Tag Archives | David Rintoul

AION

By C.G Jung
Read by David Rintoul
10 hours 46 minutes

Aion is one of the major works of C.G. Jung’s later years. The title comes from the Greek word for aeon or age and refers to the age of Christianity, for, in Aion, Jung is concerned with the collective psychic development that the Christian era represents. How did it come about when it did? What psychic change did it represent? In exploring these questions, Jung (1875-1961) draws upon Christian symbolism and, in particular, the figure of Christ as a case study in the archetype of the Self. Continue Reading →

THE PRINCIPAL SPEECHES OF DEMOSTHENES

By Demosthenes
Read by David Rintoul
7 hours 45 minutes

Demosthenes (384-322 BCE) is regarded as one of the greatest orators of Classical times. This view has persisted through the centuries even though his rousing speeches warning of the dangers of Macedonian expansion – firstly guided by Philip II and then Alexander the Great – failed to stem the course of continued military success. Continue Reading →

THE MAXIMS

By The Duc de la Rochefoucauld

Read by David Rintoul
3 hours and 26 minutes

‘There’s no fool like an old fool’…’The world is full of pots calling kettles black’… ‘We can no more set a term to our passions than to our life’. These are just three of the aphorisms that made the collection of Maxims by François, Duc de la Rochefoucauld an enduring influence upon succeeding generations following their initial publication in 1665. Continue Reading →

THE UNDISCOVERED SELF

By C.G Jung
Read by David Rintoul
2 hours 30 minutes

In The Undiscovered Self Jung explains the essence of his teaching for a readership unfamiliar with his ideas. He highlights the importance of individual responsibility and freedom in the context of today’s mass society, and argues that individuals must organize themselves as effectively as the organized mass if they are to resist joining it. Continue Reading →

THE LAYS OF MARIE DE FRANCE

Translated by Edward J. Gallagher

Read by Georgina Sutton, David Rintoul
5 hours and 6 minutes

The 12 Lays of Marie de France offer one of the most striking collections of short narrative poems of the 12^th century – two centuries before Chaucer. Written in Anglo-French, they contain beguiling and entertaining stories of love and romance, of chivalry and adventure with, sometimes, even a magical twist. They are especially unique in early literature by being ascribed to a female poet, Marie de France: in the very first Lay – Guigemar – is the introductory line: ‘Hear my Lords, what Marie says, who does not wish to be forgotten in her time.’ Continue Reading →

THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

By Thomas Mann
Read by David Rintoul
37 hours 27 minutes

It was The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) that confirmed Thomas Mann as a Nobel prizewinner for literature and rightly so, for it is undoubtedly one of the great novels of the 20^th century. Its unusual story – it opens with a young man visiting a friend in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps – was originally started by Mann in 1912, but was not completed until 1924. Continue Reading →

THE LAY OF THE NIBELUNGS

Verse Translation by Alice Horton
Read by David Rintoul
11 hours 07 minutes

One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama, The Ring of the Nibelung. It is easy to see how Wagner was enthralled by the story and the poetry for the power of the tale drives the narrative: intense love, loyalty, jealousy, murder, duty, honour and massacre are all interwoven in a page-turner of a classic. Continue Reading →

SELECTIONS from PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA VOLUME 1

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by Leighton Pugh and David Rintoul
15 hours 58 minutes

The two sizeable volumes of Parerga and Paralipomena hold a special place in the output of Arthur Schopenhauer. Parerga means ‘supplementary to a main work, and Paralipomena suggests a further supplement but these two books were anything BUT a casual addition to his major opus, The World as Will and Idea. For a start, it was the publication of Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851 which brought Schopenhauer to the attention of the general public, decades after The World as Will and Idea first appeared. Continue Reading →

APOLOGIA and MEMORABILIA

By Xenophon
Read by David Rintoul
4 hours 41 mins

Xenophon was a friend of Socrates and yet his concise memories of the iconic philosopher have lived under the shadow of the more voluminous accounts by Plato. Yet Xenophon’s two works – Apology and Memorabilia – are, in many ways, more entertaining and more accessible, and they present a different view of the man who embodies a clear mind, temperate, ethical living, sharp intellect and humour. Continue Reading →

David Rintoul

THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUES – EARLY PERIOD VOLUME 1

The Apology • Crito • Charmenides • Laches • Lysis • Euthyphro • Menexenus • Ion

By Plato
Multi-Voice Production – Read by David Rintoul as Socrates and cast
6 hours 32 minutes

