The Quest for Character Audiobook By Massimo Pigliucci cover art

The Quest for Character

What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us About Our Search for Good Leaders

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The Quest for Character

By: Massimo Pigliucci
Narrated by: Alan Carlson
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What Socrates’s greatest failure reveals about an ancient question: Can we teach our leaders to be better people?

Is good character something that can be taught? In 430 BCE, Socrates set out to teach the vain, power-seeking Athenian statesman Alcibiades how to be a good person—and failed spectacularly. Alcibiades went on to beguile his city into a hopeless war with Syracuse, and all of Athens paid the price.

In The Quest for Character, philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci tells this famous story and asks what we can learn from it. He blends ancient sources with modern interpretations to give a full picture of the philosophy and cultivation of character, virtue, and personal excellence—what the Greeks called arete. At heart, The Quest for Character isn’t simply about what makes a good leader. Drawing on Socrates as well as his followers among the Stoics, this book gives us lessons perhaps even more crucial: how we can each lead an excellent life.

©2022 Massimo Pigliucci (P)2022 Basic Books Ethics & Morality Greek & Roman Philosophers Philosophy Professionals & Academics Mythology Ancient History Greece Ancient Greece Greek Mythology
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This is a great foundational guild to the path of virtue and the building blocks of a good and worthy character.

Transformational Reading

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This book presents an age-old question and provides us thoughts from wise people on what it takes to develop and maintain a good character. The list provided at the end is superb. The sources cited are ones I will investigate in my journey.

Thought Provoking

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only suggestion would be to include a PDF of the syllabus in last chapter with the audio book

another great work by Massimo

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Concise. Excellent reading. Will listen again and again, and recommend it to others. Thank you.

The best stoic character text

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I found most interesting the sources used. Alcibiades, Laertius, Xenophon, Epictetus. Books that are not read in most philosophy programs! Of course , this oddity is expalined in the book. Excellent reading.

Character and politics.

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To bring the shots and wearing mask in to this book is as really bad taste

Wear your mask boys

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Good information but not as charming or enlightening as his other works. A bit let down.

Not as wonderful as his other books

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