Audiobooks narrated by Michael Lunts

Henri Bergson's highly influential book, ‘Creative Evolution' (‘Evolution Creatrice', 1907) established a theory of evolution - called ‘Creative Evolution Theory' - which gained a considerable following in the first half of the 20th Century. It also helped the author to win the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his work investigating the origins of biological information and divergence in the evolutionary process. In this work, Bergson seeks an alternative explanation as to how new forms of life emerge compared to those prevailing at the time. This included both the ‘mechanistic' or deterministic explanations of biological science on the one hand, and on the other the ‘finalist' or strictly teleological explanation of those who believed in the hand of a ‘Creator' or God, coordinating life in a divine plan. Creative Evolution proposes a third explanation in what Bergson calls élan vital' or ‘vital impetus', a force that infuses all matter and drives it forward into an ever-changing and infinite variety of living forms. This appears as a vital impetus that can also be related to humanity's own creative life force. Bergson's book builds on his ‘Theory of Time' as set forth in works such as ‘Matter and Memory' and ‘Time and Free Will'. In these works, and in the present volume, Bergson sees continuous ‘duration' as real time, as opposed to the way in which time is divided up into measured units by the ‘organising' mind of science. Life, as we really experience it, is subject to constant change and our tendency to explain evolutionary change by looking only at ‘ends' achieved rather than the processes by which they emerge, divorces us from the life force itself. Instead, Bergson feels we need to reengage with our instincts as well as with our intelligence in order to understand the evolutionary process, as both co-exist to some extent within us, all forms of life having a common origin in that instinctual, innate knowledge of simpler life forms. Though these may be unconscious or semi-conscious, they are, in Bergson's view, much more in touch with the ever-changing nature of real time than the analytical and rational knowledge of our species As he writes: “Our thought, in its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the true nature of life, the full meaning of the evolutionary movement. Created by life, in definite circumstances, to act on definite things, how can it embrace life, of which it is only an emanation or an aspect?” It is to attempt an answer to this question that ‘Creative Evolution' directs its attention.

Henri Bergson (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Throughout history philosophers have sought to define, understand, and delineate concepts important to human well-being. One such concept is 'knowledge.' Many philosophers believed that absolute, certain knowledge, is possible—that the physical world and ideas formulated about it could be given solid foundation unaffected by the varieties of mere opinion. Sextus Empiricus stands as an example of the 'skeptic' school of thought whose members believed that knowledge was either unattainable or, if a genuine possibility, the conditions necessary to achieve it were next to impossible to satisfy. In other words, in the absence of complete knowledge, one must make do with the information provided by an imperfect world and conveyed to the mind through sense impressions that can often deceive us. Throughout his life Sextus Empiricus entered into intellectual combat with those who confidently claimed to possess indubitable knowledge. For skeptics, the best one can hope to achieve is a reasonable suspension of judgment—remaining ever mindful that claims to knowledge require careful scrutiny, thoughtful analysis, and critical review if we are to prevent ourselves and others from plunging headlong into mistaken notions.

Sextus Empiricus (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Critique of Pure Reason

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.

Immanuel Kant (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Matter and Memory

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.

Henri Bergson (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science

Kant's Prolegomena, although a small book, is without doubt the most important of his writings, writes the translator, Paul Carus. Prolegomena means, literally, prefatory or introductory remarks, and it furnishes us with a key to his main work, The Critique of Pure Reason; in fact, it is an extract containing all the salient ideas of Kant's system. It approaches the subject in the simplest and most direct way and is therefore best adapted as an introduction into his philosophy. It is not without good reasons that the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason is regarded as the beginning of a new era in the history of philosophy; and so it seems that a comprehension of Kant's position, whether we accept or reject it, is indispensable to the student of philosophy. It is not his solution which makes the sage of Ko¨nigsberg the initiator of modern thought, but his formulation of the problem.

