How to Be: Life Lessons From the Early Greeks

by Nicolson, Adam

Format

Paperback $9.49
Condition Bargain Brand-new publisher overstock that may have a remainder mark and minor wear from handling. Bargain
$9.49

List price: $20.00 List Price This is the manufacturer's recommended retail price. Please note older versions of books may not reflect the most current list price due to price adjustments made on newer printings. We strive to keep the website's list price updated to match the current MSRP, based on information from publishers.

About

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. 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.

Enhanced with maps, photographs, and artwork, How to Be is an expedition into early ideas. Adam 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 they physical world? How can we be good in it? And why do we continue to ask these questions? It is an enthralling, exhilarating journey.
Additional Info