Michael Lunts has narrated 14 audiobooks on Listento.it by 7 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 22 ratings. The most-rated is The Will to Power.
The Will to Power
Summary
Nietzsche never recovered from his mental breakdown in 1889 and therefore was unable to further any plans he had for the ‘magnum opus’ he had once intended, bringing together in a coherent whole his mature philosophy. It was left to his close friend Heinrich Köselitz and his sister Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche to go through the remaining notebooks and unpublished writings, choosing sections of particular interest to produce The Will to Power, giving it the subtitle An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. It was published in 1901, was expanded in subsequent years and was translated into English in its expanded form in 1910 by Anthony M Ludovici, who had done so much to bring Nietzsche’s work to the English-speaking public. Ludovici explains that for Nietzsche, the Will to Power was the fundamental principle of all life, a view that could be found in many of his earlier texts, including Thus Spoke Zarathustra: ‘Where there is life, there is also will: not, however, Will to Life, but - so teach I thee - Will to Power!’ (In this, Nietzsche was concerned to overtake Schopenhauer’s concept of the ‘Will to Live’.) This posthumous compilation is arranged in four books (divided into 1,067 sections): European Nihilism A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto The Principles of a New Valuation Discipline and Breeding Among the themes given prominence by this compilation - and it is, it must be remembered, basically an anthology - are nihilism, metaphysics and the future of Europe. Nietzsche identified Christianity (and its claim to be ‘higher and better’) and its ‘meek/weak’ attitude as one cause of the nihilism that so concerned him. Another side of the coin was the ineluctable basic human nature of ’the will to power’. Deny that, and nihilism results. But passive nihilism (following the breakdown of social conventions, including conventional religion) can be counteracted by active nihilism and the role of the ‘ubermensch’, the self-reliant. In aphorism after aphorism he argued for the creation of new values based on acceptance that there is nothing beyond ourselves. It remains his conviction that it is the men who are the masters of themselves - a dominating elite - who must lead. But a deeply human initiative, not the creation of a master race! Aphorism 22 posits, ‘Nihilism. It may be two things: A. Nihilism as a sign of enhanced spiritual strength: active Nihilism. B. Nihilism as a sign of the collapse and decline of spiritual strength: passive Nihilism.’ Nietzsche’s powerful, uncompromising language continues right to the closing moments, where he concludes, ‘And even you yourselves are this will to power - and nothing besides!’ Translation by Anthony M Ludovici.
Public Domain (P)2019 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Human, All Too Human
Summary
It was with Human, All Too Human, first published in 1878, that Nietzsche developed the aphoristic style that so suited his challenging views and uncompromising style. The text is divided into three main sections: 'Of the First and Last Things', 'History of the Moral Feelings' and 'The Religious Life'. But the style remains the same: he declares the subjects - dream and civilisation; private ethics and world ethics; gratitude and revenge; well-wishing; vanity - and then discusses them in a few sentences or sometimes in a longer passage. This style enables him to cover an extraordinarily wide range of topics as his fertile and lively mind wander over man in his element. This audiobook also contains the two parts of volume II: 'Miscellaneous Maxims' and 'The Wanderer and His Shadow'. These two collections are less well known - unjustly so, as they are packed with Nietzsche's wonderfully uncompromising views and observation on a lucky dip of topics including debauchery, bach, danger in admiration, deception in love and dishonest praise. Here is an example: 'End and goal. Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has also not reached its goal. A parable.' All in all, this 15-hour collection in an appropriately conversational reading by Michael Lunts is a fascinating, at times infuriating yet always entertaining discovery.
Public Domain (P)2016 Ukemi Audiobooks
The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom)
Summary
The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom) is one of Nietzsche's greatest books. His wonderfully fertile mind roams over mankind, his thoughts, his emotions, his behaviour and his weaknesses with remarkable clarity, with insight - but also with humour! In this work are 383 separate paragraphs, some short, some long, but all singular observations - the epitome of his famous aphoristic style. 'Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.' 'The world is overfull of beautiful things, but it is nevertheless poor, very poor, in beautiful moments.' Being intellectual, he declares, is not equivalent to 'taking things seriously': why not laugh while thinking! When should one be an Epicurean and when a Stoic? Nietzsche may be best known for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (The Gay Science was published in 1882, a year before Zarathustra, and actually contains its opening paragraph!) but with its potpourri of comments, some wild, some sharp, some rather odd, it is totally different in tone. The Gay Science represents the Friedrich Nietzsche one would want to meet. All of the 77 poems included by Nietzsche in The Gay Science have been placed at the end of the main text, to be enjoyed by dedicated Nietzscheans. The aphorisms and poems are persuasively read by Michael Lunts.
