Companionship of Books

Alan Udoff is professor of philosophy and Jewish studies at St. Francis College. Martin D. Yaffe is professor of philosophy and religion studies at University of North Texas. Sharon Portnoff teaches at Connecticut College.

• Chapter 1 IntroductionPart I. Athens and JerusalemChapter 1: "In the Beginning . . . "Chapter 2: The MazkirChapter 3: The Philosophy of Socrates or the Gods the City Believes InChapter 4: The Transformation of Courage in Plato's LachesPart II: Literature Ancient and ModernChapter 5: Herodotus and Homer on Helen: An Essay on History and PoetryChapter 6: Treason and ParricideChapter 7: For Love of One's Teachers: Dante, Virgil, and PaganismChapter 8: How One Philosophizes with a Scalpel: Darwin, Nietzsche, and Wells's The Island of Doctor MoreauChapter 9: Literature and the Moral Universe: Camus's The Stranger and Dostoevsky's Crime and PunishmentPart III: The Turn to the New WorldChapter 10: Spinoza's Defense of the Bible: A Model of Modern StatesmanshipChapter 11: America's Debt to John MiltonPart IV: The Return to First ThingsChapter 12: The Essence of Babel: Rousseau on the Origin of LanguagesChapter 13: The Domestication of Nature: A Reading of Darwin's The Origin of Species

This collection is inspired by Laurence Berns, 'scholar, friend, and teacher,' whose thoughtful and probing spirit is reflected in each essay and whose breadth of interests is exhibited by the range of the whole—from the Bible, Plato and Herodotus, Dante and Milton, Spinoza and Rousseau, to Darwin, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky. In their illuminating introduction, Martin Yaffe and Joshua Parens show us how Laurence Berns was drawn, and drew others, into philosophical conversation with the great books. In continuing that conversation, the editors and authors of these essays pay a fitting tribute to him.