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  • 50 Philosophy Classics

  • Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing, Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books
  • By: Tom Butler-Bowdon
  • Narrated by: Sean Pratt
  • Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (28 ratings)
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50 Philosophy Classics

By: Tom Butler-Bowdon
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
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Summary

From Aristotle to Wittgenstein and Zizek, 50 Philosophy Classics provides a lively entry point to the field of philosophy. Analyses of key works by Descartes, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Heidegger, and Nietzsche also show how philosophy helped shape the thinking and events of the last 150 years. The list also includes Twentieth Century greats including de Beauvoir, Foucault, Kuhn, and Sartre, along with contemporary philosophy including the writings and ideas of Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, Harry Frankfurt, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

50 Philosophy Classics explores key writings that have shaped the discipline and impacted the real world. From Aristotle, Plato, and Epicurus in ancient times, to John Stuart Mill’s manifesto for individual freedom and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s struggle to understand fate as person versus the universe. Most notably, Butler-Bowdon takes listeners beyond the Twentieth Century to introduce contemporary thinkers like Slavoj Zizek, who suggests that the fight for food and water, a bio-genetic and social revolution, indicate the apocalyptic end of global liberal capitalism.

©2013 Tom Butler-Bowdon (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

"This book explains and discusses briefly, but with remarkable lucidity, some of the ideas of fifty philosophical thinkers from ancient times to the present-day. Complex views on a whole range of important and enduring issues are made accessible to the general reader... The book is enjoyable and instructive." (C.L. Ten, Professor of Philosophy, National University of Singapore)

What listeners say about 50 Philosophy Classics

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Really interesting and well produced

The quality of audio book productions varies quite widely in my experience. This is definitely one of the better ones. The narration is spot on and does justice to the content.

The book is a great way of getting an overview of fifty key philosophers and their ideas. It is structured as fifty 15-20 minute bios that provide an overview of the individual and of their most significant works. I found this a great way to learn about various philosophical ideas and to pick up lots of tips for further reading.

Overall, I really enjoyed this audio book and definitely will be listening to it again. I recommend it for anyone who wants to get a broad view, although of course because of the breadth it is not possible to go into each theory in a lot of detail, so you will probably want to identify the ideas that ring true with you and follow up on them for more information. The production is useful in this way because the books/publications in which the theories are set out are named.

Highly recommended.

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9 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Dissapointing

this book was not what I expected. If you are expecting a compendium of 50 philosophers this is not it.

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1 person found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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meh

honestly, I wouldn't bother. the choice of "classics" really didn't inspire and I get the impression that the author is somewhat left wing and I'd rather classics just be real classics

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Such a good source of pockets of gold

This is so good and contains so much snippets of gold!
I love this series as they give such good insight to such hard topics, and make them very digestible to anyone at any level of understanding.

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