Articles liés à How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks

How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks - Couverture rigide

Nicolson, Adam

 
9780374610104: How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 037461010X ISBN 13 : 9780374610104
Editeur : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023

Synopsis

Nicolson crafts a geography of the ancient world and a brilliant exploration of our connections to the past.

What is the nature of things?
What is justice? How can I be myself?
How should we treat each other?

Before 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.

These 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.

The 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.

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À propos de l'auteur

Adam Nicolson is the author of many books on history, landscape, and great literature. He is the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, the W. H. Heinemann Award, and the Ondaatje Prize. His books include The Life Between the Tides and Why Homer Matters. He lives on a farm in Sussex.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date d'édition
2023
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
037461010X
ISBN 13 
9780374610104
Reliure
Relié
Nombre de pages
368
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible