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Socrates in 90 Minutes

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Socrates in 90 Minutes

Written by: Paul Strathern
Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
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About this listen

 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 the forerunner of logic; he used it to cut through the twaddle of his adversaries and arrive at the truth. Rather than questioning the world, he believed, we would be better off questioning ourselves. Socrates placed philosophy on the sound basis of reason. He saw the world as not accessible to our senses, only to thought. Finally, charged with impiety and the corruption of youth, he was tried and sentenced to death, and ended his life by drinking the judicial hemlock.

In Socrates in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Socrates' life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Socrates' work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Socrates within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

©1997 Paul Strathern (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks Greek & Roman Philosophy Young Adult Stoicism Ancient History Greek Mythology Ancient Greece

What the critics say

"Well-written, clear, and informed, they have a breezy wit about them. I find them hard to stop reading." (The New York Times)

What listeners say about Socrates in 90 Minutes

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Profile Image for Natalia Ando

Brief biography

Brief biography of Socrates, a good introduction into his life and thought process. Pretty short though, but enough to decide whether the listener wants to dive deeper

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Outdated drivel

Honestly never thought I would say this, however, in listening to this audiobook many things became clear to me. Peter Kingsley, with his understanding of Empedocles and Parmenodes, has brought us back closer to Reality than we have ever been since Aristotle. Here the author mistakenly teaches that Dialectic was a precursor to Logic, however, Parmenodes was the Father of Logic and was an old man when Socrates was still quite a young lad. Only valueing a left brained wakeful state, as our current post-modern Western society does, is a by-product of the subject-object paradigm that Aristotle invented. It's caused us to use so-called philosophy to study the external world, and no longer ourselves and wisdom, as it was originally designed to do. We therefore needed a modern day scientific minded and yet also a Mystical and Gnostic man, like C. G. Jung, to turn our awareness back to the unconscious realm and be participants in our enlightenment or reintegration, as opposed to simply passengers. Strange how the author says that it took Christianity to get rid of the homosexuality of the Greeks, when one considers how many Roman Catholic priests have abused altarboys over the years. The author also seems to struggle with the concepts of life and death, and tries to place a Christian overlay on the beliefs of Ancient Athenians (who were actually believers of Reincarnation) and his lack of knowledge regarding what came to be called, among other things, Hermetism, is why he can't figure out the sacrifice of a rooster, the trances that Socrates experienced, his connection to his Daemon, and the saying that goes something like, he who dies before he dies won't experience death when his Pneuma / Nous / Psyche leaves his mortal physical body. Socrates was ready, and instead of trying to avoid the inevitable, and establish a legacy, it behooves us to also prepare for the short journey of coming back again, until we each get over our ego and meld back into To Hen (The One, single neuter). Cheers.

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90 mins of dismissing Socrates.

The unexamined is not worth listening.
You As such, continue looking elsewhere. Nothing to be discovered here.

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