"An augmented edition of the famed interdisciplinary study on saturnine melancholy. Saturn and Melancholy remains an iconic text in art history, intellectual history, and the study of culture generally, despite being long out of print in English. Co-authored by Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl and rooted in the tradition established by Aby Warburg and the Warburg Library, this book has deeply influenced the understanding of the interrelations among humanities disciplines since its first publication in English in 1964. This study offers an unparalleled inquiry into the origin and development of the philosophical and medical theories on which the ancient conception of the Temperaments was based, and their connections to astrological concepts and religious ideas. Representations of melancholy are traced in literature and the arts up to the sixteenth century culminating in an illuminating analysis of Dürer's most famous engraving, Melencolia I. Following the success of Italian, French, and German versions of the work in intervening years, this new edition overseen by Philippe Despoix and Georges Leroux makes available for the first time in decades the original English published text. It is complemented by a new introduction and bibliographical amendments undertaken by Raymond Klibansky after the death of his co-authors, as well as supplemental translations of source material and extensive illustrations which inform the volume's landmark iconographic analysis. Completing this new edition is a new and thorough history of the complex publication history of this pathbreaking collective publication project of the Warburg Library--which almost never saw the light of day--covering more than 80 years, including the rich heritage of this work in the decades after its original publication."--

Born in Paris in 1905 to a German-Jewish family from Frankfurt and dying a century later in Montreal, Raymond Klibansky lived a life indelibly coloured by the history of the twentieth century. His thought shaped and was shaped by intellectual currents both European and American, and his scholarly work entailed an intellectual reckoning with tradition that was unique in its scope and ambition, long before talk of academic interdisciplinarity. Klibansky, a student of Karl Jaspers and Ernst Cassirer, was educated in the liberal milieu of the Weimar Republic. Forced to emigrate from Germany in 1933, Klibansky spent the war years in London, where he participated in the British war effort. Working in the tradition established by Aby Warburg and the Warburg Library, he completed with Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl the German text of Saturn and Melancholy. The book's cast metal type was reclaimed for the war effort before it could be printed, but it was eventually published in English in 1964 and has deeply influenced understandings of the interrelations between humanities disciplines ever since. After the war Klibansky came to McGill University, where he enjoyed a brilliant career as a scholar of platonic studies and the history of ideas, mainly in the works of Locke and Hume. Over twelve chapters, each devoted to questions that were dear to Klibansky during his long life, Georges Leroux presents dialogues with his mentor selected from decades of conversation, exploring themes including philosophical traditions, melancholy, tolerance, peace, and the role of philosophy in international relations. Scholarship, interlinked with the events of a turbulent century, is at the centre of these fascinating conversations between student and teacher. A richly illustrated autobiography through dialogue, Raymond Klibanskyis a portrait of a heroic figure in twentieth-century philosophy, a model for a younger generation who can find in his scholarship an admirable example of virtue in the service of peace.