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Discourses and Selected Writings
- Narrated by: Richard Goulding
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
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Wisdom of ages. Similar to St. Paul's writing.
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One of the most significant books ever written by a head of state, the Meditations are a collection of philosophical thoughts by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180 ce). Covering issues such as duty, forgiveness, brotherhood, strength in adversity and the best way to approach life and death, the Meditations have inspired thinkers, poets and politicians since their first publication more than 500 years ago. Today, the book stands as one of the great guides and companions - a cornerstone of Western thought.
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Listed dozens of times
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don't get the audible version
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From the best-selling authors of The Daily Stoic comes an inspiring guide to the lives of the Stoics, and what the ancients can teach us about happiness, success, resilience, and virtue. In Lives of the Stoics, Holiday and Hanselman present the fascinating lives of the men and women who strove to live by the timeless Stoic virtues of Courage. Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Organized in digestible, mini-biographies of all the well-known - and not so well-known - Stoics, this book vividly brings home what Stoicism was like for the people who loved it and lived it.
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One of my top reference books
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One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life.
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Convinced to try stoicism
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'The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.' Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century because his humanistic, atheistic, if pessimistic views chimed with a new secularism that was emerging from a Western society dominated by religion. Despite his rather forbidding image (and a few outdated views), he is one of the most approachable German philosophers, and this is certainly evident in these two key works, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims.
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Logical wisdom laid out
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. With blazing intensity, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free.
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Courage Is Calling
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Almost every religion, spiritual practice, philosophy and person grapples with fear. The most repeated phrase in the Bible is “Be not afraid.” The ancient Greeks spoke of phobos, panic and terror. It is natural to feel fear, the Stoics believed, but it cannot rule you. Courage, then, is the ability to rise above fear, to do what’s right, to do what’s needed, to do what is true. And so it rests at the heart of the works of Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, and CS Lewis, alongside temperance, justice, and wisdom.
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Stay in your lane, Ryan.
- By Cherokee199X on 2023-01-23
Written by: Ryan Holiday
Publisher's Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
This Penguin Classic is performed by Richard Goulding, best known for Me Before You, The Iron Lady and The Windsors.
Epictetus, a Greek stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy school in Nicropolis in the early second century AD. His animated discussions were celebrated for their rhetorical wizardry and were written down by Arrian, his most famous pupil. Together with the Enchiridion, a manual of his main ideas, and the fragments collected here, The Discourses argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the ethics of stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family, friendship and love, and leaves an intriguing document of daily life in the classical world.
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What listeners say about Discourses and Selected Writings
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 2023-06-10
Simply Excellent
A must read. IMO the “source” of other books from authors such as Ryan Holiday or other modern “Stoicism” writings where the the Root of Consciousness’s (“God”) influence has been left out, but cannot be ruled out.
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- JB Bell
- 2021-03-22
Engaging and illuminating but incomplete
Epictetus' Discourses and the Enchiridion are justly famous philosophical works, if not as well known as Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
Goulding's narration is very engaging and hits the exact tone I imagine in my head when reading the text. No complaints at all on that front.
However, the translation leaves some to be desired if you want a little more rigour. One notable example is how, when Epictetus is rebuking some member of his audience, the narration has him call them "idiot." This gets the sense more or less right, but the word is more accurately translated "slave." Today, of course, we wouldn't use this as an insult. But Epictetus was himself enslaved, until he was manumitted fairly late in life. And he makes a distinction between being enslaved as a social status versus making oneself a slave to others' whims by caring about things not under one's control. So the rebuke has that nuance as well.
The text also is significantly abridged. This is normal in audiobooks, unless they specifically say "unabridged."
It's particularly annoying that no translator is credited, other than to note that it's a public domain translation. So I assume this is a gloss on either Long or Oldfather's translation; I can't tell which.
If this is your entry point to Stoicism, more power to you! It gets the important parts right, and presents the language in a vivid, powerful way, and made more accessible to a modern audience. I just hope listeners will develop a curiosity to check out the full text.
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