What is the nature of the fundamental relation we have to ourselves that makes each of us a self? To answer this question, Charles Larmore develops a systematic theory of the self, challenging the widespread view that the self’s defining relation to itself is to have an immediate knowledge of its own thoughts. On the contrary, Larmore maintains, our essential relation to ourselves is practical, as is clear when we consider the nature of belief and desire. For to believe or desire something consists in committing ourselves to thinking and acting in accord with the presumed truth of our belief or the presumed value of what we desire.
Larmore develops this conception with frequent reference to such classic authors as Montaigne, Stendhal, and Proust and by comparing it to other views of the self in contemporary philosophy. He also discusses the important ethical consequences of his theory of the self, arguing that it allows us to better grasp what it means to be ourselves and why self-understanding often involves self-creation.
Winner of the Académie Française’s Grand Prix de Philosophie, The Practices of the Self is that rare kind of lucid yet rigorous work that transcends disciplinary boundaries.
To the ancient Greeks, providence was the inherent purpose and rational structure of the world. In Christian thought, it became a benign will “providing” for human well-being. And in our own ever more secular times—is providence lost? Perhaps, but as Genevieve Lloyd makes clear in this illuminating work, providence still exerts a powerful influence on our thought and in our lives; and understanding how can help us clarify the functioning—or, increasingly, disfunctioning—of concepts of freedom and autonomy that define our modernity. Such an understanding is precisely the goal of this book, which traces a succession of transformations in the concept of providence through the history of Western philosophy.
Beginning with early versions of providence in ancient Greek thought, Lloyd follows the concept through its convergence with Christian ideas, to its role in seventeenth-century philosophical accommodations of freedom and necessity. Finally, she shows how providence was subsumed into the eighteenth-century ideas of progress that eventually rendered it philosophically superfluous. Incorporating rich discussions of thinkers from Euripides to Augustine, Descartes and Spinoza to Kant and Hegel, her lucid and elegantly written work clearly and forcefully brings the history of ideas to bear on our present confusion over notions of autonomy, risk, and responsibility. Exploring the interplay among philosophy, religion, and literature, and among intellect, imagination, and emotion in philosophical thought, this book allows intellectual historians and general readers alike to grasp what it actually means that providence can be lost but not escaped.
The great Swiss psychologist and theorist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) had much to say about the developing mind. He also had plenty to say about his own development, much of it, as Fernando Vidal shows, plainly inaccurate. In the first truly historical biography of Piaget, Vidal tells the story of the psychologist’s intellectual and personal development up to 1918. By exploring the philosophical, religious, political, and social influences on the psychologist’s early life, Vidal alters our basic assumptions about the origins of Piaget’s thinking and his later psychology.
The resulting profile is strikingly dissimilar to Piaget’s own retrospective version. In Piaget’s own account, as an adolescent he was a precocious scientist dedicated to questions of epistemology. Here we find him also—and increasingly—concerned with the foundations of religious faith and knowledge, immersed in social and political matters, and actively involved in Christian and socialist groups. Far from being devoted solely to the classification of mollusks, the young Piaget was a vocal champion of Henri Bergson’s philosophy of creative evolution, an interest that figured much more prominently in his later thinking than did his early work in natural history. We see him during World War I chastising conservatism and nationalism, espousing equality and women’s rights, and advocating the role of youth in the birth of a new Christianity.
In his detailed account of Jean Piaget’s childhood and adolescence—enriched by the intellectual and cultural landscape of turn-of-the-century Neuchâtel—Vidal reveals a little-known Piaget, a youth whose struggle to reconcile science and faith adds a new dimension to our understanding of the great psychologist’s life, thought, and work.
The publication in 1890 of William James’s acknowledged masterpiece marked a turning point in the development of psychology as a science in America. The Principles of Psychology also became a source of inspiration in philosophy, literature, and the arts. When John Dewey reviewed it, he predicted that it would rank “as a permanent classic, like Locke’s Essay and Hume’s Treatise.”
