How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks - Adam Nicolson

Descriere How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks - Adam Nicolson

\nNicolson crafts a geography of the ancient world and a brilliant exploration of our connections to the past. \n \nWhat is the nature of things? \nWhat is justice? How can I be myself? \nHow should we treat each other? \n \nBefore the Greeks, the idea of the world was dominated by god-kings and their priests. Twenty-five hundred years ago, in a succession of small eastern Mediterranean harbor cities, a few heroic men and women decided to cast off mental subservience and apply their own thinking minds to the conundrums of life. \n \nThese great innovators shaped the beginnings of western philosophy. Through the questioning voyager Odysseus, Homer explored how we might navigate our way through the world. Heraclitus, in Ephesus, was the first to consider the interrelatedness of things. Xenophanes of Colophon was the first champion of civility. On the Aegean island of Lesbos, the early lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus asked themselves, How can I be true to myself? On Samos, Pythagoras imagined an everlasting soul and took his ideas to Italy, where they flowered again in surprising and radical forms. \n \nThe award-winning writer Adam Nicolson travels with us through this transforming world and asks what light these ancient thinkers can throw on our deepest preconceptions. Enhanced with maps, photographs, and artwork, How to Be is an expedition into early ideas. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and makes the fundamental questions of the ancient philosophers new again. What are the principles of the physical world? How can we be good in it? And why do we continue to ask these questions? It is an enthralling, exhilarating journey.\n

Detalii

Brand

Farrar, Straus And Giroux

Categorie

ENSTK

EAN / GTIN

9780374610104

Magazine

1

Disponibilitate

in stock