A collection of essays, originally published between 1955 and 1983.

That bad things happen to good people was as true in early China as it is today. Franklin Perkins uses this observation as the thread by which to trace the effort by Chinese thinkers of the Warring States Period (c.475-221 BCE), a time of great conflict and division, to seek reconciliation between humankind and the world. Perkins provides rich new readings of classical Chinese texts and reflects on their significance for Western philosophical discourse.

Contains English translations of Chinese writings drawn from throughout a period of four hundred years, including poems, drama, fiction, songs, biographies, and early works of philosophy and history; arranged chronologically and by genre, with introductory quotes and comments.

A collection of essays by a team of distinguished international contributors concerned with how Classic - mainly Greek and Latin but also Arabic and Portuguese - texts become present in later cultures; how they are passed on, received and affect over time and space, and how they resonate in the modern.

In The Art of Humane Education, Donald Phillip Verene presents a new statement of the classical and humanist ideals that he believes should guide education in the liberal arts and sciences. These ideals are lost, he contends, in the corporate atmosphere of the contemporary university, with its emphasis on administration, faculty careerism, and student performance. Verene addresses questions of how and what to teach and offers practical suggestions for the conduct of class sessions, the relationship between teacher and student, the interpretation of texts, and the meaning and use of a canon of great books.In sharp contrast to the current tendency toward specialization, Verene considers the aim of college education to be self-knowledge pursued through study of all fields of thought. Education, in his view, must be based on acquisition of the arts of reading, writing, and thinking. He regards the class lecture as a form of oratory that should be presented in accordance with the well-known principles of rhetoric. The Art of Humane Education, styled as a series of letters, makes the author's original and practical ideas very clear. In this elegant book, Verene explores the full range of issues surrounding humane education.On the humanities: "Despite Descartes, the study of humane letters has remained, but it is always in danger of passing out of the curriculum. It remains a beggar who will not quite leave the premises."On teaching: "Like oratory, teaching requires a natural gift, but it is also an art which, like all the other humane arts, can be learned only mimetically.... As some are born tone-deaf and cannot be musical, there are those who can never teach. But most if they wish have some aptitude for it, and this aptitude can be developed into an art."On teachers: "Teachers motivated by eloquence attempt to speak wholly on a subject, since the whole is where its life is. Teachers not motivated by eloquence tend to be either dull or comedic. The dull teacher may have knowledge but have no true language for it.... The comedic teacher is shallow and a menace to the subject matter."On administrators: "Administration is never content simply to concern itself with the pure business of the university, paying its bills, maintaining its buildings. It sees itself as necessary in order for the process between teacher and student to go on. But it is a process that it constantly interrupts.... Administrators, however, should not be taken too seriously."Although sharply critical of many aspects of the modern university and of many currents within the humanities, The Art of Humane Education remains at heart a ringing endorsement of the high humanist tradition and its continuing relevance to the institutions of teaching and learning.

The papers in this volume, presenting a stimulating appraisal of graduate education in America, were delivered during the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of the Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania. Though the writers of these papers approach the overall topic from many different points of view, one striking, basic conclusion is held by all: graduate training must change from the study of "subjects" to the study of institutional aggregates evolving in time, such as cultures or civilizations, basing more of its research on the use of models, on the application of the most rigorous instruments of thought and analysis, and on a more effective assessment of value. The papers of Max Black, Charles Frankel, and S. S. Wilks all indicate that we are developing more precise methods of definition, discovery, and communication—methods which are difficult to teach, to learn, and to use. Do we really face the problem of how well do we teach them? These papers likewise indicate a new concept of cooperation and sharing of insight, particularly in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities. Whatever gap exists between them should be bridged by the faculty, and the students should be led constantly back and forth across the bridge. John P. Gillin describes the need for the bridge and gives some specifications for planning and building it. In this matter of specifications, Whitney J. Oates, Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Leo Gershoy, and Henri Peyre join with him in stressing the "cultural" concept. There are entities in space and time, population aggregates, which have folkways and characteristics of behavior which can be defined, analyzed, and compared. The implications as well as the definite recommendations of these papers underline the inadequacies of much of our orientation toward present Ph.D. training and add greatly to the difficulties of our situation. If we are to place the study of any phase of human behavior in its proper setting, we must provide our students with a cultural frame of reference which most of them do not now have. The study of the ancient world, Eastern cultures, recurrent behavioral patterns, and the intricate process of the creation and transmission of ideas all provide guideposts along a new road which society should demand that we travel. Pendleton Herring, Howard Mumford Jones, and Donald Young offer suggestions, sometimes rather at variance with one another, as to the philosophy which should direct a scholarly reorientation. A need exists for more careful attention to the implications of a graduate school as an association of a mature group of scholars with a younger generation who are being trained to carry on. There should be a greater sense of men and women of varied skills working together and sharing their curiosities as well as their information, their thoughts as well as their discoveries. Contributors: John P. Gillin, Max Black, S. S. Wilks, Howard Mumford Jones, Charles Frankel, Leo Gershoy, Henri Peyre, Pendleton Herring, Whitney J. Oates, Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Donald Young.