Δοκίμιο & Πολιτισμός

Happiness is not a comfortable state of well-being, but an energetic and carefully considered endeavour to lead a rich and meaningful life. Few books are so suited to stimulating critical thought about the good life as Aristotle ’ s Nicomachean Ethics. What makes the Ethics so appealing is that Aristotle always remains realistic, in spite of his high ideals, and is constantly testing his views against those of others. In Book X of the Ethics, included in this volume, the great philosopher discusses what happiness [eudaimonia] is and how to achieve it.

The publication of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most influential figures in the Western Marxist tradition. On Ideology contains Althusser's most significant philosophical writings from the late sixties and through the seventies. Intended to contribute, in his own words, to a 'left-wing critique of Stalinism that would help put some substance back into the revolutionary project here in the West', they are the record of a shared history. At the same time they chart Althusser's critique of the theoretical system unveiled in his own major works, and his developing practice of philosophy as a 'revolutionary weapon'.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution.

They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

One of the most important thinkers ever to write in English, the Empiricist David Hume liberated philosophy from the superstitious constraints of religion; here, he argues that all are free to choose between life and death, considers the nature of personal taste and succinctly criticises common philosophies of the time.

A collection of colorful and candid essays and other pieces about Freud and his legacy today, featuring twenty-five leading writersWith original contributions by André Aciman • Sarah Boxer • Jennifer Finney Boylan • Susie Boyt • Gerald Early • Esther Freud • Rivka Galchen • Adam Gopnik • David Gordon • Siri Hustvedt • Sheila Kohler • Peter D. Kramer • Phillip Lopate • Thomas Lynch • Daphne Merkin • David Michaelis • Rick Moody • Susie Orbach • Richard Panek • Alex Pheby • Michael S. Roth • Casey Schwartz • Mark Solms • Colm Tóibín • Sherry TurkleW.

H. Auden described Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) as “a whole climate of opinion / Under whom we conduct our differing lives.” The controversial father of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Freud charted the human unconscious, brought us the talking cure, and wrote books that now rank among the classics of world literature. In On the Couch, the great analyst is analyzed by some of today’s great writers and thinkers, who help us understand the man who has helped us understand ourselves as much, if not more, than anyone else, ever.

The result is a fresh, multifaceted reassessment of Freud’s continuing relevance and influence on ideas, literature, culture, science, and more. Here, Colm Tóibín writes about Freud, World War I, Henry James, and Thomas Mann; Adam Gopnik explores Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents; Susie Orbach considers Freud’s “ordinary unhappiness” and D. W.

Winnicott’s “good enough”; Jennifer Finney Boylan reflects on penis envy and gender identity; Peter Kramer describes how new science and drugs have revolutionized psychology since Freud; Susie Boyt, one of Freud’s great-granddaughters, spends the night at the Freud Museum in London; Siri Hustvedt examines Freud’s divided reception today; and there’s much more. Filled with insights, provocation, and humor, On the Couch offers an original and nuanced portrait of Freud as a complex figure who, for all his flaws, forever changed how we see ourselves and the world.

This is the first and still the only collection of the essays of the Nobel Prize Laureate George Seferis (1900–1971) to be published in English; the essays were selected by Seferis himself, drawing upon his prose work written over a period of thirty years. Seferis was a classicist and a humanist, a man of modern sensibility imbued with a deep respect for Mediterranean tradition. He is present in all these aspects in his essays. When he was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1963, the citation spoke of 'his eminent lyrical writings inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture'. Hellenism for Seferis is an enduring style, as alive and as meaningful today as when Homer and Pericles walked the roads of Greece. 'If we were to understand the ancient Greeks,' Seferis writes, 'it is always into the soul of our own people that we should look.' Thus the central group of essays in this collection is concerned with the spirit of Hellenism as it continues to manifest itself in Greek painting, poetry, history, landscape, and religion. But of equal interest are the essays that explore international themes: art and 'engagement'; the poetry of Eliot and Cavafy; the theatre of Pirandello; and the role of the artist in the modern world; and admirers of Seferis's poetry will take particular pleasure in his introduction to his long poem 'The Thrush', which is followed in this edition by the poem itself. Various and occasional as these essays are, they are united by the extraordinary sensibility of their author. And they are to be savoured equally for their wisdom, subtlety, and impeccable style.

Κυκλοφορεί η 4η μονογραφία του φωτογράφου Ανδρέα Ζαχαράτου, από τις εκδόσεις ΤΟΠΟΣ. Φωτογραφία τεκμηρίωσης ενός εθίμου που έρχεται από τα αρχαία χρόνια και γιορτάζεται την Καθαρά Δευτέρα, αρκετές δεκαετίες τώρα, στο οικογενειακό χωριό των Ντουμέων στα Τριπόταμα Αρκαδίας στη σκιά του Πάρνωνα. Μια μέρα ένα πέταγμα αετού από το πρωί έως το βράδυ σε 16 καρούλια α/μ φιλμ. Μια μέρα που κουβαλάει μια ολόκληρη ζωή. The 4th monograph of photographer Andreas Zacharatos is published by TOPOS publications. Documentary photography of a custom that comes from ancient times and is celebrated on Clean Monday, several decades now in the family village of Doumos in Tripotama, Arcadia, in the shadow of mountain Parnon. One day a kite flying from morning to night on 16 rolls of B/W film. A day that carries within a whole life.

This book plumbs the virtues of the Homeric poems as scripts for solo performance. Despite academic focus on orality and on composition in performance, we have yet to fully appreciate the Iliad and Odyssey as the sophisticated scripts that they are. What is lost in the journey from the stage to the page?Readers may be readily impressed by the vividness of the poems, but they may miss out on the strange presence or uncanniness that the performer evoked in ancient audience members such as Plato and Aristotle. This book focuses on the performer not simply as transparent mediator, but as one haunted by multiple stories and presences, who brings suppressed voices to the surface. Performance is inextricable from all aspects of the poems, from image to structure to background story. Background stories previously neglected, even in some of the most familiar passages (such as Phoenix's speech in Iliad 9) are brought to the surface, and passages readers tend to rush through (such as Odysseus's encounter with Eumaeus) are shown to have some of the richest dramatic potential. Attending to performance enlivens isolated features in a given passage by showing how they work together.

On Saturday 9th September, 1922, the victorious Turkish cavalry rode into Smyrna, the richest and most cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire. What happened over the next two weeks must rank as one of the most compelling human dramas of the twentieth century. Almost two million people were caught up in a disaster of truly epic proportions. PARADISE LOST is told with the narrative verve that has made Giles Milton a bestselling historian. It unfolds through the memories of the survivors, many of them interviewed for the first time, and the eyewitness accounts of those who found themselves caught up in one of the greatest catastrophes of the modern age.

In his analysis of the deep social trends rooted in production, consumption, and the symbolic, Jean Baudrillard touches the very heart of the concerns of the generation currently rebelling against the framework of the consumer society. With the ever-greater mediatization of society, Baudrillard argues that we are witnessing the virtualization of our world, a disappearance of reality itself, and perhaps the impossibility of any exchange at all. This disenchanted perspective has become the rallying point for all those who reject the traditional sociological and philosophical paradigms of our age. "Passwords" offers us twelve accessible and enjoyable entry points into Baudrillard's thought by way of the concepts he uses throughout his work: the object, seduction, value, impossible exchange, the obscene, the virtual, symbolic exchange, the transparency of evil, the perfect crime, destiny, duality, and thought.