Showing results by author "Paul Strathern" in All Categories

Following on from the incredible online success of the ‘History In An Hour’ titles- now there’s a Philosophy series for busy people, on the go. Listen to a succinct account of the Philosophy of Sartre in just one hour. Here is a concise, expert account of Jean-Paul Sartre’s life and...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Socrates in just one hour. Socrates is widely renowned as one of the founders of Western philosophy, despite the fact that his ideas survive largely through the work of his pupil Plato. Socrates’ dialectic – a...

Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642 something happened that transformed the entire culture of Western civilisation. Painting, sculpture and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born or emerge in an entirely new guise. The ideas that broke this mould largely began, and continued to flourish, in the city of Florence in the province of Tuscany.

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Plato in just one hour. Plato is still seen by many as the greatest of all philosophers, inspiring many of the finest thinkers through the ages. Indeed, many see all later philosophy as nothing but attempts to...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Rousseau in just one hour. In Rousseau we encounter a walking ego, a naked sensibility – his arguments are both deeply stirring and deeply inconsistent. Yet whilst his contemporaries Kant and Hume may have been...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of J.S. Mill in just one hour. John Stuart Mill is remembered today as the leading exponent of Utilitarianism, arguing that our aim in life must be the attainment of pleasure and the minimizing of pain for the majority of...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Descartes in just one hour. Descartes was the first modern philosopher. His scepticism led him to doubt all certainties, until finally he arrived at his famous maxim 'I think therefore I am'. He would also apply his...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Kierkegaard in just one hour. Although Kierkegaard was not a philosopher in the academic sense, he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He didn’t write about the world, he wrote about life – how we live...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to a succinct account of the philosophy of Neitzsche in just one hour. Philosophy has always been dangerous for philosophers; Friedrich Nietzsche made it dangerous for everyone. His ideas presaged a collective madness which was to ravage Europe throughout the...

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice, and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history.           

Rise and Fall opens with the Akkadian Empire, which ruled over a vast expanse of the region of ancient Mesopotamia, then turns to the immense Roman Empire, where we trace back our Western and Eastern roots. Next Strathern describes how a great deal of Western classical culture was developed in the Abbasid and Umayyid Caliphates. Then, while Europe was beginning to emerge from a period of cultural stagnation, it almost fell to a whirlwind invasion from the East, at which point we meet the Emperors of the Mongol Empire....

It is generally accepted that the European Renaissance began in Italy. However, a historical transformation of similar magnitude also took place in northern Europe at the same time. This "Other Renaissance" was initially centered on the city of Bruges in Flanders (modern Belgium), but its influence was soon being felt in France, the German states, England, and even in Italy itself. Following a sequence of major figures, Paul Strathern tells the fascinating story of how this "Other Renaissance" played as significant a role as the Italian Renaissance in bringing our modern world into being.

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Aristotle in just one hour. The philosophy of Aristotle dominated Western thought for over a thousand years. He had a mind that mastered all disciplines from mathematics to politics and had a continuing impact on...

Philosophy for busy people. Listen to this succinct account of the philosophy of Karl Marx in just one hour. Karl Marx's philosophical critique of capitalism and his solution of communism directly led to the formation of the communist state in the Soviet Union. Whilst this great venture has now...

Focusing on key characters from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, including Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Newton, Descartes, Spinoza, Louis XIV and Charles I, Dark Brilliance is a fascinating and wide-ranging history that explores the human costs of imposing progress and modernity.

Schopenhauer, el «filósofo del pesimismo», ve el mundo y nuestra vida en él como un mal chiste. Pero si bien el mundo es indiferente a nuestro destino, no es su propósito fastidiarnos adrede. La fachada del mundo se apoya en lo que Schopenhauer llama la voluntad...

"La primera ambición de Platón fue la de consagrarse como luchador, pero no pudo llegar a los Juegos Olímpicos. Probó entonces suerte como poeta trágico, pero no ganó ninguno de los grandes certámenes. Como último recurso, fue a...

Tres de los cuatro hermanos varones de Ludwig Wittgenstein –a cual más brillante– acabarían por suicidarse, una posibilidad que contempló el propio Ludwig varias veces a lo largo de su vida. Afortunadamente, quien estaba destinado a ser el miembro útil de una...

Darwin y la evolución constituye un brillante repaso a la vida y obra de Darwin y ofrece una explicación clara y accesible del significado y la importancia de la teoría de la evolución y de lo que implica para el mundo en que vivimos...

Curie y la radiactividad presenta una brillante instantánea de la vida y la obra de Marie Curie y ofrece una explicación clara y accesible del significado e importancia del descubrimiento de la radioactividad y de las implicaciones que ello tendría para la vida en el siglo...