Mostrando resultados por narrador "Robert Whitfield" en Todas las categorías

A little over 100 years ago, East Africa was terra incognita to most whites: a land largely unmapped, sparsely settled by Europeans, and teeming with wildlife. It was the hunter-adventurer's paradise, and by the early 20th century, a small, lionhearted clan of explorers and big-game hunters began leading safaris there for money.

Schopenhauer, the "philosopher of pessimism", makes it very plain that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. But if the world is indifferent to our fate, it doesn't thwart us on purpose. The world's facade is supported by what Schopenhauer calls the Universal Will, blind and without purpose. This Will brings on all our misery and suffering; our only hope is to liberate ourselves from its power and from the trappings of individualism and egoism that are at its mercy.

Karl Marx's devastating critique of capitalism, and his proposal of communism as the answer to the failings of the capitalist system, bore their greatest fruits in the twentieth century with the formation of the communist state in the Soviet Union. This great venture has now all but completely failed. Yet the force of the communist belief offered the prospect of "justice on this earth" to countless numbers. And Marx's critique has influenced generations of thinkers who call themselves Marxists.

Confucius knew all about life and told us how to behave, but we can't find out precisely what he was up to. His well-meaning platitudes, quaint maxims, and quasi-enigmatic anecdotes combined to produce an ideal philosophy for civil servants. It would appear that his aim was to turn his pupils into good government officials, but his teachings succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, providing rules of conduct and spiritual fodder for more than two thousand years.

Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the "existing being." In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even "the pretenses of psychology." Nonetheless, it was the source of all these subjects. The branch of philosophy to which Kierkegaard gave birth has come to be known as existentialism.

In an age when philosophers had scarcely glimpsed the horizons of the mind, a boy named Aristocles decided to forgo his ambitions as a wrestler. Adopting the nickname Plato, he embarked instead on a life in philosophy. In 387 B.C. he founded the Academy, the world's first university, and taught his students that all we see is not reality but merely a reproduction of the true source. And in his famous Republic he described the politics of "the highest form of state."

We see our age as the greatest in human history, filled with seemingly unending originality. Yet such dynamism is not a necessary characteristic of great eras. Among the most long-lasting and stable civilizations was that of medieval Europe. There stasis was achieved, and with it a stability that permitted the development of structured thought and intellectual embellishment of unparalleled degree.

"If we accept Wittgenstein's word for it," Paul Strathern writes, "he is the last philosopher. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished."

Young Oxford tutor Theodore Gumbril has become thoroughly dismayed by the formality of college life and the staid British institutions of learning. An impetuous need for celebration, even rebellion, possesses him. He and his bohemian companions embark on wild and daring "bacchanalian" adventures that steer them resolutely away from stifling conventions of behavior. Antic Hay, first published in 1923, is one of Aldous Huxley's earlier novels, and like them is primarily a 'novel of ideas' involving conversations which disclose viewpoints rather than establish characters; its polemical theme unfolds against the backdrop of London's post-war nihilistic Bohemia. This is Huxley at his biting, brilliant best -- a novel, loud with derisive laughter, which satirically scoffs at all conventional morality and at stuffy people everywhere -- a novel that's always charged with excitement.

Discover the SHARP™ Method, the cutting-edge approach to speeding up recovery after surgery. Dr. Rob, a leading plastic surgeon known for his expertise in breast explant surgery, presents his innovative SHARP™ Method. This comprehensive guide is designed to help patients maximize their recovery from any surgical procedure by reducing chronic inflammation and boosting the immune system.

A handsome recluse, plagued by indecision and hypochondria, Franz Kafka nonetheless exhibited an extraordinary strength. He developed the uncanny ability to observe himself with cool objectivity, and he cultivated this ability in his writing, where it appeared in increasingly original metaphorical form. His works became among the greatest of the twentieth century, and his influence permeated far and wide, transcending literature.

Never has the subject of men's health attracted more attention than in this era of optimal living. In this revised and updated edition of Men's Private Parts: A Pocket Reference to Prostate, Urologic, and Sexual Health, the author, known for years to readers of the Men's Health newsletter as "Dr. Private Parts", tackles men's most delicate health questions with reassuring authority.

Phineas Finn is an Irish M.P.A. climbing the political ladder, largely through the assistance of his string of lovers. The questions he is forced to ask himself about honesty, independence, and parliamentary democracy are questions still asked today.

One of the greatest prose writers and social commentators of the 20th century, Aldous Huxley here introduces us to a delightfully cynical, comic, and severe group of artists and intellectuals engaged in the most free-thinking and modern kind of talk imaginable. Poetry, occultism, ancestral history, and Italian primitive painting are just a few of the subjects competing for discussion among the amiable cast of eccentrics drawn together at Crome, an intensely English country manor.

Caught in the middle of the American Revolution against the English Crown, two families are divided by their loyalties. Dake Bradford, a blazing American patriot under the command of George Washington, has taken a stand against the British. Clive Gordon, a young physician and Dake's first cousin, is the son of an English colonel who has sworn to put down the rebellion. Fanned by fires of patriotism, sides have been drawn, and there can be no turning back.

One of the two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was linguistic analysis, derived largely from Wittgenstein. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and its fundamental question was, "What is the meaning of existence?" For Heidegger, this question could not simply be "analyzed away". It was beyond the reach of logic or reason. It was the primary "given" of every individual life. To confront it, Heidegger needed to develop an entire new form of philosophy.

As General George Washington makes a desperate attempt to forge an army that can stop the British from taking New York and defeating the Continental Army, the Bradford family is learning that serving God and serving one's country often calls for great sacrifice. Meanwhile, Clive Gordon, son of Colonel Leslie Gordon of the British army, falls in love with Katherine Yancy, a daring young woman whose father and uncle are patriot prisoners. When Clive crosses enemy lines to attempt their rescue, will he be shot as a spy?

After narrowly avoiding a firing squad when he was just twenty-eight years old, Dostoevsky never took things lightly. His great novels burst upon the European literary scene like a succession of thunderbolts. His understanding of the darker and more extreme recesses of the human mind cast a forceful light into these areas of experience. The raw psychology and passionate involvement of his books galvanized writers and thinkers as disparate as Nietzsche and Kafka.

"I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could, I think, hardly be exceeded. I have known what it was to be a poor man and I have known what it was to be fairly affluent. I have sampled every kind of human experience. I have known many of the most remarkable men of my time. I have had a long literary career after a medical training which gave me the MD of Edinburgh...I have traveled as Doctor to a whaler for seven months in the Arctic and afterwards in the West Coast of Africa." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

From a young age, James Joyce showed a precocious and original intellect and a confidence in his own artistic destiny. He would indeed go on to transform the nature of modern literature, employing a unique stream-of-consciousness technique rich in symbolism and wordplay. Through his art, the Dublin native sought to reveal the radiance and meaning that lurks in the everyday world - "the soul of the commonest object" - evoking a heightened sense of consciousness within the grit of common life.