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...

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...

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...

En los siglos anteriores a él, la filosofía había sido peligrosa para los filósofos, pero con Friedrich Nietzsche resulta peligrosa para todo el mundo. Nietzsche enloqueció y su locura presagió la demencia colectiva que había de tener...

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 visitar a...

De la vida de Confucio, cuya filosofía ha conformado las vidas de millones de seres humanos durante más de dos milenios, lo desconocemos casi todo. Las reglas de conducta que nos legara perduran, pese a que apenas conservamos una breve compilación de aforismos y má...

Es posible que Pitágoras fuese el primer matemático y filósofo del mundo occidental. Su obra cambió la visión contemporánea del mundo, pues estableció conceptos tales como el razonamiento abstracto o la prueba deductiva. Pitágoras y su...

Aristóteles fue preceptor de Alejandro Magno. La historia no registra detalles de esta relación, pero sabemos que, con el tiempo, Alejandro estuvo a punto de firmar la sentencia de muerte de su maestro, si bien acabó por olvidarse del tema y, en su lugar, se dispuso a...

Los descubrimientos de Niels Bohr en el campo de la teoría cuántica llevaron a avances monumentales en la física y en nuestra comprensión de la estructura atómica. Bohr ganó el premio Nobel por su labor en 1922 y sus ideas, aún hoy, siguen...

Hawking es tal vez uno de los científicos más conocidos de nuestra época. Sus investigaciones y descubrimientos en los campos de los agujeros negros y la cosmología han abierto posibilidades infinitas y han cambiado nuestra manera de mirar el mundo y el cosmos...