Stoic philosopher and tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote moral essays - exercises in practical philosophy - on how to live in a troubled world. Strikingly applicable today, his thoughts on happiness and other subjects are here combined in a clear, modern translation with an introduction on Seneca's life and philosophy.

This new translation of Plutarch's miscellaneous works, the Moralia, illuminates his thinking on religious, ethical, social, and political issues. Two genres are represented: the dialogue, which Plutarch wrote in a tradition nearer to Cicero than to Plato, and the informal treatise or essay, in which his personality is most clearly displayed. His diffuse and individual style conveys a character of great charm and authority. This edition includes an introduction, notes, sources of quotations, and a glossary of proper names.

Selected Essays and Dialogues is a collection of translations of Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati’s theoretical and musing work from the late 1960s to the present. Topics range from environmental perception and archaeological conceptions of historical knowledge, to street theatre, writing, photography, cinema and translation. The book provides a framework of key literary, theoretical and artistic movements of the last 50 years, as well as a guide for English-language readers to place Celati’s work in historical, cultural and biographical context, serving to illuminate his books available in English, namely Towards the River’s Mouth, Adventures in Africa, Voices from the Plains and Appearances. There are various paths to take, tempting readers to wander and become lost in webs of daring thought, drawn ever on by Celati’s fondness for the unexpected ordinary and his bonhomie with others. Indeed, a genial adventurousness can be found within all of Celati’s writings collected here, driven by an affectionate and light-hearted engagement with the surrounding world. Herein is a taste of a seemingly endless series of adventures of the mind and body, always tapped into a lithe sensitivity for an encompassing collective imagination not restricted to the so-called high arts or letters, but very much also engaged with the everyday lives, places and tales we all constantly share. Praise for Selected Essays and Dialogues by Gianni Celati ‘Barron’s volume is a very welcome addition to the field. As the first collection of Gianni Celati’s essays in English translation, the book makes accessible a wide selection of his critical work to an Anglophone audience.’ Marina Spunta, University of Leicester

The notion of beauty as a point of transit between the sensuous and the ideal is well-established in the history of Western philosophy. Describing this transition and seeking to rethink the ways in which humans understand the things they find beautiful in life, Harry Underwood’s The Experience of Beauty approaches the notion of beauty through the insights of major but distinctively individual philosophers and artists. In seven essays and a dialogue, Underwood considers the principal instances of beauty as it reveals itself in everyday experience, as a concept in the mind of the philosopher, as the artist’s vision, and as the shining image of the ideal. Considering the perspectives of many notable figures in the Western canon of philosophy and literature for whom beauty and the imagination have mattered, including Plato, Nietzsche, Auden, Coleridge, Proust, and Iris Murdoch, Underwood draws out a rounded sense of beauty. It is shown, on one view, to be inherent in a perceptible order and, on another, to be an expression of the will to confer meaning on a meaningless world. In art, beauty reveals itself to be both perceived and created, and a world-disclosing, truth-relaying force. As a final matter, Underwood asks what it means to embrace your own vision of beauty and apply it to your life’s work. A quietly provocative meditation on the mystery of beauty, this collection of essays contends that beauty serves life as an inspiration, not merely as an ornament.

This volume provides a broad cross-section of Merton's work as an essayist, collecting pieces that are characteristic examples of his astonishing output and the fantastic breadth of his interests. The essays range from the wisdom of the desert fathers to the novels of Faulkner and Camus, from interreligious dialogue to racial justice.

This series is conceived as a library of bilingual editions of works chosen for their importance to Italian literature and to the international tradition of art and thought Italy has nurtured. In each volume an Italian text in an authoritative edition is paired with a new facing-page translation supplemented by explanatory notes and a selected bibliography. An introduction provides a historical and critical interpretation of the work. The scholars preparing these volumes hope through Biblioteca ltaliana to point a straight way to the Italian classics. GENERAL EDITOR: Louise George ClubbEDITORIAL BOARDPaul J. Alpers, Vittore BrancaGene Brucker, Fredi ChiappelliPhillip W. Damon, Robert M. DurlingGianfranco Folena, Lauro MartinesNicolas J. Perella

[Being and Logos is] a philosophical adventure of rare inspiration. . . . Its power to illuminate the text . . . , its ecumenicity of inspiration, its methodological rigor, its originality, and its philosophical profundity—all together make it one of the few philosophical interpretations that the philosopher will want to re-read along with the dialogues themselves. A superadded gift is the author’s prose, which is a model of lucidity and grace." —International Philosophical Quarterly John Sallis's luminous reading of six major Platonic dialogues—Apology, Meno, Phaedrus, Cratylus, Republic, and Sophist—weaves discussion of dramatic and mythical aspects together with basic philosophical issues. Being and Logos fundamentally reorients our reading and understanding of the platonic dialogues. This new edition of this classic of philosophical interpretation augments the Collected Writings of John Sallis, published by Indiana University Press.