Why does Plato write dialogues? Why more than one? The Temporality of Human Excellence begins with a brief introductory consideration of these questions, and concludes with a suggestion about two things: the intent of his use of this form, and the manner of its concrete realization in a set of two dozen or so dialogues. Taking up each dialogue as a separate drama, the reading seeks to focus attention on how each, by its characters, their interplay and conversation, and the apparent lack of positive issue to the discussion they engage in, contributes to a sketch of human excellence as a...

Loving and Dying is a reading of three dialogues (Phaedo, Symposium, and Phaedrus) which, using the figure of Socrates conversing in three different concrete situations, in complementary fashion address death, love, and reflection, as matters central to finding and understanding life's meaning and to sharing in the kind of immortality that is open to a human being. The intent of the work is simply to bring to attention how the dialogues register as drama and how they achieve this provocation of the reader to reflection on these central matters in human life.

In an effort to clear up misunderstanding of his previous writings and avoid future misinterpretations, Nietzsche assessed his own work in the autobiographical Ecce Homo and offered readers pointers for properly reading and understanding his writings. The Well of Eternity addresses Nietzsche's thinking on time and temporality in eight of his works, beginning with The Birth of Tragedy and culminating in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, using the pointers described in Ecce Homo. Its detailed exploration highlights three points: how central the matter of growth and maturation was to Nietzsche's sense of...