Its stature undiminished after 91 years, The Principles of Psychology appears now in a new, handsome edition with an authoritative text that corrects the hundreds of errors, some very serious, that have been perpetuated over the years. Prepared according to the modern standards of textual scholarship, this edition incorporates all of the changes James made in the eight printings he supervised, as well as the revisions and new material he added to his own annotated copy. In addition, all footnotes, references, quotations, and translations have been thoroughly checked.
The complete text of the Principles, with footnotes, drawings, and James’s own index, appears in Volumes I and II. Volume III includes extensive notes, appendixes, textual apparatus, and a general index.
The publication in 1890 of William James’s acknowledged masterpiece marked a turning point in the development of psychology as a science in America. The Principles of Psychology also became a source of inspiration in philosophy, literature, and the arts. When John Dewey reviewed it, he predicted that it would rank “as a permanent classic, like Locke’s Essay and Hume’s Treatise.”
Its stature undiminished after 91 years, The Principles of Psychology appears now in a new, handsome edition with an authoritative text that corrects the hundreds of errors, some very serious, that have been perpetuated over the years. Prepared according to the modern standards of textual scholarship, this edition incorporates all of the changes James made in the eight printings he supervised, as well as the revisions and new material he added to his own annotated copy. In addition, all footnotes, references, quotations, and translations have been thoroughly checked.
The complete text of the Principles, with footnotes, drawings, and James’s own index, appears in Volumes I and II. Volume III includes extensive notes, appendixes, textual apparatus, and a general index.
Today's scholars know James's psychology primarily through his great Principles of Psychology (1890), but those who studied the subject at the turn of the century were more apt to learn his view through his Psychology: Briefer Course (1892). Indeed, professors at colleges and universities throughout the United States use this book--which their students labeled "Jimmy" to distinguish it from the larger "James"--in their classes, and more than six times as many copies of the Briefer Course were sold by 1902 as were sets of Principles.
Despite its title, the Briefer Course is more than a simple condensation of the larger work. For example, to the material from Principles James added several chapters on the physiology of the senses that helped mesh his psychology with the other sciences of the period. The earlier chapter title "The Stream of Thought" is replaced here with "The Stream of Consciousness." Psychology: Briefer Course remains a useful and highly readable introduction to James's views on psychology and is an essential source for anyone interested in studying all of his psychological writings.
The book follows major themes, highlighting the similarities and differences among influential thinkers and schools of thought. At the same time, Psychoanalytic Theory is structured so that the chapters can be read in any order. Each one includes an introductory overview and summary, as well as biographical and historical material for each theorist discussed. This book is an essential starting point for any exploration of the contribution of psychoanalysis to contemporary theory.
The Psyche and Schizophrenia offers a remarkably clear and comprehensive treatment of biopsychosocial development and psychotic processes. This extraordinary work lays the theoretical foundation for understanding the relationships between feeling and thinking (affect and logic) in normal as well as in pathological conditions, especially schizophrenia. Ciompi's affective-cognitive theory integrates interpersonal, familial, and social interactions with intrapsychic mental structures and yields startling new insights into the origins of "schizophrenic alienation." While Ciompi acknowledges the important role that genetic and biological models play in schizophrenia, he maintains that it is largely the psychosocial factors that determine long-term prognosis. Thus, The Psyche and Schizophrenia elaborates a number of new therapeutic approaches to the management of biological as well as environmental influences.
Drawing upon Piaget, Freud, and systems theory, as well as advanced current research, Ciompi develops a new model of the normal and pathological functioning of the psyche. This model presents cognition and emotion, the structure of logic and the dynamics of affects, as a complementary system governed by "ubiquitous laws of equilibrium."
