Provocative, wide-ranging and full of wisdom, Between the Monster and the Saint is a brilliant book about our place in the world. Being human isn't easy. We might think that consciousness and freewill give us control over our lives but our minds are dangerous and unpredictable places. We are susceptible to forces we don't understand. We are capable of inflicting immense cruelty on one another - violence, torture and rape - and yet we also have the capacity to be tender, to empathise, to feel....
De la Brievete de la Vie. Texte Latin Inclus (Graphyco Classiques Francais)
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a “powerful” (The Washington Post) novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are n...
This title explores the causes of evil in myth, encompassing themes such as defilement, the figure of the trickster, evil people both within and outside the society, and traumatic initiations. Evil, an undeniable yet inexplicable force in human existence, is often defined as that which ought not to be, yet is - so it must be destroyed, or contained, or lived with. Myths of evil function to universalize the human condition, to show the tension between the ideal and the real, to reveal but not all...
The Trolley Problem or Would You Throw the Fat Guy off the Bridge?
by Thomas Cathcart
A runaway trolley is hurtling down the track, brakes gone, aiming directly at five track workers who won't be able to get out of the way. You happen to be standing next to a lever that would reroute the trolley onto a spur where one worker is in the trolley's path. Would you pull the lever and reroute the train so it kills one person instead of five? How about this scenario: same runaway trolley, same five people in its path but this time there's no spur. You're observing the action from a footb...
Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane (World Philosophies)
by Franklin Perkins
That bad things happen to good people was as true in early China as it is today. Franklin Perkins uses this observation as the thread by which to trace the effort by Chinese thinkers of the Warring States Period (c.475-221 BCE), a time of great conflict and division, to seek reconciliation between humankind and the world. Perkins provides rich new readings of classical Chinese texts and reflects on their significance for Western philosophical discourse.
Alcestis (BCP Classic Commentaries on Greek and Latin Texts) (Classical Texts)
by Euripides
At once a vigorous translation of one of Euripides' most subtle and witty plays, and a wholly fresh interpretation, this version reveals for the first time the extraordinary formal beauty and thematic concentration of the Alcestis. The late William Arrowsmith, who was an eminent classical scholar, translator, and General Editor of this highly praised series, rejects the standard view of the Alcestis as a psychological study of the egotist Admetos and his naive but devoted wife. His transla...