World-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and author Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the very situations that usually pressure and antagonize us. For him a ringing telephone can be a signal to call us back to our true selves. Dirty dishes, red lights, and traffic jams are spiritual friends on the path to "mindfulness"—the process of keeping our consciousness alive to our present experience and reality. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next aware breath and the smile we can form right now.Lucidly and beautifully written, Peace Is Every Step contains commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the reader already is—in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking a part—and shows how deep meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing, which can bring immediate joy and peace. Nhat Hanh also shows how to be aware of relationships with others and of the world around us, its beauty and also its pollution and injustices. the deceptively simple practices of Peace Is Every Step encourage the reader to work for peace in the world as he or she continues to work on sustaining inner peace by turning the "mindless" into the mindFUL.

    Mixing Christian spirituality, Buddhist parables, Hindu breathing exercises, and psychological insight, de Mello's words of hope come together in Awareness in a grand synthesis.In short chapters for reading in quiet moments at home or at the office, he cajoles and challenges: We must leave this go-go-go world of illusion and become aware. And this only happens, he insists, by becoming alive to the needs and potential of others, whether at home or in the workplace.Here, then, is a masterful book of the spirit, challenging us to wake up in every aspect of our lives.

    Illustrated throughout with photographs from Joseph Campbell's family archive and with a new, revised introduction, The Hero's Journey introduces the reader first-hand to Joseph Campbell the man, his discoveries, his terminology, and his thinking.

    Francis A. Schaeffer. A man with a remarkable breadth of cultural interest, with penetrating insight into modern life, and with a clear sense of spiritual reality, Schaeffer was also a man who cared deeply about people and their search for truth and reality in their lives.With the publication of this Trilogy, Dr. Schaeffer's three foundational books are available for the first time in one volume. Schaeffer himself considered these three books to be essential to everything he wrote (twenty-three books in all), and it is here especially that we see his ability to understand the deep need of modern man for truth, beauty, and meaning in life.In the first book, The God Who Is There, Schaeffer shows how modern thought has abandoned the idea of truth with tragic consequences in every area of culture-from philosophy, to art, to music, to theology, and within culture as a whole.Escape from Reason, the second book, explains especially how the disintegration of modern life and culture grows from corrupted roots that reach far into the past.In the last book, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Schaeffer contrasts the silence and despair of modern life with the Christian answer that God can indeed be known because He is there and He is not silent. In addition to the convenience of having Schaeffer's three foundational books in one volume, the Trilogy is especially valuable in that it uses the text revised and updated by Schaeffer shortly before his death.Why was Schaeffer able to understand and communicate so effectively to a generation? The best way to know is to find out firsthand, by reading his essential works as found in this Trilogy. Few who begin this journey will come to the end without having their life profoundly changed.

    With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, relativity, non-Euclidean geometries, non-Aristotelian logic and General Semantics, the scientific view of the world has changed dramatically from just a few decades ago. Nonetheless, human thinking is still deeply rooted in the cosmology of the Middle Ages. Quantum Psychology is the book to change your way of perceiving yourself—and the universe—for the 21st century. Some say it's materialistic, others call it scientific and still others insist it's mystical. It is all of these—and none.

    On the way, Hans Thomas receives a mysterious miniature book—the fantastic memoir of a sailor shipwrecked in 1842 on a strange island where a deck of cards come to life.Structured as a deck of cards—each chapter is one in the deck—"The Solitaire Mystery" weaves together fantasy and reality, fairy tales and family history. Full of questions about the meaning of life, it will spur its listeners to reexamine their own.

    In these commentaries, Thich Nhat Hanh guides the reader to an understanding of the fundamental basis of the Buddhist practice and encourages application in daily life. The book describes the four methods of mindfulness: mindfulness of the body, the feelings, the mind, and the object of mind. It teaches how to deal with anger and jealousy; to nurture the best qualities in our children, spouse, and friends; and to greet death with compassion and equanimity. Three versions of the Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness are presented here, along with Thich Nhat Hanh's insightful commentary, his discussion of breathing techniques, and 23 exercises — or contemplations — to aid in the daily practice of mindfulness. Accessible to novice Buddhists as well as more advanced practitioners, this second edition features a new introduction by the author.

    Original. Tour.

    Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. He speaks with sadness of the greedy consumption of this country's natural resources and the grim consequences Americans must face if current economic practices do not change drastically. In the end, these essays offer rays of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast of America's future. Berry's program presents convincing steps for America's agricultural and cultural survival.

    Pieper expresses succinctly that the foundation of the human person in society is leisure, free time in which one can contemplate, be receptive to being and its beauty."Joy is more profound than sadness, and our capacity to delight in what is mostly determines what we are. Josef Pieper's welcome guidance on leisure, festivity, and contemplation is the most secure and most exciting way to arrive at, and to delight in, the truth in things. Pieper teaches us through music, sculpture, and poetry to see the luminous beauty that reflects an origin deeper than themselves." - James V. Schall, S.J., Georgetown UniversityTable of Contents: Preface Work, Spare Time, and Leisure Learning How to See Again Thoughts about Music Music and Silence Three Talks in a Sculptor's Studio    Remembrance: Mother of the Muses    Those "Guests at the Festival"    Vita Contemplativa - the Comtemplative Life

    These essays, first published in 1990, stand as the mature centerpiece of Snyder’s work and thought, and this profound collection is widely accepted as one of the central texts on wilderness and the interaction of nature and culture. As the Library Journal affirmed, “This is an important book for anyone interested in the ethical interrelationships of things, places, and people, and it is a book that is not just read but taken in.”

    G. Jung, as rendered by Jung's official translator. "The Undiscovered Self" (1957) integrates many of Jung's lifelong social and psychological concerns and addresses the uneasy relation between the individual and mass society. The survival of civilization, he maintains, depends on individual awareness of both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the human psyche. The exploration of the unconscious, in particular, leads to self-knowledge and with it recognition of the duality of human natureits potential for evil as well as for good. Jung believes that it is this self-knowledge that enables the individual to resist the collective power of mass society and the state and to cope with their possible threats. Jung's reflections on self-knowledge and the exploration of the unconscious carry over into his essay "Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams, " completed shortly before his death in 1961. (It is the original version of his introduction to the symposium Man and His Symbols, conceived as a popular presentation of Jungian ideas.) Describing dreams as communications from the unconscious--as expressions of aspects of the individual that have been neglected or unrealized--Jung explains how the symbols that occur in dreams compensate for repressed emotions and intuitions. In a world dehumanized, in Jung's view, by scientific "progress" and the loss of emotional participation in natural events, symbols recall our original nature, its instincts and peculiar way of thinking. This essay brings together Jung's fully evolved thoughts on the analysis ofdreams and the healing of the rift between consciousness and the unconscious, in the context of his system of psychology.

