Socrates: A Life Worth Living

by Devra Lehmann Narrated by Robert Petkoff

Overview

A lively and accessible introduction to the quintessential philosopher, and the civilized world's first enemy of the state.

Socrates: A Life Worth Living traces the life and ideas of one of Western civilization's founding philosophers, whose influence is still felt more than two thousand years later. Socrates is famous for how he died, executed by the Athenian government for corrupting the youth of Athens, but his most important contribution was to challenge the people around him to test their ideas and beliefs in conversation with each other, in the belief that in this way we could become a society that knows the difference between truth and falsehood, and find what makes a life worthwhile. He did not claim to have definitive answers, but he knew that knowledge was the key to finding them, and he invited everyone he met to join him in his quest. 
 
The Socratic Method is the first, and still the best, method for distinguishing truth from falsehood. In Socrates: A Life Worth Living, award-winning author Devra Lehmann gives us the first biography for young readers of the thinker who has seen no equal.

Cover design: Stewart Cauley

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"What a welcome book! Socrates—relentless in the pursuit of truth, champion of the Socratic method, fearless prisoner of conscience—went willingly to his death upon the verdict of an Athenian jury. Why? He lived almost 2,500 years ago, and yet the questions he raised and the controversies he generated are disputed as heatedly now as they were then. Lehmann weaves into Socrates’s story the details of daily life and politics, historical context, and scenes from the comic stage that bring passages from Plato’s dialogues to life. The resulting animation of philosophy is as imaginative as it is realistic."
—Debra Nails, professor emerita, Michigan State University, and author of The People of Plato

"A thorough study of the brilliant, timeless, entertainingly abrasive thinker. . . .
     This account is based on judicious use of source material and massive research and further livened throughout by frequent photos or diagrams of major Athenian buildings, sexually suggestive images on artifacts, and even an illustration of a hemlock plant. Women do get rare but occasional mentions.
     A vivid, perceptive portrait aimed at spurring readers to take up the quest. (map, notes, note on sources, bibliography, glossary, index)."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2022-08-31
A thorough study of the brilliant, timeless, entertainingly abrasive thinker.

As in her outstanding Spinoza: The Outcast Thinker (2014), Lehmann doesn’t present an encyclopedic analysis of Socrates’ life and thought, focusing instead on themes and ideas that will (or should, anyway) provoke immediate responses from today’s readers. Here, then, she steers (more or less) clear of esoteric philosophical topics to describe her subject’s lifelong quest for clarity on ethical issues, on how to conduct a meaningful life, and on the nature of true virtue. In retracing the course of his life, she also explores his adversarial relationship with the polis of Athens as soldier, public figure, and ultimately political victim. Along with describing his trains of reason in clear, simple language, she brings him to life as a “modest but arrogant, ugly but alluring, sensuous but ascetic, mocking but earnest” force of nature who considered himself not a teacher but a sort of intellectual midwife, asking thorny questions to confound the supposedly wise but leaving it to others (us, for instance) to work out answers. This account is based on judicious use of source material and massive research and further livened throughout by frequent photos or diagrams of major Athenian buildings, sexually suggestive images on artifacts, and even an illustration of a hemlock plant. Women do get rare but occasional mentions.

A vivid, perceptive portrait aimed at spurring readers to take up the quest. (map, notes, note on sources, bibliography, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175105903
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	12/13/2022
Series:	PHILOSOPHY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Edition description:	Unabridged

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