Tag Archives | Leighton Pugh

THE NEUROTIC CHARACTER

By Alfred Adler
Read by Leighton Pugh
14 hours 13 minutes

As the 20^th century drew to a close, the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was perhaps the least known of the prominent figures of his time – in particular Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung – and yet he continues to be a figure of influence in the 21^st century. His school of ‘individual psychology’ involved a holistic approach to the study of the individual, with a key focus on the way each person viewed the world, especially regarding their concerns of inferiority. Continue Reading →

IDEAS

By Edmund Husserl
Read by Leighton Pugh with an Introduction by Taylor Carman
16 hours 56 minutes

As philosophy professor Taylor Carman explains in his helpful Introduction, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was the founder of modern phenomenology, one of the most important and influential movements of the 20^thcentury. ‘Ideas’ published in 1913 – its full title is ‘Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy’ – was the key work. It is arguably ‘the most fundamental and comprehensive statement of the fundamental principles of Husserl’s mature philosophy.’ Continue Reading →

WILHELM MEISTER’S APPRENTICESHIP

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Read by Leighton Pugh
22 hours 57 minutes

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre was the original German title – was Goethe’s second novel, published 1795-6, almost two decades after The Sorrows of Young Werther. It again focuses on a young man, but this time on his growing understanding and maturity as he makes his way in the world. Continue Reading →

OBLOMOV

By Ivan Goncharov
Read by Leighton Pugh
20 hours 07 minutes

Oblomov is one of the most distinctive characters in Russian literature – within a short time following its publication in 1859, the novel spawned its own saying: ‘Oblomovism’! From the pen of Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891) emerged a portrait of a young man, Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov who represented a figure well known in pre-revolutionary Russia at the time – one of the idle rich. Continue Reading →

TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION

TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT

A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION

By John Locke
Read by Leighton Pugh
12 hours 50 minutes

John Locke (1632-1704) was a product of his troubled times: he lived through the English Civil War, the Interregnum, the Restoration, Monmouth’s Rebellion, the Bloody Assizes and the Glorious Revolution. His empirical thinking was very much directed at finding rational solutions to the root causes of those troubles. Considered the founder of English empiricism and a precursor of the enlightenment his ideas on religious toleration, human rights and limitations on governmental power may seem so normal to us now as to be common sense, so well have they been assimilated by the social psyche; but this was far from being the case when Locke proposed them. Continue Reading →

SELECTIONS from PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA VOLUME 2

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by Leighton Pugh
15 hours 58 minutes

Volume 2 of Parerga and Paralipomena has a very different character from Volume 1. There are, in total, 31 Essays, 24 of which are presented here. The range of topics is very varied, opening with On Philosophy and Its Method and including On Pantheism, On Ethics, On Jurisprudence, On Men of Learning, On Thinking for Oneself, On Religion and The Vanity of Existence. 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 →

Leighton Pugh

TWO FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS OF ETHICS ESSAY ON THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL / THE BASIS OF MORALITY

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by Leighton Pugh
20 hours 38 minutes

The essays in ‘The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics’ have a rather special place in Schopenhauer’s work, both being written as entries to Scandinavian philosophy competitions, one in Norway and the other in Sweden. ‘Essay on the Freedom of the Will’ was Schopenhauer’s response to the question posed by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in 1839: ‘Is it possible to demonstrate human free will from self-consciousness’. Continue Reading →

ON THE FOURFOLD ROOT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by Leighton Pugh
6 hours 45 minutes

There is a cause, or a reason, behind everything that happens. This is the fundamental view behind the classical proposition, ’The Principle of Sufficient Reason’, which, in 1813, Schopenhauer chose as his subject for further examination in his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Continue Reading →

AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

By John Locke
Read by Leighton Pugh
30 hours 20 minutes

John Locke and his works – particularly An Essay Concerning Human Understanding – are regularly and rightly presented as foundations for the Age of Enlightenment. His primary epistemological message – that the mind at birth is a blank sheet waiting to be filled by the experiences of the senses – complemented his primary political message: that human beings are free and equal and have the right to envision, create and direct the governments that rule them and the societies within which they live. Continue Reading →

A THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL TREATISE

By BARUCH SPINOZA
Read by Leighton Pugh
16 hours 4 minutes

Though it first aroused anger and controversy rather than admiration and acceptance, A Theologico-Political Treatise was a landmark in the analysis of theology (with particular reference to the Bible and its Jewish and Christian interpretations) and its relationship to philosophy and politics. Spinoza’s scholarly analysis, based on careful study, demonstrated that the Bible was composed by many writers over the centuries – and that even the Pentateuch, the first five books, were not the work of Moses as was generally assumed at the time. Continue Reading →

THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA Volume 1

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by Leighton Pugh
20 hours 31 minutes

Schopenhauer was just 30 when his magnum opus, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, a work of considerable learning and innovation of thought, first appeared in 1818. Much to his chagrin and puzzlement, (so convinced was he of its merits) it didn’t have an immediate effect on European philosophy, views and culture. Continue Reading →

THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA VOLUME 2

THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA Volume 2

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by Leighton Pugh
17 hours 51 minutes

The original edition of The World as Will and Idea appeared in 1818 but in 1844 Schopenhauer published an expanded version. It contained the Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy, a lengthy document; and Supplements to the First Book (The Doctrine of the Idea of Perception) and the Second Book (The Doctrine of Perception or Knowledge Of The Understanding). Continue Reading →

THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA Volume 3

By Arthur Schopenhauer
Read by Leighton Pugh
17 hours 22 minutes

In this final part to Schopenhauer’s momentous and hugely influential work, his original and wide-ranging observations are as lively as ever. Though cast as a ‘pessimist’ by history, he is anything but that to read – and listen to. Here are the last supplementary comments his original work (published 1818), the fruit of decades of further reflection. Continue Reading →

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY / AGAINST WAR

By Desiderius Erasmus
Read by Georgina Sutton, Leighton Pugh
6 hours

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) was known as Prince of the Humanists – though a theologian, a Catholic priest and the leading European scholar of his time. A close friend of Sir Thomas More, Erasmus’s writings had a strong influence on the growing movement for change in Christian Europe, both Lutheran and the Counter-Reformation. Continue Reading →

THE LETTERS OF PLINY THE YOUNGER

By Pliny the Younger
Read by Leighton Pugh
12 hours 40 minutes

Pliny the Younger (61 CE -c113 CE) was a well-connected official in the Rome of the 1st century, and it is through his ten Books of letters that we have one of the liveliest and most informal pictures of the period. As a lawyer and magistrate he rose through the senate to become consul in 100 AD, and therefore corresponded with leading figures including the historian Tacitus, the biographer Suetonius, the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates the Stoic and most notably the Emperor Trajan. Continue Reading →

AGRICOLA, GERMANIA, A DIALOGUE CONCERNING ORATORY

By Tacitus
Read by Leighton Pugh
4 hours 49 minutes

These three vibrant texts show different sides of the Roman historian Tacitus (c56–c102 CE) best known for his principal (and much longer) legacies of The Annals and The Histories. Agricola was a successful general and Governor of Britain (77-83CE), a task which he carried out with firmness and probity – in contrast to much of the corruption and repression in place during the reign of Emperor Domitian. Continue Reading →

THE SORRROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Read by Leighton Pugh
4 hours 32 minutes

Werther, a sensitive young artist, finds himself in Wahlheim, a quiet attractive village in Germany where he seeks solace from the turmoils of love. It is a ‘young spring’ and he hopes that arcadian solitude will prove ‘a genial balm’ to his mind. But his romantic tendency rules otherwise, and he falls in love with Charlotte – Lotte – even though he knows she is affianced to another. Continue Reading →