    Writing within a Jungian framework, they perceive symptoms of "Boycaps per book psychology" all around us--in men's abusive behaviors, passivity and inability to act creatively. To help males become more nurturing and mature, Moore and Gillette identify four archetypes of masculine energies from myth and literature: the Lover, brimming with vitality and sensitivity; the Magician, guider of the processes of inner and outer transformation; the selfless and wise King identified with Adam or primordial man; and the Warrior, whose energies often go awry in destructive activity. Dream analysis, meditation, Jungian "active imagination" and ritual processes are among the tools set forth in a clear, concise map to territories of masculine selfhood.

    Peasants, serfs, untouchables, slaves, laborers, and prisoners are not free to speak their minds in the presence of power. These subordinate groups instead create a secret discourse that represents a critique of power spoken behind the backs of the dominant. At the same time, the powerful also develop a private dialogue about practices and goals of their rule that cannot be openly avowed. In this book, renowned social scientist James C. Scott offers a penetrating discussion both of the public roles played by the powerful and powerless and the mocking, vengeful tone they display off stage—what he terms their public and hidden transcripts. Using examples from the literature, history, and politics of cultures around the world, Scott examines the many guises this interaction has taken throughout history and the tensions and contradictions it reflects.

    The author Tsong-kha-pa (1357–1419) completed this masterpiece in 1402 and it soon became one of the most renowned works of spiritual practice and philosophy in the world of Tibetan Buddhism. Tsong-kha-pa took great pains to base his incisive insights on the classical Indian Buddhist literature, illustrating his points with classical citations as well as with sayings of the masters of the earlier Kadampa tradition. In this way, the text demonstrates clearly how Tibetan Buddhism carefully preserved and developed the Indian Buddhist traditions. Volume One covers all practices that are prerequisite for developing the spirit of enlightenment (bodhicitta). Volume Two explains how to train in the six perfections in order to develop the heart of compassion indispensable for any student who wants to put the Dharma into practice. Volume Three contains a presentation of the two most important topics to be found in the Great Treatise: meditative serenity (shamatha) and supramundane insight into the nature of reality (vipasyana).

    Although on the surface, simians, cyborgs and women may seem an odd threesome, Haraway describes their profound link as creatures which have had a great destabilizing place in Western evolutionary technology and biology. Throughout this book, Haraway analyzes accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs. At once a social reality and a science fiction, the cyborg--a hybrid of organism and machine--represents transgressed boundaries and intense fusions of the nature/culture split. By providing an escape from rigid dualisms, the cyborg exists in a post-gender world, and as such holds immense possibilities for modern feminists. Haraway's recent book, Primate Visions, has been called outstanding, original, and brilliant, by leading scholars in the field. (First published in 1991.)

    

    What is at stake in male homo/heterosexual definition? Through readings of Melville, Nietzsche, Wilde, James and Proust, the author argues that the vexed imperatives to specify straight and gay identities have become central to every important form of knowledge of the 20th century.

    Combines selected philosophical passages from Thomas' Summa Theologica with detailed footnotes and explanations for modern readers.

    Its true nature—whether disguised in Eastern mysticism or American cynicism—is despair. In this thought-provoking and witty book, Ravi Zacharias provides Christians a clear apologetic for their faith.Formerly published as A Shattered Visage, The Real Face of Atheism systematically examines atheistic positions on human nature, the meaning of life, morality, the "First Cause," death, and more. With a new introduction and revisions throughout, The Real Face of Atheism is the perfect text for pastors, students, and thinking laypeople who want to improve their apologetic skill and reach out to non-believers.

    His eloquent writings on the human condition convey passion, intelligence and deep conviction. "Freedom Is A Two-Edged Sword of which one edge is liberty and the other responsibility, on which both edges are exceedingly sharp".

    A provocative guide to Deleuze by Deleuze, this collection traces the intellectual journey of one of the most important French philosophers and clarifies the key critical concepts in the work of this vital figure who has had an impact on aesthetics, film theory, psychoanalysis and cultural studies.

    Hubert Dreyfus's commentary opens the way for a new appreciation of this difficult philosopher, revealing a rigorous and illuminating vocabulary that is indispensable for talking about the phenomenon of world.The publication of Being and Time in 1927 turned the academic world on its head. Since then it has become a touchstone for philosophers as diverse as Marcuse, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida who seek an alternative to the rationalist Cartesian tradition of western philosophy. But Heidegger's text is notoriously dense, and his language seems to consist of unnecessarily barbaric neologisms; to the neophyte and even to those schooled in Heidegger thought, the result is often incomprehensible.Dreyfus's approach to this daunting book is straightforward and pragmatic. He explains the text by frequent examples drawn from everyday life, and he skillfully relates Heidegger's ideas to the questions about being and mind that have preoccupied a generation of cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind.

    Umberto Eco focuses here on what he once called "the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation"--that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication.

    The key to A Theater of Envy is Rene Girard's novel reinterpretation ofmimesis. For Girard, people desire objects not for their intrinsic value, but because they are desired by someone else--we mime or imitate their desires. This envy--or mimetic desire--he sees as one of the foundations of the human condition. Bringing such provocative and iconoclastic insights to bear on Shakespeare, Girard reveals the previously overlooked coherence of problem plays like Troilus and Cressida, and makes a convincing argument for elevating A Midsummer Night's Dream from the status of a chaotic comedy to amasterpiece. The book abounds with novel and provocative interpretations: Shakespeare becomes a prophet of modern advertising, and the threat of nuclear disaster is read in the light of Hamlet. Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is a brief, but brilliant aside in which an entirely new perspectiveis brought to the chapter in Joyce's Ulysses in which Stephen Dedalus gives a lecture on Shakespeare. In Girard's view only Joyce, perhaps the greatest of twentieth-century novelists, comes close to understanding the greatest of Renaissance playwrights. Throughout this impressively sustained reading of Shakespeare Girard's prose is sophisticated, but contemporary, and accessible to the general reader. Anyone interested in literature, anthropology, or psychoanalysis will want to read this challenging book. And all those involved in theatricalproduction and performance will find A Theater of Envy full of suggestive new ideas.

    Written in workbook style, complete with exercises, questionnaires, journal-keeping techniques, and affirmations, The Tao of Inner Peace translates the ancient Eastern philosophy into a plan for contemporary Western living. Diane Dreher, Ph.D., shows the way to: * Bring greater joy, fulfillment, and creativity to daily life * Heal the body and spirit * Build self-acceptance and self-esteem * Resolve conflict * Reverse negative cycles of emotion * Understand life as a process of changes and challengesWith its lively, demystifying approach, The Tao of Inner Peace shows how the Tao can be a powerful source of growth, inspiration, and peace.

    The outlook of that earlier world, MacIntyre claims, was definitively articulated in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which conceived of moral enquiry as both providing insight into and continuing the rational progress of mankind into ever greater enlightenment. MacIntyre compares that conception of moral enquiry to two rival conceptions also formulated in the late nineteenth century: that of Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral and that expressed in the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII Aeterni Patris. The lectures focus on Aquinas's integration of Augustinian and Aristotelian modes of enquiry, the inability of the encyclopaedists' standpoint to withstand Thomistic or genealogical criticism, and the problems confronting the contemporary post-Nietzschean genealogist. MacIntyre concludes by considering the implications for education in universities and colleges. Alasdair MacIntyre is research professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of numerous books, including After Virtue, A Short History of Ethics, and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, all published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

    

    It critically analyzes basic concepts underlying most theories of justice, including impartiality, formal equality, and the unitary moral subjectivity. Starting from claims of excluded groups about decision making, cultural expression, and division of labor, Iris Young defines concepts of domination and oppression to cover issues eluding the distributive model. Democratic theorists, according to Young do not adequately address the problem of an inclusive participatory framework. By assuming a homogeneous public, they fail to consider institutional arrangements for including people not culturally identified with white European male norms of reason and respectability. Young urges that normative theory and public policy should undermine group-based oppression by affirming rather than suppressing social group difference. Basing her vision of the good society on the differentiated, culturally plural network of contemporary urban life, she argues for a principle of group representation in democratic publics and for group-differentiated policies. This is an innovative work, an important contribution to feminist theory and political thought, and one of the most impressive statements of the relationship between postmodernist critiques of universalism and concrete thinking.... Iris Young makes the most convincing case I know of for the emancipatory implications of postmodernism. --Seyla Benhabib, State University of New York at Stony Brook

    Selected by Derrida from the prints and drawings department of the Louvre, the works depict blindness—fictional, historical, and biblical. From Old and New Testament scenes to the myth of Perseus and the Gorgon and the blinding of Polyphemus, Derrida uncovers in these images rich, provocative layers of interpretation. For Derrida drawing is itself blind; as an act rooted in memory and anticipation, drawing necessarily replaces one kind of seeing (direct) with another (mediated). Ultimately, he explains, the very lines which compose any drawing are themselves never fully visible to the viewer since they exist only in a tenuous state of multiple identities: as marks on a page, as indicators of a contour. Lacking a "pure" identity, the lines of a drawing summon the supplement of the word, of verbal discourse, and, in doing so, obscure the visual experience. Consequently, Derrida demonstrates, the very act of depicting a blind person undertakes multiple enactments and statements of blindness and sight. Memoirs of the Blind is both a sophisticated philosophical argument and a series of detailed readings. Derrida provides compelling insights into famous and lesser known works, interweaving analyses of texts—including Diderot's Lettres sur les aveugles, the notion of mnemonic art in Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life, and Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible. Along with engaging meditations on the history and philosophy of art, Derrida reveals the ways viewers approach philosophical ideas through art, and the ways art enriches philosophical reflection. An exploration of sight, representation, and art, Memoirs of the Blind extends and deepens the meditation on vision and painting presented in Truth and Painting. Readers of Derrida, both new and familiar, will profit from this powerful contribution to the study of the visual arts.

    The book's title, taken from the first chapter, may sound esoteric but it reflects a common-sense outlook on the world, applied in a "methodical" way. That approach, known as realism, consists in emphasizing the fact that what is real precedes our concepts about it. In contrast to realism stands idealism, which refers to the philosophical outlook that begins with ideas and tries to move from them to things. Gilson shows how the common-sense notion of realism, though denied by many thinkers, is indispensible for a correct understanding of things--of what is and how we know what is. He shows the flaws of idealism and he critiques efforts to introduce elements of idealism into realist philosophy ("immediate realism"). At the same time, the author criticizes failures of certain realist philosophers--including Aristotle--to be consistent in their own principles and to begin from sound starting points. To these problems, Gilson traces medieval philosophy's failure in the realm of science, which led early modern scientific thinkers of the 17th century unnecessarily to reject even the best of medieval scholastic philosophy.He concludes with "The Realist Beginner's Handbook," a summary of key points for thinking clearly about reality and about the knowledge of it.

    Drawing on the ideas of several twentieth century continental philosophers--including Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty--Young constructs rigorous analytic categories for interpreting embodied subjectivity. The essays combine theoretical description of experience with normative evaluation of the unjust constraints on their freedom and opportunity that continue to burden many women.The lead essay rethinks the purpose of the category of "gender" for feminist theory, after important debates have questioned its usefulness. Other essays include reflection on the meaning of being at home and the need for privacy in old age residences as well as essays that analyze aspects of the experience of women and girls that have received little attention even in feminist theory--such as the sexuality of breasts, or menstruation as punctuation in a woman's life story. Young describes the phenomenology of moving in a pregnant body and the tactile pleasures of clothing.While academically rigorous, the essays are also written with engaging style, incorporating vivid imagery and autobiographical narrative. On Female Body Experience raises issues and takes positions that speak to scholars and students in philosophy, sociology, geography, medicine, nursing, and education.

    He considers the role of the Divine Sophia, examines the foundations of the Incarnation, explores the nature of Christ's divine consciousness, and ponders Christ's ministries while on earth. A profound discussion of Christ's kenosis as a model for humanity rounds out this comprehensive and valuable study.The Lamb of God is one of the greatest works of Christology in the twentieth century and a crowning achievement in the examination of the theology of divine humanity.

    

    Monk's life of Wittgenstein is such a one."--"The Christian Science Monitor."

    In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, he argues passionately, eloquently, and subtly, that what he calls 'the Great Goods' of human aspiration - liberty, justice, equality - do not cohere and never can. Pluralism and variety of thought are not avoidable compromises, but the glory of civilisation. In an age of increasing ideological fundamentalism and intolerance we need to listen to Isaiah Berlin more carefully than ever before.

    She critiques both the male bias of current theory and the debilitating dominion held by notions of "proper femininity" over women and their bodies in patriarchal culture.

    Austin's influence on contemporary philosophy was substantial during his lifetime, and has grown greatly since his death in 1960. This third edition of Philosophical Papers, the first edition of which was published in 1961, includes all of Austin's published papers (except Performatif-Constatif) as well as a new essay entitled The Line and the Cave in Plato's Republic, which has been reconstructed from Austin's notes.

    Oneself as Another, the clearest account of his "philosophical ethics," substantiates this position and lays the groundwork for a metaphysics of morals.Focusing on the concept of personal identity, Ricoeur develops a hermeneutics of the self that charts its epistemological path and ontological status.

    Carefully examining the debate in Anglo-American analytic philosophy regarding God's existence, this book presents a comprehensive critique of the arguments for the existence of God and a defense of arguments against the existence of God, showing in detail their relevance to atheism.

    The portrait that emerges is of a highly pragmatic man dedicated to finding non-violent solutions to human problems in all arenas--personal, political, and environmental.

    Bair penetrates the mystique of this brilliant and often paradoxical woman, who has been called one of the great minds of the 20th century, and surely, one of the most famously unconventional figures of her generation. "As a reference work . . . Simone de Beauvoir can be considered definitive."--The Atlantic. 16-page photographic insert.

    Discusses such themes as love of family, friends, God, and self, obstacles to love, love and crisis, and loss of love.

    As such, this is a critical survey of modern Western philosophy, focusing in particular on the complex relations between aesthetics, ethics & politics. Eagleton provides a brilliant & challenging introduction to these concerns, as characterized in the work of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Lukacs, Adorno, Habermas & others. Wide in span, as well as morally & politically committed, this is his major work to date. It forms both an original enquiry & an exemplary introduction.

    Deng shows how Taoist philosophy and practice may be integrated into contemporary Western lifestyles for complete physical, mental, and spiritual health. He provides an abundance of philosophical and practical information about hygiene, diet, sexuality, physical exercise, meditation, medicine, finding one's purpose in life, finding the right teacher, death, and transcendence.

    Why, then, are we so frequently oblivious to our own bodies? We gaze at the world, but rarely see our own eyes. We may be unable to explain how we perform the simplest of acts. We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured. In part 1, Leder explores a wide range of bodily functions with an eye to structures of concealment and alienation. He discusses not only perception and movement, skills and tools, but a variety of "bodies" that philosophers tend to overlook: the inner body with its anonymous rhythms; the sleeping body into which we nightly lapse; the prenatal body from which we first came to be. Leder thereby seeks to challenge "primacy of perception." In part 2, Leder shows how this phenomenology allows us to rethink traditional concepts of mind and body. Leder argues that Cartesian dualism exhibits an abiding power because it draws upon life-world experiences. Descartes' corpus is filled with disruptive bodies which can only be subdued by exercising "disembodied" reason. Leder explores the origins of this notion of reason as disembodied, focusing upon the hidden corporeality of language and thought. In a final chapter, Leder then proposes a new ethic of embodiment to carry us beyond Cartesianism. This original, important, and accessible work uses examples from the author's medical training throughout. It will interest all those concerned with phenomenology, the philosophy of mind, or the Cartesian tradition; those working in the health care professions; and all those fascinated by the human body.

    Darwin's defenders, like Stephen Jay Gould, have usually replied that there is no conflict betweenscience and religion--that values and biological facts occupy separate realms. But as James Rachels points out in this thought-provoking study, Darwin himself would disagree with Gould. Darwin, who had once planned on being a clergyman, was convinced that natural selection overthrew our age-oldreligious beliefs. Created from Animals offers a provocative look at how Darwinian evolution undermines many tenets of traditional philosophy and religion. James Rachels begins by examining Darwin's own life and work, presenting an astonishingly vivid and compressed biography. We see Darwin's studies of thepsychological links in evolution (such as emotions in dogs, and the mental powers of worms), and how he addressed the moral implications of his work, especially in his concern for the welfare of animals. Rachels goes on to present a lively and accessible survey of the controversies that followedin Darwin's wake, ranging from Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism to Edward O. Wilson's sociobiology, and discusses how the work of such influential intellects as Descartes, Hume, Kant, T.H. Huxley, Henri Bergson, B.F. Skinner, and Stephen Jay Gould has contributed to--or been overthrownby--evolutionary science. Western philosophy and religion, Rachels argues, have been shaken by the implications of Darwin's work, most notably the controversial idea that humans are simply a more complex kind of animal. Rachels assesses a number of studies that suggest how closely humans are linked to other primates inbehavior, and then goes on to show how this idea undercuts the work of many prominent philosophers. Kant's famous argument that suicide reduces one to the level of an animal, for instance, is meaningless if humans are, in fact, animals. Indeed, humanity's membership in the animal kingdom calls intoquestion the classic notions of human dignity and the sacredness of human life. What we need now, Rachels contends, is a philosophy that does not discriminate between different species, one that addresses each being on an individual basis. With this sweeping survey of the arguments, the philosophers, and the deep implications surrounding Darwinism, Rachels lays the foundations for a new view of morality. Vibrantly written and provocatively argued, Created from Animals offers a new perspective on issues ranging from suicide toeuthanasia to animal rights.

    The papers, many of them previously inaccessible to non-specialist readers, deal with such fundamental issues as the relationship between style and content in the exploration of ethical issues; the nature of ethical attention and ethical knowledge and their relationship to written forms and styles; and the role of the emotions in deliberation and self-knowledge. Nussbaum investigates and defends a conception of ethical understanding which involves emotional as well as intellectual activity, and which gives a certain type of priority to the perception of particular people and situations rather than to abstract rules. She argues that this ethical conception cannot be completely and appropriately stated without turning to forms of writing usually considered literary rather than philosophical. It is consequently necessary to broaden our conception of moral philosophy in order to include these forms. Featuring two new essays and revised versions of several previously published essays, this collection attempts to articulate the relationship, within such a broader ethical inquiry, between literary and more abstractly theoretical elements.

