This simplistic and ingenious allegory from one of the fathers of Western philosophy casts light on society’s naiveté and ignorance.

The Dialogues of Plato rank with the writings of Aristotle as the most important and influential philosophical works in Western thought. In them Plato cast his teacher Socrates as the central disputant in colloquies that brilliantly probe a vast spectrum of philosophical ideas and issues.

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?

The dramatic nature of Plato's dialogues is delightfully evident in Symposium. The marriage between character and thought bursts forth as the guests gather at Agathon's house to celebrate the success of his first tragedy. With wit and insight, they all present their ideas about love - from Erixymachus' scientific naturalism to Aristophanes' comic fantasy. The unexpected arrival of Alcibiades breaks the spell cast by Diotima's ethereal climb up the staircase of love to beauty itself.

A dialogue between Socrates and Meno probes the subject of ethics. Can goodness be taught? If it can, then we should be able to find teachers capable of instructing others about what is good and bad, right and wrong, or just and unjust.

The Athenian court has found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death. While he is waiting to be executed, his friend, Crito, comes to the prison to persuade him to escape and go into exile. Socrates responds by examining the essence of law and community, probing the various kinds of law and making distinctions that go far beyond the particular issue of whether or not Socrates should escape.

Socrates is in prison, sentenced to die when the sun sets. In this final conversation, he asks what will become of him once he drinks the poison prescribed for his execution. Socrates and his friends examine several arguments designed to prove that the soul is immortal. This quest leads him to the broader topic of the nature of mind and its connection not only to human existence but also to the cosmos itself. What could be a better way to pass the time between now and the sunset?

Phaedrus lures Socrates outside the walls of Athens, where he seldom goes, by promising to share a new work by his friend and mentor, Lysias, a famous writer of speeches. This dialogue provides a powerful example of the dialectical writing that Plato uses to manifest ideas that are essential to human existence and to living a good life. Phaedrus shows how oral and written forms of language relate to each other and to philosophy.

The Apology of Socrates, written by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue of the speech of legal self-defense which Socrates spoke at his trial for impiety and corruption in 399 BC. Specifically, the Apology of Socrates is a defense against the charges of "corrupting the youth" and "not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel" to Athens.

Perception, memory, truth, and knowledge all play major roles in this dialogue. What is remarkable about Plato's treatment of those ideas is how contemporary are both the questions and the answers he puts in the mouths of his characters. Socrates is adamant in asserting that he does not know the answers but that his function is simply to help formulate and critically examine the doctrines presented by others.

Socrates, at 70+ years of age, defends himself against charges of corrupting the youth of Athens, atheism, and other false claims before accepting his fate and starting his final days on Earth.

Critias is one of Plato's late dialogues and contains the story of the mighty island kingdom Atlantis and its attempt to conquer Athens, which failed due to the ordered society of the Athenians. Critias is the second of a projected trilogy of dialogues, preceded by Timaeus and followed by Hermocrates. The latter was possibly never written, and Critias was left incomplete. This edition was translated by Benjamin Jowett in 1871.

Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, said to be dedicated to Aristotle's son, Nicomachus, is widely regarded as one of the most important works in the history of Western philosophy. Addressing the question of how men should best live, Aristotle's treatise is not a mere philosophical meditation on the subject, but a practical examination that aims to provide a guide for living out its recommendations.

Henry David Thoreau's classic essay inspired Martin Luther King, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and many other activists.

This simplistic and ingenious allegory from one of the fathers of Western philosophy casts light on society’s naiveté and ignorance.

A dialogue between Socrates and Meno probes the subject of ethics. Can goodness be taught? If it can, then we should be able to find teachers capable of instructing others about what is good and bad, right and wrong, or just and unjust.

John Locke and his works - particularly An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - are regularly and rightly presented as foundations for the Age of Enlightenment. His primary epistemological message - that the mind at birth is a blank sheet waiting to be filled by the experiences of the senses - complemented his primary political message: that human beings are free and equal and have the right to envision, create and direct the governments that rule them and the societies within which they live.

Here in one volume are both the Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series from one of the most influential philosophers in American history. Although Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps America’s most famous philosopher, did not wish to be referred to as a transcendentalist, he is nevertheless considered the founder of this major movement of nineteenth-century American thought. Emerson was influenced by a liberal religious training; theological study; personal contact with the Romanticists Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; and a strong indigenous sense of individualism and self-reliance.

Durant lucidly describes the philosophical systems of such world-famous “monarchs of the mind” as Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and Nietzsche. Along with their ideas, he offers their flesh-and-blood biographies, placing their thoughts within their own time and place and elucidating their influence on our modern intellectual heritage. This book is packed with wisdom and wit.

The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom) is one of Nietzsche's greatest books. His wonderfully fertile mind roams over mankind, his thoughts, his emotions, his behaviour and his weaknesses with remarkable clarity, with insight - but also with humour!In this work are 383 separate paragraphs, some short, some long, but all singular observations - the epitome of his famous aphoristic style. 'Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.'

Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. Author Anthony Gottlieb looks afresh at the writings of the great thinkers, questions much of conventional wisdom, and explains his findings with unbridled brilliance and clarity. From the pre-Socratic philosophers through the celebrated days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, up to Renaissance visionaries like Erasmus and Bacon, philosophy emerges here as a phenomenon unconfined by any one discipline.

The Discourses of Epictetus are a series of extracts from the teachings of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. This is the complete version containing books one - four. Each book has been carefully adapted in to modern English to allow for easy listening. Enjoy.

Considered by many to be Hannah Arendt's greatest work, published as she neared the end of her life, The Life of the Mind investigates thought itself, as it exists in contemplative life. In a shift from her previous writings, most of which focus on the world outside the mind, this work was planned as three volumes that would explore the activities of the mind considered by Arendt to be fundamental. What emerged is a rich, challenging analysis of human mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.

The most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." This essay is a considered a watershed moment in which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. An American classic.

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.

The Varieties of Religious Experience is considered to be the classic work in the field. To quote Wikipedia, "James was most interested in understanding personal religious experience. The importance of James to the psychology of religion - and to psychology more generally - is difficult to overstate. He discussed many essential issues that remain of vital concern today. What makes James writing so special is that he could take a very complex subject and, without watering it down, make it understandable to 'the rest of us.'"

"The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares the way for this, or results from this." This is the key statement of Miracles, in which C. S. Lewis shows that a Christian must not only accept but rejoice in miracles as a testimony of the unique personal involvement of God in his creation.

In Flatland, originally published in 1884, a humble square describes his two-dimensional world to benefit the inhabitants of Spaceland, the three-dimensional realm he discovers when he is visited by a being from beyond his plane. With dry wit and wild imagination, author Edwin Abbott Abbott builds a meticulous fantasy world rooted in an astute apprehension of psychology, politics, and social structures, as well as basic geometry. The story of Flatland, at once ridiculous and profound, delivers an incisive satire of social discourse that remains remarkably relevant today.

'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.