Philosophy audiobooks page 5

"My Confession" is a brief autobiographical story of Leo Tolstoy's struggle with a mid-life existential crisis of melancholia. It describes his search for answers to the profound questions "What will come of my life?" and "What is the meaning of life?", without answers to which life, for him, had become "impossible." Tolstoy reflects on the arc of his philosophical life until then: his childhood abandonment of his Russian orthodox faith; his mastery of strength, will, power, and reason; and how, after he had achieved tremendous financial success and social status, life to him seemed meaningless. After despairing of his attempts to find answers in science, philosophy, eastern wisdom, and h...

The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz was edited in 1616 in Strasbourg (annexed by France in 1681). It is the third of the original manifestos of the mysterious "Fraternity of the Rose Cross" (Rosicrucians).

NOTE: It was translated into English for the first time in 1690 by E. Foxcroft. This translation became the source for many of the modern attempts to improve the original. The translation presented here is that of E. Foxcroft.

Although the book first appeared in 1616, the story takes place over 150 years earlier. It is an allegoric romance (story) divided into Seven Days, or Seven Journeys, like Genesis, and tells us about the way Christian Rosenkreuz was ...

In this work, Schopenhauer explains his fundamental idea that at the root of the reality we see around us is a Will that eternally, insatiably seeks to be satisfied. Each human Subject observes the Objects around her from the perspective of that fundamental Will working within each person. The human observer is distracted by the details of life and individual distinctions that obscure this Will; only by penetrating this “principium individuationis” (which is enslaved by the cause-and-effect tyranny of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) can the observer perceive the essential Thing-In-Itself. Art has the power to make us see the Thing-In-Itself, the Platonic Idea freed from the individual...

This book is a primer on the philosophy of stoicism, resurrected from its origins in Greek and Roman philosophy. The original philosophy was based on a reasoning process which it was assumed would lead to a virtuous life. Zeno, the founder of stoicism, did not begin expounding on its teachings until he was in his forties. He believed that the purpose of life was "to live consistently." Cleanthes, his disciple, added "with nature," so that the purpose of life became "to live consistently with nature."

Consolation of Philosophy (Latin: Consolatio Philosophiae) is a philosophical work by Boethius written in about the year 524 AD. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West in medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, and is also the last great work that can be called Classical.

Consolation of Philosophy was written during Boethius’ one year imprisonment while awaiting trial, and eventual horrific execution, for the crime of treason by Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. Boethius was at the very heights of power in Rome and was brought down by treachery. It was from this experience he was inspired to write a philosophical book from pri...

Even before the Great War turned the world upside down, Western civilization was being revolutionized at all levels: intellectually, philosophically, artistically. Noted positivist philosopher George Santayana published this volume on the eve of the War, trying to portray the status of philosophy and theology at that moment by analyzing six significant topics:
1. the intellectual "temper" of the age
2. the clash between Modernism and Christianity
3. the new idealism of Henri Bergson
4. the new skepticism of Bertrand Russell
5. Shelley's fusion of philosophy and poetry
6. the so-called "genteel" tradition in American philosophy.

In this book, Schweitzer traces the historical progress of 'Historical Jesus' research, from Hermann Reimarus in the mid 18th century, to William Wrede at the turn of the 20th. Schweitzer showed how Jesus' image had changed with the times and with the personal proclivities of the various authors. He concluded with his own synopsis and interpretation of what had been learned over the course of the previous century. He took the position that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus' own convictions, which he characterized as those of late Jewish eschatology. (Introduction from Wikipedia, modified by JoeD)

Bertrand Russell wrote 'Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy' while imprisoned for protesting Britain's involvement in World War I. Russell summarizes the significance of the momentous work of mathematicians in the late nineteenth-century. He further describes his own philosophy of mathematics, Logicism (the view that all mathematical truths are logical truths), and his earlier, influential work solving the paradoxes that plagued mathematical foundations, which crystallized after ten years of dogged effort into the co-authored (with Alfred North Whitehead), three-volume 'Principia Mathematica'. Russell emphasizes the importance of a doctrine of types, the truth of Logicism, and the cla...

Metaphysics is essentially a reconciliation of Plato’s theory of Forms that Aristotle acquired at the Academy in Athens, with the view of the world given by common sense and the observations of the natural sciences. According to Plato, the real nature of things is eternal and unchangeable. However, the world we observe around us is constantly and perpetually changing. Aristotle’s genius was to reconcile these two apparently contradictory views of the world. The result is a synthesis of the naturalism of empirical science, and the mysticism of Plato, that informed the Western intellectual tradition for more than two thousand years. At the heart of the book lie three questions. What is e...

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore) is the most famous and celebrated play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello.

Pirandello, in the preface to the play, says that whenever a reader opens Dante’s Inferno, Francesca will drift down from the dark wind in her circle of Hell and tell the Pilgrim her story; and it will always be for the first time – just as the Mother in Pirandello’s play at one point makes an agonizing cry, always for the first time.

Each character sees events and the other characters differently. Their readings of reality do not match up. No one character is more correct than the other. There are as many vers...