Harvard University Press

Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered yes in word and deed. Rorty challenges this lost generation to understand its potential role in the tradition of democratic intellectual labor that began with Whitman and Dewey.

Epictetus was a crippled Greek slave of Phrygia during Nero's reign who heard lectures by the Stoic Musonius before he was freed. He is the author of Discourses and a smaller Enceiridion, a handbook that encapsulates the doctrines of the larger work.