Public Domain (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Summary
‘How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.’ So begins The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), the first major text by Adam Smith, who, seven years later, was to publish what was to become one of the major economic classics, The Wealth of Nations (1776). However, Smith regarded The Theory of Moral Sentiments as his most important work because in it he identified the profound human instinct to act not necessarily in self-interest but through, as he phrased it, a ‘mutual sympathy of sentiments’. The work is divided into seven parts, starting with Part 1: Of the Propriety of Action, in which Smith proposes the idea that ‘Sympathy’ can underlie human actions towards others, prompted by various emotions, be it perception of misfortune in others or simply ‘the pleasure of mutual sympathy’. Other parts include ‘Of the Effect of Utility upon the Sentiment of Approbation’, ‘Of the Character of Virtue’ and finally ‘Of Systems of Moral Philosophy’. In this concluding section, Smith considers the views of other philosophers, including Epicurus, Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Hobbes, as well as the opinions of his mentor, Dr Francis Hutchison, an important influence. In short, Smith proposes that man’s sense of morality is interwoven with social instincts as much as reason or self-interest. Sympathy - the contemporary word we would use is empathy - is a universal and strongly held emotion in mankind, he says, imbued with virtue, prudence, justice and beneficence. The Theory of Moral Sentiments was, and remains, a milestone in Western philosophy.
Public Domain (P)2018 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Time and Free Will
Summary
Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was the leading French philosopher of the first half of the 20th century. Near the end of his life when he was forced to register with the police in Nazi-occupied France he wrote: ‘Academic. Philosopher. Nobel prize winner. Jew.’ He was indeed all these things and many more, being as famous in his lifetime for his political activities, working with US President Woodrow Wilson to found the League of Nations, as for being a member of the Académie française and president of the Society for Psychic Research. Time and Free Will, his doctoral thesis, was published as a book in 1889 and attacks and rejects the mechanistic view of causality described in Kant’s version of space and time and proceeds to attempt to define free-will and consciousness by separating space and time. In the process he ascribes temporality to the immediate data of consciousness, or lived time, calling it ‘the duration’, la durée. This duration is a key concept in his philosophy. He defines this state as the precondition for the possibility of free will and declares that freedom is mobility. He argues that science cannot measure changes in consciousness qualitatively, only quantitively. His approach is dualistic, expressing a preference for instinct, or intuition, to intellect and characterises intuition as memory rather than perception. In effect he asserts that free will is a fact. For Bergson intuition is experience in action and entering into the thing or state, empathy, is the way to absolute, rather than relative knowledge. His writing is remarkable for his use of striking imagery - his Nobel prize in 1927 was for literature - but in spite of this imagery which he relies on to illuminate his meaning, he was adamant that no fixed image can adequately represent the mobility he refers to, the unending ‘becomings’ of life. His influence seemed to fade after World War II with the coming of a new generation of continental philosophers including Jean Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty - existentialists, whose interests lay in responding to Husserlian phenomenology and the thinking of Heidegger. However, there has a been a growing resurgence of interest in his writings because of the acknowledged importance of his ideas to the work of Gilles Deleuze, who found in Bergson’s notion of an open society a response to the dominant arguments of phenomenology. Hindu writers have also noted similarities between Bergson’s ideas on matter, consciousness, intuition and evolution with Hindu thinking and perspectives. Time and Free Will, translated by F.L. Pogson, is read with customary clarity by Michael Lunts for Ukemi audiobooks. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Untimely Considerations
Summary
Untimely Considerations contain four essays: 'David Strauss - Writer and Confessor'; 'On the Use and Abuse of History for Life'; 'Schopenhauer as Educator'; and 'Richard Wagner at Bayreuth'. The essays date from the early part of Nietzsche’s life when his Romantic view on life and art was coloured by the powerful writings and personalities of such figures as Schopenhauer and Wagner - as the titles of two of the essays proclaim. Published between 1873 and 1876, they were presented under the umbrella title 'Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen', which has been variously translated as 'Thoughts Out Of Season', 'Untimely Meditations', 'Unfashionable Observations' - and 'Untimely Considerations'. They reflect his early interest particularly in culture, philosophy, and the interplay between art, science and life - topics which he would revisit over the following years. In ‘David Strauss: the Confessor and Writer’, he labels Strauss - a prominent Protestant theologian of the time - as a Philistine, in humorous but derogatory style. In ‘On the Use and Abuse of History for Life’ Nietzsche sets out to re-examine the role of history in informing contemporary life, and, controversially promotes the importance of individual ‘great men’ rather than the ‘masses’. This theme is continued, in a way, in the third essay, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, where he lauds those individual and honest qualities of his philosophic mentor. However, Nietzsche faced more difficulty with the final essay - where he considers both the work and the personality of Wagner - because his own attitudes towards the challenging composer were changing. These four works together present a fascinating portrait of the younger Nietzsche emerging into the highly charged and figure he was to become. Translations: David Strauss and Richard Wagner - Anthony M Ludovici ; On the Use and Abuse of History for Life - Ian Johnston; Schopenhauer as Educator by Adrian Collins.
