Philosophy audiobooks

Kant in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never traveled further than forty miles from his home in Königsberg. How appropriate it is then that in his philosophy he should deny that all knowledge was derived from experience. Kant's aim was to restore metaphysics. He insisted that all experience must conform to... Read more

Aristotle in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics, he transformed every field of knowledge that he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. When he first divided... Read more

Rousseau in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 28 minutes

Abridged: No

In Rousseau we encounter a walking ego, a naked sensibility. Feeling triumphs over intellectual argument in his works, which are both deeply stirring and deeply inconsistent. Yet while his contemporaries Kant and Hume may have been superior academic philosophers, the sheer power of Rousseau’s ideas was unequaled in his time. It was he who... Read more

Spinoza in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Spinoza’s brilliant metaphysical system was derived neither from reality nor experience. Starting from basic assumptions, with a series of geometric proofs he built a universe which was also God—one and the same thing, the classic example of pantheism. Although his system seems an oddity today, Spinoza’s conclusions are deeply in accord with... Read more

Hume in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 17 minutes

Abridged: No

Hume reduced philosophy to ruins: he denied the existence of everything—except our actual perceptions themselves. I alone exist, he argued, and the world is nothing more than part of my consciousness. Yet we know that the world remains, and we go on as before. What Hume expressed was the status of our knowledge about the world, a world in which... Read more

Schopenhauer in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 18 minutes

Abridged: No

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 fa├ºade is supported by what Schopenhauer calls the universal Will—blind and without purpose. This Will brings on all our misery... Read more

Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 21 minutes

Abridged: No

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... Read more

St. Augustine in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Augustine’s spiritual crisis and conversion to Christianity, detailed in his Confessions, ultimately led him to his major contribution to philosophy: the fusion of the two doctrines of Christianity and Neoplatonism. This not only provided Christianity with a strong intellectual backing but tied it to the Greek tradition of philosophy, which... Read more

Socrates in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Just a century after it had begun, philosophy entered its greatest age with the appearance of Socrates, who spent so much of his time talking about philosophy on the streets of Athens that he never got around to writing anything down. His method of aggressive questioning, called dialectic, was used to cut through the palaver of his adversaries... Read more

Hegel in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Hegel’s dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man. Its most vital element was the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This sprung from Hegel’s aim to overcome the deficiencies of logic and ascend toward Mind as the ultimate reality. His view of history as a process of humanity’s... Read more

Heidegger in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 27 minutes

Abridged: No

One of two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and his fundamental question: "What is the meaning of existence?" For Heidegger, this question was beyond the reach of reason and was the primary "given" of every individual life. To... Read more

Marx in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 23 minutes

Abridged: No

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... Read more

Sartre in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

Abridged: No

During his lifetime, Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed unprecedented popularity for a philosopher, due partly to his role as a spokesman for existentialism—at the opportune moment when this set of ideas filled the spiritual gap left amidst the ruins of World War II. Existentialism was a philosophy of action and showed the ultimate freedom of the... Read more

The Moral Sense

By: James Q. Wilson

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 11 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

Virtue has acquired a bad name, says Wilson, but it is nevertheless what we are referring to when we discuss a person's character, such as whether someone is kind, friendly, or loyal. Although we may disguise the language of morality as a language of personality, it is still, in Wilson's words, "the language of virtue and vice." Says the author,... Read more

Who Stole Feminism?

By: Christina Hoff Sommers

Narrated by: Kristen Underwood

Length: 13 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Philosophy professor Christina Sommers exposes a disturbing development: how a group of zealots, claiming to speak for all women, are promoting a dangerous new agenda that threatens our most cherished ideals and sets women against men in all spheres of life. In case after case, Sommers shows how these extremists have propped up their arguments... Read more

Cent éléphants sur un brin d'herbe - Abridged

By: Le Dalaï-Lama

Narrated by: Jean Leclerc

Length: 1 hour 13 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Sur le ton chaleureux et confidentiel qui lui est naturel même en présence de nombreux interlocuteurs, le Dalaï-lama livre le fruit de ses réflexions sur l'homme, l'environnement, sur la société, les institutions, la politique, les religions. Que propose-t-il ? "Quel est votre secret ?", lui demande-t-on partout où il est invité. "Sagesse,... Read more

Galileo's Daughter

By: Dava Sobel

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Galileo Galilei was the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. His telescopes allowed him to reveal the heavens and enforce the astounding argument that the earth moves around the sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition,... Read more

L'apologie de Socrate

By: Platon

Narrated by: Denis Podalydes

Length: 1 hour 11 minutes

Abridged: No

L'Apologie de Socrate rapporte le procès qui a vu condamner Socrate. Le citoyen philosophe, accusé de ne pas croire aux dieux de la cité et de pervertir les jeunes, fait preuve, face à ses juges comme auprès des Athéniens, du même don pour révéler tant l'incohérence que l'immoralité de leur discours. Read more

L'abondance dans la simplicité - Abridged

By: Sarah Ban Breathnach

Narrated by: Tania Kontoyani

Length: 2 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Jusqu'à maintenant, spiritualité et mode de vie ont constitué, pour les femmes, des domaines distincts. Cet ouvrage inspirant démontre comment la vie quotidienne, dans les plus menus détails, peut devenir la voie d'expression du moi authentique... Au fil des jours, ce titre-audio vous conduira, à travers six principes spirituels - gratitude,... Read more

Pourquoi les hommes marcent-ils à la gauche des femmes ? - Abridged

By: Philippe Turchet

Narrated by: Philippe Turchet

Length: 2 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Le Syndrome d'amour. Le couple n'a jamais autant suscité l'attention qu'aujourd'hui. Les psychologues de tous horizons s'entendent sur le fait que les hommes et les femmes vivent un malaise amoureux sans précédent. Dans un essai percutant tiré de l'observation de près de 20 000 couples, Philippe Turchet fait la démonstration que les êtres... Read more

Appel à l'amour - Abridged

By: Anthonu De Mello

Narrated by: Gérard Poirier

Length: 1 hour 9 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Les dix méditations originales contenues dans ce titre audio sont aussi les mémoires d'un mystique qui a osé voir la réalité. Avec les années, leur auteur est devenu homme de compassion et d'amour, et ces réflexions jalonnent le chemin difficile qu'il a dû parcourir à la fin de sa vie pour se dépouiller de tout système de croyances, de toute... Read more

Courage, Conversation and Changing the World

By: Margaret Wheatley

Narrated by: Michael Toms

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Never before in human history have we been exposed to so much data from so many sources, a veritable deluge. According to Wheatley, "We have to slow down. Nothing will change for the better until we do. We need time to think, to learn, to get to know each other. We are losing these great human capacities in the speed-up of modern life and it is... Read more

Between Good and Evil

By: Roger L. Depue & Susan Schindehette

Narrated by: Paul Michael

Length: 9 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

He was a pioneer in modern law enforcement, a trailblazing leader in the hunt for serial killers. But after decades of staring deep into the darkness, he entered a seminary to search for the good.
 
No one gets closer to evil than a criminal profiler, trained to penetrate the hearts and minds of society’s most vicious psychopaths. And no one is... Read more

Plato's Euthyphro

By: Plato

Narrated by: Albert A. Anderson

Length: 33 minutes

Abridged: No

In Euthyphro, Socrates is on his way to the court where he must defend himself against serious charges brought by religious and political authorities. On the way, he meets Euthyphro, an expert on religious matters, who has come to prosecute his own father. Socrates questions Euthyphro’s claim that religion serves as the basis for ethics. Read more