This collection of seven speculative and critical essays initiates a journey, inviting readers to abide, for a short time, with philosophical themes emerging from aesthetics, poetry, existentialism, and education. It opens vistas into the insightful wisdom of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Rilke, and Plato's Socrates. The book confronts such perennial issues as the practice of philosophy as a way of life, the understanding of subjecthood and human transcendence, the pursuit of ethical knowledge in ways that inform and direct the choices we make in the company of others, and the philosophical...