Paideia Publishing House was founded in 1990 and has the logo of the publishing house of culture books; she is known for her reference works, of an academic and formative nature; published over 500 titles, many of which are highly acclaimed (examples for new translations and critical editions: Homeric epics, pre-Socratic writings, Platonic dialogues, Metaphysics, Politics and Categories of Aristotle, Dionysius the Pseudo-Aeropagite, the Gnostics, Philo of Alexandria, Abelard, Bacon and Locke, Descartes, Kant and Hegel, Heidegger, Bulgakov and Berdiaev, Rilke, Borges, Derrida.
The target of the publishing house is made up of young and middle-aged intellectuals, active in academic life or involved in cultural life; in public perception, Paideia is a non-commercial, elitist and intellectual publishing house, which, unlike the other competitors, does not make concessions to the consumer book immediately and miraculously resists; the main element, which made this public loyal, is the consistency with which the books of great value of the European and national culture were published, as well as interesting researches of the Romanian specialists; a breach in the direction of the general public occurred by publishing works dedicated to traditional culture and, especially and spectacularly, with the publication of the book of ethno-culinary culture Romanian wines and customs dishes | 880 pg. large format | which in 10 years has known three very successful editions and several variants in French and English. Decisive for increasing the visibility of the publishing house was the fact that the first edition promoted the author | Radu Anton Roman | as a producer of television shows on the theme of traditional Romanian cuisine, and he systematically promoted the publishing house for 8 years.
The main collections through which Paideia honored the logo of the publishing house of culture books are: the collection of reference books, the collection of outstanding books, imagined spaces and the collection of studies and essays with its 10 series of fields. Although it has a modest turnover, between 300 and 500 thousand Euros per year, Paideia is a lively presence that continues to surprise the public with special ideas and formulas: the most surprising is the initiative to publish special editions with bibliophile notes and graphic ideas. innovative. The series of editorial events he has proposed this year opens with the launch on June 2, at 6 pm of the Tetraevangelial Paideia 2008, at the National Theater, Apollo Gallery.
In 2005, 15 years after its founding, the issue of re-forming the publishing house was raised, given the moral uses and important changes in socio-cultural and market contexts that had to be carefully evaluated again; two years of analysis and experiments followed, preliminary to the re-creation of the structure and image of the publishing house.
Although reformulated, the major goal remains the same: the formation of a large corpus of reference works comprising works and commentary books from classical universal culture and national culture; also, to be supported, systematically, through special collections, the Romanian research and creation in the fields of letters, critical literature and humanistic disciplines; the reconditioned structure of the editorial plans is as follows:
1. Collection of reference books; groups important books written by well-known authors. The collection has the following series:
- Works and masterpieces
- Stories and treatises
- Dictionaries, encyclopedias, chrestomathy
- memories
- Fine arts
- Anastatic library of Romanian literature
2. The collection of studies and essays: includes new editions or unpublished works written by renowned specialists; they are organized in series, by domains:
- Philosophy
- Religion, telogy
- Cultures and civilizations
- Literary theory and criticism
- History
- anthropology
- Political Sciences
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Science and technology
3. Paideia | Signal: launches young authors | unconsecrated; has the series:
- Literatures
- Criticism and comment
- Theoretical tests
4. Imagined spaces. This collection features frontier works that integrate visions and ideas related to the culture of the living space | architecture, fine arts, social sciences, religious thinking, spirituality. |
5. Paideia | Biblio and other special editions. Books already published in collections or other works are presented as special editions, customized by bibliophilic elements.
6. Paideia | Inscriptions, images and wall objects. Wisdom literature, famous texts of the short genre, are edited in the graphic concept of the papyrus, in fact, a long poster with inscriptions and illustrations, printed on handmade paper; it can be posted on the wall for pedagogical purposes, for memorization or just for decorative purposes.
7. Collection of unwritten, handmade papers.
The publishing house pleads for raising the production of academic books, for a more coherent and transparent offer in this direction and has contributed, with this sense, to the establishment of the Association of Academic and University Book Publishers.