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The Bourgeois Virtues
- Ethics for an Age of Commerce
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 23 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's Summary
For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken's "booboisie", and David Brooks's "bobos" all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.
McCloskey's sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities - from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich - overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism's critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of "virtue ethics" to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations.
High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in an audiobook that can only be described as a monumental project and a life's work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, and a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism.
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What listeners say about The Bourgeois Virtues
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Benzion N. Chinn
- 04-24-18
An Important Follow Up for Anyone Reading Ayn Rand
What other book might you compare The Bourgeois Virtues to and why?
What McCloskey offers is a virtue ethics defense of capitalism. This is very similar to Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy in books such as Atlas Shrugged. The advantage of McCloskey is that she is able to capture the heroic nature of free enterprise without some of Rand's baggage. For example, when reading Atlas Shrugged it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the story is an apology for greed and being a sociopath. In truth, if you are paying attention, none of Rand's heroes are actually motivated by money or personal material benefit. Part of the problem is Rand's self-inflicted wound of praising "selfishness" even though, for her, that word means something very different from how it is usually used. Rand was an explicit virtue ethicist and saw capitalism as having an inherent moral value, regardless of its ability to improve anyone's life. Engaging in the process of market exchanges teach a person to not want something they have not earned. Furthermore, a person learns to value creativity in oneself as well as in other people.
For those intrigued by this model of capitalist virtue ethics, McCloskey offers a wider historical context for such a position. In contrast to Rand's atheist materialism, McCloskey connects capitalism to the "Christian" virtues of faith, hope, and charity as opposed to mere prudence. Just in case anyone is turned off by the Christian material in the book, there are also numerous references to Jewish sources.
8 people found this helpful
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- Hyrum
- 03-15-19
A Masterpiece on Virtue and Ethics
I began this book in 2018, and it is the most important book I read that year.
The author has a delightful style. Go to any location at random. Listen for five minutes, and you will find a sentence or insight that can only be described as delicious.
The book is simply and clearly organized, but it is dense. It is not a meal, but a cuisine that must be savored over time in many servings.The book reads as though the author has spent years lovingly and carefully collected index cards filled with insights and then carefully assembled them into a work of art. The works she cites are a reading list of the great, the good, and the wise.
Do not be confused by her advocacy of capitalism and free markets, powerful as that is. This is an introduction to ethics that is more complete, and more accessible than any other I have encountered. I could not listen without applying the virtues to my own life.
The audible version is the ideal introduction to this work as it's marvelous narrator turns a ponderous tome into a conversation with a friend.
I have many books on reading lists to be reread every year. This book is unique as I will be reading a chapter chosen at random every month. (Yes, I bought the print version as well).
The best analogy I can think of us to imagine a Michelangelo painted by a member of the Dutch school, where every brush stroke or sentence can be studied with a microscope. Your life will be richer. for having experienced this work of scholarship, art, and love.
2 people found this helpful
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- B. Wilson
- 02-08-18
Great performance!
I mean the book is terrific, but the narration was incredible for a book like this.
2 people found this helpful
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- Gustavo
- 08-31-18
Unbearable
I really wanted to know about bourgeois virtues, but this book feels like an aimless rant, it’s unbearable.
The narrator does a very annoying thing of prolonging the last word of sentences, which was very distracting.
I hoped this was a more objective account on bourgeois history. It seems odd that the three volumes are over 60 hours long.
1 person found this helpful
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- booklover
- 03-14-18
I Can't Wait to Read the Other Volumes
Beautifully written, wonderful breadth and depth, narrator a pleasure to listen to. I can't wait for the rest of the series.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-18-20
Longwinded but erudite
The book is way too long but nonetheless a treasure trove of interesting ideas, anecdotes, and erudition.
The narrator doesn't know how to pronounce German or many of the other languages. I expect more from professional productions. If you can get over that, her voice is soothing and a good fit for the role.
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Performance
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Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to The Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey's influential explanation of how we got rich.
