Greek Science

This collection brings together three of Plato's most enduring classics: the "Symposium", the "Apology", and the famous "Allegory of the Cave" from the Republic.

A leading Christian intellectual and a global citizen, Thomas Merton was known for his mission to understand and learn from other cultures’ worldviews and philosophies. Now, as you listen to these nine captivating talks on Chinese and Greek philosophy, your own interest in these ancient schools of thought, Eastern and Western, will be ignited.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is one of the greatest guides to human flourishing ever written, but its length and style have left many readers languishing. How to Flourish is a colloquial new translation by Susan Sauve Meyer that makes Aristotle's timeless insights about how to lead a good life more engaging and accessible than ever before.

The Discourses of Epictetus are a series of informal lectures by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus written down by his pupil Arrian around 108 AD. Four books out of an original eight are still extant. The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical.

La pensée stoïcienne est avant tout une médecine de l'âme. Toute entière tendue vers l'application pratique, c'est un véritable manuel de vie, qui nous donne les clefs pour nous détacher de la souffrance quotidienne et nous approcher de la sagesse d'une vie vertueuse. Les écrits stoïques sont parvenus jusqu'à nous sous forme de fragments, qui contiennent chacun l'essence des enseignements dont nous avons besoin aujourd'hui pour rentrer dans la pensée de ses grands auteurs.

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."

The "Republic" poses questions that endure: What is justice? What form of community fosters the best possible life for human beings? What is the nature and destiny of the soul? What form of education provides the best leaders for a good republic? What are the various forms of poetry and the other arts, which ones should be fostered, and which ones should be discouraged? How does knowing differ from believing? Several characters in the dialogue present a variety of tempting answers to those questions. Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, and Glaucon all offer definitions of justice.

Towards the end of his life and his career as one of the leading politicians and orators in Rome, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE-43 BCE) was exiled to his country house. It was a time of political turmoil in the capital of the empire, caused by the power-grab of Julius Caesar. In the quiet of the countryside, Cicero began to write on philosophy. In On the Ends of Good and Evil, he set out to consider three major traditions of Greek philosophy - Epicureanism, Stoicism and a branch of Platonism.

With this Junior Genius Guide to Greek mythology, you’ll become an expert and wow your friends and teachers with all the best ancient stories: how Prometheus outsmarted the gods, how Achilles’s heel led to his death, and how we mere mortals always seem to get mixed up in so many misadventures. With cool trivia and fun quizzes to test your knowledge, this guide will have you on your way to whiz-kid status in no time!

When Nicole Cassidy moved to a new town, she discovered that she was a witch descended from gods. But that was nothing compared to learning that it was up to her and four others with mysterious elemental powers to help save the world from the Titans, who would soon return to Earth. Her relationship with Blake - the fire Elemental - is finally heating up. But she must remain focused, because Typhon, one of the deadliest creatures in history, has escaped from the weakening prison world. Only one object can destroy him - the head of Medusa herself.

Ancient Greece first coined the concept of democracy, yet almost every major ancient Greek thinker - from Plato and Aristotle onward - was ambivalent toward or even hostile to democracy in any form. The explanation for this is quite simple: The elite perceived majority power as tantamount to a dictatorship of the proletariat. In ancient Greece, there can be traced not only the rudiments of modern democratic society but the entire Western tradition of antidemocratic thought.

Heroes, gods, and mortals. The Greek myths are the founding narratives of Western civilization: to understand them is to know the origins of philosophy, literature, art, science, law, and more. Indeed, as Luc Ferry shows in this masterful book, they remain a great store of wisdom, as relevant to our lives today as ever before.

Considered by many to be the most important philosopher ever, Plato was born into a well-to-do family in wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. He finally decided to go into politics, but became disillusioned, especially after the Athenians condemned his teacher, Socrates, to death. He began teaching in his twenties and later founded the Academy, the world's first higher-educational research and teaching establishment. Eventually, he returned to practical politics and spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to create a constitution for Syracuse in Sicily.

Ética a Nicómaco de Aristóteles es un texto fundamental de la filosofía moral occidental, donde el autor explora el concepto de virtud y felicidad. Aristóteles plantea que la vida buena para el ser humano es la vida de virtud, entendida como un término medio entre dos extremos, y que la felicidad (eudaimonia) es el fin último de la existencia humana, alcanzable mediante la práctica de las virtudes éticas y dianoéticas, en el marco de una vida dedicada a la actividad del alma conforme a la razón.

The tradition of ancient philosophy is a long, rich, and varied one, in which a constant note is that of discussion and argument. This book introduces listeners to some ancient debates to engage with the ancient developments of some themes. Getting away from the presentation of ancient philosophy as a succession of Great Thinkers, the book gives listeners a sense of the freshness and liveliness of ancient philosophy and of its wide variety of themes and styles.

The Republic is a classic work by an ancient Greek philosopher Plato. There is one of the most famous dialogues of Plato about the arrangement of the state structure and the essence of the state (contemporary for Plato, of course, but also important nowadays because the whole modern so called "European civilisation" is based, first of all, on ancient schemes). The structure of Plato's dialogue is similar to others. Socrates and Glaucon are coming back to Athens from Piraeus. They are stopped by Polemarchus who invites them to visit him and talk.

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 human knowledge into separate categories, he enabled our understanding of the world to develop in a systematic fashion.

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy after the Allegory of the Cave. Incomparable logic and findings about the things that matter in life with a clear, succinct prose touch.

El Kybalión es un documento que contiene el conjunto de enseñanzas de la filosofía hermética, también conocidos como los siete principios del hermetismo. Escrito en los albores del siglo XX, su autoría se debe a un grupo anónimo de personas autodenominados Los tres Iniciados, aunque las bases del hermetismo se atribuyen a un alquimista de algunas logias ocultistas llamado “Hermes Trismegisto”, cuya existencia pudo haber transcurrido en Egipto antes de la época de los faraones.

This lively and accessible introduction to Plato focuses on the philosophy and argument of his writings, drawing the listener into Plato's way of doing philosophy, and the general themes of his thinking. It looks at Plato as a thinker grappling with philosophical problems in a variety of ways, rather than a philosopher with a fully worked-out system. It includes a brief account of Plato's life and the various interpretations that have been drawn from the sparse remains of information.