Divine Fury
A History of Genius
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Divine Fury
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Narrated by:
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Julian Elfer
About this listen
Genius. The word connotes an almost unworldly power: the power to create, to grasp universal secrets, even to destroy. As renowned intellectual historian Darrin McMahon explains in Divine Fury, the concept of genius can be traced back to antiquity, when men of great insight were thought to be advised by demons. The modern idea of genius emerged in tension with a growing belief in human equality; contesting the notion that all are created equal, geniuses served to dramatize the exception of extraordinary individuals not governed by ordinary laws. Today, the idea of genius has become cheapened - rock stars and football coaches earn the term with seemingly the same ease as astrophysicists and philosophers - yet our enduring fascination with it reflects the desires, needs, and fears of ordinary human beings. The first comprehensive history of this mysterious yet foundational concept, Divine Fury follows the fortunes of genius from Socrates to Napoleon to Einstein and beyond, analyzing its democratization, disappearance, and potential rebirth.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexis de Tocqueville, inform our political consciousness or discussing how beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Unpersuasive and a bit repetitive
- By Adam Shields on 03-07-18
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The Case for God
- By: Karen Armstrong
- Narrated by: Karen Armstrong
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 438
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 324
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 327
Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become unbelievable?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great recasting of how God should be interpreted
- By John Doyle on 02-18-11
By: Karen Armstrong
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Orientalism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 606
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 491
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 492
This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."
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5 out of 5 stars
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We're lucky to have this on audio
- By Delano on 02-27-13
By: Edward Said
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Hidden Wisdom
- A Guide to Western Inner Traditions
- By: Richard Smoley, Jay Kinney
- Narrated by: Ethan Sawyer
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 181
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 178
The co-editors of Gnosis magazine explore the many esoteric traditions that Western culture has to offer. While terms from Eastern spiritual practices such as Zen, mantra, and karma have become part of our daily lexicon, the traditions of Western spirituality have been largely unexplored by people searching for non-mainstream routes to spiritual experience. But for those who identify with Western culture, Western religious traditions have their own wisdom teachings that are more suitable to their needs and expectations.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting, enjoyable, not too deep
- By DBruno1987 on 03-03-15
By: Richard Smoley, and others
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The House of Wisdom
- How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
- By: Jonathan Lyons
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Missing history
- By Robert on 11-26-11
By: Jonathan Lyons
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Soul Machine
- The Invention of the Modern Mind
- By: George Makari
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
Soul Machine takes us back to the origins of modernity, a time when a crisis in religious authority and the scientific revolution led to searching questions about the nature of human inner life. This is the story of how a new concept - the mind - emerged as a potential solution, one that was part soul and part machine but fully neither.
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5 out of 5 stars
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High yield
- By Mark Twain on 01-21-16
By: George Makari
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How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
- By: Thomas E. Woods Jr.
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,284
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,029
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,026
Western civilization has given us modern science, the wealth of free-market economics, the security of law, a sense of human rights and freedom, charity as a virtue, splendid art and music, philosophy grounded in reason, and innumerable other gifts we take for granted.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating and informative
- By Michael Kellogg on 09-29-05
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Ibn Khaldun
- An Intellectual Biography
- By: Robert Irwin
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Issues with accuracy, pronounciation
- By Moh 3aly on 01-02-19
By: Robert Irwin
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The Cave and the Light
- Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
- By: Arthur Herman
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 25 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 525
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 458
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 457
The Cave and the Light reveals how two Greek philosophers became the twin fountainheads of Western culture, and how their rivalry gave Western civilization its unique dynamism down to the present.
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1 out of 5 stars
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All of Western Philosphy Leads to Ayn Rand?!?
- By Leslie on 06-22-15
By: Arthur Herman
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The Year of Our Lord 1943
- Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis
- By: Alan Jacobs
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The Audible is a Train Wreck
- By John on 09-04-18
By: Alan Jacobs
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Descartes' Bones
- A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason
- By: Russell Shorto
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 243
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 105
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Story4 out of 5 stars 103
On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely deathfar from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who washounded from country after country on charges of atheism?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Philosophy of Modernity
- By Roger on 06-17-09
By: Russell Shorto
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Seven Types of Atheism
- By: John Gray
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood “science.” John Gray’s stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism, describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and as rich as religion itself.
By: John Gray
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The Dream of Enlightenment
- The Rise of Modern Philosophy
- By: Anthony Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Anthony Gottlieb
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 195
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 169
In The Dream of Enlightenment, Anthony Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Enlightenment meets Neuroscience
- By Rodger on 12-05-19
By: Anthony Gottlieb
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Nature's God
- The Heretical Origins of the American Republic
- By: Matthew Stewart
- Narrated by: Michael Quinlan
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party. These radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as "infidels" and "atheists" in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent exploration of this subject
- By Caroline on 01-13-15
By: Matthew Stewart
What listeners say about Divine Fury
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Carrie
- 01-12-14
GENIUS! GENIUS! GENIUS!
What did you like best about this story?
This book chronologically follows the evolution of the genius and its influence on individuals and civilization. It's beautifully researched, expertly read, and totally seductive. For those who love the power behind myth and real magic that is inherent in our creative evolution, this is a perfect book. As someone who has loved and followed this subject for many years, this book is uncovering a true mystery.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Jeff Shreve
- 03-28-14
Great title, horribly boring book
What would have made Divine Fury better?
Wish I could find the book that is described by this title. I bet it would be good. This one is not it.
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