This is already a cult book in certain circles. Although it's aimed at the average reader, it contains something characteristic of turning points in the history of philosophy. Like ancient Greek (Socrates) and modern philosophy (Descartes), Serbian contemporary philosophy gets its demon too. Apart from the appearance of the Daemon as the inspirer of this book, the theme itself is unusual. In fact, this work is like a multiple personality connected by a single thread that can be followed throughout the book - the theme of barbarians. The book deals with philosophical topics covered in the cult film Conan the Barbarian. Those are the ideas of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel, which are presented in an artistically remarkably successful way by famous American director John Milius. The philosophical views presented in the film, when it comes to eternal life and philosophical issues are complemented by the author's attempt to synthesize Kant's ethical formalism and Nietzsche's dualistic immoralism. Like a real treat, the theory of human sexuality as the cause of barbarian invasions is left for the end. But we don't know whether this intriguing theory is a step back or forward for the civilization. Does a civilized man have to look up to Nietzsche's ideal of "overman" in order to avoid being replaced by a barbarian? It's perhaps the best to read this book and judge for yourself.
Conan the Barbarian is one of the most famed figures in fantasy fiction. With the success of the new film starring Jason Momoa and Ron Perlman, the time is right to revisit Robert E. Howard's classic stories. Presented in chronological order over three books, all of Conan's life is here, from his wild adventures as a youth to the final tale of Conan the King. Howard's tales of the wanderer, the reaver, the thief, the Barbarian have never been surpassed. In this volume Conan learns the secrets of THE TOWER OF THE ELEPHANT and the ROGUES IN THE HOUSE, meets THE FROST-GIANT'S DAUGHTER and the QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST and visits THE VALE OF LOST WOMEN and THE BLACK COLOSSUS. A selection of other tales and fragments round out this new collection of a classic character.
The intense psychological portrait of a hitman—the anti-Jason Bourne—as he stalks his prey from Boston to LA. He wants you to know him, maybe even admire him, but only for his excellence in his craft. Perhaps he was even born for it. "A natural killer," his mentor—a middleman named Vespucci—said he was. He proved it with his first professional hit: a Fifth Circuit Court judge in Boston, executed with a sheet of Saran Wrap in the stairwell of her own courthouse. He's proved his merit often, usually with a Glock semiautomatic, but he's improvised too, with his bare hands, the heel of a shoe, knives, even a sewing machine. He is the consummate assassin, at the top of his form, immune to the psychological strains of his chosen profession. He is what the Russians call a Silver Bear. He calls himself Columbus. It's the name Vespucci gave him, ten years ago, when he discovered a dark, new world of fences, clients, marks, jobs, jack. Not that his real name meant much to him anyway. He never knew his father or his mother, a prostitute who became dangerously involved back in the seventies with an earnest young congressman named Abe Mann, then a rising star in the Democratic Party. The magnetic Abe Mann has since become the Speaker of the House. He is currently running for the Democratic nomination in an exhausting presidential campaign, weaving his way across the country. Columbus is not far behind. But as he pieces together his past and prepares the seamless assassination of his mark, the criminal underworld he has always ruled begins unraveling violently around him.
Gabriel Richardson Lear presents a bold new approach to one of the enduring debates about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: the controversy about whether it coherently argues that the best life for humans is one devoted to a single activity, namely philosophical contemplation. Many scholars oppose this reading because the bulk of the Ethics is devoted to various moral virtues--courage and generosity, for example--that are not in any obvious way either manifestations of philosophical contemplation or subordinated to it. They argue that Aristotle was inconsistent, and that we should not try to read the entire Ethics as an attempt to flesh out the notion that the best life aims at the "monistic good" of contemplation. In defending the unity and coherence of the Ethics, Lear argues that, in Aristotle's view, we may act for the sake of an end not just by instrumentally bringing it about but also by approximating it. She then argues that, for Aristotle, the excellent rational activity of moral virtue is an approximation of theoretical contemplation. Thus, the happiest person chooses moral virtue as an approximation of contemplation in practical life. Richardson Lear bolsters this interpretation by examining three moral virtues--courage, temperance, and greatness of soul--and the way they are fine. Elegantly written and rigorously argued, this is a major contribution to our understanding of a central issue in Aristotle's moral philosophy.
The Barbaric Triumph examines all aspects of the life and work of Robert E. Howard -- the originator of the sword-&-sorcery antasy genre and the creator of Conan the Barbarian. Featured are essays by Leo Grin, Edwrad A. Waterman, Charles Hoffman, Paul Spencer, Mark Finn, Steven R. Trout, Lauric Guillaud, Scott Connors, George Knight, Don Herron, and more. From the phantoms of Hate simmering beneath Howard's blood-drenched prose to Howard's lifelong interest in philosophy, from Howard's visionary use of the American Frontier Myth to his tales of boxing, The Barbaric Triumph builds on the pioneering research of Heron's previous book on Howard, The Dark Barbarian and takes it to new levels.
