Publisher description
By turns wickedly funny and profoundly illuminating, "Encounters and
Reflections" presents a captivating and unconventional portrait of the life and
works of Seth Benardete. One of the leading scholars of ancient thought,
Benardete here reflects on both the people he knew and the topics that
fascinated him throughout his career in a series of candid, freewheeling
conversations with Robert Berman, Ronna Burger and Michael Davis. The first part of the book discloses vignettes about fellow students,
colleagues and acquaintances of Benardete's who later became major figures in
the academic and intellectual life of 20th-century America. We glimpse the
student days of Allan Bloom, Stanley Rosen and George Steiner, and we discover
the life of the mind as lived by well-known scholars such as David Grene, Jacob
Klein and Benardete's mentor Leo Strauss. We also encounter a number of other
learned and sometimes eccentric luminaries, including T.S. Eliot, James
Baldwin, Werner Jaeger, John Davidson Beazley and Willard Quine. In the book's
second part, Benardete reflects on his own intellectual growth and on his
ever-evolving understanding of the texts and ideas he spent a life-time
studying. Revisiting some of his recurrent themes - among them eros and the
beautiful, the city and the law, and the gods and the human soul - Benardete
shares his views on thinkers such as Plato, Homer and Heidegger, as well as the
relations between philosophy and science and between Christianity and ancient
Roman thought. Engaging and informative, "Encounters and Reflections" brings Benardetes's
thought to life to enlighten and inspire a new generation of thinkers. By turns wickedly funny and profoundly illuminating, "Encounters and
reflections" presents a captivating and unconventional portrait of the life and
works of Seth Benardete. The work represents a series of conversations with
Robert Berman, Ronna Burger, and Michael Davis.
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Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete
Book reviews » Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete
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