The European Union and the single currency have given Europe more stability than it has known in the past thousand years, yet Europe seems to be in perpetual crisis about its global role. The many European empires are now reduced to a multiplicity of ethnicities, traditions, and civilizations. Europe will never be One, but to survive as a union it will have to become a federation of “islands” both distinct and connected.Though drawing on philosophers of Europe’s past, Cacciari call...

Nine masterful essays on Dante's Divine Comedy and his political theology by one of today's leading Italian philosophers.Among today's Italian philosophers, Massimo Cacciari is perhaps the most assiduous commentator of Dante. Philosophy, Mysticism, and the Political collects all of Cacciari's writings on Dante to this day, from his masterful analysis of St. Francis of Assisi in Dante's Paradiso and Giotto...

The first English translation of his work, The Withholding Power, offers a fascinating introduction to the thought of Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari. Cacciari is a notoriously complex thinker but this title offers a starting point for entering into the very heart of his thinking. The Witholding Power provides a comprehensive and synthetic insight into his interpretation of Christian political theology and leftist Italian political theory more generally.The t...

Massimo Cacciari is one of the leading public intellectuals in today's Italy, both as an outstanding philosopher and political thinker and as now three times (and currently) the mayor of Venice. This collection of essays on political topics provides the best introduction in English to his thought to date. The political focus does not, however, prevent these essays from being an introduction to the full range of Cacciari's thought.The present collection includes chapters on Hofmanns...

The best and most eloquent introduction to Dante for our time.Prue Shaw is one of the world's foremost authorities on Dante. Written with the general reader in mind, Reading Dante brings her knowledge to bear in an accessible yet expert introduction to his great poem.This is far more than an exegesis of Dante’s three-part Commedia. Shaw communicates the imaginative power, the linguistic skill and the emotional intensity of Dante’s poetry—t...

New York Times–bestselling author Garry Wills provides a provocative analysis of the theological and historical basis for the priesthoodIn a riveting and provocative tour de force from the author of What Jesus Meant, Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills poses the challenging question: Why did the priesthood develop in a religion that began without it and, indeed, was opposed to it? Why Priests? argues brilliantly and persuasively fo...

In this Very Short Introduction, Peter Hainsworth and David Robey take a different approach to Dante, by examining the main themes and issues that run through all of his work, ranging from autobiography, to understanding God and the order of the universe. In doing so, they highlight what has made Dante a vital point of reference for modern writers and readers, both inside and outside Italy. They emphasize the distinctive and dynamic interplay in Dante's writing between argument, i...

There is today a dramatic reexamination of structure, authority, dogma -- indeed, every aspect of the life of the Church is held up to scrutiny. Welcoming this as a sign of vitality, Avery Dulles has carefully studied the writings of contemporary Protestant and Catholic ecclesiologists and sifted out six major approaches, or "models," through which the Church's character can be understood: as Institution, Mystical Communion, Sacrament, Herald, Servant, and, in a recent addition to the book...

With his journeys through Hell and Purgatory complete, Dante is at last led by his beloved Beatrice to Paradise. Where his experiences in the Inferno and Purgatorio were arduous and harrowing, this is a journey of comfort, revelation, and, above all, love-both romantic and divine. Robert Hollander is a Dante scholar of unmatched reputation and his wife, Jean, is an accomplished poet. Their verse translation with facing-page Italian combines maximum fidelity to Dante's tex...

The object of this work is to define Dante's attitude or, if need be, his successive attitudes towards philosophy. It is therefore a question of ascertaining the character, function and place which Dante assigned to this branch of learning among the activities of man. My purpose has not been to single out, classify and list Dante's numerous philosophical ideas, still less to look for their sources or to decide what doctrinal influences determined the evolution of his thought.

When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published--"godless," "full of abominations," "a book forged in hell . . . by the devil himself." Religious and secular authorities saw it as a threat to faith, social and political harmony, and everyday morality, and its author was almost universally regarded as a religious subversive and political radical who sought to spread atheism throughout Europe. Yet Spin...

Robert Durling's spirited new prose translation of the Paradiso completes his masterful rendering of the Divine Comedy. Durling's earlier translations of the Inferno and the Purgatorio garnered high praise, and with this superb version of the Paradiso readers can now traverse the entirety of Dante's epic poem of spiritual ascent with the guidance of one of the greatest living Italian-to-English translators. Reunited with his beloved Beatrice in ...