Gorgias
380 BC · 113 pages
Callicles tells Socrates that morality is a con the weak run on the strong, who should take whatever they want. Socrates answers that doing wrong harms you more than suffering it ever could.
★ 7.6
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Last Days of Socrates (includes Apology)
399 BC · 256 pages
Charged with corrupting the young and denying the gods, Socrates defends himself, refuses the escape his friends arrange, argues that the soul survives, then drinks the poison. His calm is the hard part.
★ 7.5
A Heart So White
1992 · 278 pages
A woman returns from her honeymoon, goes to the bathroom, and shoots herself while the family eats lunch. Marías gives the story to her nephew, an interpreter afraid to know.
★ 6.4
Being and Event
1988 · 526 pages
Set theory, Badiou insists, is the only language that can say what being is. Truth erupts as an event in politics, art, science, or love, and a subject is whoever stays faithful.
★ 5.5
The Journalist and the Murderer
1990 · 163 pages
Every journalist knows what he does is morally indefensible, Malcolm opens, then proves it through a convicted murderer suing the writer who befriended him and delivered him to readers as a sociopath.
★ 5.3