Carl Manchester' LibriVox recommendations.
I solomnly attest that I have listened to the recordings listed below and they are well read. I have included things I have recorded myself, as I am a mad egotist and I have had good feedback.
Email: carl@carlmanchester.net
Mikhail Bakunin - God and the State, read by Carl Manchester
Bakunin was a prominent Russian political dissident of the 19th century and is considered to be one of the main intellectual originators of anarchism as a political doctrine. God and the State is a fairly strident attack on religion and its role in social and political life, particularly for the time, and was written shortly before Bakunin and other anarchists were ejected from the Communist International by the Marxists. LibriVox founder Hugh picked this in his blog as one of his top five LibriVox recordings.
Epictetus - The Enchiridion, read by DE Wittkower
Maybe a little obscure (by my standards at least), but very interesting and well-chosen. It presents itself as a handbook for how to live.
Immanuel Kant - Perpetual Peace, read by DE Wittkower
In which Kant expounds on some ideas about the nature of relations between states, their forms of government, the conditions which give rise to a cycle of wars. There's much in what Kant says that we can recognise in contemporary attitudes to international law. DE, who is a philosophy professor, is going to release a seminar recording to accompany this, which should help the listener, particularly in linking this to Kant's wider philosophy.
John McTaggart - The Unreality of Time, read by Carl Manchester
Looks at different ways of looking at time and the relationships between events in "time-series". McTaggart argues that time is unreal because the transitions between one event and another cannot exist. You have to concentrate.
Marx and Engels - The Communist Manifesto, read by John Ingram
A solid reading. I'm sure I don't need to explain what this book is. I think it really benefits from being read out loud.
Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism, read by DE Wittkower
A great reading, but the book itself seems a little odd to me, and took a while for me to get into. At its best, it does seem to offer some good psychological insights and some flashes of a train of thought (on this basis I might persuade myself to give Shopenhauer another go with a more acclaimed text), but it also seemed to me to be often disorganised and shot through with sloppy logic. Perhaps I'm expecting too much of such an old text in a tradition I'm not really at home with.
Sunzi - The Art of War, read by Moira Fogarty
An ancient Chinese book on military strategy whose teachings (it is said) can be applied in any number of situations. Well read and quite short.
Rabinranath Tagore - Sadhana, group reading
A fantastic book, and a great set of readings. Tagore's achievement in presenting Indian religious philosophy as a living and viable system of thought is quite awe-inspiring, particularly given how long ago it was written. Can't help feeling, though, that the book gives a particular and more than slightly idealised view.
Voltaire - Candide, read by Ted Delorme
A very nice reading - there's a also a LibriVox group reading of this, but I'm afraid I haven't listened to that one.