The ideal of higher humanism challenges our modern civilization and its diminished image of the human being. A critique of the ideologies of "bourgeois humanism" provides a pathway toward the renascence of human identity and human dignity. Historical illustrations, drawn from the higher heritage of humanity, revive values long forgotten. Ash Gobar re-argues the great argument for the impact of the "philosophy of life" upon the "quality of life." This is a timely ...

This captivating collection brings together five of Friedrich Nietzche’s most important philosophical works, exploring themes such as nihilism, metaphysics, and the nature of morality—featuring an introduction by Peter Gay and commentary from Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Gilles DeleuzeMore than one hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most influential philosopher of the modern era. Basic Writings of Nietzsche gathers the co...

Widely recognized as one of the finest introductions to existentialist philosophy ever written, Irrational Man helped introduce existentialism to an American audience when it was first published in 1958.Barrett writes with eloquence and clarity about concerns that remain as relevant today as ever: the persistence of the irrational and absurd, the search for meaning in a fractured world, and humanity's capacity to shape or destroy its own future without ful...

What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life, but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms, rather than the other way around?In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement.A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in...

On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is a book about the history of ethics and about interpretation. Nietzsche rewrites the former as a history of cruelty, exposing the 4entral values of the Judaeo-Christian and liberal traditions - compassion, equality, justice - as the product of a brutal process of conditioning designed to domesticate the animal vitality of earlier cultures. The result is a book which raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both ethics and interpretation...

These essays reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)—known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevsky—as a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the novel. The Dialogic Imagination presents, in superb English translation, four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction to Bakhtin and his tho...

From the distinguished polymath George Steiner comes a profound and illuminating vision of the inseparability of Western philosophy and its living language.With his hallmark forceful discernment, George Steiner presents in The Poetry of Thought his magnum opus: an examination of more than two millennia of Western culture, staking out his claim for the essential oneness of great thought and great style. Sweeping yet precise, moving from essential detail to bracing illustrat...

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of ...

One of the most important of Jung's longer works, and probably the most famous of his books, Psychological Types appeared in German in 1921 after a "fallow period" of eight years during which Jung had published little. He called it "the fruit of nearly twenty years' work in the domain of practical psychology," and in his autobiography he wrote: "This work sprang originally from my need to define the ways in which my outlook differed from Freud's and Adler's. In attempting to answe...

In his best-selling book You Must Change Your Life, Peter Sloterdijk argued exercise and practice were crucial to the human condition. In The Art of Philosophy, he extends this critique to academic science and scholarship, casting the training processes of academic study as key to the production of sophisticated thought. Infused with humor and provocative insight, The Art of Philosophy further integrates philosophy and human existence, richly detailing the foundations of this rela...

Existentialism For Beginners is an entertaining romp through the history of a philosophical movement that has had a broad and enduring influence on Western culture. From the middle of the Nineteenth Century through the late Twentieth Century existentialism informed our politics and art and still exerts its influence today. Tracing the movement's beginnings with close-up views of seminal figures like Kierkegaard Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche Existentialism For Beginners follows its intellectual...

This is the first of two previously untranslated volumes of Rudolf Steiner's public lectures on Waldorf education. Readers familiar with Steiner's lectures for teachers will discover here how Steiner presented his ideas to the general public with surprising directness. Teaching, Steiner says, should be artistic, creative, and improvisational, not dogmatic. Yet he is clear that the great battle concerns the spiritual nature of the child. Other themes include understanding the role of health an...