In this book G.K. Chesterton explains how religion-a blend of philosophy and mythology-satisfies both the human intellect and the spirit, and sets man starkly apart from any other living creature. Addressing evolution, feminism, and cultural relativism within the context of religion, the book also examines religious skepticism. According to Chesterton, the shape of the key is not important. What matters is that it fits the lock and opens the door....

Balthasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) assumed his final vows of the Jesuits in 1635, having been raised by his uncle, a priest, and studying theology in Zaragoza, Spain. Gracián became quite famous as a preacher, and wrote a number of literary works concerning politics, practical advice for life, and philosophy. Today he is known as the most representative writer of the Spanish baroque style called Conceptismo (Conceptism), a literary style characterized...

An examination of the conflicts within and among nations, this treatise proposes a remedy based on true Christian doctrine: recognition of love as the supreme law of life. Written just before World War I, it articulates Tolstoy's famous dictum that it is morally superior to suffer violence than to do violence-a philosophy that has inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and countless others. Famed for such popular novels as War and Peace and Anna...

"Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them."-Saint Thérèse of Lisieux One of the greatest spiritual classics ever written, this influential autobiography has been translated into nearly every language, capturing hearts and minds around the world. Simply written in clear, enchanting prose, this memoir reveals the path to true inner peace, for "Our Lord needs...

The final published book by Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941), La pensée et le mouvant (translated here as The Creative Mind), is a masterly autobiography of his philosophical method. Through essays and lectures written between 1903 and 1923, Bergson retraces how and why he became a philosopher, and crafts a fascinating critique of philosophy itself. Until it leaves its false paths, he demonstrates, philosophy will...

Credited with influencing the philosophies of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand and the development of libertarianism and existentialism, this prophetic 1844 work challenges the very notion of a common good as the driving force of civilization. Stirner chronicles the battle of the individual against the collective to show how the latter invariably leads to oppression.

These selections illuminate Philo's crucial role in assimilating Greek philosophy to biblical religion and accommodating Jewish belief to Greek thought. Topics include the knowledge of God; the mystic way; the soul and her God; man's humility, hope, faith, and joy; vices and virtues; and Israel and the nations.

In 1878, James agreed to write a psychology textbook for the American publisher Henry Holt, but it took him twelve years to produce the manuscript, and when he did he described it to Holt as “a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: 1st, that there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and 2nd, that W. J. is an incapable” (The Letters of William James, ed. Henry

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