“Between the earliest and the latest of the works includedhere, we have two hundred and fifty years of vigorous andadventurous philosophizing,” Monroe Beardsley writes in hisIntroduction to this collection. “If the modern period can be onlyvaguely or arbitrarily bounded, it can at least be studied, and wecan ask whether any dominant themes, overall patterns of movement,or notable achievements can be found within it. This question isone that is best asked by the reader after he has read, or readaround in, these works.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic also includes a newly updatedBibliography.
Use human means as though divine ones did not exist, and usedivine means as though there were no human ones. So wrote theJesuit scholar Baltazar Gracian some 300 years ago, in a book thatwill be compared to Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Machiavelli's ThePrince. A new translation of long lost wisdom on livingsuccessfully yet responsibly.
"To quietly persevere in storing up what is learned, to continuestudying without respite, to instruct others without growingweary--is this not me?" --Confucius Confucius is recognized as China's first and greatest teacher, andhis ideas have been the fertile soil in which the Chinese culturaltradition has flourished. Now, here is a translation of therecorded thoughts and deeds that best remember Confucius--informedfor the first time by the manu* version found at Dingzhou in1973, a partial text dating to 55 BCE and only made available tothe scholarly world in 1997. The earliest Analects yet discovered,this work provides us with a new perspective on the centralcanonical text that has defined Chinese culture--and clearlyilluminates the spirit and values of Confucius. Confucius (551-479 BCE) was born in the ancient state of Lu into anera of unrelenting, escalating violence as seven of the strongeststates in the proto-Chinese world warred for supremacy. Thelandscape was not only fierce politically but also intel
