Philosophy
"Philosophy begins in wonder."
--Plato Have you ever wondered about the development of civilization? What topics were discussed in the days of ancient Greece? This collection of thoughts from Plato, Aristotle, and other masters of philosophy will lead your mind on a journey of enlightened exploration into ethics, morality, law, medicine, and more. With an introduction by a distinguished scholar of classic literature, this beautiful Canterbury Classics bonded-leather volume with gilded edges and specially designed endpapers is sure to be a favorite keepsake edition in your library. The pieces in this edition were translated by the following contributors:
Plato: translated by Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893). Aristotle's Poetics: translated by Samuel Henry Butcher (1950-1910). Aristotle's Rhetoric: translated by William Rhys Roberts (1858-1929). Xenophon: translated by Henry Graham Dakyns (1838-1911). Epictetus: translated by Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806). Epicurus: translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1850-1929).
--Plato Have you ever wondered about the development of civilization? What topics were discussed in the days of ancient Greece? This collection of thoughts from Plato, Aristotle, and other masters of philosophy will lead your mind on a journey of enlightened exploration into ethics, morality, law, medicine, and more. With an introduction by a distinguished scholar of classic literature, this beautiful Canterbury Classics bonded-leather volume with gilded edges and specially designed endpapers is sure to be a favorite keepsake edition in your library. The pieces in this edition were translated by the following contributors:
Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don't understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls "antifragile" is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call "efficient" not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb's message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile "Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining."--The Economist "A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives."--Newsweek
For more than two thousand years. Aristotle's "Art of Rhetoric" has shaped thought on the theory and practice of rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech. In three sections, Aristotle discusses what rhetoric is, as well as the three kinds of rhetoric (deliberative, judicial, and epideictic), the three rhetorical modes of persuasion, and the diction, style, and necessary parts of a successful speech. Throughout, Aristotle defends rhetoric as an art and a crucial tool for deliberative politics while also recognizing its capacity to be misused by unscrupulous politicians to mislead or illegitimately persuade others. Here Robert C. Bartlett offers a literal, yet easily readable, new translation of Aristotle's "Art of Rhetoric," one that takes into account important alternatives in the manuscript and is fully annotated to explain historical, literary, and other allusions. Bartlett's translation is also accompanied by an outline of the argument of each book; copious indexes, including subjects, proper names, and literary citations; a glossary of key terms; and a substantial interpretive essay.
A comprehensive collection of the most essential versions of The Art of War, the classic Chinese military treatise considered by many as the ultimate strategy guide Sun Tzu's Art of War, compiled more than two thousand years ago, is a study of the anatomy of organizations in conflict. It is perhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world today. Now, this unique volume brings together the essential versions of Sun Tzu's text, along with illuminating commentaries and auxiliary texts written by distinguished strategists. The translations, by the renowned translator Thomas Cleary, have all been published previously in book form, except for The Silver Sparrow Art of War, which is available here for the first time. This collection contains:
The Art of War This edition of Sun Tzu's text includes the classic collection of commentaries by eleven interpreters. Mastering the Art of War Consisting of essays by two prominent statesmen-generals of Han dynasty China, Zhuge Liang and Liu Ji, this book develops the strategies of Sun Tzu's classic into a complete handbook of organization and leadership. It draws on episodes from Chinese history to show in concrete terms the proper use of Sun Tzu's principles. The Silver Sparrow Art of War A version of Sun Tzu's Art of War based on a manuscript of the classic text discovered at a Chinese archeological site in China's Shandong Province in 1972, which contains previously unknown fragments. Note: The electronic edition of this book does not contain The Lost Art of War, as seen in the paperback edition.
The Art of War This edition of Sun Tzu's text includes the classic collection of commentaries by eleven interpreters. Mastering the Art of War Consisting of essays by two prominent statesmen-generals of Han dynasty China, Zhuge Liang and Liu Ji, this book develops the strategies of Sun Tzu's classic into a complete handbook of organization and leadership. It draws on episodes from Chinese history to show in concrete terms the proper use of Sun Tzu's principles. The Silver Sparrow Art of War A version of Sun Tzu's Art of War based on a manuscript of the classic text discovered at a Chinese archeological site in China's Shandong Province in 1972, which contains previously unknown fragments. Note: The electronic edition of this book does not contain The Lost Art of War, as seen in the paperback edition.
"Being and Time changed the course of philosophy." --Richard Rorty, New York Times Book Review
"Heidegger's masterwork." --The Economist
"What is the meaning of being?" This is the central question of Martin Heidegger's profoundly important work, in which the great philosopher seeks to explain the basic problems of existence. This first paperback edition of John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson's definitive translation also features a foreword by Heidegger scholar Taylor Carman.
A central influence on later philosophy, literature, art, and criticism--as well as existentialism and much of postmodern thought--Being and Time forever changed the intellectual map of the modern world. As Richard Rorty wrote in the New York Times Book Review, "You cannot read most of the important thinkers of recent times without taking Heidegger's thought into account."
With the imagery of a poet and the reflection of a philosopher, David Whyte turns his attention to 52 ordinary words, each its own particular doorway into the underlying currents of human life. Beginning with Alone and closing with Work, each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness the appropriate confusion and helplessness that accompanies the first stage of revelation. Consolations invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.
A new translation of the influential teachings of the great Stoic philosopher Despite being born into slavery, Greco-Roman philosopher Epictetus became one of the most influential thinkers of his time. Discourses and Selected Writings is a transcribed collection of informal lectures given by the philosopher around AD 108. A gateway into the life and mind of a great intellectual, it is also an important example of the usage of Koine or "common" Greek, an ancestor to Standard Modern Greek.
"A genuine spiritual quest. . . . Extraordinary." -- New York Times
Among the most profound and influential explorations of mind-expanding psychedelic drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books--The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell--in which Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, reveals the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. This edition also features an additional essay, "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," now included for the first time.
What makes a belief or a lifestyle rational? How much evidence do you need before deciding to act on a belief? If your religious beliefs are tightly bound up with your particular experiences and upbringing, doesn't that undermine their reliability? All these questions, and more, come to the fore in Samuel Lebens' A Guide for the Jewish Undecided. Bringing cutting-edge philosophy, science, and decision theory into conversation with Jewish tradition, this book makes the case that Jews today have cogent reasons to embrace Judaism and its practices. Moreover, this embrace is the most viable way in which they can answer the call to human responsibility.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of "maps" or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.