The Sacrifice of Socrates: Athens, Plato, and Girard
Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture
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The Sacrifice of Socrates: Athens, Plato, and Girard
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Narrated by:
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Bob Neufeld
About this listen
When Athenians suffered the shame of having lost a war from their own greed and foolishness, around 404 BCE the public's blame was directed at Socrates, a man whose unique appearance and behavior, as well as his disapproval of the democracy, made him a ready target.
Socrates was subsequently put on trial and sentenced to death. However, as René Girard has pointed out, no individual can be held responsible for a communal crisis. Plato's Apology depicts Socrates as both the bane and the cure of Greek society while his Crito shows a sacrificial Socrates, what some might consider a pharmakos figure, the human drug through whom Plato can dispense his philosophical remedies.
With tremendous insight and satisfying complexity, this audiobook analyzes classical texts through the lens of Girard's mimetic mechanism.
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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- Why the Greeks Matter
- By: Thomas Cahill
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 338
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4 out of 5 stars 155
Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Super super
- By Richard on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
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The Man Who Invented Fiction
- How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read
- By LCorSMT on 06-21-23
By: William Egginton
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A Wicked Company
- The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
The flourishing of radical philosophy in Baron Thierry Holbach’s Paris salon from the 1750s to the 1770s stands as a seminal event in Western history. Holbach’s house was an international epicenter of revolutionary ideas and intellectual daring, bringing together such original minds as Denis Diderot, Laurence Sterne, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Horace Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, Guillaume Raynal, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In A Wicked Company, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom retraces the fortunes of this exceptional group of friends.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Book on Radical Enlightenment
- By EJJ on 02-15-15
By: Philipp Blom
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Plato's Crito
- By: Plato
- Narrated by: Ray Childs
- Length: 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 137
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 122
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Story5 out of 5 stars 123
The Athenian court has found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death. While he is waiting to be executed, his friend, Crito, comes to the prison to persuade him to escape and go into exile. Socrates responds by examining the essence of law and community, probing the various kinds of law and making distinctions that go far beyond the particular issue of whether or not Socrates should escape.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bravo!
- By Byron on 10-12-16
By: Plato
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization
- By: Anthony Esolen
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 426
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 357
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 357
Western civilization is under attack. At universities and in the media, professors and pundits decry Western civilization as exploitative, destructive, and without value. But fear not: coming to its defense is this "P.I." guide to Western civilization.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Holy Neo-Nazism Batman!
- By Douglas on 12-03-11
By: Anthony Esolen
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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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Overall4 out of 5 stars 314
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 253
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 250
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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3 out of 5 stars
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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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The Honor Code
- How Moral Revolutions Happen
- By: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Narrated by: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
In this groundbreaking work, Kwame Anthony Appiah, hailed as "one of the most relevant philosophers today" (New York Times Book Review), changes the way we understand human behavior and the way social reform is brought about. In brilliantly arguing that new democratic movements over the last century have not been driven by legislation from above, Appiah explores the end of the duel in aristocratic England, the tumultuous struggles over foot binding in 19th-century China, the uprising of ordinary people against Atlantic slavery, and much more.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Horribly Boring
- By Merle N. Savedow on 02-10-21
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The Spiritual Teachings of Seneca
- Ancient Philosophy for Modern Wisdom
- By: Mark Forstater, Victoria Radin
- Narrated by: David Troughton, Louisa Millwood Haig
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 95
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 69
Seneca was dedicated to Stoicism, and in his essays and letters he explained the stoic position on many fundamental issues: pleasure and the problem of desire, happiness, and contentment; anger, fear, living in the present, how to think for yourself, anxiety and tranquillity, goodness, freedom, trusting the universe; courage, opportunity, cruelty and how to deal with it, friendship, love and trust, death and how to live, learning , chance and fate, time, aspirations, wisdom - and more.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Odd presentation style
- By Mark on 08-03-08
By: Mark Forstater, and others
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The Rational Bible: Genesis
- By: Dennis Prager
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,482
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,302
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,292
Many people today think the Bible, the most influential book in world history, is not only outdated but irrelevant, irrational, and even immoral. This explanation of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, demonstrates clearly and powerfully that the opposite is true. The Bible remains profoundly relevant - both to the great issues of our day and to each individual life. It is the greatest moral guide and source of wisdom ever written.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So glad I bought this!
- By Alex Martinez on 06-10-19
By: Dennis Prager
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Battling the Gods
- Atheism in the Ancient World
- By: Tim Whitmarsh
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked skepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter and notions of matter based on atoms.
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5 out of 5 stars
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We have a history as long and as rich as any relig
- By Glencannnon on 08-13-19
By: Tim Whitmarsh
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The Origin of Satan
- How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics
- By: Elaine Pagels
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 550
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 464
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Story4 out of 5 stars 466
Who is Satan in the New Testament, and what is the evil that he represents? In this groundbreaking book, Elaine Pagels, Princeton's distinguished historian of religion, traces the evolution of Satan from its origins in the Hebrew Bible, where Satan is at first merely obstructive, to the New Testament, where Satan becomes the Prince of Darkness, the bitter enemy of God and man, evil incarnate. In The Origin of Satan, Pagels shows that the four Christian gospels tell two very different stories.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Must read for all practicing Christians
- By Venusian Incognito on 09-06-19
By: Elaine Pagels
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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