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The Quest for Character
- What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us About Our Search for Good Leaders
- Narrated by: Alan Carlson
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's summary
What Socrates’s greatest failure reveals about an ancient question: Can we teach our leaders to be better people?
Is good character something that can be taught? In 430 BCE, Socrates set out to teach the vain, power-seeking Athenian statesman Alcibiades how to be a good person—and failed spectacularly. Alcibiades went on to beguile his city into a hopeless war with Syracuse, and all of Athens paid the price.
In The Quest for Character, philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci tells this famous story and asks what we can learn from it. He blends ancient sources with modern interpretations to give a full picture of the philosophy and cultivation of character, virtue, and personal excellence—what the Greeks called arete. At heart, The Quest for Character isn’t simply about what makes a good leader. Drawing on Socrates as well as his followers among the Stoics, this book gives us lessons perhaps even more crucial: how we can each lead an excellent life.
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In this groundbreaking work, Kwame Anthony Appiah, hailed as "one of the most relevant philosophers today" (New York Times Book Review), changes the way we understand human behavior and the way social reform is brought about. In brilliantly arguing that new democratic movements over the last century have not been driven by legislation from above, Appiah explores the end of the duel in aristocratic England, the tumultuous struggles over foot binding in 19th-century China, the uprising of ordinary people against Atlantic slavery, and much more.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Horribly Boring
- By Merle N. Savedow on 02-10-21
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Confucius
- And the World He Created
- By: Michael Schuman
- Narrated by: Steven Menache
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
Confucius is perhaps the most important philosopher in history. Today his teachings shape the daily lives of more than 1.6 billion people. Throughout East Asia, Confucius' influence can be seen in everything from business practices and family relationships to educational standards and government policies. Even as Western ideas from Christianity to Communism have bombarded the region, Confucius' doctrine has endured as the foundation of East Asian culture.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Reader Was Badly Chosen
- By Phillip W. Dennis on 10-20-22
By: Michael Schuman
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Constantine the Emperor
- By: David Potter
- Narrated by: Phil Holland
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 77
This year Christians worldwide will celebrate the 1700th anniversary of Constantine's conversion and victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. No Roman emperor had a greater impact on the modern world than did Constantine. The reason is not simply that he converted to Christianity but that he did so in a way that brought his subjects along after him. Indeed, this major new biography argues that Constantine's conversion is but one feature of a unique administrative style that enabled him to take control of an empire beset by internal rebellions and external threats by Persians and Goths.
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4 out of 5 stars
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In this sign thou shalt conquer!
- By Darwin8u on 06-11-18
By: David Potter
-
The Year of Our Lord 1943
- Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis
- By: Alan Jacobs
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The Audible is a Train Wreck
- By John on 09-04-18
By: Alan Jacobs
-
Stay
- A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It
- By: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Narrated by: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 146
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 128
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 129
Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Informative but oddly dispassionate
- By Scott on 01-07-14
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On Grand Strategy
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 955
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 805
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 797
For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Interesting, but fails to offer real lessons.
- By Zack on 07-04-18
-
Passionate Sage
- The Character and Legacy of John Adams
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 266
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 235
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 233
John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of our nation and its second president, spent nearly the last third of his life in retirement, grappling with contradictory views of his place in history and fearing his reputation would not fare well in the generations after his death. And indeed, future generations did slight him, elevating Jefferson and Madison to lofty heights while Adams remained way back in the second tier.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Stays true to Audible's description
- By Neil on 10-24-09
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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Plato's Crito
- By: Plato
- Narrated by: Ray Childs
- Length: 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 135
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 120
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 121
The Athenian court has found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death. While he is waiting to be executed, his friend, Crito, comes to the prison to persuade him to escape and go into exile. Socrates responds by examining the essence of law and community, probing the various kinds of law and making distinctions that go far beyond the particular issue of whether or not Socrates should escape.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bravo!
- By Byron on 10-12-16
By: Plato
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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
- By: Anthony Everitt
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,407
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,250
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,246
In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An eloquent man, and a patriot
- By Darwin8u on 01-19-15
By: Anthony Everitt
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The Dream of Enlightenment
- The Rise of Modern Philosophy
- By: Anthony Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Anthony Gottlieb
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 192
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 170
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 166
In The Dream of Enlightenment, Anthony Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Enlightenment meets Neuroscience
- By Rodger on 12-05-19
By: Anthony Gottlieb
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The Enlightenment
- And Why It Still Matters
- By: Anthony Pagden
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 125
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 109
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 110
One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A thorough political tract rather than history
- By Jacobus on 03-08-14
By: Anthony Pagden
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Our Declaration
- A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality
- By: Danielle Allen
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
In just 1,337 words, the Declaration of Independence changed the world, but curiously it is now rarely read from start to finish, much less understood. Unsettled by this, Danielle Allen read the text quietly with students and discovered its animating power. "Bringing the analytical skills of a philosopher, the voice of a gifted memoirist, and the spirit of a soulful humanist to the task, Allen manages to find new meaning in Thomas Jefferson' s understanding of equality," says Joseph J. Ellis about Our Declaration.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Second Most Interesting Book I've Ever Read
- By Christopher on 01-27-15
By: Danielle Allen
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The Metaphysical Club
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 304
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 167
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 163
Hardly a club in the conventional sense, the organization referred to in the title of this superb literary hybrid (part history, part biography, part philosophy) consisted of four members and probably existed for less than nine months.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Great American Experiment
- By Victoria on 12-08-03
By: Louis Menand
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A Wicked Company
- The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach’s Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach’s house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Book on Radical Enlightenment
- By EJJ on 02-15-15
By: Philipp Blom
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What's So Great About America
- By: Dinesh D'Souza
- Narrated by: Dinesh D'Souza
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 393
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 193
America is under attack as never before - not only from terrorists, but from people who provide a rationale for terrorism. Best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza takes on all of America's critics and proves them wrong - as perhaps only a writer with an immigrant's understanding of this country can.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellant!
