Graduate Institute

Homer's great epic poem The Odyssey--one of Western literature's most enduring and important works--translated by Richmond Lattimore

"A splendid achievement. . . the best translation there is of a great, perhaps the greatest, poet." -- New York Times Book Review

A classic of Greek mythology for the ages, The Odyssey recounts Odysseus' journey home after the Trojan War--and the obstacles he faces along the way to reclaim his throne, kingdom, and family in Ithaca.

During his absence, his steadfast and clever wife, Penelope, and now teenaged son, Telemachus, have lived under the constant threat of ruthless suitors, all desperate to court Penelope and claim the throne. As the suitors plot Telemachus' murder, the gods debate Odysseus' fate. With help from the goddess Athena, the scattered family bides their time as Odysseus battles his way through storm and shipwreck, the cave of the Cyclops, the isle of witch-goddess Circe, the deadly Sirens' song, a trek through the Underworld, and the omnipresent wrath of the scorned god Poseidon.

An American poet and classicist, Richmond Lattimore's translation of The Odyssey is widely considered among the best available in the English language. Lattimore breathes modern life into Homer's adventure epic, bringing this classic work of heroes, monsters, vengeful gods, treachery, and redemption to life for modern readers.

This is a new verse translation of Lucretius's only known work, a didactic poem written in six books of hexameters. Melville's particularly literal translation of the use of metaphor is especially helpful to those looking at the text from a scientific or philosophical point of view.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This great poem stands with Virgil's Aeneid as one of the vital and enduring achievements of Latin literature. Lost for more than a thousand years, its return to circulation in 1417 reintroduced dangerous ideas about the nature and meaning of existence and helped shape the modern world.

A new series of beautiful hardcover nonfiction classics, with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith

World-changing ideas meet eye-catching design: the best titles of the extraordinarily successful Great Ideas series are now packaged in Coralie Bickford-Smith's distinctive, award-winning covers. Whether on a well-curated shelf or in your back pocket, these timeless works of philosophical, political, and psychological thought are absolute musthaves for book collectors as well as design enthusiasts.

The Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. Lucretius demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear, as the soul is mortal and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature rather than by gods. By believing this, men can live with peace of mind and happiness. His far-ranging lyrical exploration of the universe continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology, all of these subjects made more attractive by the poetry with which he illustrates them. Translated by award-winning American classicist and poet A. E. Stallings, this volume also features an introduction by the esteemed Oxford classics scholar Richard Jenkyns.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Ranked #2 Translation of 2018 by Open Letters Review

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

Oliver Taplin's new translation of the fifth-century B.C.E. Greek tragedy--a trilogy of revenge and murder within the royal family of Argos--with explanatory annotations by the editors.

Ancient backgrounds and responses from Homer, Stesichorus, Pindar, Euripides, and Sophocles. -

Fourteen wide-ranging critical essays on the Oresteia, from G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche to Oliver Taplin and Peter Wilson.

A Glossary of Technical Terms and Proper Names and a Selected Bibliography.

About the Series

Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

The first unabridged translation into American English, and the first to take into account the wealth of Thucydidean scholarship of the last half of the twentieth century, Steven Lattimore's translation sets a new standard for accuracy and reliability. Notes provide information necessary for a fuller understanding of problematic passages, explore their implications as well as the problems they may pose, and shed light on Thucydides as a distinctive literary artist as well as a source for historians and political theorists.

"Thomas Hobbes's translation of Thucydides brings together the magisterial prose of one of the greatest writers of the English language and the depth of mind and experience of one of the greatest writers of history in any language. . . . For every reason, the current availability of this great work is a boon."--Joseph Cropsey, University of Chicago

A first rate translation at a reasonable price. --Michael Rohr, Rutgers University

Hegel wrote this classic as an introduction to a series of lectures on the "philosophy of history" -- a novel concept in the early nineteenth century. With this work, he created the history of philosophy as a scientific study. He reveals philosophical theory as neither an accident nor an artificial construct, but as an exemplar of its age, fashioned by its antecedents and contemporary circumstances, and serving as a model for the future. The author himself appears to have regarded this book as a popular introduction to his philosophy as a whole, and it remains the most readable and accessible of all his philosophical writings.
Eschewing the methods of original history (written during the period in question) and reflective history (written after the period has passed), Hegel embraces philosophic history, which employs a priori philosophical thought to interpret history as a rational process. Reason rules history, he asserts, through its infinite freedom (being self-sufficient, it depends on nothing beyond its own laws and conclusions) and power (through which it forms its own laws). Hegel argues that all of history is caused and guided by a rational process, and God's seemingly unknowable plan is rendered intelligible through philosophy. The notion that reason rules the world, he concludes, is both necessary to the practice of philosophic history and a conclusion drawn from that practice.