In this brilliant synthesis of theoretical and empirical research, Ciompi proposes his novel theory of an "affectlogic" that probes the affective structures of logic as well as the logical structures of the emotions. Original in its conception and elegantly written, The Psyche and Schizophrenia is a major contribution to research on schizophrenia, and its penetrating insights and thorough analysis are sure to enrich the field of psychiatry for years to come.
Psychology is the dogma of our age; psychotherapy is our means of self-understanding; and "repressed memory" is now a universally familiar form of trauma. Jeffrey Prager, who is both a sociologist and a psychoanalyst, explores the degree to which we manifest the clichés of our culture in our most private recollections.
At the core of Presenting the Past is the dramatic and troubling case of a woman who during the course of her analysis began to recall scenes of her own childhood sexual abuse. Later the patient came to believe that the trauma she remembered as a physical violation might have been an emotional violation and that she had composed a memory out of present and past relationships. But what was accurate and true? And what evidence could be persuasive and valuable? Could the analyst trust either her convictions or his own? Using this case and others, Prager explores the nature of memory and its relation to the interpersonal, therapeutic, and cultural worlds in which remembering occurs.
Synthesizing research from social science, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, Prager uses clinical examples to argue more generally that our memories are never simple records of events, but constantly evolving constructions, affected by contemporary culture as well as by our own private lives. He demonstrates the need that sociology has for the insights of psychoanalysis, and the need that psychoanalysis has for the insights of sociology.
How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them?
How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them? To answer this question, this book investigates a fundamental axiom in computer science: pattern discrimination. By imposing identity on input data, in order to filter—that is, to discriminate—signals from noise, patterns become a highly political issue. Algorithmic identity politics reinstate old forms of social segregation, such as class, race, and gender, through defaults and paradigmatic assumptions about the homophilic nature of connection.
Instead of providing a more “objective” basis of decision making, machine-learning algorithms deepen bias and further inscribe inequality into media. Yet pattern discrimination is an essential part of human—and nonhuman—cognition. Bringing together media thinkers and artists from the United States and Germany, this volume asks the urgent questions: How can we discriminate without being discriminatory? How can we filter information out of data without reinserting racist, sexist, and classist beliefs? How can we queer homophilic tendencies within digital cultures?
The concept of "psychological tools" is a cornerstone of L. S. Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of cognitive development. Psychological tools are the symbolic cultural artifacts--signs, symbols, texts, formulae, and most fundamentally, language--that enable us to master psychological functions like memory, perception, and attention in ways appropriate to our cultures. In this lucid book, Alex Kozulin argues that the concept offers a useful way to analyze cross-cultural differences in thought and to develop practical strategies for educating immigrant children from widely different cultures.
Kozulin begins by offering an overview of Vygotsky's theory, which argues that consciousness arises from communication as civilization transforms "natural" psychological functions into "cultural" ones. He also compares sociocultural theory to other innovative approaches to learning, cognitive education in particular. And in a vivid case study, the author describes his work with recent Ethiopian immigrants to Israel, whose traditional modes of learning were oral and imitative, and who consequently proved to be quick at learning conversational Hebrew, but who struggled with the reading, writing, and formal problem solving required by a Western classroom. Last, Kozulin develops Vygotsky's concept of psychological tools to promote literature as a useful tool in cognitive development.
With its explication of Vygotsky's theory, its case study of sociocultural pedagogy, and its suggested use of literary text for cognitive development, Psychological Tools will be of considerable interest to research psychologists and educators alike.
"'Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' 'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' 'The dog did nothing in the night-time.' 'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes." The quotation from A. Conan Doyle with which this book begins, is a delightfully appropriate summation of the authors' point of view garnered from their fifteen years of experiments on the psychology of reasoning.
Dr. Wason and Dr. Johnson-Laird are intrigued by the extent to which most individuals can be considered naturally rational thinkers. They present here the surprising results of their comprehensive investigations of how humans draw explicit conclusions from evidence. "Given a set of assertions," the authors write, "to what extent can the individual appreciate all that follows from them by virtue of logic alone, and remain unseduced by plausible, but fallacious conclusions? We are not concerned with whether these assertions are true or false, nor with whether the individual holds them among his beliefs, nor with whether they are sane or silly."
At the core of the Psychology of Reasoning is a vigorous discussion that incorporates various illustrations--some of them humorous, all of them fascinating--of the use of reason under a wide variety of different conditions. Particular emphasis is placed on the difficulties involved in dealing with negatively marked information that must be combined and used with other information for reaching conclusions. Thorough treatment is given as well to the search for plausible contexts that will render anomalous or ambiguous statements "sensible."
The authors have strived to isolate the components of inference, the basic steps of any kind of deductive activity, in order to determine the psychological processes involved in them. What has been the outcome of this research? Dr. Wason and Dr. Johnson-Laird conclude, "our research has suggested that the individual's logical competence may be either enhanced or limited by performance variables. And, of these, content has turned out to be vitally important for revealing, or obscuring structure. At best, we can all think like logicians; at worst, logicians all think like us."
In more ways than we may sometimes care to acknowledge, the human being is just another primate--it is certainly only very rarely that researchers into cognition, emotion, personality, and behavior in our species and in other primates come together to compare notes and share insights. This book, one of the few comprehensive attempts at integrating behavioral research into human and nonhuman primates, does precisely that--and in doing so, offers a clear, in-depth look at the mutually enlightening work being done in psychology and primatology.
Relying on theories of behavior derived from psychology rather than ecology or biological anthropology, the authors, internationally known experts in primatology and psychology, focus primarily on social processes in areas including aggression, conflict resolution, sexuality, attachment, parenting, social development and affiliation, cognitive development, social cognition, personality, emotions, vocal and nonvocal communication, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology. They show nonhuman primates to be far more complex, cognitively and emotionally, than was once supposed, with provocative implications for our understanding of supposedly unique human characteristics. Arguing that both human and nonhuman primates are distinctive for their wide range of context-sensitive behaviors, their work makes a powerful case for the future integration of human and primate behavioral research.
The undoubted fact of human individuality has remained outside the field of interest of scientific psychology. Neither the central organization of consciousness nor individual powers of action have been dealt with in substantial research programmes. Yet every facet of our mental lives is influenced by how our minds are organized. How much of this organization comes from the languages and social practices of the cultures into which we are born is undetermined.
In this book, Rom Harré explores the radical thesis that most of our personal being may be of social origin. Consciousness, agency and autobiography are the three unities which make up our personal being. Their origin in childhood development and their differences in different cultures are explored.
Nevertheless, despite the overwhelming influence of social environment on mental structure, individual identity is a central facet of Western culture. How is the formation of such identity possible? Rom Harré ends with the suggestion that personal identity derives from the complementary powers of human beings both to display themselves socially as unique and to create novel linguistic forms making individual thought and feeling possible.
In The Private Self, Arnold Modell contributes an interdisciplinary perspective in formulating a theory of the private self. A leading thinker in American psychoanalysis, Modell here studies selfhood by examining variations on the theme of the self in Freud and in the work of object relations theorists, self psychologists, and neuroscientists. Modell contends that the self is fundamentally paradoxical, in that it is at once dependent upon social affirmation and autonomous in generating itself from within. We create ourselves, he suggests, by selecting values that are endowed with private meanings.
By thinking of the unconscious as a neurophysiological process, and the self as the subject and object of its own experience, Modell is able to explain how identity can persist in the flux of consciousness. He thus offers an exciting and original perspective for our understanding of the mind and the brain.
In the wake of the French Revolution, as attempts to restore political stability to France repeatedly failed, a group of concerned intellectuals identified a likely culprit: the prevalent sensationalist psychology, and especially the flimsy and fragmented self it produced. They proposed a vast, state-run pedagogical project to replace sensationalism with a new psychology that showcased an indivisible and actively willing self, or moi. As conceived and executed by Victor Cousin, a derivative philosopher but an academic entrepreneur of genius, this long-lived project singled out the male bourgeoisie for training in selfhood. Granting everyone a self in principle, Cousin and his disciples deemed workers and women incapable of the introspective finesse necessary to appropriate that self in practice.
Beginning with a fresh consideration of the place of sensationalism in the Old Regime and the French Revolution, Jan Goldstein traces a post-Revolutionary politics of selfhood that reserved the Cousinian moi for the educated elite, outraged Catholics and consigned socially marginal groups to the ministrations of phrenology. Situating the Cousinian moi between the fragmented selves of eighteenth-century sensationalism and twentieth-century Freudianism, Goldstein suggests that the resolutely unitary self of the nineteenth century was only an interlude tailored to the needs of the post-Revolutionary bourgeois order.
Contributors. Irving E. Alexander, James William Anderson, Leslie A. Carlson, Rae Carlson, Alan C. Elms, Carol Franz, Lynne Layton, Dan P. McAdams, Richard L. Ochberg, George C. Rosenwald, William McKinley Runyan, Abigail G. Stewart, Jacquelyn Wiersma, David G. Winter
Experienced ASL instructor Leann Sebrey champions two-way sign communication between parents and their infants who are just months old as a way to bond more closely and reduce frustration, while also maximizing the children’s intelligence and emotional quotients.
Sebrey’s book The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs: Early Communication with Your Infant lays out an easy, step-by-step process that will instill confidence in parents who have never signed before. She begins by explaining why ASL is best for all children, both deaf and hearing. Sebrey also recognizes the different ways young children learn, encouraging parents and caregivers to sign with infants at all times as a natural part of their interaction. She reveals the first indications of when a baby is ready to communicate, and includes a list of signs to provide parents with a good starting point. Sebrey discusses the moments when infants are most receptive to learn signs and outlines numerous practical techniques with plenty of helpful hints to speed the process. She describes the pleasure of seeing a baby’s first sign, and tells parents how to interpret baby signs, including what to do when a baby uses the wrong signs. Full of easy-to-grasp illustrations of child and family-oriented signs, The Parents’ Guide to Baby Signs is the best how-to book for parents, caregivers, and educators to teach early communication to infants.
After the age of 40, we may notice occasional lapses—a forgotten phone number, a friend's name, or a word that was right on the tip of our tongue. By 60, we may find ourselves wondering who called this morning, why we came into the kitchen, where we parked the car. In an aging nation, where one citizen in seven will be 65 when the next century arrives, these little difficulties raise a larger question: What precisely happens to our thinking as we grow older? What is normal, what is not, and how are we to know the signs?
Douglas Powell offers a comprehensive account of cognitive aging, of how our mental functions change as we mature. Defining patterns of normal decline, as well as severe forms of cognitive impairment, this book will help us understand and address the needs of an aging population. Powell integrates the latest literature on aging with the findings of his recent study of 1,000 physicians and 600 other subjects ranging in age from 25 to 92. His work reveals patterns of cognitive aging throughout the life cycle, particularly the way in which variability among individuals outpaces the decline of overall ability. Tackling an issue of growing interest in the field of gerontology, he notes the effect of certain factors such as gender, diet, health, and physical and mental exercise on changes in cognitive functioning over time.
Along with the criteria for mild cognitive impairment and normal cognitive aging, this book addresses the question of optimal cognitive aging, identifying its characteristics and searching out their implications for the maintenance of intellectual abilities in the post-retirement years.
Psychic Investigators examines British anthropology’s engagement with the modern spiritualist movement during the late Victorian era. Efram Sera-Shriar argues that debates over the existence of ghosts and psychical powers were at the center of anthropological discussions on human beliefs. He focuses on the importance of establishing credible witnesses of spirit and psychic phenomena in the writings of anthropologists such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Edward Burnett Tylor, Andrew Lang, and Edward Clodd. The book draws on major themes, such as the historical relationship between science and religion, the history of scientific observation, and the emergence of the subfield of anthropology of religion in the second half of the nineteenth century. For secularists such as Tylor and Clodd, spiritualism posed a major obstacle in establishing the legitimacy of the theory of animism: a core theoretical principle of anthropology founded in the belief of “primitive cultures” that spirits animated the world, and that this belief represented the foundation of all religious paradigms. What becomes clear through this nuanced examination of Victorian anthropology is that arguments involving spirits or psychic forces usually revolved around issues of evidence, or lack of it, rather than faith or beliefs or disbeliefs.
Every night we enter a mythic realm, a dark, primordial world of fear and desire. What this world offers, Anthony Stevens suggests, may well be the key to understanding our waking mysteries--ourselves, our society, and our history. A prominent psychiatrist and practicing Jungian analyst, Stevens views dreaming from both psychological and neurological perspectives to show how dreams owe their origins as much to our evolutionary history as a species as to our personal history as individuals.
A work rich in symbolic and scientific insight, Private Myths traverses the course of dream interpretation from distant hunter-gatherer times to the present. This analysis is as authoritative as it is wide-ranging, including discussions of the biology of dreaming and the discovery of REM sleep, elaboration of the latest neuroscientific techniques in sleep research, and an assessment of the century-long legacy of analytic practice to dream interpretation. In a close look at the actual processes of dream formation, Stevens relates "dream work" to other creative capacities such as language, poetry, storytelling, memory, play, symptom-formation, magic, and ritual. He draws on his many years of experience to analyze key historical dreams, such as Freud's dream of Irma's injection and Hitler's dream of being buried alive, and enriches this discussion with analyses of his own and his patients' dreams.
Remarkable in its breadth, Private Myths makes the principles of dream interpretation accessible to scientists, the findings of dream science accessible to analysts, and the discoveries of both available to anyone intrigued by the mysteries of dreams and dreaming.
A new, expanded edition of a classic reference tool
This volume of more than 170 documents of prophecy from the ancient Near East brings together a representative sample of written documents from Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Egypt dating to the second and first millennia BCE. Nissinen's collection provides nonspecialist readers clear translations, transliterations, and discussions of oracles reports and collections, quotations of prophetic messages in letters and literature, and texts that reference persons with prophetic titles. This second edition includes thirty-four new texts.
Features:
To the practical modern mind, the idea of divine prophecy is more ludicrous than sublime. Yet to our cultural forebears in ancient Greece and Rome, prophecy was anything but marginal; it was in fact the basic medium for recalling significant past events and expressing hopes for the future, and it offered assurance that divinities truly cared about mere mortals. Prophecy also served political ends, and it was often invoked to support or condemn an emperor's actions. In Prophets and Emperors, David Potter shows us how prophecy worked, how it could empower, and how the diverse inhabitants of the Roman Empire used it to make sense of their world.
This is a fascinating account of prophecy as a social, religious, and political phenomenon. The various systems of prophecy--including sacred books, oracles, astrological readings, interpretation of dreams, the sayings of holy men and women--come into sharp relief. Potter explores the use of prophecy as a nieans of historical analysis and political communication, and he describes it in the context of the ancient city. Finally, he traces the reformation of the prophetic tradition under the influence of Christianity in the fourth century.
Drawing on diverse evidence--from inscriptions and ancient prophetic books to Greek and Roman historians and the Bible--Potter has produced a study that will engage anyone interested in the religions of the ancient Mediterranean and in the history and politics of the Roman Empire.
Examining select high points in the speculative tradition from Plato and Aristotle through the Middle Ages and German tradition to Dewey and Heidegger, Placing Aesthetics seeks to locate the aesthetic concern within the larger framework of each thinker’s philosophy.