- By William J. Schleue on 01-02-03
By: Dinesh D'Souza
-
The Problem of Democracy
- The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
- By: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 22 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Very insightful and rewarding adding understanding
- By William on 05-12-19
By: Nancy Isenberg, and others
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Some people bounce back in response to setbacks; others break. We often think that these responses are hardwired, but fortunately this is not the case. Stoicism offers us an alternative approach. Plumbing the wisdom of one of the most popular and successful schools of thought from ancient Rome, philosopher William B. Irvine teaches us to turn any challenge on its head. The Stoic Challenge, then, is the ultimate guide to improving your quality of life through tactics developed by ancient Stoics, from Marcus Aurelius and Seneca to Epictetus.
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Considered by many to be the most important philosopher ever, Plato was born into a well-to-do family in wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. He finally decided to go into politics, but became disillusioned, especially after the Athenians condemned his teacher, Socrates, to death. He began teaching in his twenties and later founded the Academy, the world's first higher-educational research and teaching establishment. Eventually, he returned to practical politics and spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to create a constitution for Syracuse in Sicily.
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story5 out of 5 stars 33
Gaius Musonius Rufus was a Roman Stoic philosopher of the first century AD. He has been referred to as the Roman Socrates and is also remembered for being the teacher of Epictetus. He taught philosophy in Rome during the reign of Nero and so was sent into exile in 65 AD, returning to Rome only under Galba. Twenty-one of his lectures survive together with a few fragmentary notes from others, all of which are contained in this narration.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing timeless wisdom
- By Rosy on 08-16-22
By: Musonius Rufus
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,048
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 922
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 916
Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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4 out of 5 stars
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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Think like a Stoic
- Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
- By: Massimo Pigliucci, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Professor Massimo Pigliucci
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 636
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 556
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 550
Distilled to its essence, the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy known as Stoicism is a philosophy of personal betterment. Professor Pigliucci, who knows firsthand just how transformative a Stoic approach to life can be, has designed these 25 lessons as an enlightening introduction to the basics of Stoic philosophy and ways to incorporate its lessons into your own life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A lot to love. A little to object to.
- By Amazon Customer on 08-20-21
By: Massimo Pigliucci, and others
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How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
- The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
- By: Donald J. Robertson
- Narrated by: Donald J. Robertson
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 4,188
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3,591
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Story5 out of 5 stars 3,571
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was the final famous Stoic philosopher of the ancient world. The Meditations, his personal journal, survives as one of the most loved self-help and spiritual classics of all time. In How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, psychotherapist Donald Robertson weaves stories of Marcus’ life from the Roman histories together with explanations of Stoicism - its philosophy and its psychology - to enlighten today’s listeners. He discusses Stoic techniques for coping with problems such as irrational fears, bad habits, anger, pain, and illness.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Marvelous mix of a biography with stoicism and CBT
- By Eduard Ezeanu on 04-12-19
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A History of Western Philosophy
- By: Bertrand Russell
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 38 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 264
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 218
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 218
Considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of all time, the History of Western Philosophy is a dazzlingly unique exploration of the ideologies of significant philosophers throughout the ages - from Plato and Aristotle through to Spinoza, Kant and the 20th century. Written by a man who changed the history of philosophy himself, this is an account that has never been rivaled since its first publication over 60 years ago.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Russell's Philosophy, Some History Included
- By Donald on 06-19-21
By: Bertrand Russell
What listeners say about The Quest for Character
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Roberto H. Castro
- 10-29-22
Thought Provoking
This book presents an age-old question and provides us thoughts from wise people on what it takes to develop and maintain a good character. The list provided at the end is superb. The sources cited are ones I will investigate in my journey.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Carlson Factory
- 02-19-23
Transformational Reading
This is a great foundational guild to the path of virtue and the building blocks of a good and worthy character.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 09-07-23
The best stoic character text
Concise. Excellent reading. Will listen again and again, and recommend it to others. Thank you.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Cameron
- 11-14-22
another great work by Massimo
only suggestion would be to include a PDF of the syllabus in last chapter with the audio book
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Kim A Jackson
- 10-14-22
Not as wonderful as his other books
Good information but not as charming or enlightening as his other works. A bit let down.
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