Frogs

"Frogs is by common consent one of the finest achievements of Aristophanes (456 BC to 386 BC), the greatest writer of comic drama in classical Athens and among most famous writers of dramatic comedy in our Western tradition. The play was first performed at a Festival of Dionysus in Athens in 405 BC, at a time when the disastrous Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta was nearing its end. The production was so popular that it received the extraordinary honour of a second production and Aristophanes received a special award from the city. In the play the god Dionysus, in the form of a middle-aged human being, insists on travelling to Hades to bring back the tragic poet Euripides (who had died the year before), so that Athens can once again enjoy fine poetry. His slave Xanthias accompanies him. The trip is full of robust comical encounters with a range of characters, including Hercules, Charon, the famous Chorus of the Frogs, various underworld figures, and, finally Euripides and Aeschylus, who stage a debate over which of them is the greatest poet, an argument which has them mercilessly satirizing each other s work. For all its extremely funny stage business, Frogs raises some important and still relevant questions about the nature of dramatic art and the role of the dramatist. It also explores and exposes the self-serving attitudes of citizens during a time of war."

Literature & Fiction

Translated by Ian Johnston

Aristophanes

Dramas & Plays

Richer Resources Publications

Euripides' Medea, first produced in 431 BC, has long been considered one of the great masterpieces of classical Greek drama and has attracted attention in modern times as one of the first great works of feminist drama. The play pits Medea, a murderously passionate barbarian princess, against her husband, Jason, the leader of an expedition of Greek heroes who set out to capture the fabled Golden Fleece. Jason was successful on that voyage largely because of Medea's help, which required her to turn against her own family. They returned together, became husband and wife, and had two children. Now, however, Jason has married a princess of Corinth, and Medea faces an uncertain future in exile. Her response to this threat is the basis for one of the best known and most horrific plots in classical Greek drama.

Medea

Eurípides

Homer's Odyssey, composed in the eighth century BC, is the most influential and most popular epic poem in our cultural traditions. The story of Odysseus' adventures on his return home from the Trojan War has inspired the imaginations of readers for centuries and has become an integral part of our civilization's greatest artistic achievements, exerting its appeal on writers, painters, poets, film makers, and others, right up to the present time. Ian Johnston's abridged version of this magnificent poem, approximately one third the length of the original, is based upon his acclaimed new translation of the entire work (also published by Richer Resources Publications). Every line in the abridged text comes from Homer's poem, and a few short summary comments are included to keep the narrative thrust of the action coherent. This abridgment also has explanatory footnotes, a glossary of names and places, a floor plan of Odysseus' palace, and a map of his route home. It thus serves as an ideal entry into Homer's poem for those who do not have the time yet to tackle the full poem.

The Odyssey Abridged

HOMER

Classics

The Genealogy of Morals, first published in 1887, is widely considered the most important work written by the revolutionary and extraordinarily influential German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). The work consists of three essays, each one examining some aspects of the historical development of modern moral concepts. Nietzsche s purpose here, as in his other works, is to expose the falsity and deleterious effects of traditional morality, especially the morality of Christianity. Nietzsche s central concern is the value of morality, something traditional philosophers have not questioned. To address this question of value, he asserts, we need a history of moral systems, morality as it has actually been practiced. If we do that, we will come to understand that many of the values we assume to be true are, in fact, the product of particular historical circumstances, especially of the revolt of the slave classes against their masters and the consequent inversion of values, which led to the creation and imposition of a morality which, for all the good things one might say about it, made human beings sick and hindered their development as healthy, joyful creatures. Genealogy of Morals is an eloquent demonstration of Nietzsche s remarkable talent for acute linguistic and psychological observation and of his formidable rhetorical gifts, here put to use in sustained arguments which depart somewhat from his earlier aphoristic style. The work is essential reading for anyone who wishes to learn about the development of modern philosophy. Ian Johnston s fluent English translation is faithful to the original German and captures the spirit of Nietzsche's bold, polemical style.

