Roman Philosophy

The Apology of Socrates was written by Plato. In fact, it's a defensive speech of Socrates that he said in a court noted down by Plato. The main subject of the speech is a problem of the evil. Socrates insists that neither death nor death sentence is evil. We shouldn't be afraid of the death because we don't know anything about it. Socrates proved that the death shouldn't be taken as the evil with the following dilemma: the death is either a peace or a transit from this life to the next. Both can't be called evil. Consequently, the death shouldn't be treated as evil.

Dating from the third century AD, Artemidorus’ The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica) is the only dream-book from Graeco-Roman antiquity that has survived intact. It represents the most influential pre-Freudian treatment of dreams and the theory of their interpretation. In the ancient world it was widely believed that some dreams had allegorical significance that, if correctly interpreted, offered insight into the future. Artemidorus makes a clear distinction between predictive and non-predictive dreams, setting out the general principle of interpretation.

The idea of sexual fluidity may seem new, but it is at least as old as the ancient Greeks, who wrote about queer experiences with remarkable frankness, wit, and insight. How to Be Queer is an infatuating collection of these writings about desire, love, and lust between men, between women, and between humans and gods, in lucid and lively new translations.

Daniel Klein journeys to the Greek island Hydra to discover the secrets of aging happily. Drawing on the lives of his Greek friends, as well as philosophers ranging from Epicurus to Sartre, Klein learns to appreciate old age as a distinct and extraordinarily valuable stage of life. He uncovers simple pleasures that are uniquely available late in life, as well as headier pleasures that only a mature mind can fully appreciate.

On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.

These three ‘Consolations', written by Seneca to his mother and two friends, have been described as ‘the crowning achievement in the canon of ‘consolation letters'. But sentimental they are not, for they emerge from the writer's deep-seated commitment to Stoicism, where individuals are exhorted to inhabit qualities of virtue, positivity, resilience, and indifference. This recording opens with Seneca's consolatory letter to Marcia, who, after three years, was still mourning the death of her son.

Acclaimed historian and best-selling author Paul Johnson’s books have been translated into dozens of languages. In Socrates: A Man for Our Times, Johnson draws from little-known resources to construct a fascinating account of one of history’s greatest thinkers. Socrates transcended class limitations in Athens during the fifth century B.C. to develop ideas that still shape the way we think about the human body and soul, including the workings of the human mind.

In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and strange, this book reintroduces us to our earliest thinkers through the lands they inhabited. To know the mental occupations of Homer or Heraclitus, one must visit their cities, sail their seas, and find landscapes not overwhelmed by the millennia that have passed but retain the atmosphere of that ancient life. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and a nexus of cross-cultural connection.

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.

Ancient Stoics lived in a time of turmoil under difficult conditions. So, the solutions they found to living free were tested under very stringent conditions. For example, the author of this handbook was a lame slave who made himself free and happy later in life by following the principles set out in this audiobook.

La pensée antique est au fondement de l'histoire des idées et de la philosophie occidentale. Fondamentalement pratique et axée sur le quotidien, elle est marquée par le stoïcisme et la recherche de la sagesse sous toutes ses formes. Découvrez-en toute la profondeur en 400 citations soigneusement choisies pour présenter sous forme condensée les enseignements majeurs des figures incontournables de la Grèce antique.

When Athenians suffered the shame of having lost a war from their own greed and foolishness, around 404 BCE the public's blame was directed at Socrates, a man whose unique appearance and behavior, as well as his disapproval of the democracy, made him a ready target. Socrates was subsequently put on trial and sentenced to death. However, as René Girard has pointed out, no individual can be held responsible for a communal crisis.

Is good character something that can be taught? In 430 BCE, Socrates set out to teach the vain, power-seeking Athenian statesman Alcibiades how to be a good person—and failed spectacularly. Alcibiades went on to beguile his city into a hopeless war with Syracuse, and all of Athens paid the price. In The Quest for Character, philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci tells this famous story and asks what we can learn from it.

Ce texte fondateur du philosophe épicurien de la Grèce Antique qui regroupe poésie et philosophie se présente comme une tentative de "briser les forts verrous des portes de la nature", c'est-à-dire de révéler au lecteur la nature du monde et des phénomènes naturels. Selon Lucrèce, cette connaissance du monde doit permettre à l'homme de se libérer du fardeau des superstitions, notamment religieuses, constituant autant d'entraves qui empêchent chacun d'atteindre l'ataraxie ; la tranquillité de l'âme.

"L'Éthique à Nicomaque" d'Aristote est composée de neuf livres qui traitent des moyens d'atteindre le bonheur en développant la vertu. Les deux derniers livres sont consacrés à définir l'amitié, telle qu'elle existe et telle qu'elle doit être vécue par l'homme vertueux. La méthode aristotélicienne permet de distinguer les différentes causes et les différentes manifestations de l'amitié, nécessaire à l'homme et qui lui révèle son appartenance à la communauté. Le véritable ami est celui qui aime l'autre pour lui, et non en vue de ce qu'il peut lui apporter.

Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. Author Anthony Gottlieb looks afresh at the writings of the great thinkers, questions much of conventional wisdom, and explains his findings with unbridled brilliance and clarity. From the pre-Socratic philosophers through the celebrated days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, up to Renaissance visionaries like Erasmus and Bacon, philosophy emerges here as a phenomenon unconfined by any one discipline.

Who doesn't worry sometimes that smart phones, the Internet, and TV are robbing us of time and preventing us from having a life? How can we make the most of our time on earth? In the first century AD, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger offered one of the most famous answers to that question in his essay "On the Shortness of Life"—a work that has more to teach us today than ever before.

In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Christopher Taylor explores the life of Socrates and his philosophical activity, before looking to the responses his philosophical doctrines have evoked in the centuries since his betrayal and execution at fellow Athenian hands.

The Trial and the Death of Socrates remains a powerful document not least because it gives a first-hand account of the end of one of the greatest figures in history.

In Apology, Socrates defends himself before the Athenian court against charges of corrupting youth. Phaedo is the account by a young man of the actual last words and moments of Socrates.

Aristotle knew things about happiness, habits, and human nature. This book is about his book, the Nichomachean Ethics.