Yale University Press publishes a series named "Rethinking the Western Tradition". The bulk of a volume will be some classic of the Western tradition, followed by essays by scholars now active. The usual proportion of classic to commentary seems to be between two to one and three to one. I first noticed the series for its edition of Newman's The Idea of a University, in which I thought that some of the essays could have been spared for more Newman.
I have just finished reading the series edition of Leviathan. Here the first essay I read was definitely worth the time, an attempt to emphasize Hobbes's reliance on natural law. I don't know that the author made his case. But I will have a look at other essays when time allows.
Hobbes will occasionally occasionally give a term in Greek, mostly later in the book. Here in a few places the production process let Yale down. There are a couple of sigmas where omicrons should be, and a nu replaces an upsilon. These are not especially important, but they introduce a doubt: how accurately rendered are the four hundred pages of 17th Century English, with different spellings, capitalization, and punctuation? Cross-checking against an old Pelican paperback edition shows that the Pelican edition does not have these particular errors.
Well, I bought the book in part to encourage Kramerbooks to carry more works of philosophy. I see in looking at the Yale series that we bought another volume in it last year to give to a friend at Christmas, a collection of Hume's essays.
