Dying for Ideas: On the Dangerous Life of Philosophers
14.99 €
11.99 €
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Dying for Ideas: On the Dangerous Life of Philosophers
14.99 €
11.99 €
What do Socrates, Hypatia, Giordano Bruno, Thomas More and Jan Patocka have in common? One day they were all faced with the most difficult choice of all: to die, remaining true to their ideas, or to renounce them and stay alive. And each of them chose death. Death became not only an integral part of their biographies, but also a philosophical statement - a testament in the truest sense of the word. "Socrates may indeed never have written a single line, but his death is one of the greatest philosophical bestsellers of all time." Kostika Bradatan's book Dying for Ideas explores the liminal situation in which philosophers find themselves when the last means of convincing themselves of their rightness becomes their own dying bodies and the public spectacle of their deaths. The work is based primarily on material from the history of philosophy, but it offers an interdisciplinary approach to the central problem. It is a book about Socrates and Heidegger, but also about Gandhi's "fast unto death" and the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk, about Girard and Pasolini, about self-improvement and the art of the essay. Philosophy, the author thinks, should not be only an academic exercise, but an art of living, and any art of living is accompanied by an art of dying. Kostika Bradathan is a noted contemporary American philosopher and professor at Honors College at Texas Tech University.
See also:
- All books by the publisher
- All books by the author
- All books in the series Criticism and essayism