-
The Metaphysical Club
- A Story of Ideas in America
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $21.30
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Free World
- Art and Thought in the Cold War
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 34 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.
-
-
Cuts off mid-sentence and never ends!
- By Sasha Senderovich on 05-01-21
By: Louis Menand
-
Exact Thinking in Demented Times
- The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
- By: Karl Sigmund
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science.
-
-
Historical narrative, with physics and despair.
- By Philip J. Kurle on 10-08-18
By: Karl Sigmund
-
Journey to the Edge of Reason
- The Life of Kurt Gödel
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true - yet never provable - continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life.
-
-
Highly recommended
- By J.A.MANOHARAN on 10-25-21
-
The Infidel and the Professor
- David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.
-
-
a thoroughly enjoyable account of friendship
- By henryj on 02-21-20
-
The Age of Revolution
- 1789-1848
- By: Eric Hobsbawm
- Narrated by: Hugh Kermode
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphoristic elegance. Part of Eric Hobsbawm's epic four-volume history of the modern world, along with The Age of Capitalism, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes.
-
-
Brilliant Materialist Interpretation
- By Earth Lover on 05-16-20
By: Eric Hobsbawm
-
Time of the Magicians
- Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.
-
-
Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations
- By William G. Brown on 08-31-20
-
The Free World
- Art and Thought in the Cold War
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 34 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.
-
-
Cuts off mid-sentence and never ends!
- By Sasha Senderovich on 05-01-21
By: Louis Menand
-
Exact Thinking in Demented Times
- The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
- By: Karl Sigmund
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science.
-
-
Historical narrative, with physics and despair.
- By Philip J. Kurle on 10-08-18
By: Karl Sigmund
-
Journey to the Edge of Reason
- The Life of Kurt Gödel
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true - yet never provable - continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life.
-
-
Highly recommended
- By J.A.MANOHARAN on 10-25-21
-
The Infidel and the Professor
- David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.
-
-
a thoroughly enjoyable account of friendship
- By henryj on 02-21-20
-
The Age of Revolution
- 1789-1848
- By: Eric Hobsbawm
- Narrated by: Hugh Kermode
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphoristic elegance. Part of Eric Hobsbawm's epic four-volume history of the modern world, along with The Age of Capitalism, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes.
-
-
Brilliant Materialist Interpretation
- By Earth Lover on 05-16-20
By: Eric Hobsbawm
-
Time of the Magicians
- Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.
-
-
Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations
- By William G. Brown on 08-31-20
-
Logic and Intuition
- Selections from the Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce
- By: David Christopher Lane, Charles Sanders Peirce
- Narrated by: John Alan Martinson Jr.
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Sanders Peirce is perhaps the greatest philosophical mind to emerge from the United States. He was hugely influential on William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and many other eminent thinkers. This small volume includes two famous essays by Peirce, "The Fixation of Belief" and "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man." Also included is a short, intellectual biography of Peirce which focuses on his many contributions to science and philosophy. Chosen and very slightly edited by Professor David Christopher Lane, PhD.
-
-
Problems Ahead
- By J. Duncan Berry on 05-27-21
By: David Christopher Lane, and others
-
At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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!"
-
-
Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
-
Emerson
- The Mind on Fire
- By: Robert D. Richardson
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.
-
-
Finally!
- By Douglas on 08-15-14
-
The War on the West
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Douglas Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning, but much of it fatally undermines the very things that created the greatest, most humane civilization in the world. In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric.
-
-
Every Human (seriously, everyone) Read This!
- By aaron on 04-27-22
By: Douglas Murray
-
The Enlightenment
- The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790
- By: Ritchie Robertson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 40 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This magisterial history - sure to become the definitive work on the subject - recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.
-
-
The quickest 40 hour audio book I’ve listen to
- By Joey Caster on 04-02-21
-
The Hedgehog and the Fox (Second Edition)
- An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History
- By: Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy - editor, Michael Ignatieff - foreword
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.
-
-
The Fox Who Tried To Be A Hedgehog
- By Rich S. on 12-14-21
By: Isaiah Berlin, and others
-
The Open Society and Its Enemies
- New One-Volume Edition
- By: Karl Popper
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 23 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An immediate sensation when it was first published in two volumes in 1945, Popper's monumental achievement has attained legendary status on both the Left and Right and is credited with inspiring anticommunist dissidents during the Cold War. Arguing that the spirit of free, critical inquiry that governs scientific investigation should also apply to politics, Popper traces the roots of an opposite, authoritarian tendency to a tradition represented by Plato, Marx, and Hegel.
-
-
A very difficult book
- By Jason Baumbach on 04-09-20
By: Karl Popper
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes
- A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls barely missed his heart and spinal cord. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age 61, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms.
-
-
Top-Notch Biography
- By Jean on 08-01-19
-
Between Past and Future
- Eight Exercises in Political Thought
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hannah Arendt's insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future, Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future.
