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Books about morality

Marcus Aurelius writing his private notes to himself and Sophocles' Oedipus are not obvious companions, but both sit at the same uncomfortable question: what do you owe other people when your own life is at stake? These books are for readers who want moral problems argued rather than solved, and who don't mind that the arguing is sometimes a ghost story, sometimes a courtroom, sometimes a prison cell.

A page that shows it

When conscience answers to a higher authority, what does the state hear?

Το σημείον όμως το οποίον πάντοτε εφαίνετο τελείως ανεξήγητον είναι κάποια συναισθηματική ατέλεια εις την ψυχοσύνθεσιν του Μάρκου Αυρηλίου, ιδία δε υπό μορφήν σκληρότητος και αναισθησίας ενώπιον ωρισμένων παθημάτων των ανθρώπων. Ούτω αγνοεί απολύτως την ζωοφιλίαν, μένει αδιάφορος ενώπιον των κατακρεουργήσεων των ξιφομάχων εις τον στίβον και ουδένα αισθάνεται οίκτον διά τα μαρτύρια των χριστιανών. [...] Τέλος, διατί να φαίνεται ανεξήγητος η αντίληψις ην είχεν ο Μάρκος Αυρήλιος περί των χριστιανών ως εκφύλων επαναστατών; Ήτο δυνατόν ο αυτοκράτωρ να μη θεωρή ως στοιχεία υποσκάπτοντα τα θεμέλια του κράτους ανθρώπους έχοντας την ιδέαν ότι οφείλουν προ παντός υπακοήν εις το ουράνιον κράτος, εις τον Θείον Παντοκράτορα;
Excerpt from Μάρκος Αυρήλιος, Μάρκος Αυρήλιος, Θυραθεν 180. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals

  3. Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley, 1818

    A young scientist makes life and then cannot face what he has made. Told in nested voices, it asks who owes what to whom, and why ambition so often ends in solitude.

  6. Middlemarch

    George Eliot, 1872

    A provincial town, a clever woman married to the wrong scholar, an ambitious doctor, and the slow, comic, devastating work of learning that other people are real.

  13. Dialogues

    Plato, -347

    A deep dive into the questions that define civilization: what is justice, what is wisdom, and what happens to the soul after death.

  14. Hamlet

    William Shakespeare, 1603

    A prince in mourning delays, dissembles, and thinks too much, while a court watches every move. Read for the language, stay for the recognitions.

  17. Meditations

    Marcus Aurelius, 180

    A Roman emperor's private notebook, written on campaign. Short, blunt reminders to himself about anger, death and other people's opinions, which read like advice addressed to you.

  23. Analects

    Confucius

    A collection of small, sharp conversations on how to live with other people, mostly remembered because they refuse to be simple rules.

  24. Poetry

    John Keats, 1820

    Poems that make beauty and mortality argue in the same breath—odes, sonnets, and mythic fragments from a writer who died at twenty-five.

A taste of the feed

  1. A body gone silent, and one light still signalling from inside.

    Sight and hearing were the only senses remaining, and they, like two solitary sparks, remained to animate the miserable body which seemed fit for nothing but the grave; it was only, however, by means of one of these senses that he could reveal the thoughts and feelings that still occupied his mind, and the look by which he gave expression to his inner life was like the distant gleam of a candle which a traveller sees by night across some desert place, and knows that a living being dwells beyond the silence and obscurity.

    The Count of Monte Cristo · Alexandre Dumas

  2. A mind wakes up with no history, and nobody to ask.

    “But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.

    Frankenstein · Mary Shelley

  3. When fear leaves no landscape untouched.

    Κ’ εγώ άκουγα μέσα μου μεγάλη ταραχή και με συνεπήρε το πνεύμα στο Μισολόγγι. Και δεν έβλεπα μήτε το κάστρο, μήτε το στρατόπεδο, μήτε τη λίμνη, μήτε τη θάλασσα, μήτε τη γη που επάτουνα, μήτε τον ουρανό· πολιορκούμενους και πολιορκισμένους και όλα τα έργα τους και όλα τα πάντα τα εκατασκέπαζε μαυρίλα και πίσσα.

    Η Γυναίκα της Ζάκυθος · Διονύσιος Σολωμός

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