Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics represent, in many ways, the Western classical springboard for the systematic study and implementation of ethics, the optimum behaviour of the individual. (By contrast, Aristotle’s Politics concerns the optimum blueprint for the city-state.) It is in the hands of each individual, he argues in these books on personal ethics, to develop a character which bases a life on virtue, with positive but moderate habits.

Poetics and Rhetoric are the two major works by Aristotle which, after more than 2,000 years, remain key behavioural handbooks for anyone interested in story, performance, presentation and indeed psychology. The continuing influence of Poetics, for example, is readily discernible even among the scriptwriters of Hollywood!

The title Politics literally means ‘the things concerning the city’. Here, Aristotle considers the important role that politics plays in the life of the community and its contribution to harmonious and virtuous existence. It is divided into eight books and was a cornerstone in political philosophy for centuries despite certain features - including attitudes towards slaves and women - clearly placing its conclusions and advice within the confines of Athenian society of the fourth century BCE. 

Here are the Socratic Dialogues presented as Plato designed them to be - living discussions between friends and protagonists, with the personality of Socrates himself coming alive as he deals with a host of subjects, from justice and inspiration to courage, poetry and the gods. Plato's Socratic Dialogues provide a bedrock for classical Western philosophy. For centuries they have been read, studied and discussed via the flat pages of books, but the ideal medium for them is the spoken word.

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, and which ones should be fostered and which ones should be discouraged? How does knowing differ from believing?

Here are three important but very different Dialogues from the Middle Period. Symposium, the most well-known in this collection, is concerned with the theme of love. In the house of Agathon, a group of friends - each very different in personality and background - meet to consider and discuss various kinds of love. Each one, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes (the playwright) and Agathon (a prize-winning tragic poet), presents his particular view in a short discourse.

The Summa Theologica, by Thomas Aquinas, is a fundamental text in Catholic doctrine, a compendium of theology that has been studied and debated since its first publication in the 13th century. Furthermore, it has been widely regarded as one of the classics of Western philosophy, not least because, perhaps for the first time in such a systematic manner, it set out to consider the views of non-Christian figures such as Aristotle, Boethius, Muslim writers including Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and the Sephardic Jewish scholar Maimonides. 

Schopenhauer was just 30 when his magnum opus, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, a work of considerable learning and innovation of thought, first appeared in 1818.

Much to his chagrin and puzzlement (so convinced was he of its merits), it didn't have an immediate effect on European philosophy, views and culture. It was only decades later that it was recognised as one of the major intellectual landmarks of the 19th century.

Being and Time was published in 1927 during the Weimar period in Germany, a time of political, social and economic turmoil. Heidegger himself did not escape the pressures and his nationalism, and undeniable anti-Semitism in the following decades cast a shadow over the man, but not the work. Being and Time is not coloured by expressions of his later views (unlike other writings) and remains an outstanding document.  

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is one of the most extraordinary - and important - texts in Western philosophy. It was written by Friedrich Nietzsche between 1883 and 1885. He cast it in the form of a novel in the hope that his urgent message of the 'death of God' and the rise of the superman (Ubermensch) would have greater emotional as well as intellectual impact.

Here, in this second collection of Socratic Dialogues from Plato's Early Period, read by David Rintoul as Socrates with a full cast, are contrasting six works. Often, as with Gorgias, which opens the recording, Socrates combats the popular subjects of sophistry and rhetoric, in direct conversation with Gorgias (a leading sophist teacher), and with one of his pupils, Callicles.

These five very different Socratic Dialogues date from Plato's later period, when he was revisiting his early thoughts and conclusions and showing a willingness for revision. In Timaeus (mainly a monologue read by David Timson in the title role), Plato considers cosmology in terms of the nature and structure of the universe, the ever-changing physical world and the unchanging eternal world. And he proposes a demiurge as a benevolent creator God.

In 1929, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) published his remarkable book Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. The Kantbuch, as Heidegger often called it, is regarded by many as a vital supplement to the unfinished second part of Heidegger’s most influential work, Being and Time, which was published two years earlier in 1927. 

Aristotle considers ‘the principles and causes of change, or movement’ behind both animate and inanimate things. It is philosophy, not science, but over centuries affected the views of those involved in the ‘natural sciences’. The text emerged from the Lyceum, the school founded by Aristotle, and is accepted to be a compilation of texts, some of which - but perhaps not all - is by Aristotle. Regardless of authorship, its importance is unquestioned.

Two contrasting reflections by Aristotle which cover very particular ground. In 'On the Soul', Aristotle presents his view of the 'life essence' which, he argues, is possessed by living things whether plants, animals or humans. Not a 'soul' in the generally accepted Western use of the term, this 'soul', he says, is a life force that is indivisible from the organism that possesses it.