Living holds us between two places. It expresses what is most elementary – to be alive – and the absoluteness of our aspiration – finally living! But could we desire anything other than to live? In "The Philosophy of Living", Francois Jullien meditat...

For more than sixty years, Ngugi wa Thiong'o has been writing fearlessly the questions, challenges, histories, and futures of Africans, particularly those of his homeland, Kenya. In his work, which has included plays, novels, and essays, Ngugi narrat...

In "This Strange Idea of the Beautiful", Francois Jullien explores what it means when we say something is beautiful. Bringing together ideas of beauty from both Eastern and Western philosophy, Jullien challenges the assumptions underlying our commonl...

One of Polish theater's great innovators is Jerzy Grotowski, well known for his lifelong research on the work of the self with and through the other. Taking various forms and undergoing multiple transformations, this single underlying proposition pro...

After several years abroad, a young man returns to his hometown to seek the man he calls master. This master, a brilliant philosopher, had made the young man into a disciple before sending him out into the world to put his teachings into practice. Re...

One of the foremost poets of the French Resistance, Rene Char has been hailed by Donald Revell as "the conscience of modern French poetry". Translated by Mark Hutchinson, "The Inventors" is a companion volume to Char's critically acclaimed "Hypnos"....

Widely considered the foremost French poet of his generation, Yves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, "The Anchor's Long Chain" is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. En...

Roland Barthes, whose centenary falls in 2015, was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator, often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another, he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went...

Roland Barthes, whose centenary falls in 2015, was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator, often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another, he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went...

Roland Barthes, whose centenary falls in 2015, was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator, often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another, he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went...