    These essays are crucial to the interpretation of Levinas's work more generally, [and] Aronowicz's excellent introduction and occasional notes are very helpful in making this work accessible to those unacquainted with either Talmud or Levinas." --Religious Studies ReviewNine rich and masterful readings of the Talmud by the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas translate Jewish thought into the language of modern times. Between 1963 and 1975, Levinas delivered these commentaries at the annual Talmudic colloquia of a group of French Jewish intellectuals in Paris. Here Levinas applies a hermeneutic that simultaneously allows the classic Jewish texts to shed light on contemporary problems and lets modern problems illuminate the texts. Besides being quintessential illustrations of the art of reading, the essays express the deeply ethical vision of the human condition that makes Levinas one of the most important thinkers of our time.

    Starting from an inquiry that grows out of the specific context of a society that is experiencing uncertainty as to its ways of living and being, its goals, its values, and its knowledge, one that has been incapable, so far, of adequately understanding the crisis it is undergoing, Castoriadis sets as his task the elucidation of this crisis and its conditions.The book is in four parts: Koinonia, Polis, Psyche, Logos. The opening section begins with a general introduction to the author’s views on being, time, creation, and the imaginary institution of society and continues with reflections on the role of the individual psyche in racist thinking and acting and on the retreat from autonomy to generalized conformity in postmodernism. The second part is a critique of those who now belittle and distort the meaning of May ‘68 and other movements of the sixties as well as the French Revolution. The fate of the “project of autonomy” is considered here in the light of the Greek and the modern “political imaginary,” the “pulverization of Marxism-Leninism,” and a recent alleged “return of ethics” (Habermas, Rawls, McIntyre, Solzhenitsyn, Havel).In part three, Castoriadis shows how psychoanalysis, like politics, can contribute to the project of individual and collective autonomy and challenges Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, and others in his report on “The State of the Subject Today.” This section also presents his most current lines of psychoanalytic research and thought on the “human nonconscious” in the body and on the problem of the psychoanalysis of psychotic subjects, where an alternative coherence on the level of meaning offers a constant challenge to the task of psychoanalytic interpretation.Castoriadis’s highly original investigations of the unruly place of the imagination in Western philosophy round out the book. He examines how Aristotle’s original aporetic discovery and cover-up of the imagination were repeated by Kant, Freud, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty.

    Frank Smith is one of the most influential writers in education today. His work on reading in particular has had a seminal effect on classroom practice throughout the English-speaking world. At the core of all his work has been this issue of the nature of thought. In this book, he analyses the language of thinking and then moves on to look at different aspects of the thinking process: everyday thought, creative and critical thought. Finally he looks critically at the various methods currently advocated for teaching children to think, arguing that learning to think is in the end less a matter of instruction than of experience and opportunity.

    In this book, current liberal theories of justice are criticized, the shortcomings of the modern university are analyzed and the works of Shakespeare, Swift and Plato are examined.

    LotmanIntroduction by Umberto EcoTranslated by Ann ShukmanA major book by one of the initiators of cultural studies."Universe of the Mind is an ambitious, complex, and wide-ranging book that semioticians, textual critics, and those interested in cultural studies will find stimulating and immensely suggestive." --Journal of Communication"Soviet semiotics offers a distinctive, richly productive approach to literary and cultural studies and Universe of the Mind represents a summation of the intellectual career of the man who has done most to guarantee this." --Slavic and East European JournalUniverse of the Mind addresses three main areas: meaning and text, culture, and history. The result is a full-scale attempt to demonstrate the workings of the semiotic space or intellectual world. Part One is concerned with the ways that texts generate meaning. Part Two addresses Lotman's central idea of the semiosphere--the domain in which all semiotic systems can function--presented through an analogy with the global biosphere. Part Three focuses on semiotics from the point of view of history.A seminal text in cultural semiotics, the book's ambitious scope also makes it applicable to disciplines outside semiotics. The book will be of great interest to those concerned with cultural studies, anthropology, Slavic studies, critical theory, philosophy, and historiography.Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman is the founder of the Moscow-Tartu School and the initiator of the discipline of cultural semiotics.

    Echer, many of whose pictures the book reproduces. The book draws on the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Emily Dickinson, Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud and the "Tao Te Ching," among other works, to show how good theology is best compared to the image of wild birds flapping their wings and refusing to be caged. This material was originally delivered at the 1990 Edward Cadbury Lectures in the University of Birmingham.

    This book is the expression of the freedom of two-pole world, after all, the gift of spirit is not to be found everywhere, it is given once in about 2000 years. But this up to you to consider, dear reader.

    He takes as his point of departure Nietzsche's conception of the soul as a multiplicity of conflicting drives and personae, and focuses on the task Nietzsche allotted himself to make a cosmos out of his chaotic inheritance. This struggle to become what you are by way of a spiritual politics is demonstrated to be Nietzsche's foremost concern, which fused his philosophy with his life.The book offers a conversation with Nietzsche rather than a consideration of the secondary literature, yet it takes to task many prevalent approaches to his work, and contests especially the way we often restrict our encounter with him to conceptual analysis. All deconstructionist attempts to portray him as solely concerned with the destruction of the subject and the dispersion of the self, rather than its unification, are called into question. Often portrayed as the champion of nihilism, Nietzsche here emerges as a thinker who saw his primary task as the overcoming of nihilism through the heroic struggle of individuation.

    Mortimer J. Adler argues that in the conflict between ancient and modern approaches to the study of the mind key insights have been lost that bear on contemporary psychology. According to Adler, the intellectual powers of the human mind have either been denied or neglected, or they have been reduced to the mind's sensitive powers--sense-perception, memory, and imagination. With that goes a further reduction of all psychological phenomena to the action of the sense-organs and the brain.Adler's thoroughgoing critique of both of the above reductions restores the intellect to its primacy in the understanding of the mind. He explains the intellect's uniqueness, its immateriality, the role it plays both in our sense-experience and in our knowledge of an independent reality, and how it functions as the source of meaning in our use of language.

    As well as the invaluable features of the previous edition, this new updated version contains: suggestions for practical ideas to start the day thinking; more on emotional intelligence, cognitive acceleration and the use of ICT in teaching thinking; new summaries for each chapter; and more on assessment, new resources and weblinks.

    Another wonderful and insightful book by the noted Jewish writer and thinker Aryeh Kaplan.

    It is for this reason that we turn to Western psychology and metaphysics for help in solving our problems. The approach of psychology and psychotherapy is based on "statistical normality," or the behavior of the greatest number. In an effort to conform, we focus on our problems rather than our possibilities, emulating a norm that falls drastically short of our full capacity for development. Oriental thought, and Zen thought in particular, seeks to activate the true potential of men and women--to transform our lives, and thereby enable us to shed our problems and suffering.The Supreme Doctrine applies the essence of Oriental Wisdom to the pursuit of self-knowledge and transcendence. The first step in a holistic psychology is to begin examining the true “state of man”, rather than its aberrations. In so doing, we can give new direction and purpose to our lives.The author does not advocate “conversion” to Eastern thought, but rather an integration of East and West, wherein Western psychological thinking and reasoning can be enriched and clarified by Oriental wisdom.

    In reason for being Ellul offers an exposition of the three intertwining themes of Ecclesiastes: vanity, wisdom, and God. While interacting with recent scholarship, Ellul presents a unique interpretation and contemporary application of "the profound and paradoxical Qohelet."Examining specific passages in his development of the three general themes, Ellul considers theological, philosophical, and literary aspects of the text and asserts his own opinion on the book's place in Scripture and the gospel. Ellul's treatment of the book's irony and paradoxes, an often problematic matter which he sees as the key to understanding Ecclesiastes, sheds valuable light on the book as well as on life itself.

    Examining moments of “syncopation” in the discourses of Plato, Descartes, Pascal, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, the author critiques a classical Western logocentric philosophy that always tries to master any fissure of uncertainty.

    Rather than relying on abstract generalizations and theories, van Manen offers an alternative that taps the unique nature of each human situation.The book offers detailed methodological explications and practical examples of hermeneutic-phenomenological inquiry. It shows how to orient oneself to human experience in education and how to construct a textual question which evokes a fundamental sense of wonder, and it provides a broad and systematic set of approaches for gaining experiential material that forms the basis for textual reflections.Van Manen also discusses the part played by language in educational research, and the importance of pursuing human science research critically as a semiotic writing practice. He focuses on the methodological function of anecdotal narrative in human science research, and offers methods for structuring the research text in relation to the particular kinds of questions being studied. Finally, van Manen argues that the choice of research method is itself a pedagogic commitment and that it shows how one stands in life as an educator.

    

    Offering a perspective on modern society and intellectual life, they are concerned with the crisis of modern culture as it manifests itself in science and mathematics, capitalism and nationalism, the changing roles of women and writers, and more. Writing to find his way in a world where moral systems everywhere were seemingly in decay, Musil strives to reconcile the ongoing conflict between functional relativism and the passionate search for ethical values. Robert Musil was born in 1880 and died in 1942. His first novel, Young Törless, is available in English. A new two-volume translation by Burton Pike and Sophie Wilkins of The Man without Qualities is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf."Now we have these thirty-one invaluable and entertaining pieces, from an article on 'The Obscene and Pathological in Art' to the equally provocative talk 'On Stupidity,' which, with a new translation of The Man without Qualities forthcoming . . . amount to a literary event for the reader of English comparable to Constance Garnett's massive translation of Chekhov's stories."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune"Musil is one of the few great moderns, one of the handful who ventured to confront the issues that shape and define our time. . . . He has a range and a striking capacity every bit as great as that of Mann, Joyce, or Beckett."—Boston Review"These essays are crucial in understanding a writer and critic whose lifelong task was an attempt to resolve the dichotomy between the precision of scientific form and the soul—the matter of life and art."—Choice

    Throughout the book, the clinical illustrations the author has selected brilliantly spotlight the theory, touching the imagination, and fixing even the most difficult ideas permanently in the reader's mind. In a mutually enhancing relationship, theory and clinical example are combined, and then applied, to create the author's new and original theories of art and aesthetics.As Betty Joseph notes in her foreword, Segal's writing, and in particular this book, does much to enrich psychoanalysis not only because of the clarity and intelligence but also because of the depth and breadth of her interests and her clinical imagination.

    These pho- tons originate from a single source and travel in opposite directions an equal distance halfway across the known universe to points where each will be measured or observed. Now suppose that before the pho- tons are released, one observer is magically transported to a point of observation halfway across the known universe and the second ob- server is magically transported to another point an equal distance in the opposite direction. -The task of the observers is to record or meas- ure a certain property of each photon with detectors located at the two points so that the data gathered at each can later be compared. Even though the photons are traveling from the source at the speed of light, each observer would have to wait billions of years for one of the photons to arrive at his observation point. Suppose, how- ever, that the observers are willing to endure this wait because they hope to test the predictions of a mathematical theorem. This theorem not only allows for the prospect that there could be a correlation be- tween the observed properties of the two photons but also indicates that this correlation could occur instantly, or in no time, in spite of the fact that the distance between the observers and their measuring instruments is billions of light years.

    In one essay, the wanton assassination of a musk rat provokes a meticulous meditation on the nature of survival that manages to be both a lucid scientific exposition and a concealed allegory on Central European politics.

