Paul Strathern Audio

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams.

Samuel Becketts work evokes passionate responses: readers and playgoers either revere it or consider it pretentious nonsense. But his philosophy of pessimism will always find a new generation of young readers.

Weaving fiction with fact, fantastic matter with historical figures, Borges work is both timeless and touching, a product of deep suffering and incorrigible innocence. Strathern offers a concise, expert account of his life and ideas.

Confucius taught a moral wisdom that would become a predominant social force in China from the second century BCE until the mid-twentieth century.

D. H. Lawrences works were an attempt to revive some vivid, instinctual part of the human spirit that he felt had been lost or damaged. Strathern offers a witty and incisive appraisal of the writer and his work.

René Descartes spent most of his childhood in solitude, a situation that also came to characterize his adult life.

After narrowly avoiding a firing squad when he was just twenty-eight years old, Dostoevsky never took things lightly. His great novels burst upon the European literary scene like a succession of thunderbolts.

In García Márquez in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of García Márquez’s life and ideas and explains their influence on literature and on man’s struggle to understand his place in the world.

With Hegel, philosophy became very difficult indeed. His dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man.

One of the two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was linguistic analysis, derived largely from Wittgenstein. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger…

In Hume in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Hume’s life and ideas and explains their influence on man’s struggle to understand his existence in the world.

Through his art, James Joyce sought to reveal the radiance and meaning that lurks in the everyday world. Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Joyces life and ideas and explains their profound influence on modern literature.

A handsome recluse, plagued by indecision and hypochondria, Kafka nonetheless exhibited an extraordinary strength.

Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never traveled further than forty miles from his home in Kvnigsberg....

Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense....

Karl Marx's devastating critique of capitalism, and his proposal of communism as the answer to the failings of the capitalist system, bore their greatest fruits in the twentieth century…

With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone.

In an age when philosophers had scarcely glimpsed the horizons of the mind, a boy named Aristocles decided to forgo his ambitions as a wrestler.

In Rousseau in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Rousseau’s life and ideas and explains their influence on man’s struggle to understand his existence in the world.

During his lifetime, Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed unprecedented popularity for a philosopher, due partly to his role as a spokesman for existentialism—at the opportune moment when this set of ideas filled the spiritual gap left amidst the ruins of World War II.

In Schopenhauer in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Schopenhauer’s life and ideas and explains their influence on man’s struggle to understand his existence in the world.

In Socrates in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Socrates' life and ideas and explains their influence on mans struggle to understand his existence in the world.

In Spinoza in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Spinoza’s life and ideas and explains their influence on man’s struggle to understand his existence in the world.

In St. Augustine in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of St. Augustines life and ideas and explains their influence on mans struggle to understand his existence in the world.

In Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Aquinas’s life and ideas and explains their influence on man’s struggle to understand his existence in the world.