On the Genealogy of Morals

Politics & Social Sciences

Friedrich, Nietzsche

Philosophy

Seven against Thebes

Seven Against Thebes written by Aeschylus (525-456 BC), the oldest of the three famous ancient Greek writers of tragedy whose work has survived, is the third famous ancient Greek writers of tragedy whose work has survived, is the third play in a trilogy which tells the story of the battle between the sons of Oedipus for control of Thebes (the other two plays are lost). The first production (in 467 BC) won first prize in the annual competition for tragic drama. In the play, Eteocles, king of Thebes, is defending the city against the forces fighting on behalf of his brother Polyneices, and he is called upon to choose seven of his best warriors to defend the city gates. Much of the play celebrates the traditional warrior ethic from the Trojan War and earlier, but it also contrasts this with a more civic-minded concern for the safety of the entire polis, rather than for the glory that comes with heroic individuality in the face of danger. Central to the play is the character of Eteocles, who, as king of Thebes, is responsible for the well being of the city but who, as a son of Oedipus, is obsessed by the nature of the curse upon his family and the need to assert his own heroic qualities, even though that will bring about his death and continue the series of disasters which have afflicted Thebes since the days of Laius and Jocasta, the parents of Oedipus. The play is remarkable for the formal patterning of the speeches, the moving quality of its lyrics, and the sense it conveys of human life lived out under the watchful and ominous scrutiny of the divine forces which rule the world. Ian Johnston's new translation is accurate, fluent, and vivid. It conveys beautifully the tragic eloquence of this ancient play and is especially recommended for public reading or performance.

Seven Against Thebes

ÆSchylus

Discourse on Method, published in 1637, is one of the most important works in the history of modern science. In this slim book, Descartes ostensibly sets out to inform the reader, in a modest, informal, and very readable style, of his own educational development and pursuit of knowledge. However, by the end he has set down a revolutionary new program for investigating the truth and laid the preliminary groundwork for Western civilization s most important and most influential achievement, modern science. He does this by launching a famous thought experiment, in which he places everything in doubt, rejects all received knowledge, and searches for a single certain truth from which he can begin. This process leads to his famous claim I think; therefore, I am. Once that is established, Descartes then analyzes his criteria for knowledge of the truth, sets down a method, and reviews some of the discoveries this new method has enabled him to make.Descartes method, which radically separates the knowing mind from a soulless natural world operating on mechanical principles, which insists that mathematics is the key to understanding nature, which pleads for more experiments to confirm the validity of hypotheses, and which sets down as the major purpose of the endeavour the desire to make human beings the masters and possessors of nature, so that we can improve human lives (especially through advances in medicine) launches what we call modern science. The book is thus an essential text in the history of ideas.Ian Johnston s new translation is accompanied by a few explanatory footnotes to assist the reader and an introductory essay which discusses in more detail some important features of Descartes argument and its influence.

Discourse on the Method for Reasoning Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences

RenÃ© Descartes

Illustrated by Ian Crowe

On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus (written around 60 BC) has for centuries been one of the most popular and influential works from our classical past. The poem is a long, impassioned plea for a materialistic understanding of the universe and of human life, without reference to divine creativity or benevolence or to a future life. Only such a view, Lucretius claims, can liberate human beings from religious superstitions, irrational fears, and false ambitions and thus enable us to live successfully. Long celebrated as the greatest expression of faith in Epicurean philosophy, the poem has exercised a decisive influence on the development of Western scientific thought since the Renaissance and is a vitally important part of our humanist traditions. Ian Johnston s new poetic translation brings out the full emotional range of this great work and captures the restless and intense urgency of the original text. The English is an accurate rendition of Lucretius in a fluent modern idiom, so that it makes this important vision of the world accessible to the modern reader. The translation includes notes to assist the reader who is encountering Lucretius for the first time.

