Spencer A. Klavan - Böcker

A book to let you know you're not alone: the wisdom of the ages can guide us through the struggles of the present. The fate of our civilisation depends on whether ordinary people internalise the truth and beauty conveyed in the masterpieces of Western culture. Spencer Klavan, classicist and podcaster, defends that culture and explains why and how we must hand it on to the next generation.It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad. Is this the endgame? Have we come to closing time in the West? Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Today’s “five essential crises” are: • The Crisis of Reality: Is there such a thing as objective truth—and even if there is, can “virtual reality” replace it?• The Crisis of the Body: Not just the “transgender” insanity, but the push for a “transhumanist” future• The Crisis of Meaning: Evolution—both biological and cultural—is a process of endless replication, of copying. But is there an original model that gives us an aspiration to aim for? Do our lives and actions have meaning?• The Crisis of Religion: Science has not eliminated man's religious impulse, but rather  misdirected it—and wrongly dismissed the profound philosophical plausibility of Judeo-Christian revelation.• The Crisis of the Regime: Has America reached a point of inevitable collapse? Republican government was meant to end the destructive cycle of regimes rising and falling—but can it? Klavan brings to the West’s defence the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future. That wisdom can improve our own lives and the lives of those around us—and ultimately save the West.

Two and half centuries ago, John Adams complained, “Our modern philosophers are all the low grovelling disciples of Epicurus.”That’s even truer today.The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus is—acknowledged or not—the source of secular “woke” liberalism.In his own time, Epicurus was a fringe thinker. He and his few followers speculated about how invisibly small entities of indivisible matter called “atoms,” hurtling endlessly through an infinite void according to fixed physical laws, could explain the world and everything in it. Most ancient philosophers thought his speculations abstruse and counterintuitive, and he gained few adherents.But today, the overwhelming success of modern science has turned Epicurus’ fringe philosophy into the governing worldview of nearly everyone. Atoms hurtling through a void—that is what everything is made of, according to our scientific gurus.Along with this new atomism has come a whole constellation of fashionable Epicurean ideas: that peace and contentment are the most important things in life, that reality is an infinite expanse of multiverses, that divine power has no part to play in human affairs.Epicureanism is the philosophy that now runs the world—and if we are to understand ourselves in the twenty-first century, we must understand Epicurus, who died in the third century B.C.In this convenient volume, the classicist Spencer A. Klavan presents core selections from Epicurus’ own writings and those of his most famous ancient disciple, the poet Lucretius. Listen in as the teacher outlines for his students how his system of physics, logic, and ethics works. Read the elegant presentations of these Epicurean ideas aimed at the Roman upper crust. And consider with Klavan how this philosophy has gripped the modern mind, why it is falling apart, and why it leaves confusion in its wake.