Showing results by narrator "Ellis Freeman" in All Categories

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) has influenced philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Oswald Spengler, George Grant, Emil Cioran, Albert Camus, Ayn Rand, Jacques Derrida, Leo Strauss, Max Scheler, Michel Foucault and Bernard Williams. His writings on aesthetics, language, truth, morality, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, and the meaning of existence have exerted a vast influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history.

The book comprises two parts: Dialogue of Council and Discourse on Utopia. It is a work of fiction and satire by Thomas More (1478-1535), depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social, and political customs.

The Will to Power is an audiobook of notes compiled from the literary remains of Friedrich Nietzsche. The title derives from a work that Nietzsche himself had intended to write. The "will to power", a prominent concept in his philosophy, describes what Nietzsche believed to be the main driving force in humans.

The Lives of the Saints is a collecton of biographies written by Catholic priest and hagiographer Alban Butler. It is considered the greatest such collection of Catholic saints.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) is generally considered one of the two greatest justices of the United States Supreme Court. In more than 2000 opinions, he delineated an impressive legal philosophy that profoundly influenced American jurisprudence, particularly in the area of civil liberties and judicial restraint. In The Common Law, derived from a series of lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Holmes systematized his legal doctrines.

On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic is an 1887 work by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interconnected essays that expand on concepts Nietzsche first raised in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). The three essays question and critique the value of our moral judgments based on a method whereby Nietzsche examines the origins and meanings of our different moral concepts.

Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints is one of the most revered Catholic books after the Bible, the Missal, and The Imitation of Christ. Written in the early 19th century by Butler, an English convert to Catholicism, the collection is organized by date, which makes the work easy to use for those who want to deepen their devotion to the Saints. Each biographical entry is followed by a lesson to help believers apply the virtues of that saint to their own lives.

Creative Evolution is a 1907 book by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. The work proposes a version of orthogenesis in place of Darwin's mechanism of evolution, suggesting that evolution is motivated by the “élan vital”, a vital impetus that may also be understood as a natural creative impulse. The book also developed concepts of time which influenced writers like Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann. Bergson's term "duration", for example, refers to an individual, subjective experience of time, as opposed to the mathematical, objectively measurable clock time.

Saint Athanasius (c. 296 - 298 - 2 May 373) was the 20th bishop of Alexandria. He was a fierce Trinitarian and a champion of orthodoxy who opposed four Roman emperors and many prominent churchmen of his time. This work begins with the creation, making it clear that the redeeming Word is also the Word which creates. Athanasius contends that the Godhead is present in every particle of creation, and especially in the person of Jesus Christ who is The Word. In his view of atonement, Jesus is the Christus Victor - the hero who defeats Satan and, thereby, destroys death.

This collection of Friedrich Nietzsche’s most famous works contains Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Human, All Too Human, and The Antichrist.

"The Twilight of the Idols" was written by Nietzsche in 1888 as a short introduction to his work. In it, he labels the era’s German culture as decadent and nihilistic, and criticizes certain British, French and Italian cultural figures who, in his view, represented similar tendencies. By decadence, he means a fading of life, vitality and an embrace of weakness. In contrast to those alleged representatives of cultural decadence, Nietzsche holds up historical personages like Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, Thucydides and the Sophist philosophers as healthier types.

As a Man Thinketh is an inspirational book by James Allen, first published in 1903. It deals with the power of thought, and particularly with the use and application of thought to create happy and prosperous circumstances. The writing is simple, so that all can easily grasp the teachings and put the methods into practice. In the earlier work, From Poverty to Power: The Realization of Prosperity and Peace, (1901) Allen emphasizes that a disciplined mind and a focus on serving others are the keys to achieving prosperity.

Lives of the Saints was written by English Roman Catholic priest Alban Butler. The month of October features St. Mark, St. Theodoret, and St. Francis of Assisi, among others.

The title of this work does not refer to the biblical Antichrist but is a criticism of institutionalized religion and the priestly class. The book is an attack on what Nietzsche considered the "slave morality" and apathy of Western Christianity. Nietzsche argues that Christianity poisons western culture and perverts the words of and practice of Jesus.

From Poverty to Power shows how one may rise above adversity and poverty by taking the paths of material prosperity and truth to ultimately reach the goal of spiritual peace. Enduring success in any field is shown to be the result of inner adjustment and growth.

The Soul of Prayer was written by P. T. Forsyth (1848 - 1921), a British Nonconformist minister and author of 25 books and 260 articles. In this work, the author discusses the philosophical and scriptural principles relating to the prayer life of believers. He expounds on the inwardness, the naturalness, and the timelessness of prayer, and considers the vicariousness and the insistency of the practice. The Soul of Prayer serves as an in-depth resource for the earnest seeker on how to cultivate and maintain a fruitful prayer life.

The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is an account of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Christ, dictated by a 19th-century German stigmatic and visionary, Anne Catherine Emmerich. Emmerich was nearly illiterate, so she dictated the text to the poet Clemens Brentano. The narrative contains many small details that do not occur in the Gospel narratives, and the sublime poetics and lofty imagery in the book have led scholars to suspect that Brentano may have embellished Anne’s descriptions as he write them down.

Published in 1886, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future is a work which expands the ideas on Nietzsche’s previous work, Thus Spake Zarathustra. The book comprises 296 aphorisms arranged thematically into nine chapters. In the preface, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of dogmatism, and in the first chapter he claims that every famous philosophy is merely a personal confession.

The Call of the Wild and White Fang are two masterpieces of American literature set in the desolate cold North. The Call of the Wild is the story of a gentle domestic dog that rejects civilization and returns to the wilderness due to the cruelty of mankind. White Fang is a companion narrative and a thematic mirror to The Call of the Wild; it tells the tale of a wolf-dog hybrid who struggles to survive and ultimately changes from a fearsome wild beast into a creature of love.

The January volume includes Saints Almachius, Euphrosyne, Fulgentius, Felix of Bourges, Peter of Atroa, Odilo, Hugolino of Gualdo, Macarius of Alexandria, Vincentian, Stephana Quinzani, Peter Balsam, Genevieve, Bertilia of Mareuil, and Pharaildis.