The seventy-eight letters in this Anthology are selected both for their intrinsic interest and to illustrate the range of functions letters performed in the ancient world. Dating from between c.500 BC and c.400 AD, they include naive and high-style, "real" and "fictitious", and classical and patristic items. Numerous letters survive from the ancient world. Their range is similarly wide: official and private, literary and non-literary, philosophical and mundane. Some were written by well-known literary figures, such as Ovid and Pliny, others were written by kings and emperors, while many survive from the pens of otherwise anonymous figures from the provinces.
The 1914 California Sixth Grade Reader with classical stories and poems that every high school student studied in that era. The same stories were read in most states, and the American culture of that era was profoundly affected by these stories. They remain relevant to those who care about civilization and are part of our cultural heritage. They're also good stories. The poems were once as popular as any TV series, and learning to read and enjoy great poetry, while hardly taught in schools now, was once another great part of our cultural heritage. The small amount of work invested in learning to enjoy poetry will last the rest of your life.
What would the global history of philosophy look like if it were told not as a story of ideas but as a series of job descriptions–ones that might have been used to fill the position of philosopher at different times and places over the past 2,500 years? The Philosopher does just that, providing a new way of looking at the history of philosophy by bringing to life six kinds of figures who have occupied the role of philosopher in a wide range of societies around the world over the millennia–the Natural Philosopher, the Sage, the Gadfly, the Ascetic, the Mandarin, and the Courtier.
Quentin Skinner presents a fundamental reappraisal of the political theory of Hobbes. Using, for the first time, the full range of manuscript as well as printed sources, it documents an entirely new view of Hobbes's intellectual development, and re-examines the shift from a humanist to a scientific culture in European moral and political thought.
Drawing together literature, media, and philosophy, Ghostly Apparitions provides a new model for media archaeology. Stefan Andriopoulos examines the relationships between new media technologies and distinct cultural realms, tracing connections between Kant's philosophy and the magic lantern's phantasmagoria, the Gothic novel and print culture, and spiritualist research and the invention of television.
