Book Search:  

 

 
Google full text of our books:

bookjacket

The Therapy of Desire:
Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
Martha C. Nussbaum

With a new introduction by the author

Paper | 2009 | $29.95 / £20.95
600 pp. | 6 x 9

e-Book | 2009 | $29.95 | ISBN: 978-1-4008-3194-4

Shopping Cart | Reviews

The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought today. This edition features a new introduction by Nussbaum, in which she revisits the themes of this now classic work.

Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, and holds appointments in the Law School, Philosophy Department, and Divinity School. She is the author of many books, including Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law.

Reviews:

"[E]ven while she admires the seriousness and subtlety with which these philosophers analyze the passions, [Nussbaum] allows that there is an unresolveable conflict between the detachment and the intense engagement entailed by their philosophies. The sense that these philosophers still matter, that we can wrangle with them and learn from them, is invigorating."--Richard Jenkyns, New York Times Book Review

"Nussbaum adventurously straddles boundaries conventionally drawn between philosophy and its own history, between philosophy and literature, and between scholarship and the social sciences. . . . Few modern books have done as much as this one promises to do in raising the profile of Hellenistic philosophy. It is constantly gripping and absorbing, written with rare eloquence and containing long stretches of almost lyrical intensity. A literary as well as a philosophical tour de force."--David Sedley, Times Literary Supplement

"By turns wise and witty, silly and Socratic, critical and compassionate, Nussbaum proves to be an extraordinarily addictive literary companion. . . . This is a book to live with."--Peter Green, New Republic

Other Princeton books by Martha C. Nussbaum:

Subject Areas:

Shopping Cart:

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia

Paper: $29.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-14131-2

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India

Paper: £20.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-14131-2

Our e-Book editions are available from many of these online vendors

Prices subject to change without notice

File created: 11/4/2009

Questions and comments to: webmaster@press.princeton.edu
Princeton University Press

ONLINE BOOK SALE
New Book E-Mails
New In Print
PUP Blog
Subjects
Catalogs
Series
Sample Chapters
Podcasts/Vodcasts
Recent Awards
Google Settlement
E-Books
Online Books
Online Ordering
For Reviewers
Class Use
Permissions
About Us
Contact Us
European Office
Links
F.A.Q.
Home Page
Send me emails
about new books in:
Classics
Philosophy
More Choices
Email:
Country:
Name: