Best of
Philosophy

1977

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments


Roland Barthes - 1977
    Rich with references ranging from Goethe's Werther to Winnicott, from Plato to Proust, from Baudelaire to Schubert, A Lover's Discourse artfully draws a portrait in which every reader will find echoes of themselves.

Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins


Robert Anton Wilson - 1977
    This is called "initiation" or "vision quest" in many traditional societies and ... a dangerous variety of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology. I do not recommend it for everybody... the main thing I learned is that "reality is always plural and mutable." — From the Preface

The Essential Alan Watts


Alan W. Watts - 1977
    Beginning at the age of 20, when he wrote The Spirit of Zen, he developed an audience of millions who were enriched by his book, tape recordings, radio, television, and public lectures.Just before his death he completed the project most dear to his heart. In the secluded and relaxed atmosphere aboard his ferryboat SS Vallejo and at his mountain retreat in Druid Heights he recorded the basic tenets of his philosophy.Revised by his son Mark here is the last original work of Alan Watts now combined with several classic pieces previously not available in book form, including the favorites "Work As Play" and "The Trickster Guru."This final volume is an outstanding introduction to Watts for those who do not know him and a valuable legacy for all." - from the back cover

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah


Richard Bach - 1977
    For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders...until he meets Donald Shimoda — former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar....In Illusions, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar...that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them... and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places — like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves.

The Spectrum of Consciousness


Ken Wilber - 1977
    He was the first to suggest in a systematic way that the great psychological systems of the West could be integrated with the noble contemplative traditions of the East. Spectrum of Consciousness, first released by Quest in 1977, has been the prominent reference point for all subsequent attempts at integrating psychology and spirituality.

Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness


Itzhak Bentov - 1977
    Widely known and loved for his delightful humor and imagination, Bentov explains the familiar world of phenomena with perceptions that are as lucid as they are thrilling. He gives us a provocative picture of ourselves in an expanded, conscious, holistic universe.

Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977


Michel Foucault - 1977
    He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the broad social vision and political aims that unified them.Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent - and terrifying - portrait of society that he was patiently compiling.For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives."Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time - and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds.

Aesthetics and Politics


Theodor W. Adorno - 1977
    In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history.Discussing expressionism / Ernst BlochRealism in the balance / Georg LukacsAgainst Georg Luckacs / Bertolt BrechtConversations with Brecht / Walter BenjaminLetters to Walter Benjamin / Theodor AdornoReply / Walter BenjaminReconciliation under duress ; Commitment / Theodor AdornoReflections in conclusion / Fredric Jameson

Eumeswil


Ernst Jünger - 1977
    Eumeswil is a utopian state ruled by the Condor, a general who has installed himself as a dictator and who dominates the capital from a guarded citadel atop a hill - the Casbah. A refined manipulator of power, the Condor despises the democrats who conspire against him. Venator, the narrator of the novel, is a historian whose discreet and efficient services as the Condor's night steward earn him full access to the forbidden zone, at the very heart of power. Every evening, while attending to the Condor and his guests at the Casbah's night bar, Venator keeps a secret journal in which he records the conversations he overhears, delineating the diverse personalities in the Condor's entourage while sketching out an analysis of the different aspects of the psychology of power. Venator's days are spent building a hidden refuge in the mountains, a hermetic retreat where he hopes one day to realize his dreams of utter self-sufficiency. In the meantime, however, he continues to pursue his career as a historian, using the magnificent tool that has been placed at his disposal - the "luminar", a holographic instrument that can summon up any figure or event in human history. Venator, in a word, embodies Junger's ideal of the "anarch" - a heroic figure whose radical skepticism and individualism are not to be confused with mere anarchism. Around the opposite figures of the dictator and the anarch, Junger weaves a hallucinatory and poetic rumination on the nature of history and on the mainsprings of political power. At once tale, essay and philosophical poem, Eumeswil offers a desolate and lucid assessment of totalitarianism by an author who witnessed its horrors firsthand.

Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously


Osho - 1977
    It is, rather, the total presence of fear, with the courage to face it. This book provides a bird's-eye view of the whole terrain--where fears originate, how to understand them, and how to find the courage to face them. In the process, Osho proposes that whenever we are faced with uncertainty and change in our lives, it is actually a cause for celebration. Instead of trying to hang on to the familiar and the known, we can learn to enjoy these situations as opportunities for adventure and for deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.The book begins with an in-depth exploration of the meaning of courage and how it is expressed in the everyday life of the individual. Unlike books that focus on heroic acts of courage in exceptional circumstances, the focus here is on developing the inner courage that enables us to lead authentic and fulfilling lives on a day-to-day basis. This is the courage to change when change is needed, the courage to stand up for our own truth, even against the opinions of others, and the courage to embrace the unknown in spite of our fears-in our relationships, in our careers, or in the ongoing journey of understanding who we are and why we are here.Courage also features a number of meditation techniques specifically designed by Osho to help people deal with their fears.

The Meaning of Anxiety


Rollo May - 1977
    He explores how it can relieve boredom, sharpen sensibilities, and produce the tension necessary to preserve human existence. May sees a link extending from anxiety to intelligence, creativity, and originality, and guides the reader away from destructive ways to positive ways of dealing with anxiety. He convincingly proposes that anxiety can impel personal change, as it is only by confronting and coping with it that self-realization can occur.

Image - Music - Text


Roland Barthes - 1977
    His selection of essays, each important in its own right, also serves as ‘the best... introduction so far to Barthes’ career as the slayer of contemporary myths’. (John Sturrock, New Statesman)

Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience


Aldous Huxley - 1977
    Includes letters and lectures by Huxley never published elsewhere. In May 1953 Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gram of mescaline. The mystical and transcendent experience that followed set him off on an exploration that was to produce a revolutionary body of work about the inner reaches of the human mind. Huxley was decades ahead of his time in his anticipation of the dangers modern culture was creating through explosive population increase, headlong technological advance, and militant nationalism, and he saw psychedelics as the greatest means at our disposal to "remind adults that the real world is very different from the misshapen universe they have created for themselves by means of their culture-conditioned prejudices." Much of Huxley's writings following his 1953 mescaline experiment can be seen as his attempt to reveal the power of these substances to awaken a sense of the sacred in people living in a technological society hostile to mystical revelations. Moksha, a Sanskrit word meaning "liberation," is a collection of the prophetic and visionary writings of Aldous Huxley. It includes selections from his acclaimed novels Brave New World and Island, both of which envision societies centered around the use of psychedelics as stabilizing forces, as well as pieces from The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, his famous works on consciousness expansion.

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television


Jerry Mander - 1977
    Its problems are inherent in the technology itself and are so dangerous -- to personal health and sanity, to the environment, and to democratic processes -- that TV ought to be eliminated forever.Weaving personal experiences through meticulous research, the author ranges widely over aspects of television that have rarely been examined and never before joined together, allowing an entirely new, frightening image to emerge. The idea that all technologies are "neutral," benign instruments that can be used well or badly, is thrown open to profound doubt. Speaking of TV reform is, in the words of the author, "as absurd as speaking of the reform of a technology such as guns."

Dialogues


Gilles Deleuze - 1977
    Conversational in tone, this is the most personable and accessible of all Deleuze's writings, in which he describes his own philosophical background, relationsbips and development, and some of the central themes of his work.

Culture and Value


Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1977
    "It was Wittgenstein's habit to record his thoughts in sequences of more or less closely related 'remarks' which he kept in notebooks throughout his life. The editor of this collection has gone through these notebooks in order to select those 'remarks' which deal with Wittgenstein's views about the less technical issues in his philosophy. So here we have Wittgenstein's thoughts about religion, music, architecture, the nature of philosophy, the spirit of our times, genius, being Jewish & so on. The work is a masterpiece by a mastermind."—Leonard Linsky

The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity


Dietrich von Hildebrand - 1977
    

The Fall of Public Man


Richard Sennett - 1977
    Richard Sennett’s insights into the danger of the cult of individualism remain thoroughly relevant to our world today. In a new epilogue, he extends his analysis to the new “public” realm of social media, questioning how public culture has fared since the digital revolution.

The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph


Albert O. Hirschman - 1977
    Hirschman here offers a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuities between old and new, in contrast to the assumption of a sharp break that is a common feature of both Marxian and Weberian thinking. Among the insights presented here is the ironical finding that capitalism was originally supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon denounced as its worst feature: the repression of the passions in favor of the "harmless," if one-dimensional, interests of commercial life. To portray this lengthy ideological change as an endogenous process, Hirschman draws on the writings of a large number of thinkers, including Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart, and Adam Smith.

The Hour of Our Death


Philippe Ariès - 1977
    A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. Starting at the very foundations of Western culture, the eminent historian Phillipe Aries shows how, from Graeco-Roman times through the first ten centuries of the Common Era, death was too common to be frightening; each life was quietly subordinated to the community, which paid its respects and then moved on. Aries identifies the first major shift in attitude with the turn of the eleventh century when a sense of individuality began to rise and with it, profound consequences: death no longer meant merely the weakening of community, but rather the destruction of self. Hence the growing fear of the afterlife, new conceptions of the Last Judgment, and the first attempts (by Masses and other rituals) to guarantee a better life in the next world. In the 1500s attention shifted from the demise of the self to that of the loved one (as family supplants community), and by the nineteenth century death comes to be viewed as simply a staging post toward reunion in the hereafter. Finally, Aries shows why death has become such an unendurable truth in our own century--how it has been nearly banished from our daily lives--and points out what may be done to re-tame this secret terror. The richness of Aries's source material and investigative work is breathtaking. While exploring everything from churches, religious rituals, and graveyards (with their often macabre headstones and monuments), to wills and testaments, love letters, literature, paintings, diaries, town plans, crime and sanitation reports, and grave robbing complaints, Aries ranges across Europe to Russia on the one hand and to England and America on the other. As he sorts out the tangled mysteries of our accumulated terrors and beliefs, we come to understand the history--indeed the pathology--of our intellectual and psychological tensions in the face of death.

Simone Weil Reader


Simone Weil - 1977
    She confronted the rootlessness of modern life and the death of the spirit in an age of materialism. Her writing was visionary and her vision, radical.Born in France, a contemporary of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Weil inspired T.S. Eliot to say of her, We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of a saint. Today, nearly sixty years after her death, her work has, perhaps, an even greater immediacy and relevance. This book is a collection of the best of her writings from The Notebooks of Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty and Gravity and Grace.

Two Zen Classics: The Gateless Gate and the Blue Cliff Records


Katsuki Sekida - 1977
    The two works translated in this book, Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate ) and Hekiganroku (The Blue Cliff Record), both compiled during the Song dynasty in China, are the best known and most frequently studied koan collections, and are classics of Zen literature. They are still used today in a variety of practice lineages, from traditional zendos to modern Zen centers. In a completely new translation, together with original commentaries, the well-known Zen teacher Katsuki Sekida brings to these works the same fresh and pragmatic approach that made his Zen Training so successful. The insights of a lifetime of Zen practice and his familiarity with both Eastern and Western ways of thinking make him an ideal interpreter of these texts.

Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture


Giorgio Agamben - 1977
    Through rereadings of Freud and Saussure, Agamben proposes a radical reconfiguration of the epistemological foundation of Western culture.

Marxism and Literature


Raymond Williams - 1977
    He analyzes previous contributions to a Marxist theory of literature from Marx himself to Lukacs, Althusser, and Goldmann, and develops his own approach by outlining a theory of cultural materialism' which integrates Marxist theories of language with Marxist theories of literature. Williams moves from a review of the growth of the concepts of literature and idealogy to a redefinition of determinism' and hegemony'. His incisive discussion of the 'social material process' of cultural activity culminates in a re-examination of the problems of alignment and commitment and of the creative practice in individual authors and wider social groups.

The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny


Luigi Giussani - 1977
    Based in Milan, Italy, Giussani heads the Communion and Liberation movement and is a council for the Congregation for the Clergy and the Pontifical Council for the Laity. He discusses education in terms of fundamental truths, in particular, the element of faith. It presents the argument that without the fundamental factors of tradition, the young person is merely a fragile leaf separated from its branch.

Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews


Michel Foucault - 1977
    This book offers a selection of seven of Foucault's most important published essays, translated from the French, with an introductory essay and notes by Donald F. Bouchard. Also included are a summary of a course given by Foucault at Collège de France, the transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, and an interview with Foucault that appeared in the journal Actuel.

King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World


Charles Le Gai Eaton - 1977
    It begins with a consideration of how secular societies attempt to possess their citizens, body and soul and how, as a consequence, the necessity of redefining human responsibility becomes an ever more urgent imperative. The book continues with a presentation of the traditional view of man as 'God's Viceroy on Earth', with an eye to its practical implications in a world that has all but forgotten, under the pressure of mass social persuasion, that man must always be free to choose his own ultimate destiny. The author's thesis is a passionate yet incisive plea for the restoration of the sacred norms of religion, as against the debilitating and falsifying aims of a profane world-view based on no more than recent scientific and technological achievements.

Noise: The Political Economy of Music


Jacques Attali - 1977
    . . . In its general theoretical argument on the relations of culture to economy, but also in its specialized concentration, Noise has much that is of importance to critical theory today.” SubStance“For Attali, music is not simply a reflection of culture, but a harbinger of change, an anticipatory abstraction of the shape of things to come. The book’s title refers specifically to the reception of musics that sonically rival normative social orders. Noise is Attali’s metaphor for a broad, historical vanguardism, for the radical soundscapes of the western continuum that express structurally the course of social development.” EthnomusicologyJacques Attali is the author of numerous books, including Millennium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order and Labyrinth in Culture and Society.

The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute


Susan Buck-Morss - 1977
    In contrast to the American situation, spaces in which questions of Marxism could once again be discussed were opening in the vicinity of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Buck-Morss convincingly sketches this learning process that ended in antagonism when Horkheimer and Adorno proved unwilling to participate in the political practice of the extra-parliamentary opposition. Leftist students turned away from Critical Theory, treating it like the proverbial dead dog after 1970, thereby allowing it to be taken up by young conservatives who concerned themselves only with the aesthetic character of Adorno’s and Benjamin’s writings.

Ancient Music in the Pines: In Zen Mind Suddenly Stops


Osho - 1977
    Of the ultimate realization of Zen, Osho says, "Suddenly you become aware of a music that has always surrounded you… Your heart throbs in the same rhythm as the heart of the whole." This essential Zen reader also dips into a number of other themes - cowardice, boredom and restlessness, recognition and rejection, maturity, and moving from the non-essential to the essential.Time Period of Osho's original Discourses/Talks/Letters Feb 21, 1976 to Feb 29, 1976

Das Ornament Der Masse: Essays: Weimar Essays


Siegfried Kracauer - 1977
    In this volume his finest writings on modern society make their long-awaited appearance in English.This book is a celebration of the masses--their tastes, amusements, and everyday lives. Taking up themes of modernity, such as isolation and alienation, urban culture, and the relation between the group and the individual, Kracauer explores a kaleidoscope of topics: shopping arcades, the cinema, bestsellers and their readers, photography, dance, hotel lobbies, Kafka, the Bible, and boredom. For Kracauer, the most revelatory facets of modern life in the West lie on the surface, in the ephemeral and the marginal. Of special fascination to him is the United States, where he eventually settled after fleeing Germany and whose culture he sees as defined almost exclusively by "the ostentatious display of surface."With these essays, written in the 1920s and early 1930s and edited by the author in 1963, Kracauer was the first to demonstrate that studying the everyday world of the masses can bring great rewards. The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary essays continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile.In his introduction, Thomas Levin situates Kracauer in a turbulent age, illuminates the forces that influenced him--including his friendships with Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and other Weimar intellectuals--and provides the context necessary for understanding his ideas. Until now, Kracauer has been known primarily for his writings on the cinema. This volume brings us the full scope of his gifts as one of the most wide-ranging and penetrating interpreters of modern life.

The Tao Is Silent


Raymond M. Smullyan - 1977
    Neither alone is adequate; a purely passive serenity is kind of dull, and an anxiety-ridden awareness is not very appealing."This is more than a book on Chinese philosophy. It is a series of ideas inspired by Taoism that treats a wide variety of subjects about life in general. Smullyan sees the Taoist as "one who is not so much in search of something he hasn't, but who is enjoying what he has."Readers will be charmed and inspired by this witty, sophisticated, yet deeply religious author, whether he is discussing gardening, dogs, the art of napping, or computers who dream that they're human.

Concept of Sin


Josef Pieper - 1977
    As Thomas Mann once said, "sin" is nowadays "an amusing word used only when one is trying to get a laugh".But this small work will interpret sin in its true -- that is, serious -- meaning. What will emerge from its analysis is the discovery that the concept of sin can still serve to unlock the mystery of existence, at least for a thinking that wants to press down to the very foundations.Needless to say, such an effort will require a kind of "mining energy" of an archeologist of ideas who knows how to recover what was once known (or at least suspected) from time immemorial but has now been forgotten. But Josef Pieper does more than bring to bear on this issue his famous powers of excavation; he also makes meaningful the concept of sin to the ways of thinking and speaking of our time.Readers of his work already know Pieper as an extraordinarily fitting master in this art of making "the wisdom of the ages" a living reality today. And in this work he brings Plato, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas into a living dialogue with T. S. Eliot, Andre Gide, even with Jean-Paul Sartre. As he shows in this powerful work, none of these writers leaves any doubt that the fact of sin is central: It is the willful denial of one's own life-ground, a denial that alone rightly bears the name of "sin". Paradoxically, this reality is both willed and yet also pre-given, that is, both adventitious and yet somehow innate to our existence -- a paradox which, next to the mystery of existence itself, is the most impenetrable mystery of all.

Archeology of Violence


Pierre Clastres - 1977
    For him, tribal societies are not Rousseauist in essence; to the contrary, they practice systematic violence in order to prevent the rise in their midst of this "cold monster" the state. Only by waging war with other tribes can they maintain the dispersion and autonomy of each group. In the same way, tribal chiefs are not all-powerful; to the contrary, they are rendered weak in order to remain dependent on the community. In a series of groundbreaking essays, Clastres turns around the analysis of power among South American Indians and rehabilitates violence as an affirmative act meant to protect the integrity of their societies. These "savages" are shrewd political minds who resist in advance any attempt at "globalization."

The Path of Enlightenment in the Mithraic Mysteries


Julius Evola - 1977
    Covers the substance and ritual of Mithraism with a special section on the Emperor Julian.

The Essence of Alan Watts


Alan W. Watts - 1977
    

Notes on Love and Courage


Hugh Prather - 1977
    

The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays


Owen Barfield - 1977
    Now this seasoned British thinker.offers a collection of [essays] that reflects the entire range of his interests, including the philosophy of science, physics, biology, psychology, metaphysics, aesthetics, literature, linguistics, and religion.. He is a prophet of the New Consciousness who has been around a long time; and he may well be the most comprehensive and critically incisive of them all." -The Kirkus Reviews

Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics


Félix Guattari - 1977
    

Out of Chaos


Louis J. Halle - 1977
    As it unfolds under the reader's eyes, there emerges from it the vision of one universsal order that rises above the underlying chaos in which our lives are still so largely immersed. By bringing together in one perspective the physical universe, the evolution of life within it, the emergence of mind, and the fruits of mind's creativity, Halle reveals, step by step, what presents itself at last as a seamless whole. We see how order arises out of the fundamental chaos represented by the Uncertainty Principle in physics, or by the "Extended Uncertainty Principle" that applies to all aspects of being."

Holy Brother: Inspiring Stories and Enchanted Tales about Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach


Yitta Halberstam Mandelbaum - 1977
    In this incredible volume, Yitta Halberstam Mandelbaum, a devoted student of Reb Shlomo, gathers dozens of stories about this charismatic, loving Jewish leader. The episodes retold here by Reb Shlomo's followers and admirers underscore his unfailing generosity, his capacity to love unconditionally, and his desire to reconnect every Jew with his or her heritage. As a whole, the collection reveals how many individuals were touched by Reb Shlomo, and serves as a moving tribute to the man many consider a tzaddik (righteous one).

Rousseau And Romanticism


Irving Babbitt - 1977
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Fundamentals of Gnostic Education: Learn How to Think, Not What to Think


Samael Aun Weor - 1977
    Schools, teachers, and parents emphasize what we should think, rather than teaching how to think, to question, analyze, and discover the truth through our own experience. The modern system demands that students follow what they are told, and not to question what is taught. From the perspective of the ancient Gnostic tradition, beneficial growth for an individual or a society is an outcome of comprehension: knowing the truth through experience, rather than because of what someone else has said. History shows that those who are willing to question and analyze are those who arrive at the most useful and important knowledge for the benefit of everyone. This includes spirituality: the greatest spiritual leaders refused to follow the established "rules," and instead followed the guidance of awakened consciousness, thereby showing humanity the way to the Light. Over his lifetime, Samael Aun Weor taught millions of people how to awaken consciousness and free themselves of suffering. This book radiates his brilliant teaching method, a beautiful reflection of the same approach utilized by our most important sages, philosophers, and thinkers, which is a form of superior logic and tremendous love that illustrates how vital it is for people to learn not "what to think, but HOW to think." By awakening the consciousness and developing the heart and mind in equilibrium comes the potential to alter the painful realities that humanity is suffering within. Perhaps his most quotable book, it provides a solid and ethical foundation for students, teachers of any kind, and parents.

The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, Volume One


Milarepa - 1977
    The Life-story And Teaching Of The Greatest Poet-Saint Ever To Appear In The History Of Buddhism.

The Birth of Physics


Michel Serres - 1977
    Serres argues that the Greeks had all the mathematical resources to formulate an adequate picture of the physical principles acting on matter. Crucial to his reconception of the Atomists' thought is a recognition that their model of atomic matter is essentially a fluid one - they are describing the actions of turbulence. Recognition of this fact throws in relief the force of this ancient thought with respect to the recent disciplines of chaos and complexity. It explains the continuing presence of Lucretius in the work of such scientific giants as Nobel Laureates Schroedinger and Prigogine. This book is truly a landmark in the study of ancient physics and will promote not only more work in the area but also stimulate a more general rebirth of philosophical interest in the ancients.

Truth and Actuality


Jiddu Krishnamurti - 1977
    

Revolt Against Maturity


Rousas John Rushdoony - 1977
    Biblical psychology contrasts sharply with a science of the mind based on the religious presuppositions of humanism, which regards man as having no constant nature. A science of the mind based on humanism views the mind as a clean slate, and man's nature as plastic to be molded by men and institutions in the image of man for the new order he will establish. The Biblical view sees Psychology as a branch of theology; theology is a study of all that the Scriptures declare about God. Theology is essential not only to the study of psychology, but to ethics, anthropology, soteriology, eschatology, etc. Biblical Psychology assumes that man is created in the image of God directly, and not indirectly through theistic— or any other kind of evolution. Being created directly by God, man is not in the process of defining or determining his ontological qualities. Man has already been determined and defined by God. Thus it is God who has established the limits and nature of the mind.The mind of regenerate man experiences radically different motives and presuppositions from those of unregenerate man. The author sees the central task of Christian Psychology as that of discerning the mind and soul differences that exist between the regenerate and unregenerate. Pastoral counseling should first seek to establish whether or not a person is truly regenerate, and then aid the regenerate to further growth in sanctification.Work was to have provided the joy of fulfillment in God's goal of maturity for man, but because of the curse man is often subject to the frustration of meaningless and degrading work. True work is the exercise of dominion over the creation under God. When man's work is separated from dominion of the created world, he is often subject to moral and religious paralysis and becomes a sick soul.Man suffers similarly when he abstracts God from reality. Since God created everything, nothing can be interpreted apart from God. When man attempts this impossibility, he suffers psychologically. True knowledge of anything is revelational of God. Thus, an aspect of man's revolt against maturity and against life is his revolt against knowledge. Psychological damaging is inevitable for those in revolt against the maturity which the God of all life and all knowledge has purposed for man.The certain and true guilt which the human personality suffers because of sin can be alleviated only when God effects regeneration through the atoning blood of Christ. Thus having laid aside the old self with its evil practices, the new self is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him in righteousness and holiness of the truth. (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24) In the general or wider sense, the image of God in man means that man like God is a personality. The author notes that "in the redeemed man, this means that man becomes progressively more and more a person, selfconscious in his growth and character (as opposed to being unconscious of his nature), and steadily manifesting more and more the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion." Sanctification is unto holiness by which man realizes his chief end: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever: But because of his revolt against maturity man continues to suffer psychological damage both personally and collectively through the chaotic condition of his mind and his culture.

Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-Of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought


Langdon Winner - 1977
    What we lack is our bearings. The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments. Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer. Patterns of perceptive thinking that were entirely reliable in the past now lead us systematically astray. Many of our standard conceptions of technology reveal a disorientation that borders on dissociation from reality. And as long as we lack the ability to make our situation intelligible, all of the data in the world will make no difference. From the Introduction

Disabling Professions


Ivan Illich - 1977
    Why do we put so many resources into medicine, education and law with so little apparent benefit? Why do we hold the professions in awe and allow them to set up what are in effect monopolies? This fascinating and controversial collection of essays challenges the power and the mystique of the modern professions.

With the Adepts: An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians


Franz Hartmann - 1977
    There, he encounters a dwarf who seems to understand the dilemmas that cloud his brain. The dwarf leads him to the Brothers of the Golden and Rosy Cross, where he commences monastic study.Hartmann writes poetically about the beauty of the Alps and skillfully weaves the actual beliefs and practices of the ancient Rosicrucians into a tale that includes magic and an alchemical laboratory, mind-reading dwarfs, and unexpected revelations.

Beyond Words


Satchidananda - 1977
    Through stories, puns, parables and examples, he enables his readers to discover for themselves the peace and joy that is within us all.

Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra


Francis Harold Cook - 1977
    This book is a description and analysis of the Chinese form of Buddhism called Hua-yen (or Hwa-yea), Flower Ornament, based largely on one of the more systematic treatises of its third patriarch. Hua-yen Buddhism strongly resembles Whitehead's process philosophy, and has strong implications for modern philosophy and religion. Hua-yen Buddhism explores the philosophical system of Hua-yen in greater detail than does Garma C.C. Chang's The Buddhist Teaching of Totality (Penn State, 1971). An additional value is the development of the questions of ethics and history. Thus, Professor Cook presents a valuable sequel to Professor Chang's pioneering work. The Flower Ornament School was developed in China in the late 7th and early 8th centuries as an innovative interpretation of Indian Buddhist doctrines in the light of indigenous Chinese presuppositions, chiefly Taoist. Hua-yen is a cosmic ecology, which views all existence as an organic unity, so it has an obvious appeal to the modern individual, both students and layman.

Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery


Sylvia L. Cranston - 1977
    An anthology that offers perspectives on Job's question: 'If a man die, shall he live again?' Spanning over 5,000 years of world thought, this title invites consideration of an idea that has found hospitality in the greatest minds of history.

A Sense of the Future: Essays in Natural Philosophy


Jacob Bronowski - 1977
    This volume extends the process to a further level of insight, and it may be more than suggestive that its final essay is entitled The Fulfillment of Man. Bronowski was an extraordinary teacher precisely because he did not condescend to his audience. He did not talk down to them; he knew how to talk them up to something near his own level, however briefly. He felt that if human beings are taken seriously, they can be led to respond to serious and difficult subjects that relate to the deepest aspects of nature, both beyond and within themselves.A Sense of the Future succeeds brilliantly in this respect, in part because it is a collection of essays that can be read independently as self-contained, delimited presentations; and in part because the book is more than the sum of these individual essays--it is a unified whole in which Bronowski's most abiding concerns are interrelated, juxtaposed, and tested for consistency in various intellectual contexts. The major unifying theme of the work is the intensely creative and human nature of the scientific enterprise--its kinship, at the highest levels of individual achievement, with comparable manifestations of the artistic imagination, and its ethical imperatives, evolved within the community of scientists over the centuries, which both embody and forge the values of civilized life at large. Still, the book's diversity of topics is as striking as the unity of its aim. Among the subjects within the realm of Bronowski's mind that are presented here are the limitations of formal logic and experimental methods, the epistemology of science, the distinctive nature of human language and the human mind, and the bases of biological and cultural evolution.Bronowski also contrasts the findings of science as the here and now of man's understanding with the ongoing activity of science as the open-ended search for truth, and he undertakes to demonstrate that the factual, individual is and the ethical, societal ought can be derived each from the other. A mathematician by training, Bronowski published poetry as well as books on literature and intellectual history. In addition to those mentioned above, The Common Sense of Science and Science and Human Values are among the most widely read of his books. Before his death in 1974, he was for many years a Senior Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where his formal area of research was concerned with the questions of human specificity and uniqueness. Clearly, his interests ranged far beyond this area, and in many directions.

Easy Essays


Peter Maurin - 1977
    A co-founder of the Catholic Worker and an unyielding champion of the oppressed, Maurin was not to be satisfied merely by criticism of the social order. He felt that change can come about only when each of us accepts our personal responsibility for the state for the state of our world and struggles forward "in the joy of the cross".

Planetarization of Consciousness


Dane Rudhyar - 1977
    Man as a microcosm of the universe. Man as a reality that transcends the physical organism, all localisms and nationalisms, and in whom spirit and matter can unite in a Divine Marriage productive of ever creative tomorrows.

The Idol and Distance: Five Studies


Jean-Luc Marion - 1977
    And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader who wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of interplay and undecidability where theology and philosophy inform, provoke, and challenge one another in endlessly complex ways. In both his theological and his phenomenological projects Marion's central effort to free the absolute or unconditional (be it theology's God or phenomenology's phenomenon) from the various limits and preconditions of human thought and language will imply a thoroughgoing critique of all metaphysics, and above all of the modern metaphysics centered on the active, spontaneous subject who occupies modern philosophy from Descartes through Hegel and Nietzsche.

Space And Place: The Perspective of Experience


Yi-Fu Tuan - 1977
    The result is a remarkable synthesis, which reflects well the subtleties of experience and yet avoids the pitfalls of arbitrary classification and facile generalization. For these reasons, and for its general tone and erudition and humanism, this book will surely be one that will endure when the current flurry of academic interest in environmental experience abates.” Canadian Geographer

Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism


Toshihiko Izutsu - 1977
    Although it seems that Zen would not lend itself to philosophical discussion, that all conceptualization would dissolve in light of this empiricism, in this volume, the author demonstrates that the "silence" of Zen is in fact pregnant with words. A variety of topics are discussed: the experience of satori, ego and egolessness, Zen sense and nonsense, koan practice, the influence of Zen on Japanese painting and calligraphy and much more.

Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution Volume 2: The Golden Age


Leszek Kolalowski - 1977
    Its three volumes in English are: 1: The Founders, II: The Golden Age, and III: The Breakdown. It was first published in Polish in Paris in 1976, with the English translation appearing in 1978. In 2005, Main Currents of Marxism was republished in a one volume edition, with a new preface and epilogue by Kołakowski. The work was intended to be a "handbook" on Marxism by Kołakowski, who was once an orthodox Marxist but ultimately rejected Marxism. Despite his critical stand toward Marxism, Kołakowski endorsed the philosopher György Lukács's interpretation of Karl Marx.This is the second volume and includes a discussion of the Second International and figures such as Paul Lafargue, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov, Jean Jaurès, Jan Wacław Machajski, Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Rudolf Hilferding; it reviews Hilferding's debate about the theory of value with the economist Eugen Böhm von Bawerk. It also discusses Austromarxism.

Dang Dang Doko Dang


Osho - 1977
    As well as symbolizing the poetic quality of Zen, the title represents the special flavor of this collection of Osho's commentaries on well-known Zen stories. "Zen is a way of dissolving philosophical problems, not of solving them," he explains. "It is a way of getting rid of philosophy, because philosophy is a sort of neurosis." The volume also includes Osho's answers to questions about the meditation technique of Zazen.

The Beloved, Vol 1


Osho - 1977
    And in the first verse of their song, "Only a connoisseur of the flavors of love can comprehend the language of a lover's heart" is revealed the essence of their religion. Osho explains the Bauls' view of sex, their concept of the body as a temple and their secret of surrender to God, to the Beloved, to "the essential man" who lives within us all.SubjectIndian MysticsTranslated fromNotesChapters 1-5 later published in "Bauls: The Mystics of Celebrations".Chapters 6-10 later published as "Bauls: The Singing Mystics".Time Period of Osho's original Discourses/Talks/Lettersfrom Jun 21, 1976 to Jun 30, 1976Number of Discourses/Chapters10

John G. Bennett's Talks on Beelzebub's Tales


J.G. Bennett - 1977
    Bennett regarded Gurdjieff's All and Everything as a work of superhuman genius.

Great Treasury of Western Thought: A Compendium of Important Statements and Comments on Man and His Institutions by Great Thinkers in Western History


Mortimer J. Adler - 1977
    Passages from the West's great written works, ranging from the Odyssey and the Old Testament to the Interpretation of Dreams and Ulysses, comment on love, knowledge, ethics, war, art, and other abiding topics.

The Technological System


Jacques Ellul - 1977
    

Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Ontology I: The Furniture of the World


Mario Bunge - 1977
    This has to be done because there are many ways of construing the word 'ontology' and because of the bad reputation metaphysics has suffered until recently - a well deserved one in most cases. 1. ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS Ontological (or metaphysical) views are answers to ontological ques tions. And ontological (or metaphysical) questions are questions with an extremely wide scope, such as 'Is the world material or ideal - or perhaps neutral?" 'Is there radical novelty, and if so how does it come about?', 'Is there objective chance or just an appearance of such due to human ignorance?', 'How is the mental related to the physical?', 'Is a community anything but the set of its members?', and 'Are there laws of history?'. Just as religion was born from helplessness, ideology from conflict, and technology from the need to master the environment, so metaphysics - just like theoretical science - was probably begotten by the awe and bewilderment at the boundless variety and apparent chaos of the phenomenal world, i. e. the sum total of human experience. Like the scientist, the metaphysician looked and looks for unity in diversity, for pattern in disorder, for structure in the amorphous heap of phenomena - and in some cases even for some sense, direction or finality in reality as a whole."

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Volume 10


Osho - 1977
    

The Evolution of Educational Thought: Lectures on the Formation and Development of Secondary Education in France


Émile Durkheim - 1977
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Darkness and Scattered Light: Four Talks on the Future


William Irwin Thompson - 1977
    

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega Volume 4


Osho - 1977
    

On Being Free


Frithjof Bergmann - 1977
    Not only does Bergmann give good reasons why standard contemporary philosophical views on freedom are fundamentally off base, but he also displays why current educational disputes over regimented vs. permissive education, and political debates over regulated vs. unregulated society, are grounded in irrelevant and confused notions of freedom. The book is brilliant and terribly exciting.” —-Frederick Suppe With extraordinary elegance and philosophic power, Frithjof Bergmann presents a genuine rethinking of freedom. By changing the focus from outside to inside the person, Bergmann shows how freedom can be a reality in self-growth, parenting, education, and in shaping a society that stimulates rather than stunts the self. Rejecting the standard views of freedom as an external ideal that progressively removes obstacles or as an irrational, unencumbered act that rejects all order, Bergmann argues that the primary prerequisite of freedom is a self possessed of something that wants to be acted out. An act is free if the agent identifies with the elements from which it flows. Such identification is logically prior to freedom. At the same time, this points to the problem of coming to a true understanding of one’s self and to the difficulty of building a society that contains objects with which a self can identify or, at least, a society of which the self is not ashamed.

Meetings: Autobiographical Fragments


Martin Buber - 1977
    A glittering series of reflections and narratives, it seeks not to describe his life in its full entirety, but rather to convey some of his defining moments of uncertainty, revelation and meaning. Recalling the question on the infinity of space and time which nearly drove Buber to suicide at the age of fourteen, his adolescent 'seduction' by Nietzsche's work, his hero-worship of Ferdinand Lassalle and his love of Bach's music, Meetings has no equal as a portrait of an unique intellect in progress. Like Buber's great works Between Man and Man and The Way of Man, it evokes a tactile, earthly concept of meaning ultimately found, as Maurice Friedman writes in his introduction, 'not in conceptual or systematic thought but in the four-dimensional reality of events and meetings'.

Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture


Walter J. Ong - 1977
    Ong offers a reasoned and sophisticated view of human consciousness different in many respects from that of structuralism. The essays in Interfaces of the Word are grouped around the dialectically related themes of change or alienation and growth or integration. Among the subjects Ong covers are the origins of speech in mother tongues; the rise and final erosion of nonvernacular learned languages; and the fictionalizing of audiences that is enforced by writing. Other essays treat the idiom of African talking drums, the ways new media interface with the old, and the various connections between specific literary forms and shifts in media that register in the work of Shakespeare and Milton and in movements such as the New Criticism. Ong also discusses the paradoxically nonliterary character of the Bible and the concerted blurring of fiction and actuality that marked much drama and narrative toward the close of the twentieth century.

Ultimate Questions: An Anthology of Modern Russian Religious Thought


Alexander Schmemann - 1977
    Other contributors include Rozanov, Fyodorov, and Bulgakov.

Philosophy of Woman: An Anthology of Classic to Current Concepts


Mary Briody Mahowald - 1977
    It is just right for my Philosophy of Woman course." --Ann Ferguson, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

A Child Is Being Killed: On Primary Narcissism and the Death Drive


Serge Leclaire - 1977
    We must all combat what the author calls “primary narcissism,” a projection of the child our parents wanted. This idea—that each of us carries as a burden an unconscious secret of our parents, a hidden desire that we are made to live out but that we must kill in order to “be born”—touches on some of the fundamental issues of psychoanalytic theory. Around it, the author builds an intricate analysis of the relation between primary narcissism and the death drive.Each of the book’s five chapters begins with one or more case studies drawn from the author’s clinical experience as a psychoanalyst. In these studies he links his central concern—the image of the child created by the unconscious desire of the parents—to other issues, such as the question of love, the concept of the subject, and the death drive. In the penultimate chapter, on transference, the author challenges the commonplace understanding of the analyst’s impassivity. What does such impassivity imply, especially in the context of a “transferential love” between a female patient and a male analyst? In replying to this question, the author forcefully reassesses the relation of psychoanalysis to femininity, to the question “What does a woman want?”Serge Leclaire’s overarching thesis leads to a provocative rereading of the Oedipal configuration. Leclaire suggests that he is inhabited, pursued, haunted, and debilitated by the child who should have died in order that Oedipus might have been born into life.

Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems: Expanded Edition


Josiah Royce - 1977
    Race questions and prejudices, he said, promise to become, in the near future, still more important than they have ever been before. Like his student W. E. B. Du Bois in Souls of Black Folk (1903), Royce recognized that the problem of the next century would be, as Du Bois put it, the problem of the color line. The twentieth century saw vast changes in race relations, but even after the election of the first African-American U.S. president, questions of race and the nature of community persist. Though left out of the mainstream of academic philosophy, Royce's conception of community nevertheless influenced generations of leaders who sought to end racial, religious, and national prejudice.Royce's work provided the conceptual starting place for the Cultural Pluralism movement of the 1920s and 1930s, and his notion of the Beloved Community influenced the work and vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement.Communities, whether they are understood as racial or geographic, religious or scientific, Royce argued, are formed by the commitments of individuals to causes or shared ideals. This starting point-the philosophy of loyalty-provides a means to understand the nature of communities, their conflicts, and their potential for growth and coexistence.Just as this work had relevance in the twentieth century in the face of anti-Black and anti-immigrant prejudice, Royce's philosophy of loyalty and conception of community has new relevance in the twenty-first century. This new edition of Royce's Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Questions includes a new introduction to Royce's philosophy of loyalty and the essays included in the volume, and a second introduction connecting Royce's work with contemporary discussions of race.The volume also includes six supplementary essays by Royce (unavailable since their initial publication before 1916) that provide background for the original essays, raise questions about his views, and show the potential of those views to inform other discussions about religious pluralism, the philosophy of science, the role of history, and the future of the American community.

The Sermon on the Mount


Manly P. Hall - 1977
    An interpretation of what has been called "The Code of Christendom, " this essay sets forth an ideal carrying morality and its application in daily life to the most sublime point attainable by humanity.

Economic Studies: Contributions to the Critique of Economic Theory


David P. Levine - 1977
    His premise is that only an investigation of the system of elementary economic relations — value, capital, production — can overcome the confusion and misdirection which baffles progress in all areas of economic theory, and lay the foundation for further development of economic science. The object of the present volume is the criticism of the manner in which the elementary relations of economic life are grasped in economic theory.David Levine contends that in order to move beyond the dead end of contemporary economic analysis it is necessary to return simultaneously to the historical starting point of economic science — classical political economy — and to its conceptual starting point — the theory of value. Levine discusses both the origins of economic science and the character of contemporary economic thought. He presents a comprehensive critique of the ideas of classical political economy, claiming in particular that the secret of the whole of the development of economic theory since Adam Smith has been locked away in the notion of a 'labor theory of value.' He shows how this notion excludes the possibility of a science of economic relations as much for its advocates as for those who attempt to give a coherent account of economic life in its absence.The two volumes in preparation will develop a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the contents of economic theory based upon the critique of classical political economy and upon the initial formulations and insights of Marx.

Ten Faces of the Universe


Fred Hoyle - 1977
    

The Socialist Decision


Paul Tillich - 1977
    

You & Your Thoughts: The Power of Right Thinking


Earl D. Radmacher - 1977
    Using insight gained from many years of Bible research, seminary teaching, and practical ministry, Dr. Earl Radmacher shows readers the truth of Proverbs 23:7: “As a man thinketh in his heart; so is he.” Changing our behavior begins with changing our thoughts, and changing our thoughts requires the renewal of our minds, and making every thought captive to Christ. In You & Your Thoughts Dr. Radmacher shows us how. If you want to change your thoughts, read this book today.

Yoga: The Alpha & the Omega Volume 6


Osho - 1977
    

Foundations of Modern Analysis


Jean Alexandre Dieudonné - 1977
    Enlarged and Corrected Printing J. DIEUDONNE This book is the first volume of a treatise which will eventually consist offour volumes. It is also an enlarged and corrected printing, essentially without changes, of my Foundations of Modern Analysis. Many readers, colleagues, and friends have urged me to write a sequelto that book, and in the end I became convinced that there was a place fora survey of modern analysis, somewhere between the minimum tool kitof an elementary nature which I had intended to write, and specialist monographs leading to the frontiers of research. My experience of teachinghas also persuaded me that the mathematical apprentice, after taking the firststep of Foundations, needs further guidance and a kind of general birdseye view of his subject before he is launched onto the ocean of mathematical literature or set on the narrow path of his own topic of research.Thus I have finally been led to attempt to write an equivalent, for the mathematicians of 1970, of what the Cours dAnalyse of Jordan, Picard, and Goursat were for mathematical students between 1880 and 1920.It is manifestly out of the question to attempt encyclopedic coverage, and certainly superfluous to rewrite the works of N. Bourbaki. I have therefore been obliged to cut ruthlessly in order to keep within limits comparable tothose of the classical treatises. I have opted for breadth rather than depth, inthe opinion that it is better to show the reader rudiments of many branchesof modern analysis rather than to provide him with a complete and detailedexposition of a small number of topics.Experience seems to show that the student usually finds a new theorydifficult to grasp at a first reading. He needs to return to it several times beforehe becomes really familiar with it and can distinguish for himself whichare the essential ideas and which results are of minor importance, and onlythen will he be able to apply it intelligently. The chapters of this treatise are therefore samples rather than complete theories: indeed, I have systematically tried not to be exhaustive. The works quoted in the bibliography willalways enable the reader to go deeper into any particular theory.However, I have refused to distort the main ideas of analysis by presentingthem in too specialized a form, and thereby obscuring their power andgenerality. It gives a false impression, for example, if differential geometryis restricted to two or three dimensions, or if integration is restricted to Lebesgue measure, on the pretext of making these subjects more accessible orintuitive.On the other hand I do not believe that the essential content of the ideasinvolved is lost, in a first study, by restricting attention to separable metrizabletopological spaces. The mathematicians of my own generation were certainlyright to banish, hypotheses of countability wherever they were not needed: thiswas the only way to get a clear understanding

Selected Essays (The Dan Danciger publication series)


Osip Mandelstam - 1977
    The essays in this volume, presented in an exceptionally scrupulous and true translation, were selected because they represent Mandelstam's major poetic themes and his thought on literature, language and culture, and the work and place of the poet. Mandelstam's views on literature are profound and original, and they are expressed in striking and dramatic, if sometimes difficult, prose. These essays deal with such topics as the poetic process and the relationship of poetry to politics, culture, the traditions of the past, and the demands of the present.Professor Monas's lively introduction to the work and life of Mandelstam combines the virtues of both the critical essay and detached scholarship. Keeping biographical detail to a minimum, Professor Monas concentrates on the pattern that runs through the essays and lends them that coherence often noted in Mandelstam's poetry.

Resurrection of the Dead


Karl Barth - 1977
    

The Strife of the Spirit


Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz - 1977
    A selection of Rabbi Steinsaltz's works focusing on the needs of today's spiritual seekers.

De Rerum Natura 3 (Classical Texts)


Lucretius - 1977
    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Once to Every Man: A Memoir


William Sloane Coffin Jr. - 1977
    stands out as that unique individual whose life and career epitomize the dramatic issues and conflicts - social, political, spiritual and academic - of his time.CIA operative and civil rights activist, clergyman and iconoclast, army officer and champion of draft resisters, aspiring concert pianist and formidable athlete - Coffin truly has been a child of the century. Here is a man of unquenchable vitality and prodigious capabilities: relishing the challenges to advocates of liberty, equality and fraternity, posed by a complex and contradictory universe. Here is a man to whom civil disobedience has been more than a lofty abstraction: jailed in Alabama with Ralph Abernathy, on trial in Boston with Dr. Spock, at odds with the trustees and officers of Yale, he has never hesitated to risk the worst in order to achieve the best. And here is a profoundly reflective and deeply humorous man, whose tough-minded spirituality has been tempered in the furnace of public action.Once To Every Man encompasses five tumultuous decades, and sweeps the reader from the fashionable world of New York society to the chaos of Europe at war, from Ivy League campuses to Peace Corps training camps in Puerto Rican jungles, from clandestine anti-Communist operations to the March on the Pentagon, from racial strife in the South to a Black Panther rally in New Haven. It offers an indispensable perspective on many of the crucial events of the past fifty years, and an unforgettable portrait of the man who figured so prominently in them.

Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine


William James - 1977
    James sees the individual soul as part of a greater soul, hidden behind the veil of death. And that greater soul, perhaps God, perhaps an essence that defies description, is eternal. James brings together modern science and mysticism to show his audience that the two are not as incompatible as they might have believed. Spiritual seekers, religious individuals, and even skeptics will find this discussion on the possibility of immortality thought-provoking and electric. American psychologist and philosopher WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910), brother of novelist Henry James, was a groundbreaking researcher at Harvard University and one of the most popular thinkers of the 19th century. Among his many works are Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902).

Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth


Larry Laudan - 1977
    Laudan both destroys and creates. With detailed, scathing criticisms, he attacks the 'pregnant confusions' in extant philosophies of science. The progress they espouse derives from strictly empirical criteria, he complains, and this clashes with historical evidence. Accordingly, Laudan constructs a remedy from historical examples that involves nothing less than the redefinition of scientific rationality and progress . . . Surprisingly, after this reshuffling, science still looks like a noble-and progressive-enterprise ... The glory of Laudan's system is that it preserves scientific rationality and progress in the presence of social influence. We can admit extra-scientific influences without lapsing into complete relativism. . . a must for both observers and practitioners of science." --Physics Today "A critique and substantial revision of the historic theories of scientific rationality and progress (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, etc.). Laudan focuses on contextual problem solving effectiveness (carefully defined) as a criterion for progress, and expands the notion of 'paradigm' to a 'research tradition,' thus providing a meta-empirical basis for the commensurability of competing theories. From this perspective, Laudan suggests revised programs for history and philosophy of science, the history of ideas, and the sociology of science. A superb work, closely argued, clearly written, and extensively annotated, this book will become a widely required text in intermediate courses."--Choice

The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation


David B. Allison - 1977
    Taken together they provide an indispensable foil to the interpretations available in most current American writing.Contents: "Nietzsche and Metaphysical Language," Michel Haar; "The Will to Power," Alphonso Lingis; "Who is Nietzsches Zarathustra?" Martin Heidegger; "Active and Reactive," Gilles Deleuze; "Nietzsche's Experience of the Eternal Return," Pierre Klossowski; "The Limits of Experience: Nihilism," Maurice Blanchot; "Nietzsche's Conception of Chaos," Jean Granier; "Nomad Thought," Gilles Deleuze; "Nietzsche: Life as Metaphor," Eric Blondel; "The Question of Style," Jacques Derrida; "Perspectivism and Interpretation," Jean Granier; "Metaphor, Symbol, Metamorphosis," Sarah Kofman; "Beatitude in Nietzsche," Henri Birault; "Eternal Recurrence and Kingdom of God," Thomas J. J. Altizer; "Dionysus versus the Crucified," Paul Valadier.David B. Allison is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Come To Think of It


G.K. Chesterton - 1977
    

The World of Gurus: A Critical Look at the Philosophies of India's Influential Gurus and Mystics


Vishal Mangalwadi - 1977
    

The Virtues: The Stanton Lectures 1973-74


Peter T. Geach - 1977
    

Groundless Belief: An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology


Michael J. Williams - 1977
    The point of this wider-than-normal usage of the term "phenomenalism," according to which even some forms of direct realism deserve to be called phenomenalistic, is to call attention to important continuities of thought between theories often thought to be competitors. Williams's target is not phenomenalism in its classical sense-datum and reductionist form but empiricism generally. Williams examines and rejects the idea that, unless our beliefs are answerable to a "given" element in experience, objective knowledge will be impossible. Groundless Belief was first published in 1977. This second edition contains a new afterword in which Williams places his arguments in the context of some current discussions of coherentism versus the Myth of the Given and explains their relation to subsequent developments in his own epistemological views.

The Livelihood of Man


Karl Polanyi - 1977
    

Yoga and the Hindu Tradition


Jean Varenne - 1977
    Jean Varenne, the distinguished French Orientalist, presents the theory of classical Yoga, in all its richness, as a method—a concrete way to reach the Absolute through spiritual exercises—which makes possible the transition from existence to essence. This excellent translation, including line drawings and charts, a glossary of technical terms, and a complete translation of the Yoga Darshana Upanishad, begins with a brief description of the metaphysical and religious history on which Yoga is based. Varenne discusses the theoretical conception of Yoga as the search for liberating knowledge, concluding with a brief indication of the physical practices and extra Yogic themes such as Kundalini and Tantrism. It is the author's hope that "those who read [this book] will come to realize that it is in fact dishonest to reduce Yoga to some sort of physical training, or to just an occult doctrine; it is a 'world view' a Weltanschauung that comprehends reality in its totality." "The straightforward, well-organized presentation makes the book itself a microcosm of what Varenne singles out as a dominant feature of classical Hindu thought—a bringing of the complex and multitudinous into a unity."—Judith Guttman, Yoga Journal

The Kalām Cosmological Argument


William Lane Craig - 1977
    He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife Jan and their two teenage children Charity and John. At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until 1994.

Acts and Other Events


Judith Jarvis Thomson - 1977
    Of special interest is the author's analysis--in terms of causality--of the part-whole relation among events. By use of that relation she gives accounts of the parts of acts of a number of centrally important kinds, and analyses of agency, 'method,' and intentionality. Theory of action has been, and continues to be, the focus of intense debate. Professor Thomson's searching and thorough investigation of the ontology of action merits a close reading by professional philosophers and serious students of philosophy generally.