Public Domain (P)2018 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Nietzsche and Buddhism
Summary
Morrison offers an illuminating study of two linked traditions that have figured prominently in 20th-century thought: Buddhism and the philosophy of Nietzsche. Nietzsche admired Buddhism, but saw it as a dangerously nihilistic religion; he forged his own affirmative philosophy in reaction against the nihilism that he feared would overwhelm Europe. Morrison shows that Nietzsche's influential view of Buddhism was mistaken, and that far from being nihilistic, it has notable and perhaps surprising affinities with Nietzsche's own project of the transvaluation of all values. Robert Morrison is both a trained philosopher and a practising Buddhist.
©1997 Robert G Morrison (P)2019 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Matter and Memory
Summary
Matter and Memory, (Matière et Mémoire), published in 1896, was the second book written by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), one of the leading French philosophers of his age. It followed Time and Free Will (1889) and helped to establish him as a major force in anti-mechanistic thought, opposing the trend towards uncompromisingly secular and scientific views. However, when Matter and Memory appeared, Bergson was 39 and had yet to become the hugely influential figure he became in the first decades of the 20th century. The first edition carried the subtitle An Essay on the Relationship of Body to Spirit and although this was dropped by the author when revising the text in later editions, it remains a useful introductory statement. For in Matter and Memory, Bergson set out to consider the classic problem of the union of ‘soul and body’ by the analysis of memory. He sought to refute the proposition, then very current, that memory, being ‘lodged’ in the nervous system, localised in the brain, was therefore material. Bergson rejected this reduction of mind to matter. He considered memory to be deeply spiritual. The first edition explained his approach thus: ‘The brain merely guides memory towards actions in the present. The brain inserts memories into the present, with a view to action. The brain has a practical function. The body is the centre of action. Cerebral lesions do not damage memories or the memory. Such lesions disrupt the practical operations of the brain. Memories cannot become incarnate. They always exist, but they are powerless. In fact, the brain no longer functions as intended, and consequently these memories cannot be used.’ In his introduction to the fifth edition of Matter and Memory (1908), used in this recording, Bergson writes, ‘This book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of a definite example, that of memory. It is, then, frankly dualistic. But, on the other hand, it deals with body and mind in such a way as, we hope, to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism, and which cause it, though suggested by the immediate verdict of consciousness and adopted by common sense, to be held in small honour among philosophers.’ Though the next generation of French philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty and Sartre acknowledged the influence of Bergson, his reputation declined after World War II. It was revived in the mid-1960s following the championing of his work by Gilles Deleuze. Bergson’s place in 20th century philosophy, and the relevance of his views today, are secure. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2021 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Critique of Judgement
Summary
Kant’s Critique of Judgement is the third and final part of his series of Critiques, which began with Critique of Pure Reason and continued with Critique of Practical Reason. Critique of Judgement was published in 1790 and is divided into two parts, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and the Critique of Teleological Judgement. Our ‘judgements of taste’, as Kant describes our aesthetic judgements, have both a personal and a universal function: personal because we have a subjective aesthetic response to the ‘agreeable’, the ‘beautiful’, the ‘sublime’ and the ‘good’; but also there is a ‘universal’ aspect because our aesthetic response has a ’disinterested’ element. This brings under Kant’s spotlight, for example, the concept of beauty and the perception of beauty. Teleology, the idea that something has an end or purpose, is discussed in the second section. Here Kant, though not an atheist, questions, among other things, metaphysical proofs of God, including God as an intelligent designer. Translation of Critique of Judgement by James Creed Meredith.
