[The philosophy at home series]

"On Human Nature: A Gathering While Everything Flows brings together the late essays, autobiographical reflections, an interview, and a poem by the eminent literary theorist and cultural critic Kenneth Burke (1897-1993). Burke was an innovative and original thinker who worked at the intersection of sociology, psychology, literary theology, and semiotics. This book, a selection of fourteen representative pieces of his productive later years, addresses many important themes Burke tackled throughout his career such as logology (his attempt to find a universal language theory and methodology), technology, and ecology. The essays also elaborate Burke's notions about creativity and its relation to stress, language and its literary uses, and the relation of mind and body."--Jacket.

Nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) championed individual strength of will and independent, reasoned deliberation above the irrational impulses that animated most of society. In The Wisdom of Life, taken from his last work, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851), he discusses how to order our lives to obtain the greatest amount of pleasure and success; then he offers guidelines for living life to its fullest. But for Schopenhauer a life well lived should always reach beyond itself to a higher plane.