This volume brings together Seth Benardete’s studies of Hesiod, Homer, and Greek tragedy, eleven Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

The Argument of the Action spans four decades of Seth Benardete’s work, documenting its impressive range. Benardete’s philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground, guided by the key he found in the Platonic dialogue: probing the meaning of speeches embedded in deeds, he uncovers the unifying intention of the work by tracing the way it unfolds through a movement of its own. Benardete’s original interpretations of the classics are the fruit of this discovery of the “argument of the action.”

Aristotle's much-translated On Poetics is the earliest and arguably the best treatment that we possess of tragedy as a literary form. Seth Benardete and Michael Davis have translated it anew with a view to rendering Aristotle’s text into English as precisely as possible. A literal translation has long been needed, for in order to excavate the argument of On Poetics one has to attend not simply to what is said on the surface but also to the various puzzles, questions, and peculiarities that emerge only on the level of how Aristotle says what he says and thereby leads one to revise and deepen one’s initial understanding of the intent of the argument. As On Poetics is about how tragedy ought to be composed, it should not be surprising that it turns out to be a rather artful piece of literature in its own right.

Benardete and Davis supplement their edition of On Poetics with extensive notes and appendices. They explain nuances of the original that elude translation, and they provide translations of passages found elsewhere in Aristotle’s works as well as in those of other ancient authors that prove useful in thinking through the argument of On Poetics both in terms of its treatment of tragedy and in terms of its broader concerns. By following the connections Aristotle plots between On Poetics and his other works, readers will be in a position to appreciate the centrality of this little book for his thought on the whole.

In an introduction that sketches the overall interpretation of On Poetics presented in his The Poetry of Philosophy (St. Augustine’s Press, 1999), Davis argues that, while On Poetics is certainly about tragedy, it has a further concern extending beyond poetry to the very structure of the human soul in its relation to what is, and that Aristotle reveals in the form of his argument the true character of human action.

Michael Davis revisits questions of interpretation in Greek tragedy emerging in the thought of the late Seth Benardete. While this is not the book Benardete would have written, it wrestles with problems that bear his indelible mark.  In the extant tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, only one story is treated by all three––the tale of Electra. Davis endeavors to develop Benardete's understanding of the story's deeper meaning, as well as the connections that might be drawn between the three authors. He follows a thread that brings Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides closer together according to a powerful and shared theme––namely, that the female is the deeper (even if less easily accessible and articulated) of the pair of fundamental principles constituting human beings.

Davis accomplishes much more than an exegetical bridge as he connects us with ancient memory and wisdom. "When we cannot resist the temptation to recoil morally from their terminology, we risk the tragedy of losing their profound thoughts about our humanity––their philosophical anthropology." Davis has remarkably made of a niche study a stunning source material for more universal questions. This is a book that is as timely as it is ageless.