What Is Art?
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Narrated by:
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Malk Williams
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Stephane Cornicard
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By:
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Leo Tolstoy
About this listen
During the decades of his world fame as sage and preacher as well as author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice and religion.
These culminated in What Is Art?, published in 1898. Although Tolstoy perceived the question of art to be a religious one, he considered and rejected the idea that art reveals and reinvents through beauty. The works of Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Baudelaire, and even his own novels are condemned in the course of Tolstoy's impassioned and iconoclastic redefinition of art as a force for good; for the improvement of humankind.
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Story
Aristotle's Poetics is best known for its definitions and analyses of tragedy and comedy, but it also applies to truth and beauty as they are manifested in the other arts. In our age, when the natural and social sciences have dominated the quest for truth, it is helpful to consider why Aristotle claimed poetry is more philosophical and more significant than history. Like so many other works by Aristotle, the Poetics has dominated the way we have thought about all forms of dramatic performance in Europe and America ever since.
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Skips a few sections
- By Dave Wilson on 03-16-19
By: Aristotle
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The Varieties of Religious Experience
- By: William James
- Narrated by: Jim Killavey
- Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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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.'"
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Profound stuff
- By Empowerment on 09-05-09
By: William James
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The Discarded Image
- An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Richard Elwood
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval worldview, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the middle ages and renaissance. It describes the 'image' discarded by later years as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe". This, Lewis' last book, has been hailed as "the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind".
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I hope more of Lewis's scholastic stuff is coming
- By James on 04-01-21
By: C. S. Lewis
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The Dream of Reason, New Edition
- A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
- By: Anthony Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Anthony Gottlieb
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Bias spoils the work.
- By MC on 08-21-20
By: Anthony Gottlieb
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William Blake vs the World
- By: John Higgs
- Narrated by: John Higgs
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.
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Best book ever
- By idamae on 11-04-22
By: John Higgs
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Letters to a Young Poet
- By: Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell - translator
- Narrated by: Stephen Mitchell
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Ranier Maria Rilke challenges you, "...to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers." Rilke's ability to combine the sensual and the spiritual into an inspired vision of the art of living is brought to vivid life in his letters. Through his eyes, the everyday difficulties of love, sex, solitude, sadness, and doubt are seen as the archetypal elements of the drama called life.
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Priceless Recordings of Intense Feeling
- By David on 10-08-04
By: Rainer Maria Rilke, and others
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Plato's Republic
- By: Plato
- Narrated by: Ray Childs
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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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?
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BEWARE: shortened version
- By Dranu on 03-08-20
By: Plato
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The Greek Way
- By: Edith Hamilton
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on a thorough study of Greek life and civilization, of Greek literature, philosophy, and art, The Greek Way interprets their meaning and brings a realization of the refuge and strength the past can be to us in the troubled present. Miss Hamilton's book must take its place with the few interpretative volumes which are permanently rooted and profoundly alive in our literature.
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...Not as Good as The Echo of Greece
- By The Masked Reviewer on 11-04-16
By: Edith Hamilton
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Socrates
- A Man for Our Times
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historian and best-selling author Paul Johnson’s books have been translated into dozens of languages. In Socrates: A Man for Our Times, Johnson draws from little-known resources to construct a fascinating account of one of history’s greatest thinkers. Socrates transcended class limitations in Athens during the fifth century B.C. to develop ideas that still shape the way we think about the human body and soul, including the workings of the human mind.
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Plat-Soc-Paul
- By Megasaurus on 11-17-12
By: Paul Johnson
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The Life of the Mind
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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English only please
- By angela cozea on 11-20-19
By: Hannah Arendt