"These three major plays represent a decisive turning-point in Ibsen's scheme of values." "Hurt and dismayed by the hostile reception of Ghosts in 1881, Ibsen published, a year later, the uncompromising An Enemy of the People. Its protagonist, Dr Stockmann, finds himself up against an alliance of political hypocrisy and vested interest when he attempts to reveal that the town's public baths, its civic pride and joy, are seriously polluted. The Wild...

"Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus' enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced...

"Plutarch's biographies of eminent Greeks and Romans are renowned not just for their historical importance but also for their insights into the personalities they describe. In prose that is rich, elegant, and sprinkled with learned references, Plutarch explores with an extraordinary degree of insight the interplay of character and political action. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is implicitly to warn and...