    Works such as The Gutenberg Galaxy, The Mechanical Bride , From Cliche to Archetype , and Understanding Media have established his reputation throughout the world and have profoundly influenced our understanding of contemporary communication. In his later years McLuhan was working on a 'unified field' theory of human culture, an effort in which he collaborated with and was assisted by his son, Eric McLuhan. This book is the result of that collaboration. The McLuhans are retrieving another way of understanding our world, a way known to some ancient Greeks (but not Aristotle), to medieval thinkers, to Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico, and to T.S. Eliot and James Joyce in this century. It is based on the use of words and the conseuqent power of the 'logos' to shape all the elements of culture - media - with which we surround ourselves. The authors explain how the invention of the alphabet led to the dominance of visual-space conceptualizations over those of acoustic space and its creative words (and word-plays). They consider the differences between the left- and right-hand sides of our brains, and use Gestalt theories of figure and ground to explore the underlying principles that define media. 'Media, ' the word so closely connected with Marshall McLuhan's thought, is here explored in its broadest meaning, encompassing all that has been created by humans: artefacts, information, ideas - every example of human innovation, from computer program to a tea cup, from musical arrangement to the formula for a cold remedy, from an X-ray machine to the sentence you're reading right now. All these are media to whcih can be applied the laws the McLuhans have developed. The laws are based on a set of four questions - a tetrad - that can be applied to any artefact or idea: What does it enhance or intensify? What does it render obsolete or displace? What does it retrieve that was previoulsy obsolesced? What does it produce or become when pressed to an extreme? Inherent in every human innovation is an answer to each of the questions of this tetrad; anything that does not contain answers to these four questions is not the product of human creation. The laws identified by the McLuhans consitute a new scientific basis for media studies, testable, and able to allow for prediction. It takes in all human activities and speech; it breaks down barriers and reconsiders them as mere intervals. In the McLuhan tradition, this New Science offers a while new understanding of human creation, and a vision that could reshape our future.

    It's not just a Bible commentary. It's both -- and more Deepen your walk with God with this guided study of the entire Bible in manageable daily readings.

    Only by breaking out of the limitations imposed by a computational model of mind can we grasp the special interaction through which mind both constitutes and is constituted by culture.

    She shows how each can be applied to a range of substantive topics from paid work, housework and the state, to culture, sexuality and violence, relying on the most up-to-date empirical findings. Arguing that patriarchy has been vigorously adaptable to the changes in women's position, and that some of women's hard-won social gains have been transformed into new traps, Walby proposes a combination of class analysis with radical feminist theory to explain gender relations in terms of both patriarchal and capitalist structure.

    Exploring the ideas and information in The Chalice and the Blade, Eisler here teams up with another award-winning writer to apply her book's teachings in a guide to more satisfying, more meaningful options for ourselves and our planet.

    The author refutes such easy categorizations of Milosz as "the poet of Poland," "the poet of history," "the poet of the Holocaust." He examines instead such crucial problems as Milosz's search for the essence of human nature, irreducible to historical, social, and biological categories; Milosz's reflection on the erosion of the Christian imagination, which has resulted in a fundamental gap between the individual's inner life and the image of humanity formed by scientific theories; his efforts to rebuild the anthropocentric vision of the world, while acknowledging the elements that have undermined it; and finally, his attempt to recreate in his poetry a language that is both poetic and philosophical.The Eternal Moment originally appeared in Polish in 1987. This version, which quotes extensively from Milosz's Collected Poems, is the first thorough introduction for English-speaking readers to this major poet.

    

    

    The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.

    In The Rebirth of Nature, Sheldrake urges us to move beyond the centuries-old mechanistic view of nature, explaining why we can no longer regard the world as inanimate and purposeless. Sheldrake shows how recent developments in science itself have brought us to the threshold of a new synthesis in which traditional wisdom, intuitive experience, and scientific insight can be mutually enriching.

    In form, it is a prosimetrum, in which passages of prose alternate with verse passages in various classical meters. The philosophical basis of the work is the Platonism of contemporary philosophers associated with the cathedral school of Chartres—one of whom, Thierry of Chartres, is the dedicatee of the work. According to a marginal note in one early manuscript, the Cosmographia was recited before Pope Eugene III when he was traveling in France (1147–48). - Wikipedia

    And while developing a theory of time as conflict, J. T. Fraser does offer many things indeed--an enormous range of ideas about matter, life, death, evolution, and value.

    The Anguttara Nikaya is a part of the Pali Canon, the authorized recension of the Buddha's Word for followers of Theravada Buddhism, the form of Buddhism prevailing in the Buddhist countries of southern Asia. These discourses are called numerical because they retain the structure of the original Anguttara Nikaya. Sayings are organized not by topic, but by numbers mentioned in the texts. This organizational scheme, common in ancient Indian literature, can give the reader a haphazard view of the Buddha's teachings. To balance this tendency, Bhikku Bodhi provides a systematic introduction to the Buddha's teachings. To balance this tendency, Bhikku Bodhi provides a systematic introduction to the Buddha's Teaching in the Anguttara Nikaya. The translators also provide notes, a glossary, and another introduction placing the Anguttara Nikaya in the context of the larger Theravada Buddhist Canon. This readable butt precise translation will be welcomed by both students of Theravada Buddhism as well as anyone wishing to learn from the Buddha's teachings.

    Osho taught that all of the established religions of the past are spiritually bankrupt, and urged each individual to theologically decondition themselves as a prelude to true enlightenment.

    Agamben’s exploration is, in part, a contemporary response to the work of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy, and, more historically, Plato, Spinoza, and medieval scholars and theorists of Judeo-Christian scriptures.

    If human purposeful action is the paradigm case of goal-directed action, then regarding a non-purposeful process as goal-directed means taking it to be causally similar to purposeful action. Accordingly, to determine the proper extent of teleological concepts, Binswanger provides an analysis of purposeful action and a point-by-point comparison of the features of purposeful action to those of vegetative and inanimate processes. He concludes that natural selection, in adapting actions to ends with survival value, does make all living action qualify as goal-directed, and that no inanimate process qualifies. An appendix compares Binswanger's views with those of Larry Wright and Andrew Woodfield.

    The Psychoanalytic Movement explains how the language of psychoanalysis became the dominant way in which the middle classes of the industrialized West speak about their emotions.Explains how the language of psychoanalysis became the dominant way for the industrialized West to speak about emotion.Argues that although psychoanalysis offers an incisive picture of human nature, it provides untestable operational definitions and makes unsubstantiated claims concerning its therapeutic efficacy.Includes new foreword by Jose Brunner that expands on the central argument of the book and argues that Gellner and Freud might be seen as kindred spirits.

    A fine example of the transcendent mysticism of this school.

    In its analysis of Vedic ritual, it uses methods inspired by logic, linguistics, anthropology and Asian studies. New insights are offered into various topics including music, bird song and the origin of language. The discussion culminates in a proposal for a new human science that challenges the current dogma of -the two cultures- of sciences and humanities.

