Vedāntasiddhāntamuktāvalī

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Aristoteles

The Topics is Aristotle's treatise on dialectical argument, a practice perhaps as old as human language, systemized for the first time by Aristotle. This seminal text offers many important insights into his conception of logic, his development of the notion of the predicables (the Five Terms), and his ideas on the method of philosophical inquiry itself. This volume contains a clear and accurate translation of Books I and VIII of Aristotle's Topics, together with a philosophical commentary on these books and additional selections from Books II and III, and from the Sophistical Refutation. These books and selections best give a general view of the main ideas, arguments, and techniques expounded in the Topics. The volume is well suited to the requirements of students, including those who do not know Greek.

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Cicero

We know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, than of any other Roman. Besides much else, his work conveys the turmoil of his time, and the part he played in a period that saw the rise and fall of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic.

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Plato

One of the most famous works of literature in the Western world, Plato's Symposium is also one of the most entertaining. The scene is a dinner party in Athens in 416 B.C. at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and Plato's mentor, Socrates - playfully discuss the nature of eros, or love. By turns earthly and sublime, the dialogue culminates with Socrates's famous account of the "ladder of love," an extended analysis of the many forms of eros. The evening ends with a speech by the drunken Alcibiades, the most popular and powerful Athenian of the day, who insists on praising Socrates rather than love, offering up a brilliant character sketch of the enigmatic philosopher. This Modern Library edition is the authoritative translation by Benjamin Jowett, substantially revised by Dr. Hayden Pelliccia, associate professor of classics at Cornell University. This revised translation takes into account advances in scholarship since Jowett's day and modernizes the Victorian English where it is coy or archaic. The result is a translation neither too colloquial nor too literal, one that is faithful to both Jowett's superb prose and Plato's matchless original.

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Svāmī Turīyānanda

The Vivekachudamani (Sanskrit: विवेकचूडामणि) is a famous Sanskrit poem ascribed to Adi Shankara in the eighth century. It expounds the Advaita Vedanta philosophy and is in the form of 580 verses in the Shardula Vikridita metre. The Vivekachudamani describes developing Viveka — the human faculty of discrimination — as the central task in the spiritual life and calls it the crown jewel among the essentials for Moksha. The title Vivekachudamani translates to Crest Jewel of Discrimination. Through the centuries, the Vivekachudamani has been translated into several languages and has been the topic of many commentaries and expositions.