-
-
Just stunning
- By Peter Stephens on 02-26-18
By: Hannah Arendt
-
Walt Whitman’s America
- A Cultural Biography
- By: David S. Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his poetry, Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America, and in so doing, heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his achievement, as well as the dreams and anxieties that impelled it, for it places the poet securely within the political and cultural context of his age.
-
-
Finally understanding Whitman
- By Scott Free on 06-14-21
-
Philosopher of the Heart
- The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
- By: Clare Carlisle
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence - how to be a human being in the world? - while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him.
-
-
One word wow. Loved the book one of the best
- By Kindle Customer on 04-03-22
By: Clare Carlisle
-
Theory and Reality
- An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
- By: Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the listener on a grand tour of 100 years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science.
-
-
First 75% Really Great. Last Part Not as Much.
- By Market Maven on 10-04-20
Publisher's Summary
The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea.
Holmes, James, and Peirce all believed that ideas are not things "out there" waiting to be discovered but are tools people invent - like knives and forks and microchips - to make their way in the world. They thought that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals - that ideas are social. They do not develop according to some inner logic of their own but are entirely dependent - like germs - on their human carriers and environment. And they thought that the survival of any idea depends not on its immutability but on its adaptability. The Metaphysical Club is written in the spirit of this idea about ideas. It is not a history of philosophy but an absorbing narrative about personalities and social history, a story about America.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Metaphysical Club
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bryan Decker
- 01-15-20
Hands down the best non fiction book I've read
History, philosophy, psychology, sociology. This book has such depth and scope that it demands rereading. Its the one book I would recommend to anyone and everyone.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- TJay
- 07-26-21
Mispronunciation
How could a major production allow W. E. B DuBois’s last name to be mispronounced? It’s a travesty and a major disservice to the author.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Will
- 09-26-21
Narrator needs to do his homework
Excellent overall and the performance is marred only by the narrator’s failure to learn the correct pronunciation of individual names. In addition to an incorrect French pronunciation of W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles S. Pierce should be pronounced as “purse.” It's understandable that anglophones typically are awful when reading sections written in a language other than English, but there’s no excuse for not using the proper pronunciation when referring to the central characters in a text.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Patrick Gillam
- 10-28-22
Insight and stimulation, if not complete comprehension
At one point in “The Metaphysical Club,” Menand observes that even such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson would read books for any insight and stimulation they might offer, and abandon efforts at complete comprehension. That is the way I had to read this book. It has far too much happening for me to fully comprehend, but I found it delightful to listen to. The ideas are stimulating, the characters are inspiring, and the writing is luminous.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeffrey
- 07-03-22
so significant that it overcomes its flaws
this book is paired with Menand's The Free world, and in some ways is less well written. for example, I don't think we need the extraordinary amount of space given to an explanation of statistical calculation. There are times when I believe that other lines of explanation could be shortened - but none of this should keep potential readers from a work that is so good at explaining the past seen through philosophy, legal reasoning, and the personal experience of the major characters in the book. so it deserves five stars, despite its flaws.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Free World
- Art and Thought in the Cold War
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 34 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.
-
-
Cuts off mid-sentence and never ends!
- By Sasha Senderovich on 05-01-21
By: Louis Menand
-
American Studies
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What was the real significance of William James's breakdown? Of the anti-Semitism in T.S. Eliot's writing? At each step in his latest journey through American cultural history, Menand has an original point to make.
-
-
Abridged, but doesn't say so
- By Kirk McElhearn on 10-09-07
By: Louis Menand
-
The Transcendentalists and Their World
- By: Robert A. Gross
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 26 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsized impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society was unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy.
By: Robert A. Gross
-
The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
-
-
Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
-
Logic and Intuition
- Selections from the Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce
- By: David Christopher Lane, Charles Sanders Peirce
- Narrated by: John Alan Martinson Jr.
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Sanders Peirce is perhaps the greatest philosophical mind to emerge from the United States. He was hugely influential on William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and many other eminent thinkers. This small volume includes two famous essays by Peirce, "The Fixation of Belief" and "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man." Also included is a short, intellectual biography of Peirce which focuses on his many contributions to science and philosophy. Chosen and very slightly edited by Professor David Christopher Lane, PhD.
-
-
Problems Ahead
- By J. Duncan Berry on 05-27-21
By: David Christopher Lane, and others
-
The Wealth of Nations
- By: Adam Smith
- Narrated by: Peter Wickham
- Length: 40 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was Adam Smith (1723-1790) who first established economics as a separate branch of knowledge, and many would say his work has never been surpassed. The Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776, is the definitive text for all who believe that economic decisions are best left to markets, not governments. At the heart of Smith's doctrine is an optimistic view of the effects of self-interest. Though each individual seeks only personal gain, the collective result is increased prosperity, which benefits society as a whole.
By: Adam Smith
-
The Free World
- Art and Thought in the Cold War
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 34 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.
-
-
Cuts off mid-sentence and never ends!
- By Sasha Senderovich on 05-01-21
By: Louis Menand
-
American Studies
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What was the real significance of William James's breakdown? Of the anti-Semitism in T.S. Eliot's writing? At each step in his latest journey through American cultural history, Menand has an original point to make.
