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The Meaning of Life
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more of a summary and less of an introduction!
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Why Marx Was Right
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Overall
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is probably the most divisive philosopher of the twentieth century: Viewed by some as a charlatan and by others as a leader and central figure of modern philosophy. Michael Inwood's lucid introduction to Heidegger's thought focuses on his most important work, "Being and Time," and its major themes of existence in the world, inauthenticity, guilt, destiny, truth, and the nature of time.
-
-
Not new to Heidegger
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- A Very Short Introduction
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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One of the leading philosophical movements of the 20th century, existentialism has had more impact on literature and the arts than any other school of thought. Focusing on the leading figures of existentialism, including Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Camus, Thomas Flynn offers a concise account of existentialism, explaining the key themes of individuality, free will, and personal responsibility, which marked the movement as a way of life, not just a way of thinking.
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more of a summary and less of an introduction!
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On Evil
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Wow. Magnificent book
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Wittgenstein
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- By: A. C. Grayling
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-
Overall
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Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an extraordinarily original thinker, whose influence on twentieth-century thinking far outside the bounds of philosophy alone. In this engaging introduction, A.C. Grayling makes Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general listener by explaining the nature and impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought.
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-
Lively narration
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Consciousness
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- Narrated by: Tamara Marston
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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"The last great mystery for science," consciousness has become a controversial topic. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction challenges listeners to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are opening up these debates, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers.
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Changing Body Composition Through Diet and Exercise presents the latest scientific research about changing your body composition, along with diet and exercise recommendations in incremental steps that men and women of all ages and fitness levels can follow. Led by Professor Michael Ormsbee, Assistant Professor and Interim Director of the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine, you will gain access to cutting-edge research that demonstrates what does - and doesn’t - work.
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This short, smart audiobook tells you everything you need to know about "nothing." What remains when you take all the matter away? Can empty space - "nothing" - exist? To answer these questions, eminent scientist Frank Close takes us on a lively and accessible journey that ranges from ancient ideas and cultural superstitions to the frontiers of current research, illuminating the story of how scientists have explored the void and the rich discoveries they have made there.
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Excellent treatment
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This Very Short Introduction offers a succinct tour of the fascinating world of game theory, a groundbreaking field that analyzes how to play games in a rational way. Ken Binmore, a renowned game theorist, explains the theory in a way that is both entertaining and non-mathematical yet also deeply insightful, revealing how game theory can shed light on everything from social gatherings, to ethical decision-making, to successful card-playing strategies, to calculating the sex ratio among bees.
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One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
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Capital: Volume 1
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It can be said of very few books that the world was changed as a result of its publication - but this is certainly the case of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx (1818-1883). Volume 1 appeared (in German) in 1867, and the two subsequent volumes appeared at later dates after the author's death - completed from extensive notes left by Marx himself.
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Classic Economics Text - A Good Listen
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Excellent book... totally ruined
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Plato: A Very Short Introduction
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This lively and accessible introduction to Plato focuses on the philosophy and argument of his writings, drawing the listener into Plato's way of doing philosophy, and the general themes of his thinking. This is not an audiobook to leave the listener standing in the outer court of introduction and background information, but leads directly into Plato's argument. It looks at Plato as a thinker grappling with philosophical problems in a variety of ways, rather than a philosopher with a fully worked-out system.
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Lake Success
- A Novel
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Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart. Meanwhile, his super-smart wife, Seema - a driven first-generation American who craved the picture-perfect life that comes with wealth - has her own demons to face.
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A funny and story set very much in our time
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Publisher's Summary
Eagleton first examines how centuries of thinkers and writers - from Marx and Schopenhauer to Shakespeare, Sartre, and Beckett - have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests, however, that it is only in modern times that the question has become problematic.
But instead of tackling it head-on, many of us cope with the feelings of meaninglessness in our lives by filling them with everything from football to sex, Kabbala, Scientology, "New Age softheadedness" or fundamentalism. On the other hand, Eagleton notes, many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made.
Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living - that is, a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life.
Here then is a brilliant discussion of the problem of meaning by a leading thinker, who writes with a light and often irreverent touch, but with a very serious end in mind.
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- A. Yerkes
- United States
- 05-23-15
Philosophizing beyond Nihilism or Fundamentalism
Eagleton’s exploration of the meaning of life takes the listener on a meandering and fascinating path through intellectual culture, focusing mostly on 20th-century philosophy. Like the best of Eagleton’s literary theory and criticism, this audiobook shifts between profound, thought-provoking claims and humorous phrasings and analogies that keeps things lively. Likewise, the themes of the discussion are familiar from other works of his: he banks many of his best shots off the backboard of postmodern thought, rejecting its relativistic pluralism and its privatization of values. He’s particularly interested in the role that language plays in meaning and the implications of the possibility that life is meaningless. Listeners with some background in modern thought, and an interest to learn more, will find this recording worthwhile. The reader is well matched to the material.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
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- Marcus
- Brasília, Brazil
- 07-09-17
Meaning and Skepticism
This short and well written book achieves it's goal. Terry Eagleton produced a clear and well balanced essay about the meaning of life, familiarizing the reader with the different concepts, even with the ones that reject the question. The philosophy's and theology's insights are considered and related with the main question. The reader can grasp the most important facets of the problem, considering the challenges posed by this enterprise. This short introduction makes it happen!
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- Welsh Mafia
- 07-08-12
You do the hokey, cokey and.....
After encountering Terry Eagleton’s literary criticism through the various bookshelves of Modernism and his commentary on most of the central characters of English literature and following his more recent employment law case study and well-deserved spat with Martin Amis in the press, it was great to be able to sit down to a one volume ‘history of everything according to Terry Eagleton.’
The meaning of life, we learn is intrinsically bound up with what it is to be Terry Eagleton. All of the main pointers can be picked up from the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot and, of course, James Joyce and Joseph Conrad - not forgetting Thomas Hardy and Aristotle, of course.
Less a tours de force, not the Tour de France more Tourist England, the focus never leaves our shores. What might life mean in China or Japan, India or Australia? Whilst fully acknowledging the limitations that our language and grammar place on the way in which life is shaped and the meanings that we take from what goes around around us, what goes on around us is reduced to what has gone on around Terry.
The redeeming feature is, of course, that Life on Planet Eagleton is quite fascinating in and of itself. The interplay between Roman Catholicism and the Marxist dialectic and notions of ideology are given full vent in this short book. In true literary criticism fashion, Eagleton pulls it all together at the end - what we have is the full, varied and very satisfying meaning of ‘a life‘ with just enough room for life to go on around it.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- James C.
- 06-20-18
Great text, robotic reader
The subject matter of this book is excellent. Sadly I found the narrator very robotic and this made it an unpleasant listening experience overall. I couldn’t get to the end. Will buy the book instead!
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Overall
- Mr
- 12-23-12
Mr Eagleton is the path. no honest, swear, he is!!
Fantastically concise little snippet of the absurdities we let control our actions. Come on, look at yourself in the mirror after listening to this, we really are ridiculous!!!