This is a new translation, with introduction, commentary, and an explanatory glossary.

"Sachs's translation and commentary rescue Aristotle's text from the rigid, pedantic, and misleading versions that have until now obscured his thought. Thanks to Sachs's superb guidance, the Physics comes alive as a profound dialectical inquiry whose insights into the enduring questions about nature, cause, change, time, and the 'infinite' are still pertinent today. Using such guided studies in class has been exhilarating both for myself and my students." --Leon R. Kass, The Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago

Aristotle's Physics is the only complete and coherent book we have from the ancient world in which a thinker of the first rank seeks to say something about nature as a whole. For centuries, Aristotle's inquiry into the causes and conditions of motion and rest dominated science and philosophy. To understand the intellectual assumptions of a powerful world view-and the roots of the Scientific Revolution-reading Aristotle is critical. Yet existing translations of Aristotle's Physics have made it difficult to understand either Aristotle's originality or the lasting value of his work.

In this volume in the Masterworks of Discovery series, Joe Sachs provides a new plain-spoken English translation of all of Aristotle's classic treatise and accompanies it with a long interpretive introduction, a running explication of the text, and a helpful glossary. He succeeds brilliantly in fulfilling the aim of this innovative series: to give the general reader the tools to read and understand a masterwork of scientific discovery.

Dating back to the eighth century C.E., the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch is a foundational text of Chan/Zen Buddhism that reveals much about the early evolution of Chinese Chan and the ideological origins of Japanese Zen and Korean Son. Purported to be the recorded words of the famed Huineng, who was understood to be the Sixth Patriarch of Chan and the father of all later Chan/Zen Buddhism, the Platform Sutra illuminates fundamental Chan Buddhist principles in an expressive sermon that describes how Huineng overcame great personal and ideological challenges to uphold the exalted lineage of the enlightened Chan patriarchs while realizing the ultimate Buddhist truth of the original, pure nature of all sentient beings.

Huineng seems to reject meditation, the value of good karma, and the worship of the buddhas, conferring instead a set of "formless precepts" on his audience, marked by embedded notes in the text. In his central message, an inherent, perfect buddha nature stands as the original true condition of all sentient beings, which people of all backgrounds can experience for themselves. Philip Yampolsky's masterful translation contains extensive explanatory notes and an edited, amended version of the Chinese text. His introduction critically considers the background and historical setting of the work and locates Huineng's place within the history and legends of Chan Buddhism. This new edition features a foreword by Morten Schlütter further situating the Platform Sutra within recent historical research and textual evidence, and an updated glossary that includes the modern pinyin system of transcription.

Aristotle's Politics is a key document in Western political thought. In these first two books Aristotle shows his complete mastery of political theory and practice, and raises many crucial issues still with us today. In Book I he argues vigorously for a political theory based on 'nature'. By nature, man is a 'political animal', one naturally fitted for life in a polis or state. Some people, however, are natural slaves; and women are by nature subordinate to men. Acquisition and exchange are natural, but not trading for profit. In Book II he launches a sharp attack on Plato's two 'utopias', the Republic and the Laws, and also criticizes three historical states reputed to be well governed: Sparta, Crete, and Carthage. This volume contains a close translation of these two books, together with a philosophical commentary. It is well suited to the requirements of readers who do not know Greek.

In this, the fullest attempt in English at a sustained interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics this century, Stephen Halliwell demonstrates that the Poetics, despite its laconic brevity, contains a coherent statement of a challenging theory of poetic art, as well as hints towards a theory of mimetic art in general. He assesses this theory against the background of earlier Greek views on poetry and art, particularly Plato's; and goes further than many previous authors in setting Aristotle's ideas in the wider context of his philosophical system. The core of the book is a fresh appraisal of Aristotle's view of tragic drama, in which Halliwell contends that at the heart of the Poetics lies a philosophical urge to work out a secularized understanding of Greek tragedy.

The Focus Philosophical Library's edition of Aristotle's Politics is a lucid and useful translation for the student of undergraduate philosophy, as well as for the general reader interested in the major works of western civilization. This edition includes an introductory essay, notes, glossary, and index, intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle's immediate audience.

Focus Philosophical Library books are distinguished by their commitment to faithful, clear, and consistent presentations of texts and the rich world part and parcel of those texts.