-
-
Abridged, but doesn't say so
- By Kirk McElhearn on 10-09-07
By: Louis Menand
-
The Transcendentalists and Their World
- By: Robert A. Gross
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 26 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsized impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society was unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy.
By: Robert A. Gross
-
The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
-
-
Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
-
Logic and Intuition
- Selections from the Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce
- By: David Christopher Lane, Charles Sanders Peirce
- Narrated by: John Alan Martinson Jr.
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Sanders Peirce is perhaps the greatest philosophical mind to emerge from the United States. He was hugely influential on William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and many other eminent thinkers. This small volume includes two famous essays by Peirce, "The Fixation of Belief" and "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man." Also included is a short, intellectual biography of Peirce which focuses on his many contributions to science and philosophy. Chosen and very slightly edited by Professor David Christopher Lane, PhD.
-
-
Problems Ahead
- By J. Duncan Berry on 05-27-21
By: David Christopher Lane, and others
-
The Wealth of Nations
- By: Adam Smith
- Narrated by: Peter Wickham
- Length: 40 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was Adam Smith (1723-1790) who first established economics as a separate branch of knowledge, and many would say his work has never been surpassed. The Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776, is the definitive text for all who believe that economic decisions are best left to markets, not governments. At the heart of Smith's doctrine is an optimistic view of the effects of self-interest. Though each individual seeks only personal gain, the collective result is increased prosperity, which benefits society as a whole.
By: Adam Smith
-
The Infidel and the Professor
- David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.
-
-
a thoroughly enjoyable account of friendship
- By henryj on 02-21-20
-
Exact Thinking in Demented Times
- The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
- By: Karl Sigmund
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science.
-
-
Historical narrative, with physics and despair.
- By Philip J. Kurle on 10-08-18
By: Karl Sigmund
-
The American Political Tradition
- And the Men Who Made It
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Christopher Lasch - foreword
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics", Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
-
The Enlightenment That Failed
- Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830
- By: Jonathan I. Israel
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 60 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Enlightenment That Failed explores the growing rift between those Enlightenment trends and initiatives that appealed exclusively to elites and those aspiring to enlighten all of society by raising mankind's awareness, freedoms, and educational level generally. Jonathan I. Israel explains why the democratic and radical secularizing tendency of the Western Enlightenment, after gaining some notable successes during the revolutionary era (1775-1820) in numerous countries, especially in Europe, North America, and Spanish America, ultimately failed.
-
-
Enlightened radical
- By Anonymous User on 07-02-22
-
The Life of the Mind
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Considered by many to be Hannah Arendt's greatest work, published as she neared the end of her life, The Life of the Mind investigates thought itself, as it exists in contemplative life. In a shift from her previous writings, most of which focus on the world outside the mind, this work was planned as three volumes that would explore the activities of the mind considered by Arendt to be fundamental. What emerged is a rich, challenging analysis of human mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.
-
-
English only please
- By angela on 11-20-19
By: Hannah Arendt
-
The Metaphysical Club
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The Great American Experiment
- By Victoria on 12-08-03
By: Louis Menand
-
Time of the Magicians
- Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.
-
-
Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations
- By William G. Brown on 08-31-20
-
The History of Philosophy
- By: A. C. Grayling
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 28 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of philosophy is an epic tale, spanning civilizations and continents. It explores some of the most creative minds in history. But not since the long-popular classic by Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, published in 1945, has there been a comprehensive and entertaining single-volume history of this great, intellectual, world-shaping journey.
-
-
A much needed update to Bertrand Russell's classic
- By Michael on 06-27-20
By: A. C. Grayling
-
Robert Oppenheimer
- A Life Inside the Center
- By: Ray Monk
- Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
- Length: 35 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Oppenheimer was among the most brilliant and divisive of men. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis in the race to develop the first atomic bomb – a breakthrough that was to have eternal ramifications for mankind and that made Oppenheimer the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” But with his actions leading up to that great achievement, he also set himself on a dangerous collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch-hunters. In Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center, Ray Monk, author of peerless biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, goes deeper than any previous biographer in the quest to solve the enigma of Oppenheimer’s motivations and his complex personality.
-
-
A comprehensive biography
- By Jean on 10-17-14
By: Ray Monk
-
Math Without Numbers
- By: Milo Beckman
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is an audiobook about math, but it contains no numbers. Math Without Numbers is a vivid, conversational, and wholly original guide to the three main branches of abstract math - topology, analysis, and algebra - which turn out to be surprisingly easy to grasp. This audiobook upends the conventional approach to math, inviting you to think creatively about shape and dimension, the infinite and infinitesimal, symmetries, proofs, and how these concepts all fit together. Join this freewheeling tour of the inimitable joys and unsolved mysteries of this curiously powerful subject.
By: Milo Beckman
-
Founding Brothers
- The Revolutionary Generation
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic - John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.
-
-
Great!
- By Gotta Tellya on 08-10-16
By: Joseph J. Ellis