While a student, Franz Kappus began sending his poetry to a young Rainer Maria Rilke, seeking his advice. The resultant ten letters from Rilke, published after his death, contain words of luminous intimacy where Rilke shapes the ecstasy of youthful desire into a consideration of how to live life deliberately.

Becoming an artist is an apprenticeship in solitude, seeking, and suffering. When initially asked by Herr Kappus whether his verses are good, Rilke counters with the dismissal of all such outward concerns, and an admonition to go inside oneself, to discover whether one's poetic...

The history of education can easily be described as theme and variation on one motif: reform. From Plato's critique of the Sophists in Protagoras to John Henry Newman's considerations of education in The Idea of a University in 1854, from the educational projects of Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Loris Malaguzzi in the 20th century to Kieran Egan's call for a reimagination of education in the 21st, educators and philosophers have regularly turned to two fundamental questions: "What is the purpose of an education?" and "How is it to be achieved?" This is the essence of Friedrich...