Michael O'Sullivan has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is The Levelling.
The Levelling
Summary
A brilliant analysis of the transition in world economics, finance, and power as the era of globalization ends and gives way to new power centers and institutions. The world is at a turning point similar to the fall of communism. Then, many focused on the collapse itself, and failed to see that a bigger trend, globalization, was about to take hold. The benefits of globalization - through the freer flow of money, people, ideas, and trade - have been many. But rather than a world that is flat, what has emerged is one of jagged peaks and rough, deep valleys characterized by wealth inequality, indebtedness, political recession, and imbalances across the world's economies. These peaks and valleys are undergoing what Michael O'Sullivan calls "the levelling" - a major transition in world economics, finance, and power. What's next is a levelling-out of wealth between poor and rich countries, of power between nations and regions, of political accountability from elites to the people, and of institutional power away from central banks and defunct 20th-century institutions such as the WTO and the IMF. O'Sullivan then moves to ways we can develop new, pragmatic solutions to such critical problems as political discontent, stunted economic growth, the productive functioning of finance, and political-economic structures that serve broader needs. The Levelling comes at a crucial time in the rise and fall of nations. It has special importance for the US as its place in the world undergoes radical change - the ebbing of influence, profound questions over its economic model, societal decay, and the turmoil of public life.
©2019 Michael O'Sullivan (P)2019 Hachette Audio
A Macat Analysis of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind
Summary
What we think of as the "mind" is little more than an illusion. That's the provocative thesis of British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's 1949 work The Concept of Mind. Seventeenth-century French writer René Descartes, one of the fathers of philosophy, imagined the mind and body as two separate entities that combine to form a human being. This concept came to be called "mind-body dualism." Ryle set about ridiculing Descartes's idea of, as he put it, a "ghost in the machine" stating that it was "entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle...not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind." Ryle argues that our distinction between concepts pertaining to the mind and others pertaining to matter arise from a problematic use of language (and particularly through what he calls "category mistakes"). In The Concept of Mind, his best-known and most important book, Ryle establishes a new branch of philosophy, "the philosophy of mind." The work remains an important statement in mid-20th-century philosophy. You can find out more about how Ryle's ideas have been challenged and applied - and how his work has impacted on thinkers in other academic disciplines - by exploring further in the Macat Library. Macat's analyses cover 14 different subjects in the humanities and social sciences. To browse our whole multi media library and get a lot more, visit www.macat.com today. Macat. Learn better. Think smarter. Aim higher.
©2016 Macat Inc (P)2016 Macat Inc
A Macat Analysis of David Hume's An Enquiry of Human Understanding
Summary
Excited by the possibilities hinted at by the major scientific breakthroughs of the day, Scottish philosopher David Hume set out to construct a science of the mind. 1748's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is the result. A work that had a huge influence on great thinkers including celebrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant, An Enquiry is Hume's examination of how we obtain information and form beliefs. He argues that we mainly gain knowledge through our senses, a theory known as empiricism. But while the impressions from our senses are key to our beliefs about the world, Hume argues that reason and facts play only a limited part. His thinking here led him to dangerous places. His conclusion that many religious beliefs of the time could therefore not be justified was viewed with great suspicion during his lifetime. Yet An Enquiry is now widely considered one of the greatest works of Western philosophy, and Hume one of its key thinkers. You can find out more about how David Hume's ideas have been challenged and applied - and how his work has impacted on thinkers in other academic disciplines - by exploring further in the Macat Library.
©2016 Macat Inc (P)2016 Macat Inc
A Macat Analysis of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Summary
More than two centuries after its initial publication in 1781, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason remains perhaps the most influential text in modern philosophy. Kant himself claimed his work as a revolutionary document and insisted that it changed the discipline of philosophy as thoroughly as Copernicus had changed astronomy 300 years earlier, when he said the Earth revolved around the sun and not the other way round. Kant argues that metaphysicians (philosophers who are primarily concerned with the fundamental causes and nature of things) could move away from their endless battles about whether human knowledge must conform to independently given objects. Instead he argues that progress in philosophy is possible only by agreeing that objects conform to forms of human cognition, or awareness. Much of the history of philosophy can be recounted in terms of how thinkers have reacted to Kant's work. His critique continues to provoke and inform a range of contemporary debates, both within and beyond philosophy.
©2016 Macat Inc (P)2016 Macat Inc