Public Domain (P)2018 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Language, Truth and Logic
Summary
The front cover of the second edition of Language, Truth and Logic carried this statement in capital letters: ‘THE CLASSIC TEXT WHICH FOUNDED LOGICAL POSITIVISM - AND MODERN BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.’ It was a bold statement, but the book, first published in 1936 when A. J. Ayer was just 25 and a lecturer on philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford, drew unstinting praise from leading figures in the field, including Bertrand Russell. Its effect was to ‘sweep away the cobwebs and revitalise British philosophy and it continued to make an international impact on 20th century thought’. The outline on the back of the first edition laid out the ground. ‘This book will appeal not merely to philosophical specialists but to all those who are in any way concerned about the nature and scope of human knowledge. The author deserves the gratitude of all students of philosophy for his clear and definitive exposition of the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. Relying on the principle that a statement of fact, to be genuine, must be empirically verifiable, he demonstrates the impossibility of any system of speculative philosophy which attempts to transcend the field of natural science and shows that if philosophy is to make good its claim to be a genuine branch of knowledge, it must confine itself to works of clarification and analysis. And he describes how the philosopher, by the provision of definitions and the examination of their consequences, perfects our understanding of the propositions that are expressed in the language of science and in that of everyday life. In this way the author succeeds in bridging the gap between philosophy and science which was one of the most unfortunate legacies of the 19th century. He shows that philosophy and science, so far from being competing brands of knowledge, are complementary to one another. The philosopher finds in the theories of the scientist the richest material for his analyses; the scientist looks to the philosopher to dispel the confusions which result from the use of unanalysed concepts, and to formulate definitions which will lead to the development of new and fruitful theories. In addition, the author succeeds in settling the old controversy between science and religion, by proving that there cannot be any logical ground of enmity between them. For the statements of the theist, in so far as they involve the assertion of the existence of a transcendent God, are found to be devoid of literal significance, since they are not empirically verifiable. They are expressions of feeling, and not statements of fact; and, consequently, they cannot possibly come into contradiction with any scientific hypothesis. And the book deals no less conclusively with the question of personal survival. It is shown that the empirical self cannot possibly survive since its self-identity must be defined in terms of the self-identity of the body; and that the assumption of the existence of a metaphysical soul as distinct from the empirical self is not a genuine hypothesis. Particular interest will be aroused by the author's treatment of the propositions of logic and mathematics, which he regards as tautologies, by his method of dealing with the question "What is truth?" and above all by his attempt to provide a definitive solution of all the most important problems which have given rise to disputes among philosophers in the past. Historically this book marks a return to the principles of English empiricism which were forsaken in England at the close of the 19th century. It stamps the author as one of the leading exponents of the scientific movement in philosophy which is one of the most important features of the intellectual life of our time.'
©1936 A. J. Ayer (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Critique of Pure Reason
Summary
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason can lay claim to being the most important single work of modern philosophy, a work whose methodology, if not necessarily always its conclusions, has had a profound influence on almost all subsequent philosophical discourse. In this work Kant addresses, in a groundbreaking elucidation of the nature of reason, the age-old question of philosophy: “How do we know what we know?” and the limits of what it is that we can know with certainty. Immanuel Kant (1724 to 1804) lived his long life against the background of the Enlightenment and shared in that movement’s growing confidence in the ability of human reason, in the sciences, mathematics and, Kant was to argue, in philosophy too, to explain matters that had previously been the preserve of purely speculative thought and of metaphysics. The Critique of Pure Reason is exactly that, a critique of what ‘pure’ reason, that is to say reason independent of empirical evidence, could claim as truth, particularly with regard to such questions as freedom, causality, and the existence of a Supreme Being. As well as challenging what he saw as the contradictory metaphysical traditions of past philosophers, Kant critiqued both rationalism and empiricism, the alternative schools of philosophical thought dominant at the time, which argued, respectively, for either reason or experience as being the key to our understanding. In the Critique Kant turns these opposing schools on their head and expounds what Kant himself called a revolutionary and all-encompassing ‘Transcendental Idealism’. Instead of an objective reality which we can somehow ‘know’ through either reason or experience, Kant proposes that our knowledge of empirical objects depends upon our subjective reasoning of them (“objects must conform to our knowledge”) and not, as was usually assumed, the other way around. Kant’s exhaustively thorough and ‘scientific’ working out of this central thesis meant that all philosophers who came after him were set a benchmark against which to propound their own arguments with equal thoroughness. Indeed, Kant himself thought that, so comprehensive had his work been in its analysis both of the nature of reason itself and of the shortcomings of all previous thinkers on the subject, that his Critique of Pure Reason might be considered ‘the last word’. While this was not to be the case, this seminal work still maintains its power to challenge the way we think of ourselves in relation to the world around us and, if we really engage with Kant’s arguments and insights, to change our very understanding of what it means to be a ‘rational’ human being. This reading uses Kant’s heavily revised Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1787. It is read by Michael Lunts who has also recorded Kant’s two subsequent Critiques, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement for Ukemi Audiobooks.Translator: Norman Kemp Smith. All the main footnotes included.
©Public Domain (P)2021 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Dawn of Day
Summary
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is one of the towering intellectual figures of the 19th century, a philologist, philosopher and poet of profound complexity and range whose writings in moral philosophy continue to resonate in the present day. The Dawn of Day (Morgenröte), first published in 1881, marked a clear shift in his thinking and prefigures many of the ideas that would be further developed in his later writings. The clue is in the title, sometimes translated as Dawn or Morning, which suggests the beginning of a different awareness. One of Nietzsche’s least studied works, The Dawn of Day consists of 575 passages ranging from a few lines to numerous pages in length, in which the philosopher considers and dissects the nature of reality and of conventional 19th-century European ethics and morality. The great German thinker and classicist makes considerable use of aphorisms and frequently uses an ironic tone to criticise the nature of the morality suffusing the fabric of the society of his day. In John M Kennedy’s excellent translation, Nietzsche ranges across the influences exerted on the mind of modern man referencing classical sources, the Bible, Christian thinkers and the writer’s own contemporaries. The influence of Schopenhauer and an admiration for Kant are still apparent in his thinking, but Nietzsche clearly begins to develop his own world view, his own philosophy in this work. His burgeoning moral and cultural relativism in his critique of Christian thought is incisive and constant and the roots of the notions later developed into the ideas of ‘the death of God’ and ‘the will to power’ are clearly discernible. The work is organised in four books containing Nietzsche’s reflections on everything including politics, history, art, music, theatre, literature, psychology, religion, culture, crime and punishment, heroism, idealism and a plethora of other issues affecting the individual in society. It is an attempt at creating and describing a modern European perspective on existence while simultaneously exploring the nature of thinking and belief. Nietzsche alternates between pondering, preaching, teasing and provoking the listener. For instance when considering education he remarks, ‘…nobody learns, nobody teaches, nobody wishes, to endure solitude’. Then, shortly afterwards, he states, ‘Master and Pupil. By cautioning his pupils against himself the teacher shows his humanity.’ The Dawn of Day remains an abundant source of food for thought and is expertly presented by reader Michael Lunts for Ukemi Audiobooks.
Public Domain (P)2019 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Wealth of Nations
Summary
The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, is the first book of modern political economy and still provides the foundation for the study of that discipline. An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, to give it is full title, was an immediate best seller and has since rightfully claimed its place in the Western intellectual canon. Its author, Adam Smith (1723-1790), was one of the brightest stars of the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment. Along with important discussions of economics and political theory, Smith mixed plain common sense with large measures of history, philosophy, psychology, sociology and much else. Few texts remind us so clearly that the Enlightenment was very much a lived experience, a concern with improving them human condition in practical ways for real people. This recording opens with an informative and helpful introduction by Mark G. Spencer of Brock University, Ontario, Canada, an authority on the period. He places the work and its concepts against the background of Smith’s life and influences, and includes his strong friendships with key figures of the time varying from the philosopher David Hume, the chemist William Cullen and the architect Robert Adam. The Wealth of Nations is divided into five books. Book I: Of the Causes of Improvement in the Productive Powers of Labour, and of the Order according to which its Produce is Naturally Distributed Among the Different Ranks of the People. Book 2: Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock. Book 3: Of the Different Progress of Opulence in Different Nations. Book 4: Of Systems of Political Economy. Book 5: Of the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth. A masterpiece by any measure, The Wealth of Nations remains a classic of world literature to be usefully enjoyed by listeners today. It receives an engaged and clear reading from Michael Lunts. A PDF is available for download containing tables illustrating the Prices of Wheat and the Malt Tax. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our Desktop Site.
Public Domain (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Malice Masterpieces: The First Five Books
Summary
Box set of all five of the first five Malice books of the series, including Mysterious Malice (Book 1), Meticulous Malice (Book 2), Mistaken Malice (Book 3), Malicious Malice (Book 4), Masterful Malice (Book 5).
©2012, 2021 K'Anne Meinel (P)2021 K'Anne Meinel