Immanuel Kant (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Language, Truth and Logic

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 wer

A.J. Ayer (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: And Its Influence on Morals and Happiness

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness by William Godwin (1756-1836) was first published in February 1793, the month following the execution of Louis XVI of France. It proved to be immediately popular and influential. Godwin, the son of a Calvinist preacher, was educated at Hoxton Academy, after which, he became a minister to a dissenter congregation in Ware. However, partially as a result of reading Rousseau, Helvetius and d' Holbach, his thinking changed and he left the ministry in 1783, the year the American war of Independence ended, by which point he had become a complete sceptic in matters of religion and turned to philosophy and ultimately to anarchism for the truth. This was to be a period of huge political turmoil and continuing uncertainty, which had seen revolution in America and France, as well as the madness of King George III and the Regency crisis. It was a time of Whigs and Tories, of frenzied political argument and a flood of political pamphlet publishing. The Enquiry came hot on the heels of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791-1792) in a time that witnessed severe government repression of civil liberties. In essence it is a wide- ranging disquisition on moral and political philosophy. Its central message or theme is that of the potential for human perfectibility through the pursuit of reason and truth. At times it has a visionary quality, which perhaps explains why its publication was met with such delighted excitement and approval by the young Romantic poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and others. It appeared in a moment of great optimism, when there was a sense that the revolution would lead to sweeping reforms and the abolition of ancient abuses of privilege and inequality and hopes that traditional antagonisms and hostilities between England and France would soon come to an end. For a brief period Godwin was very much the toast of the town, but as the excesses of the Terror mounted in France and the heads rolled beneath the guillotine, thinking changed, attitudes hardened and the mood darkened. Godwin's star fell as rapidly as it had risen. England and France would go to war and as quickly as Godwin had been taken up by the young radicals he was cast aside by them as they matured into conservatives, both socially and politically, rejecting many of the ideas that had seemed so appealing to their younger selves. Godwin was seen as a figurehead for dangerous ideas and as being a representative of the somewhat wilder and more extreme ideas of the young Jacobins. Consequently, he became a scapegoat to be satirised and attacked. It is important to note, however, that although his book was published during revolutionary times Godwin, who was spoken of in social circles as ‘The Philosopher', never advocated violent revolutionary change but indeed insisted that change had to come about gradually and peacefully. He argued that people had to be persuaded, not coerced and advocated systematic philosophical radicalism since history had demonstrated that those who overthrew tyrants with violence frequently became tyrants themselves. Godwin's anarchist vision of society comprises three basic principles: ‘political simplicity', ‘public inspection' and ‘positive sincerity'. He declares in effect that there must be a complete restructuring of human society, prefiguring later thinkers such as Marx in maintaining th

William Godwin (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

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.

Henri Bergson (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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The Wealth of Nations

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.

Adam Smith (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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The Dawn of Day: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

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.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Twilight of the Idols, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense: How to Philosophise with a Hammer

Though Twilight of the Idols (written in a week in 1888 and subtitled How to Philosophise with a Hammer) came near the end of Nietzsche's creative life, he actually recommended it as a starting point for the study of his work. This was because from the beginning he viewed it as an introduction to his wide-ranging views. After an opening chapter of aphorisms - ‘Maxims and Arrows' – he takes a challenging look at ‘The Problem of Socrates', continues to buck the trend with ‘Morality as Anti-Nature', and ‘The Four Great Errors' (starting with ‘The Error of Confusing Cause and Effect'). He makes a scathing attack on conventional morality in ‘The Improvers of Mankind' and finishes with a critical look at his own nation in ‘What Germans Lack'. He roams freely over icons of European culture, dispensing judgment without favour on writers, philosophers, composers and the like in a lively and characteristically Nietzschean torrent: Caryle, Emerson, Rousseau, George Eliot, Dante, Sainte Beuve, The Imitation of Christ, psychology, all fall under his pen; while he gives time to those he continues to admire, such as Schopenhauer, ‘the last German worthy of consideration', and Dostoyevsky, ‘the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn'. He also looks back to where he began in ‘What I Owe to the Ancients'. Vigorous and intensely human, Twilight of the Idols (a nod to Wagner's Götterdämmerung) is certainly instructive, argumentative and good fun! The shorter essay ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense' comes from an earlier stage in Nietzsche's career (1873), though it was not published until two decades later. It has significantly influenced postmodernists of the 20th century. Twilight of the Idols is translated by Thomas Cannon. ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense' is translated by W. A. Haussman.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in Nihilism and Ironic Affinities

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.

Robert Morrison (Author), Michael Lunts (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Michael Lunts