Product Description: Plato’s dialogues show Socrates at different ages, beginning when he was about nineteen and already deeply immersed in philosophy and ending with his execution five decades later. By presenting his model philosopher across a fifty-year span of his life, Plato leads his readers to wonder: does that time period correspond to the development of Socrates’ thought? In this magisterial investigation of the evolution of Socrates’ philosophy, Laurence Lampert answers in the affirmative...read more

Product Description: When Nietzsche published Beyond Good and Evil in 1886, he told a friend that it was a book that would not be read properly until “around the year 2000.” Now Laurence Lampert sets out to fulfill this prophecy by providing a section by section interpretation of this philosophical masterpiece that emphasizes its unity and depth as a comprehensive new teaching on nature and humanity...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Francis Bacon is rightly celebrated as one of the founders of the scientific and technological revolution that transformed Western civilization. His chief works argue that a society dedicated to science and technology would "relieve the human estate," providing a longer, healthier, more informed, and more ennobling life for everyone...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The influential political philosopher Leo Strauss has been credited by conservatives with the recovery of the great tradition of political philosophy stretching back to Plato. Among Strauss's most enduring legacies is a strongly negative assessment of Nietzsche as the modern philosopher most at odds with that tradition and most responsible for the sins of twentieth-century culture—relativism, godlessness, nihilism, and the breakdown of family values. In fact, this apparent denunciation has become so closely associated with Strauss that it is often seen as the very core of his thought.In Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, the eminent Nietzsche scholar Laurence Lampert offers a controversial new assessment of the Strauss-Nietzsche connection. Lampert undertakes a searching examination of the key Straussian essay, "Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil." He shows that this essay, written toward the end of Strauss's life and placed at the center of his final work, reveals an affinity for and debt to Nietzsche greater than Strauss's followers allow. Lampert argues that the essay comprises the most important interpretation of Nietzsche ever published, one that clarifies Nietzsche's conception of nature and of human spiritual history and demonstrates the logical relationship between the essential themes in Nietzsche's thought—the will to power and the eternal return.

Provides an interpretation of modern philosophy by developing Nietzsche's view that genuine philosophers set out to determine the direction of culture through their ideas and that they conceal the radical nature of their thought by their esoteric style.

The first comprehensive interpretation of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra—an important and difficult text and the only book Nietzsche ever wrote with characters, events, setting, and a plot. Laurence Lampert’s chapter-by-chapter commentary on Nietzsche’s magnum opus clarifies not only Zarathustra’s narrative structure but also the development of Nietzsche’s thinking as a whole.“An impressive piece of scholarship. Insofar as it solves the riddle of Zarathustra in an unprecedented fashion, this study serves as an invaluable resource for all serious students of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Lampert’s persuasive and thorough interpretation is bound to spark a revival of interest in Zarathustra and raise the standards of Nietzsche scholarship in general.”—Daniel W. Conway, Review of Metaphysics“A book of scholarship, filled with passion and concern for its text.”—Tracy B. Strong, Review of Politics“This is the first genuine textual commentary on Zarathustra in English, and therewith a genuine reader’s guide. It makes a significant and original contribution to its field.”—Werner J. Dannhauser, Cornell University“This is a very valuable and carefully wrought study of a very complex and subtle poetic-philosophical work that provides access to Nietzsche’s style of presenting his thought, as well as to his passionately affirmed values. Lampert’s commentary and analysis of Zarathustra is so thorough and detailed. . . that it is the most useful English-language companion to Nietzsche’s ‘edifying’ and intriguing work.”—ChoiceSelected as one of Choice’s outstanding academic books for 1988 (view table of contents)