By: Deirdre N. McCloskey, and others
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Why Liberalism Works
- How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All
- By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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The greatest challenges facing humankind, according to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, are poverty and tyranny, both of which hold people back. Arguing for a return to true liberal values, this engaging and accessible book develops, defends, and demonstrates how embracing the ideas first espoused by 18th-century philosophers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft is good for everyone. In McCloskey's view, liberalism leads to equality, but equality does not necessarily lead to liberalism - and the fixation of the left on inequality is counterproductive.
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Outstanding
- By Plutologist on 07-06-20
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The Great Leveler
- Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
- By: Walter Scheidel
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
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Content is not suitable for an Audiobook
- By Varun on 02-10-18
By: Walter Scheidel
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Escape from Rome
- The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity
- By: Walter Scheidel
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 21 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe's economic rise and the creation of the modern age. Ranging across the entire premodern world, Escape from Rome offers new answers to some of the biggest questions in history: Why did the Roman Empire appear? Why did nothing like it ever return to Europe? And, above all, why did Europeans come to dominate the world?
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Very interesting book, terrible narration
- By Matt Griffin on 12-03-19
By: Walter Scheidel
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The Origin of Capitalism
- A Longer View
- By: Ellen Meiksins Wood
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Ellen Meiksins Wood offers a clear and accessible introduction to the theories and debates concerning the birth of capitalism, imperialism, and the modern nation state. Capitalism is not a natural and inevitable consequence of human nature, nor simply an extension of age-old practices of trade and commerce. Rather, it is a late and localized product of very specific historical conditions, which required great transformations in social relations and in the relationship between humans and nature.
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incredibly dence.
- By Jake Fahey on 10-22-21
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The WEIRDest People in the World
- How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
- By: Joseph Henrich
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.
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Lots of mispronounced words
- By Phillip Falk on 10-24-20
By: Joseph Henrich
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Conservatism
- A Rediscovery
- By: Yoram Hazony
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 16 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The award-winning political theorist Yoram Hazony argues that the best hope for Western democracy is a return to the empiricist, religious, and nationalist traditions of America and Britain—the conservative traditions that brought greatness to the English-speaking nations and became the model for national freedom for the entire world. Conservatism: A Rediscovery explains how Anglo-American conservatism became a distinctive alternative to divine-right monarchy, Puritan theocracy, and liberal revolution.
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Practical solution for today's chaos
- By CheerfulGiver on 12-03-22
By: Yoram Hazony
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The Secret of Our Success
- How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
- By: Joseph Henrich
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 17 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?
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The power of sociality to supercharge evolution
- By Graeme Newell on 09-27-19
By: Joseph Henrich
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The Road to Serfdom, the Definitive Edition
- Text and Documents
- By: F. A. Hayek, Bruce Caldwell - editor
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and the public for half a century. Originally published in 1944 - when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program - The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production.
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Hayek's case for individualism over collectivism
- By Wayne on 10-27-18
By: F. A. Hayek, and others
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Slouching Towards Utopia
- An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
- By: J. Bradford DeLong
- Narrated by: Allan Aquino
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870-2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo.
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Take a tour of Brad DeLong’s mind palace
- By Owen Davis on 10-08-22
Related to this topic
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Bourgeois Equality
- How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World
- By: Deirdre N. McCloskey
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 29 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Few economists or historians write like McCloskey - her ability to invest the facts of economic history with the urgency of a novel, or of a leading case at law, is unmatched. She summarizes modern economics and modern economic history with verve and lucidity yet sees through to the really big scientific conclusion. Not matter, but ideas. Big books don't come any more ambitious or captivating than Bourgeois Equality.
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How the world got rich
- By Andrew Cooper-Sansone on 01-26-23
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A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.
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Erudite and entertaining!
- By D. A. Vail on 05-20-19
By: Adam Gopnik
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Achieving Our Country
- Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
- By: Richard Rorty
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the ivied halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered "yes" in both word and deed. In Achieving Our Country, one of America's foremost philosophers challenges this lost generation of the Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers like Walt Whitman and John Dewey.