In a meteoric career that spanned a mere twelve years, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword and sorcery. From his fertile imagination sprang some of fiction’s most enduring heroes. Yet while Conan is indisputably Howard’s greatest creation, it was in his earlier sequence of tales featuring Kull, a fearless warrior with the brooding intellect of a philosopher, that Howard began to develop the distinctive themes, and the richly evocative blend of history and mythology, that would distinguish his later tales of the Hyborian Age. Much more than simply the prototype for Conan, Kull is a fascinating character in his own right: an exile from fabled Atlantis who wins the crown of Valusia, only to find it as much a burden as a prize. This groundbreaking collection, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Justin Sweet, gathers together all Howard’s stories featuring Kull, from Kull’ s first published appearance, in “The Shadow Kingdom,” to “Kings of the Night,” Howard’ s last tale featuring the cerebral swordsman. The stories are presented just as Howard wrote them, with all subsequent editorial emendations removed. Also included are previously unpublished stories, drafts, and fragments, plus extensive notes on the texts, an introduction by Howard authority Steve Tompkins, and an essay by noted editor Patrice Louinet. Praise for Kull “Robert E. Howard had a gritty, vibrant style–broadsword writing that cut its way to the heart, with heroes who are truly larger than life.”—David Gemmell “Howard’s writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks.”—Stephen King “Howard was a true storyteller–one of the first, and certainly among the best, you’ll find in heroic fantasy. If you’ve never read him before, you’ re in for a real treat.”—Charles de Lint “For stark, living fear . . . what other writer is even in the running with Robert E. Howard?”—H. P. Lovecraft
This 860-page collection contains all of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian stories published during his lifetime, contextualized with biographical details of their author. The hardcover, a Multimedia Bundle Edition, includes the e-book and audiobook editions as downloadable bonus content. Excerpt from Introduction: "When the first Conan of Cimmeria story appeared in the pages of Weird Tales magazine in December 1932, nothing quite like it had ever before appeared in print.Author Robert E. Howard had been writing stories broadly similar to it for half a decade; but it was with Conan, and the Hyborian Age storyworld in which he was placed, that Howard finally fully doped out the sub-genre that would become known as "sword and sorcery," of which Howard is today considered the founding father. "Conan's origins date back to an experiment in 1926 titled "The Shadow Kingdom," featuring the character Kull, exile of Atlantis. The idea -- Howard's great innovation -- was, at its core, historical fiction set in a pre-historical period. That pre-historical period -- being, of course, lost in the mists of time -- could contain anything Howard might like to include: evil races of sentient snake-things, sorcerers, undead creatures, demons walking upon the earth, anything. "In other words, Howard was creating a secular mythology. "And as with any mythology, secular or no, there would be a hero, a Ulysses or a Theseus, an exceptional man of legend striding through that myth-world, sword in hand, righting wrongs and slaying supernatural monsters and, along the way, providing metaphorical insight onto his world and ours. "At the same time, he was finding success with another historical-fiction-fusion innovation: The grim, savage English Puritan Solomon Kane. Kane's world was the skull-strewn chaos of Europe and north Africa during the Thirty Years War, in the early 1600s. Little enough is known about specific events during that dark time that it was possible to take historical liberties with it as a storyworld, so that it could accommodate dark magic, walking skeletons, vampires, magic staffs, and, of course, N'Longa the witch-doctor. "Howard quickly realized he was onto something with Solomon Kane. The first Solomon Kane story, "Red Shadows," appeared in August 1928 in Weird Tales, and readers loved it. Here was a dark, brooding world of menace and witchcraft connected pseudo-genealogically to their own. It was easy for readers to "take the ride" -- to suspend their disbelief and envision Kane's adventures as a part of the real world. "But, perhaps the connection with the real world was too close. The countries of 1630s Europe are well known; the causes of the conflict fully understood. There was only so much Howard could do in Solomon Kane's world. Moreover, Solomon Kane is just a hard character to root for. Unlike Kull, he is, not to put too fine a point on it, really not a sane man. "So it makes perfect sense that after the shadowy, prehistoric world of Kull and the dark, necromantic world of Solomon Kane, Howard would combine these two precursors to develop a world that was far enough into the distant past to be free of actual historical constraints -- like Kull's -- yet close enough to the present to still exist as echoes and legends in the world's mythologies. "And so Howard created The Hyborian Age, circa 10,000 B.C. And to play the role of our avatar as we explore this shadowy, almost-historical world, he gave us Conan the Cimmerian - to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."
Here are Robert E. Howard’s greatest horror tales, all in their original, definitive versions. Some of Howard’s best-known characters—Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them—roam the forbidding locales of the author’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa. The collection includes Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” which Stephen King calls “one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation–and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers–and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. In these and other lavishly illustrated classics, such as the revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” and “The Cairn on the Headland,” Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world’s great masters of the macabre.
An entertaining and insightful history of martial arts and the role of the warrior, drawing on pop culture, philosophy, mythology, religion, and spirituality The urge to forge one’s character by fighting, in daily life as well as on the mat, appeals to something deep within us. More than a collection of fighting techniques, martial arts constitute a path to developing body, spirit, and awareness. On the Warrior’s Path connects the martial arts with this larger perspective, merging subtle philosophies with no-holds-barred competition, Nietzsche with Bruce Lee, radical Taoism and Buddhism with the Star Wars Trilogy, traditional martial arts with basketball and American Indian culture. At the center of all these phenomena is the warrior. Though this archetype seems to manifest contradictory values, author Daniele Bolelli describes the heart of this tension: how the training of martial technique leads to a renunciation of violence, and how overcoming fear leads to a unique freedom. Aimed at students at any level or tradition of martial arts but also accessible to the armchair warrior, On the Warrior’s Path brings fresh insights to why martial arts remains an enduring and widespread art and discipline. Two new chapters in this second edition focus on spirituality in the martial arts and the author’s personal journey in the field.
