In "The Tragedy and Comedy of Life", Seth Benardete focuses on the idea of the good in what is widely regarded as one of Plato's most challenging and complex dialogs, the Philebus. Traditionally the Philebus is interpreted as affirming the doctrine that the good resides in thought and mind rather than in pleasure or the body. Benardete challenges this view, arguing that Socrates vindicates the life of the mind over the life of pleasure not by separating the two and advocating a strict asceticism, but by mixing pleasure and pain with mind in such a way that the philosophic life emerges as the only possible human life. Benardete combines a probing and challenging commentary that subtly mirrors and illuminates the complexities of this dialog with the finest English translation of the Philebus yet available. The result is a work that will be of great value to classicists, philosophers, and political theorists alike.

One of the outstanding thinkers of our time offers in this book his final words to posterity. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy was well underway at the time of Leo Strauss's death in 1973. Having chosen the title for the book, he selected the most important writings of his later years and arranged them to clarify the issues in political philosophy that occupied his attention throughout his life. As his choice of title indicates, the heart of Strauss's work is Platonism--a Platonism that is altogether unorthodox and highly controversial. These essays consider, among others, Heidegger, Husserl, Nietzsche, Marx, Moses Maimonides, Machiavelli, and of course Plato himself to test the Platonic understanding of the conflict between philosophy and political society. Strauss argues that an awesome spritual impoverishment has engulfed modernity because of our dimming awareness of that conflict. Thomas Pangle's Introduction places the work within the context of the entire Straussian corpus and focuses especially on Strauss's late Socratic writings as a key to his mature thought. For those already familiar with Strauss, Pangle's essay will provoke thought and debate; for beginning readers of Strauss, it provides a fine introduction. A complete bibliography of Strauss's writings if included.

《蒂迈欧篇》为柏拉图的晚期著作，是柏拉图思想的一篇重要文献。本篇对话提出了两个重要的概念：作为事物材料来源的载体，以及为事物提供形式结构的理型。柏拉图运用几何化的理型来解释万事万物的结构，并认为事物的内在结构是事物的本质。在第一部分中，柏拉图讨论了造物者的作用，在第二部分中，他指出宇宙生成是必然作用和理性作用的结果。必然作用即是载体概念和理型几何化的过程，而理性的承载者，即人类的生成，是理性“说服”了必然而产生的结果。因此，人的出现意味着宇宙演化的最终实现，造物者在自己的创造物中实现了自身：宇宙本身就是活生生的神自身。

本书选择了上个世纪以来历次召开的柏拉图研究会议中关于《法义》的最有代表性的文章，针对政治学和政治哲学的相关主题，汇集成册，以期展现西方学界《法义》研究的最新成果，以及西方古典学界在这个领域所达到的广度和深度。

《苏格拉底或政治哲学的诞生》是施特劳斯派学者特拉夫尼对苏格拉底的独特解读，通过解读柏拉图早期对话《克力同》和《苏格拉底的申辩》来理解苏格拉底的基本立场。 作者认为，在苏格拉底那里，哲学必然从根本上涉及政治，也就是涉及一个共同体的生活规范。苏格拉底的哲学因而表现为一种政治哲学，而政治哲学总是在某一个共同体中追问什么是真正的善与正义。 与此同时，作者亦指出，在专业化分工日甚的现代大学，科学渐渐不再关注何谓好何谓善的问题，在这样的背景下，重温苏格拉底对智术师们以生活利益为导向的科学活动与以善的生活为导向的政治哲学的区分，对现代大学重拾其精神尊严极为必要。