The Therapy of Desire

About this book

The Epicureans Skeptics and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death love and sexuality anger and aggression. Like medicine philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus Lucretius Sextus Empiricus Chrysippus and Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today.