    Demonstrating a comprehensive knowledge, both of the history of science fiction narrative from its earliest origins, and of cultural theory and philosophy, Bukatman redefines the nature of human identity in the Information Age. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary theories of the postmodern—including Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway, and Jean Baudrillard—Bukatman begins with the proposition that Western culture is suffering a crisis brought on by advanced electronic technologies. Then in a series of chapters richly supported by analyses of literary texts, visual arts, film, video, television, comics, computer games, and graphics, Bukatman takes the reader on an odyssey that traces the postmodern subject from its current crisis, through its close encounters with technology, and finally to new self-recognition. This new "virtual subject," as Bukatman defines it, situates the human and the technological as coexistent, codependent, and mutally defining.Synthesizing the most provocative theories of postmodern culture with a truly encyclopedic treatment of the relevant media, this volume sets a new standard in the study of science fiction—a category that itself may be redefined in light of this work. Bukatman not only offers the most detailed map to date of the intellectual terrain of postmodern technology studies—he arrives at new frontiers, providing a propitious launching point for further inquiries into the relationship of electronic technology and culture.

    Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years.Building on the historic 1948 essay by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” which introduced the deductive-nomological (D-N) model on which most work on scientific explanation was based for the following four decades, Salmon goes beyond this model's inherent basis of describing empirical knowledge to tells us “not only what, but also why.” Salmon examines the predominant models in chronological order and describes their development, refinement, and criticism or rejection.Four Decades of Scientific Explanation underscores the need for a consensus of approach and ongoing evaluations of methodology in scientific explanation, with the goal of providing a better understanding of natural phenomena.

    This book contains three of Bakhtin's early essays from the years following the Russian Revolution, when Bakhtin and other intellectuals eagerly participated in the debates of the period.

    S. Lewis, theologian and literary scholar, and Owen Barfield, philosopher and London solicitor, were longtime friends. G. B. Tennyson, editor of these papers by Barfield on Lewis, believes this relationship of "two immense intellects" "one of the most absorbing literary friendships of the twentieth century." Lewis called Barfield the "wisest and best of my unofficial teachers"; to Barfield, C. S. Lewis was "the absolutely unforgettable friend." They had been friends and disputants from their Oxford days after the First World War until Lewis's death forty years later. Barfield was his solicitor and trustee in the later years. This is vintage Barfield as well as an astute appraisal of C. S. Lewis's personality and beliefs. In essays, interviews, several poems, and a fragment of fiction, Barfield writes of "the individual essence" of C. S. Lewis, his brilliance, his "absolute honesty of mind," his lack of interest in collectivities-races, nations, movements-his interest only in the individual soul, his "irrepressible bent for comedy," his "keenness in pursuing any point of difference or doubt to its final conclusion." Barfield writes about himself, also, as a way of understanding his friend: "In an argument we always, both of us, were arguing for truth, not for victory, and arguing for truth, not for comfort." Both trusted the imagination, but they differed on its relation to knowledge-"[Lewis] was in love with the imagination" and "to search for any link between myth and fact was for him a crucial error." C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield had in common an awareness "of the silliness and the triviality of the time" and the conviction that the contemporary loss of the idea of sin was a disaster. But they also disagreed from the first, as Barfield explains, especially about theology, about the nature of God, the process of history. Lewis saw revelation as finished; Barfield saw it as a "continuing process," as he did human history. Lewis considered hierarchy necessary and healthy; Barfield regarded it as an evolutionary phase. Although C. S. Lewis died in 1963, Barfield's reflections on their relationship and analysis of its meaning ended only with his own death, in his hundredth year, in 1997.

    It includes writings on Greek science, philosophy and history, and demonstrates Popper's lifelong fascination and admiration of the Presocratic philosophers, in particular Parmenides, Xenophanes and Heraclitus.

    Loy Ching-Yuen stresses the importance of practice rather than speech or ideals. Viewing the heart as the center of right-mindedness and self-empowerment, he teaches benevolence, humility, and meditation in a refreshing approach to living simply and honestly in the world.

    This book is an attempt to clarify what is demanded if we are to have a chance of achieving this. It examines the nature and significance of the sacred itself, why the sense of its presence has been so disastrously eroded from our conciousness over recent centuries. This book is an attempt to clarify what is demanded if we are to have any chance of achieving this. It examines the nature and significance of the sacred itself, why the sense of its presence has been so disastrously eroded from our conciousness over recent centuries.

    Then, in the midst of the transformations connected with the Council, he wrote an "Account" for himself and his readers, about what had been done, and what was still required. Finally, in a kind of pause, as one already looking toward the close of his life, he gave once again an account of what had been achieved and what could no longer be achieved, in a clear shift of emphasis away from his "authorship" in favor of the pastoral work in the communities which he had founded. This present volume is a helpful guide to his many-sided work.

    Written around 1600 during the Ming dynasty, these practical teachings reveal the secrets of serenity and wisdom in a changing world.

    Written with wisdom and eloquence, this book thoroughly but sensitively discusses biblical notions of death, the impact of science, the various attempts by immortalists to describe heaven, and the failure of spiritual "proofs." Corliss Lamont also argues for a new, ethical affirmation of life based upon an appreciation of our common mortality.

    Though the author's down-to-earth approach is accessible and easy to follow, the reader's creative thought processes and imagination are also challenged in this unique study of the celestial alphabet. What is learned can be immediately applied towards a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.

    This book illuminates that tradition through a historical examination of a crucial period in its formation: the rejection of Idealism by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the subsequent development of Russell's thought in the period before the First World War.

    Umberto Eco begins by arguing that our familiar system of classification by genus and species derives from the Neo-Platonist idea of a "tree of knowledge." He then moves to the idea of the dictionary, which—like a tree whose trunk anchors a great hierarchy of branching categories—orders knowledge into a matrix of definitions. In Eco's view, though, the dictionary is too rigid: it turns knowledge into a closed system. A more flexible organizational scheme is the encyclopedia, which—instead of resembling a tree with finite branches—offers a labyrinth of never-ending pathways. Presenting knowledge as a network of interlinked relationships, the encyclopedia sacrifices humankind's dream of possessing absolute knowledge, but in compensation we gain the freedom to pursue an infinity of new connections and meanings.Moving effortlessly from analyses of Aristotle and James Joyce to the philosophical difficulties of telling dogs from cats, Eco demonstrates time and again his inimitable ability to bridge ancient, medieval, and modern modes of thought. From the Tree to the Labyrinth is a brilliant illustration of Eco's longstanding argument that problems of interpretation can be solved only in historical context.