guidebook, we are going to take you from the very basics of using Stoicism in your daily life, to complete mastery. We will show you how this ancient philosophy is going to work to make you feel happier and more virtuous.

Inayat's Song is the story of a young man who struggled with the great questions of existence. Who is God? And who am I? And what is our relationship? Inayat Khan's first-person narrative is read by award-winning actor Tom Alter. Inayat Khan was a gold medal-winning musician, a child prodigy from a musical family, including the renowned musician and music educator, Maulbakhsh Shole Khan. Along with his music education, he showed an aptitude for mystical training and was taken as a pupil of Sufi Master Abu Hashim Madani of Hyderabad.

Johannes Sløk gør i denne bog på en forståelig og pædagogisk veltilrettelagt måde rede for, hvad der var anliggendet og tankeudviklingen bag Kierkegaards livsværk. Bogen er en uundværlig nøgle for alle, der ønsker at stifte bekendtskab med Danmarks mest geniale og berømte tænker. "Den bedste og lettest tilgængelige indføring til Kierkegaards univers, der nogensinde er skrevet på dansk". - Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, direktør, Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret "... et lysende eksempel på formidling, der forener personlig lidenskab med overlegen indsigt i stoffet.

Taking his lead from his subject, Gershom Scholem - the 20th-century thinker who cracked open Jewish theology and history with a radical reading of Kabbalah - Prochnik combines biography and memoir to counter our contemporary political crisis with an original and urgent reimagining of the future of Israel.

From the Introduction: "Every biography is a story of adventure. The energetic personalities of the world represent an adventure in living. The philosophical personalities, on the other hand, represent an adventure in thinking. And when we examine the lives of the philosophers we find that the procession of a man's thoughts can be as exciting a spectacle as the pageantry of a man's deeds."

Yogananda was born in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, to a devout family. According to his younger brother, Sananda, from his earliest years young Mukunda's awareness and experience of the spiritual was far beyond the ordinary. In his youth he sought out many of India's Hindu sages and saints, hoping to find an illuminated teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest. In 1910 Yogananda's seeking after various saints mostly ended when, at the age of 17, he met his guru, Swami Yukteswar Giri. He describes his first meeting with Yukteswar as a rekindling of a relationship that had lasted for many lifetimes.

La historia de cómo cuatro genios revolucionaron la filosofía y cambiaron nuestra forma de entender el mundo.

Para la construcción de esta obra, Sacristán, posiblemente el más destacado intelectual español de izquierdas de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, sigue dos reglas: primera, no separar completamente los textos "personales" de Gramsci de los textos públicos, sino considerar que la cronología es más fuerte razón de homogeneidad que el género literario; y segunda, acentuar la temática en la que se realiza la unidad de la "obra", que no es otra que la literatura política.

Humanly Possible is a wide-ranging, personal, thought-provoking and entertaining journey through the battle of ideas over some 700 years of history—mostly, but not exclusively, in Europe. Through a mixture of biography and philosophy, Bakewell seeks to understand what humanism is, why it has continued to flourish despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, tyrants and cultural pessimists of all kinds, and exactly why we should value and defend it in the 21st century.

Set in Provence, London, and New York, this is a daughter’s wonderfully evocative and witty memoir of her mother and stepfather—Dee Wells, the glamorous and rebellious American journalist, and A. J. Ayer, the celebrated and worldly Oxford philosopher—and the life they lived at the center of absolutely everything.

This audiobook introduces the key ideas, themes and working methods of each featured individual, setting their ideas within a wider historical and cultural context. Charting the development of ideas across the centuries in both the East and West, from ancient Chinese philosophy to the work of contemporary thinkers, Philosophers provides a compelling glimpse into the personal lives, loves and influences of the great philosophers as they probed into life's 'big ideas'.

A deeply divisive figure, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) remains an enigma to this day. Infamous for his startling assertion that "God is dead", he is often misrepresented. In this illuminating account of Nietzsche's life and work, Robert Wicks skilfully navigates the controversy that continues to surround one of today’s most famous but least understood thinkers. Exploring the impact of Nietzsche's Christian upbringing and his childhood on his beliefs, Wicks demonstrates that, far from being a nihilist, Nietzsche offers a positive and understanding of human nature.

Preguntas aparentemente sencillas, como ¿qué te pasa?, ¿cómo te llamas? o ¿de dónde vienes?, nos van acercando poco a poco al centro más profundo de nuestra alma, allí donde se descubre la herida originada por las cuatro infinitudes esenciales: vida, muerte, tú y mundo. Jamás seremos demasiado humanos: si algún horizonte tiene sentido es el de llegar a ser más humanos.

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.

This audiobook contains biographies on five prominent Stoics: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Cato, and Zeno. Get an inside look at the lives of the men who made Stoicism famous.

Discover America's forgotten sage. This is a new anthology of Elbert Hubbard's most insightful, inspiring, and provocative writings, edited and introduced by Sam Torode. Elbert Hubbard was a philosopher, entrepreneur, and leader of the arts and crafts movement in America. One of the most widely read authors of his day, his work fell into obscurity in the decades after he perished at the outset of WWI. This audiobook aims to bring Elbert Hubbard back into the limelight.

This biography describes the intellectual and political milieus that helped shape Noam Chomsky, a pivotal figure in contemporary linguistics, politics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. It also presents an engaging political history of the last several decades, including such events as the Spanish Civil War, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War.