Zbigniew Janowski

The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton Bloomsbury, 288 pages, $25 The human artistic drive is as old as the species itself. The famous Lascaux cave paintings in France show that even at the earliest stages man had an urge for expression beyond utilitarian needs. . . . . Continue Reading »

The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey by Edith Hall Johns Hopkins University Press, 304 pages, $35 Edith Hall’s The Return of Ulysses is a sweeping tour of almost all one could wish to demonstrate about the spell of Homer. A professor at the University of London, . . . . Continue Reading »

Dialogue with Nietzsche by Gianni Vattimo Columbia University Press, 247 pages, $29.50 It is part of academic folklore to defend philosophers against unskilled readings by nonspecialists. One of the best-known cases involves the outraged scholars who defended Plato when Karl Popper published The . . . . Continue Reading »

Few contemporary philosophers have works considered important by non-academics. Their intellectual pursuits, important as they are in their own right, have little impact outside academia, let alone are they deemed politically dangerous. But Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski is just such a . . . . Continue Reading »

An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in RomaniaBy Marta Petreu Ivan R. Dee. 332 pages, $30It is an unenviable task for a biographer to dig up the dirt in someone’s life, and it is worth the effort only if the achievements of the person whose biography he has embarked on . . . . Continue Reading »