Jean-Luc Beauchard

Why does life in society make us so unhappy? Why has civilization always been marked with social unrest? From the time of Plato, our greatest thinkers have understood that in order to confront the ills of the city, one must first look to the individual, to the maladies and discontents of the human soul. In this novel reading of Plato's Republic, the insights of Nietzsche and Freud are brought to bear on one of western civilization's most important texts. But what is at stake is far more than our interpretation of the Republic. City of Man will leave readers better equipped to face the crises that confront us today by reintroducing the import of that oft-quoted but rarely practiced Delphic maxim: know thyself.

What gives life its meaning? This question stands behind every philosophical inquiry, and philosophy itself arises from it. Confronting the problem of meaning is, as Camus says, the fundamental task of human life. Yet at bottom, meaning is an aesthetical category. Meaning hinges on interpretation. It makes sense then to turn to art--and in particular the art form which deals most explicitly with meaning, the novel--if we are to attempt to address it. Inspired by but critical of Roland Barthes's "death of the author" literary theory, The Mask of Memnon seeks to reconcile opposing philosophical approaches to the question of meaning by examining the death of the author from the perspective of the character, not the reader. In this work, the traditional dichotomy between external/objective meaning and internal/subjective meaning is upended and a new paradigm is proposed.