“Trenchant and moving.”―Robert Boyers, Los Angeles Times The inexhaustible man of letters directs his critical gaze at his own profession―teaching. When we talk about education today, we tend to avoid the rhetoric of “mastery,” with its erotic and inegalitarian overtones. But the charged personal encounter between master and disciple is precisely what interests George Steiner in this book, a sustained reflection on the infinitely complex and subtle interplay of power, trust, and passions in the most profound sorts of pedagogy. Based on Steiner's 2001–2002 Norton Lectures on the art and lore of teaching, Lessons of the Masters evokes a host of exemplary figures, including Socrates and Plato, Virgil and Dante, Heloise and Abelard, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, along with spiritual leaders from Buddhist and Confucian sages to Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov. Pivotal in the unfolding of Western culture are Socrates and Jesus, charismatic masters who left no written teachings and founded no schools. In the efforts of their disciples―and in the passion narratives inspired by their deaths―Steiner sees the beginnings of the inward vocabulary, the encoded recognitions of much of our moral, philosophical, and theological idiom. He goes on to consider a diverse array of traditions and disciplines, returning throughout to three underlying themes: the master's power to exploit his student's dependence and vulnerability; the complementary threat of subversion and betrayal of the mentor by his pupil; and the reciprocal exchange of trust and love, of learning and instruction between master and disciple. Forcefully written and passionately argued, Lessons of the Masters is itself a masterly testament to the high vocation and perilous risks undertaken by true teacher and learner alike. “Why do we constantly degrade or lampoon teachers? What they do is how civilizations are built―'no craft more privileged' says George Steiner...Perhaps it's because too many teachers, like me, fell ignominiously short of greatness. Steiner is not one of those. In these six Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, he brings his formidable charisma, his unrivalled range of reference and powers of rhetoric to bear on the peaks (as well as some troughs) of pedagogy, in history and literature: Socrates and Alcibiades, the parables of Christ, Faust, Virgil and Dante, Abelard and Eloise...Like his hero Socrates, Steiner professes to have few answers, but his questions sweep you along.” ― Robin Blake , Financial Times “Steiner's scope of reference is daunting, massive, seemingly pan-textual and perhaps spilling sloppily over the edges of a short book like this one. But one of the pleasures of reading his reticulate, compounded, prodigious and forceful prose style has always been the knowledge that we're getting more than we bargained for, that the exegete's high-octane gloss on seven words from The Inferno might outstrip our urge to reread The Inferno . Fine with me: The man is impassioned. And his goal, what he wants passed on to his readers, seems nothing less than a reminder of what constitutes la société libre , a cultured populace willing to ingest, learn from and, when necessary, refute the Masters.” ― Ken Babstock , Globe and Mail “Steiner's Lessons of the Masters sets forth the disturbing complexity of the relationship between teacher and pupil, master and disciple...Some of the best writing in Steiner's book is scorching characterisation―of bad teachers, of the politically correct, and the hypocrites who would deny the erotic element in the teacher-pupil relationship.” ― Germaine Greer , Times “Steiner has addressed the whole topic of 'masters'...and their students or disciples, and what the whole vexed process of the passing on of wisdom involves. Lessons of the Masters , based on Steiner's Norton lectures, explores those exceptional souls who attempted to divine, unpick or wrestle with truth and their dramatic and often complicated relationships with their followers...It is the urgent sense of the unquantifiable but irreplaceable value of teaching that gives Lessons of the Masters its force.” ― Salley Vickers , Observer “Steiner...[explores] the ways in which the evolution of the art of knowledge has been accompanied by an evolved symbiosis of attraction and subversion, a reciprocity of trust and love passing between disciple and provider of knowledge...In this small volume, Steiner provides what must be his most dazzling spectacle of poly-scholarship. Judaism, Confucianism, Zen, Christianity, mathematics, science, the sportsfield, pop music, the classics are all quarried for analogues and examples. In each lecture, he provides wonderful examples of the internal politics of apprenticeship.” ― Anthony Smith , Times Higher Education Supplement “The debt owed to [Steiner] by his readers...cannot be acknowledged too often...The rewards and privileges of teaching, as well as the fears