On the Nature of Things

Science & Math

Lucretius

Research

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was a brilliant, influential, and powerful figure in natural science in the early nineteenth century, particularly famous for his work with the fossils of quadrupeds and his ability to reconstruct entire skeletal structures on the basis of a few fragments. Like many of his colleagues, Cuvier opposed evolution and yet, as a scientist, he could not ignore the evidence of past extinctions. Thus, he proposed that the history of the earth was characterized by a series of major calamities which had wiped out almost all creatures on the earth. The latest of these disasters occurred a few thousand years ago. The Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals was originally the introduction to an important book on quadruped fossils, but its popularity soon led to its being printed and translated as a separate volume. In it Cuvier sets down an argument for his views on the history the earth, a position that has come to be known as Catastrophism. However, the Discourse is more than a fascinating picture of the state of natural science in the years before Darwin s work, for it offers an enormously wide-ranging exploration of what we can learn about the history of human society from mythology, astrology, astronomy, and literature from all of the world s cultures to which Cuvier had access. Ian Johnston s fluent new translation of this landmark in the history of science also includes Cuvier s essay On the Ibis, in which Cuvier resolves a long dispute about the identity of this ancient bird.

Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Earth

Georges, Cuvier

Biological Sciences

Franz Kafka (1883-1924), whose writings attracted relatively little attention in his own lifetime, has long been recognized as one of the most famous, distinctive, and influential voices in modern world literature. His Erzählungen (stories), which are famously enigmatic, have prompted and continue to prompt a wide variety of critical debates from any number of literary schools and have stimulated interpretative adaptations of many different kinds by actors, painters, photographers, and film makers.Kafka s fictions typically present an unusual, sometimes surreal story, in a deliberately flat prose, so that there is a wrenching gap between the weirdness, tension, humour, or horror of the events described and the apparently calm surface of the language. It is a style which at once pressures the reader to discover some allegorical structure at work in the tale, while at the same time frustrating all attempts to impose such an interpretative scheme. Hence, Kafka s stories, which for this reason some have called parables, tend to remain in the reader s imagination as vivid puzzling challenges and are very difficult to forget. The strange world Kafka depicts in his stories has given rise to the adjective Kafkaesque, which Merriam Webster defines as "having a nighmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality."This new collection of stories translated by Ian Johnston includes a selection of Kafka s best known and most popular stories, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, A Hunger Artist, A Report for An Academy, The Great Wall of China, Jackals and Arabs, Before the Law, Up in the Gallery, A Country Doctor, The Hunter Gracchus, and An Imperial Message.

The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories

Franz, Kafka

Short Stories & Anthologies

Using Isaac Newton s mathematical principles and laws of motion and taking up an idea first suggested by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanual Kant, the greatest philosopher of the eighteenth century, in 1755 produced a detailed account of what has come to be known as the Nebular hypothesis, still considered the most plausible explanation for the formation of the solar system: the structure of the universe develops from widely dispersed materials scattered throughout space which, under the influence of the forces of attraction and repulsion, rotate, flatten, and over time produce stars and planets. In his account, Kant also considers the ring of Saturn, the formation of moons, and other celestial phenomena (like the axial rotation of the planets and the development of comets). He also lets his imagination run rampant in a fascinating exploration of what living creatures must be like on other planets.The extent to which Kant fully understood the mathematical complexities involved in his explanation has been strongly challenged, but, for all that, his account is an important document in the most important trend of natural science in the eighteenth century, that is, placing scientific accounts of natural phenomena on a historical basis and seeing them as the result of a process of development maintained by mechanical forces (a revolutionary trend which culminates a century later in the work of Charles Darwin). In this way, while honoring Newton s achievement, Kant is also issuing a direct challenge to it.Kant s work also offers an enthusiastic defense of the design argument (that the harmonies in the design of the solar system are the best physical evidence we have for the existence of God), a claim which, ironically enough, his later philosophy would do so much to undermine.

Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens

Immanuel, Kant

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