
The Metaphysical Club
A Story of Ideas in America
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Narrated by:
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Paul Heitsch
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By:
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Louis Menand
About this listen
The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea.
Holmes, James, and Peirce all believed that ideas are not things "out there" waiting to be discovered but are tools people invent - like knives and forks and microchips - to make their way in the world. They thought that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals - that ideas are social. They do not develop according to some inner logic of their own but are entirely dependent - like germs - on their human carriers and environment. And they thought that the survival of any idea depends not on its immutability but on its adaptability. The Metaphysical Club is written in the spirit of this idea about ideas. It is not a history of philosophy but an absorbing narrative about personalities and social history, a story about America.
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- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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What was the real significance of William James's breakdown? Of the anti-Semitism in T.S. Eliot's writing? At each step in his latest journey through American cultural history, Menand has an original point to make.
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Abridged, but doesn't say so
- By Kirk McElhearn on 10-09-07
By: Louis Menand
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The Light Ages
- The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
- By: Seb Falk
- Narrated by: Seb Falk
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk.
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Fascinating exploration of medieval science
- By Celia on 07-05-21
By: Seb Falk
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The Visionaries
- Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history’s greatest philosophers. There were four women, in particular, whose parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century—at once in necessary dialogue and in striking contrast with one another.
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Long deep dive into the lives of writers
- By profcpa on 09-16-24
By: Wolfram Eilenberger, and others
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The Enlightenment That Failed
- Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1830
- By: Jonathan I. Israel
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 60 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The Enlightenment That Failed explores the growing rift between those Enlightenment trends and initiatives that appealed exclusively to elites and those aspiring to enlighten all of society by raising mankind's awareness, freedoms, and educational level generally. Jonathan I. Israel explains why the democratic and radical secularizing tendency of the Western Enlightenment, after gaining some notable successes during the revolutionary era (1775-1820) in numerous countries, especially in Europe, North America, and Spanish America, ultimately failed.
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Enlightened radical
- By Anonymous User on 07-02-22
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Learning from the Germans
- Race and the Memory of Evil
- By: Susan Neiman
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin.
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This is an important book.
- By Amazon Customer on 05-29-20
By: Susan Neiman
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Incompleteness
- The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel
- By: Rebecca Goldstein
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Probing the life and work of Kurt Gödel, Incompleteness indelibly portrays the tortured genius whose vision rocked the stability of mathematical reasoning—and brought him to the edge of madness.
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drones on and on for hours!
- By Mark Pumphrey on 10-29-24
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By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean
- The Birth of Eurasia
- By: Barry Cunliffe
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering more than 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the 13th century AD.
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Remarkable research!
- By B. Dillon on 07-21-22
By: Barry Cunliffe
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Illiberal America
- A History
- By: Steven Hahn
- Narrated by: Mitch Crawford
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That's not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep seated in the American past as the founding ideals.
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Excellent and important Am history
- By CommentDante on 04-28-24
By: Steven Hahn
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Power and Liberty
- Constitutionalism in the American Revolution
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The half century extending from the imperial crisis between Britain and its colonies in the 1760s to the early decades of the new republic of the United States was the greatest and most creative era of constitutionalism in American history, and perhaps in the world. During these decades, Americans explored and debated all aspects of politics and constitutionalism - the nature of power, liberty, representation, rights, the division of authority between different spheres of government, sovereignty, judicial authority, and written constitutions.
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Provides Context for Todays Mess
- By Tad on 07-20-24
By: Gordon S. Wood
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A Spectre, Haunting
- By: China Miéville
- Narrated by: China Miéville
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1848, The Communist Manifesto was published by two émigrés from Germany. Marx and Engels' apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system that penetrates every corner of the world reduces every relationship to that of profit, and burst asunder the old forms of production and of politics. It is still a recognisable picture of our world—the vampiric energy of the system being once again highly contentious. This is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today.
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A great follow up to October
- By Amazon Customer on 01-18-23
By: China Miéville
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The Sweet Science
- By: A. J. Liebling
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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This collection of A.J. Liebling's classic New Yorker pieces on the "sweet science of bruising" brings vividly to life the boxing world as it once was. It depicts the great events of boxing's American heyday: Sugar Ray Robinson's dramatic comeback, Rocky Marciano's rise to prominence, Joe Louis' unfortunate decline. Liebling never fails to find the human story behind the fight, and he evokes the atmosphere in the arena as distinctly as he does the goings-on in the ring.
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Liebling is a master wordsmith, Gardner an incredible narrator
- By Josh on 03-29-16
By: A. J. Liebling
Amazing book, minor pronunciation problems with names
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Cogent neurophilosology
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Insight and stimulation, if not complete comprehension
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Hands down the best non fiction book I've read
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so significant that it overcomes its flaws
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nice way to stitch in the history and connections between the main characters.
fascinating connections, awesome history story telling…
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Terrific book, performer mispronounces key names
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Great story-well crafted and artfully performed
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Excellent
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Narrator needs to do his homework
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