Here are the Socratic Dialogues presented as Plato designed them to be – living discussions between friends and protagonists, with the personality of Socrates himself coming alive as he deals with a host of subjects, from justice and inspiration to courage, poetry and the gods. Continue Reading →

THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUES – EARLY PERIOD VOLUME 2

Gorgias • Protagoras • Meno • Euthydemus • Lesser Hippias • Greater Hippias

By Plato
Multi-Voice Production – Read by David Rintoul as Socrates and cast
10 hours 9 minutes

Here, in this second collection of Socratic Dialogues from Plato’s Early Period, read by David Rintoul as Socrates with a full cast, are contrasting six works. Often, as with Gorgias, which opens the recording, Socrates combats the popular subjects of sophistry and rhetoric, in direct conversation with Gorgias (a leading spophist teacher), and with one of his pupils, Callicles. In Meno, Socrates encounters another Gorgias pupil, Meno and a debate on ‘virtue’ ensues. Continue Reading →

THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUES – MIDDLE PERIOD VOLUME 1

Symposium • Theaetetus • Phaedo

By Plato
Multi-Voice Production – Read by David Rintoul as Socrates, Hugh Ross (Symposium) and cast
8 hours 30 minutes

Here are three important but very different Dialogues from the Middle Period. SYMPOSIUM, the most well-known in this collection, is concerned with the theme of love. In the house of Agathon, a group of friends – each very different in personality and background – meet to consider and discuss various kinds of love. Continue Reading →

THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUES – MIDDLE PERIOD VOLUME 2

Phaedrus • Cratylus • Parmenides

By Plato
Multi-Voice Production – Read by David Rintoul as Socrates, Laurence Kennedy (Parmenides) and cast
6 hours 53 minutes

The remarkable range of Plato’s Socratic Dialogues is vividly demonstrated by these three works. It opens with Phaedrus, a highly personal discussion between Socrates (David Rintoul) and the young, love-struck Phaedrus (Gunnar Cauthery). Continue Reading →

THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUES – MIDDLE PERIOD VOLUME 3

The Republic

By Plato
Read by David Rintoul as Socrates
12 hours

The Republic is perhaps the single most important, the most studied and the most quoted text of all Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. Through the medium of Socrates, Plato outlines his view and ideas concerning the ideal working of the city state. Continue Reading →

THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUES – LATE PERIOD VOLUME 1

Timaeus • Sophist • Critias • Statesman • Philebus

By Plato
Multi-Voice Production – David Rintoul as Socrates, with David Timson, Peter Kenny and full cast
10 hours 41 mins

These five very different Socratic Dialogues date from Plato’s later period when he was revisiting his early thoughts and conclusions and showing a willingness for revision. In Timaeus (mainly a monologue read by David Timson in the title role) Plato considers cosmology in terms of the nature and structure of the universe, the ever-changing physical world and the unchanging eternal world. And he proposes a demiurge as a benevolent creator God. Continue Reading →

An Introduction to Schopenhauer’s The Wisdom of Life

By T. Bailey Saunders
Read by David Rintoul
42 minutes

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a key influence on a wide range of major 19th and 20th century figures who followed him including Nietzsche, Schrödinger, Freud, Tolstoy, Wagner, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Jorge Luis Borges and Samuel Beckett. This was despite his reputation for being gloomy and pessimistic! Continue Reading →

THE WISDOM OF LIFE, COUNSELS AND MAXIMS

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by David Rintoul
9 hours 22 minutes

‘The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.’

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century because his humanistic, atheistic if pessimistic views chimed with a new secularism that was emerging from a Western society dominated by religion. Despite his rather forbidding image, (and a few outdated views) he is one of the most approachable of German philosophers and this is certainly evident in these two key works, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims. Continue Reading →

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

By Anicius Manlius Severinus BOETHIUS
Read by David Rintoul
4 hours 55 minutes

The Consolation of Philosophy is one of the key works in the rich tradition of Western philosophy, partly because of the circumstances in which it was written. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c480-c524) was of aristocratic Roman birth and became consul and then Master of Offices at Ravenna, one of the highest posts under the Ostrogothic Roman ruler Theodoric. But Boethius was unjustly charged with treason in 524 and this led to house arrest, then torture and execution. Continue Reading →

BUDDENBROOKS

By Thomas Mann
Read by David Rintoul
26 hours 48 minutes

First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family – a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck. Continue Reading →