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volunteers bring you 23 recordings of An Old Man's Thought of School by Walt Whitman. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for February 12, 2012. Whitman claimed that after years of competing for the usual rewards, he determined to become a poet. He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to the cultural tastes of the period. As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death. ( Summary from Wikipedia )...

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Advice, Instruction, Philosophy, Teen/Young adult, Poetry

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Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. Manfred, the lamp must be replenish?d, but even then It will not burn so long as I must watch. My slumbers -- if I slumber -- are not sleep, But a continuance of enduring thought, Which then I can resist not: in my heart There is a vigil, and these eyes but close To look within; and yet I live, and bear The aspect and the form of breathing men. But grief should be the instructor of the wise; Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o?er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. Philosophy and science, and the springs Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world....

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“The Philosophy of Style,” explored a growing trend of formalist approaches to writing. Highly focused on the proper placement and ordering of the parts of an English sentence, [Spencer] created a guide for effective composition. Spencer’s aim was to free prose writing from as much friction and inertia as possible, so that the reader would not be slowed by strenuous deliberations concerning the proper context and meaning of a sentence. [Wikipedia]...

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Philosophy

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The Problems of Philosophy is one of Bertrand Russell's attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics. Russell guides the reader through his famous distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Philosophy

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George Edward Moore, usually known as G. E. Moore, (1873 – 1958) was a distinguished and influential English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and (before them) Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the analytic tradition in philosophy....

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Philosophy

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An Introduction to Metaphysics (Introduction a la Metaphysique) is a 1903 essay by Henri Bergson that explores the concept of reality. For Bergson, reality occurs not in a series of discrete states but as a process similar to that described by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Reality is fluid and cannot be completely understood through reductionistic analysis, which he said implies that we go around an object, gaining knowledge from various perspectives which are relative. Instead, reality can be grasped absolutely only through intuition, which Bergson expressed as entering into the object....

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Philosophy

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Richard le Gallienne was an English poet and critic, who, although unfamiliar with the Persian language, had a profound interest in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1897 he published a collection of 211 quatrains, which was based on earlier English translations, in particular the prose version by Justin Huntly McCarthy. A expanded edition, containing fifty additional quatrains was published in 1901, and this has been used for the present recording. (Summary by Algy Pug)...

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Poetry, Philosophy

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Vom glückseligen Leben von Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC - AD64). Übersetzt durch Albert Forbiger (1798-1878); veröffentlicht 1867. Eine stoische Anleitung zum Leben. Knapp und gut geschrieben. (Summary by redaer)...

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Philosophy

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Aphorisms from the Stoic Greek.

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Philosophy

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Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 v. Chr.–65 n. Chr.) gibt stoische Grundsätze zum Tod und zur Trauer. Übersetzung durch Albert Forbiger (1798-1878) von 1867. (Zusammenfassung von redaer) This reading is in German....

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Philosophy

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John McTaggart (1866-1925) John McTaggart was a British metaphysician and philosophical idealist. In this famous article for the periodical Mind, he introduced the notion of the A, B and C series, which was to become a leading theory in explaining the nature of time....

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Philosophy

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Kalimát-i-Maknúnih (کلمات مکنونه) or The Hidden Words is a book written in Baghdad around 1857 by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. This work is written partly in Arabic and partly in Persian. The Hidden Words is written in the form of a collection of short utterances, 71 in Arabic and 82 in Persian, in which Bahá'u'lláh claims to have taken the basic essence of certain spiritual truths and written them in brief form. Bahá'ís are advised by `Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of Bahá'u'lláh to read them every day and every night and to implement its latent wisdom into their daily lives. He also said that The Hidden Words is a treasury of divine mysteries and that when one ponders its contents, the doors of the mysteries will open. The text of the Hidden Words is divided up into two sections: one from Arabic, and another from Persian. Each consist of several short, numbered passages. The Arabic has 71 passages, and the Persian has 82. This audiobook only contains the Persian section. Each passage begins with an invocation, many of which repeat. Some common invocations include O Son of Spirit, O Son of Man, and O Son of Being. Bahá'í pr...

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Advice, Philosophy, Religion

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volunteers bring you 16 recordings of Chorus of Women by Aristophanes. This was the Weekly Poetry project for October 21, 2012. Aristophanes was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. This poem is from the Thesmophoriazusae; meaning Women Celebrating the Festival of the Thesmophoria, sometimes also called The Poet and the Women) (Summary from Wikipedia )...

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Ancient Texts, Comedy, Humor, Philosophy, Romance, Poetry

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volunteers bring you 9 recordings of At the End of the Feast by Anonymous. A traditional English Christmas Carol, first published in New Christmas Carols in 1642. This poem was the Weekly Poetry Project for the week beginning December 25th 2011. (Summary by Lucy Perry)...

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Holiday, Humor, Philosophy, Poetry

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Nature is a short essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson published anonymously in 1836. It is in this essay that the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. Recent advances in zoology, botany, and geology confirmed Emerson's intuitions about the intricate relationships of Nature at large. The publication of Nature is usually taken to be the watershed moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Henry David Thoreau had read Nature as a senior at Harvard College and took it to heart. It eventually became an essential influence for Thoreau's later writings, including his seminal Walden. (Summary excerpted from Wikipedia by Neeru Iyer)...

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Nature, Philosophy

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Aristotle’s Poetics from the 4th century B.C. aims to give a short study of storytelling. It discusses things like unity of plot, reversal of situation, and character in the context of Greek tragedy, comedy and epic poetry. But it still applies today. It is especially popular with screenwriters as seen in many script gurus’ how-to books. (Summary by Robert Foster)...

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Philosophy

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volunteers bring you 11 recordings of Old Ireland by Walt Whitman. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for August 1st, 2010.

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Philosophy, Poetry

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Orthodoxy is a book that has become a classic of Christian apologetics. In the book's preface Chesterton states the purpose is to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. In it, Chesterton presents an original view of the Christian religion. He sees it as the answer to natural human needs, the answer to a riddle in his own words, and not simply as an arbitrary truth received from somewhere outside the boundaries of human experience....

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Philosophy, Religion

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Notes from Underground is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. The second part of the book is called Àpropos of the Wet Snow, and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator....