Rousseau and Voltaire
The Lives of the Two Most Famous Intellectuals of the Enlightenment
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Rousseau and Voltaire
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Narrated by:
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Mark Linsenmayer
About this listen
"To hold a pen is to be at war." (Voltaire)
"Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself." (Rousseau)
The grand narrative of the Enlightenment, usually recounted and understood in terms of progress and modernity, generally appears as a simplified evolution from the trappings of superstition, feudalism, and everything "irrational" to a world more similar to today's world. Alongside the Renaissance, the Enlightenment is credited with the transition to an adherence to reason, secularism, and promotion of values such as the value of the individual, collective freedom, and liberty. At the heart of the movement in France was François-Marie Arouet, better known by the pen name Voltaire, whose voluminous writings advocated for greater liberalism, including freedom of religion and separation of church and state. In addition to the classic Candide, Voltaire was a biting polemic whose satirical attacks on the Catholic Church were among the fiercest of his day. He also understood the risks he was taking with these writings, at one point explaining, "It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong."
The Enlightenment is looked upon fondly, and it serves to reinforce the notion that the present is superior to the past, but things did not change as rapidly or as completely as many believe. In fact, some recent historians have challenged the belief that the Enlightenment was responsible for the French Revolution, which is a vital issue when it comes to Voltaire. After all, Voltaire, as both his contemporaries and most of his modern readers know him, is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Enlightenment thought, the symbol of the era of reason.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 161
Returning Marx to the Victorian confines of the 19th century, Jonathan Sperber, one of the United States' leading European historians, challenges many of our misconceptions of this political firebrand turned London journalist. In this deeply humanizing portrait, Marx no longer is the Olympian soothsayer, divining the dialectical imperatives of human history, but a scholar-activist whose revolutionary Weltanschauung was closer to Robespierre's than to those of 20th-century Marxists.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Informative intellectual biography, poor reading
- By anonymous on 10-25-13
By: Jonathan Sperber
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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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Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
- By: Richard Hofstadter
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 158
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 157
This book throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Still Current, Without Opening Recent Wounds
- By wbiro on 11-09-17
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The Austrian School of Economics
- A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, & Institutions
- By: Eugen Maria Schulak, Herbert Unterköfler
- Narrated by: Paul Strikwerda
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
The Austrian School is in the news as never before. It is discussed on business pages, in academic journals, and in speeches by public figures. At long last, there is a brilliant and engaging guide to the history, ideas, and institutions of the Austrian School of economics. It is written by two Austrian intellectuals who have gone to the sources themselves to provide a completely new look at the tradition and what it means for the future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good book about Austrian Economics and it's histor
- By Kyle and Dawn Christerson on 04-30-19
By: Eugen Maria Schulak, and others
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Theory and History
- An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (LvMI)
- By: Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Like F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises moved beyond economics in his later years to address questions regarding the foundation of all social science. But unlike Hayek's attempts, Mises' writings on these matters have received less attention than they deserve. Theory and History, writes Rothbard in his introduction, "remains by far the most neglected masterwork of Mises". Here Mises defends his all-important idea of methodological dualism: one approach to the hard sciences and another for the social sciences.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Without This Book, You Are Uneducated
- By Michael D. Rubin on 10-03-18
By: Ludwig von Mises, and others
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The Twilight of the American Enlightenment
- The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberalelites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Such a relevant book to our current world
- By Adam Shields on 09-14-16
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The Metaphysical Club
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 304
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4 out of 5 stars 163
Hardly a club in the conventional sense, the organization referred to in the title of this superb literary hybrid (part history, part biography, part philosophy) consisted of four members and probably existed for less than nine months.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Great American Experiment
- By Victoria on 12-08-03
By: Louis Menand
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Culture and Imperialism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 154
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 157
A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).
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5 out of 5 stars
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BRAVO, AUDIBLE!! WE NEED MORE SAID!! REAL BOOKS!!
- By AnthonyStevens on 02-27-11
By: Edward Said
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
- By: Max Weber
- Narrated by: Monroe Clark McBride
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 112
Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day powerful and fascinating. Weber's highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ethic made possible and encouraged the development of capitalism in the West.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very good unprejudiced scholar
- By Viktor V. Choban on 07-11-19
By: Max Weber
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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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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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The Demon in Democracy
- Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
- By: Ryszard Legutko, John O'Sullivan, Teresa Adelson
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades - and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Important book on political philosophy
- By Wayne on 08-02-19
By: Ryszard Legutko, and others
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On Liberty
- By: John Stuart Mill
- Narrated by: Alastair Cameron
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
On Liberty is a book by John Stuart Mill, one of the most celebrated philosophers on the subject of leadership and governing ideals. The book focuses on Mill's philosophy on utilitarianism which is one of his defining principles. The principles of the book are focused on developing a relationship between the ruling authority and liberty.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Must read
- By Trevor M. on 08-04-21
By: John Stuart Mill
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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