In Professor Robert Wood’s study, aesthetics is not peripheral but rather central to the speculative tradition and to human existence as such. In Dewey’s terms, aesthetics is “experience in its integrity.” Its personal ground is in “the heart,” which is the dispositional ground formed by genetic, cultural , and personal historical factors by which we are spontaneously moved and, in turn, are inclined to move, both practically and theoretically, in certain directions.
Prepared for use by the student as well as the philosopher, Placing Aesthetics aims to recover the fullness of humanness within a sense of the fullness of encompassing Being. It attempts to overcome the splitting of thought, even in philosophy, into exclusive specializations and the fracturing of life itself into theoretical, practical, and emotive dimensions.
In this rich and rewarding work, Yi-Fu Tuan vividly demonstrates that feeling and beauty are essential components of life and society. The aesthetic is not merely one aspect of culture but its central core—both its driving force and its ultimate goal.
Beginning with the individual and his physical world, Tuan's exploration progresses from the simple to the complex. His initial evaluation of the building blocks of aesthetic experience (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) develops gradually into a wide-ranging examination of the most elaborate of human constructs, including art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, and more.
Today we associate prejudice with ignorance and bigotry and consider it a source of injustice. So how can prejudice have a legitimate place in moral and political judgment? In this ambitious work, Adam Sandel shows that prejudice, properly understood, is not an unfortunate obstacle to clear thinking but an essential aspect of it. The aspiration to reason without preconceptions, he argues, is misguided.
Ranging across philosophy from Aristotle to Heidegger and Gadamer, Sandel demonstrates that we inherit our "prejudice against prejudice" from the Enlightenment. By detaching reason from habit and common opinion, thinkers such as Bacon, Descartes, and Kant invented prejudice--as we understand it today--as an obstacle to freedom and a failure to think for oneself.
The Place of Prejudice presents a powerful challenge to this picture. The attempt to purge understanding of culture and history leads not to truth, Sandel warns, but to shallowness and confusion. A purely detached notion of reason deprives judgment of all perspective, disparages political rhetoric as mere pandering, and denies us the background knowledge we need to interpret literature, law, and the past. In a clear, eloquent voice, Sandel presents instead a compelling case for reasoning within the world.
In this volume, Josef Fuchs has brought together 12 important essays which consider various aspects of the relationship between Christian morality and human behavior. Among the subjects he discusses are the connections between moral theology and Christian experience, the absolute character of moral norms, and the importance of ethical reflection in shaping the future of the human race.
One of the most heated debates in recent times among Christian ethicians has been over what has come to be called "proportionalism." Opponents have argued that proportionalists are intent on relativizing theology norms and theh concept of intrinsic evil. Proponents, on the other hand, argue that they are merely developing a traditional notion of proportion of reason. Bernard Hoose puts this debate in context by showing its roots in the writings of European moral theologians and its flowering in the writings of their American colleagues. He uncovers a number of confusions that have bedeviled the argument while revealing how important the issues are for establishing in coherent Christian ethics in the twentieth century.
The Phenomenology of Pain is the first book-length investigation of its topic to appear in English. Groundbreaking, systematic, and illuminating, it opens a dialogue between phenomenology and such disciplines as cognitive science and cultural anthropology to argue that science alone cannot clarify the nature of pain experience without incorporating a phenomenological approach. Building on this premise, Saulius Geniusas develops a novel conception of pain grounded in phenomenological principles: pain is an aversive bodily feeling with a distinct experiential quality, which can only be given in original first-hand experience, either as a feeling-sensation or as an emotion.
Geniusas crystallizes the fundamental methodological principles that underlie phenomenological research. On the basis of those principles, he offers a phenomenological clarification of the fundamental structures of pain experience and contests the common conflation of phenomenology with introspectionism. Geniusas analyzes numerous pain dissociation syndromes, brings into focus the de-personalizing and re-personalizing nature of chronic pain experience, and demonstrates what role somatization and psychologization play in pain experience. In the process, he advances Husserlian phenomenology in a direction that is not explicitly worked out in Husserl’s own writings.
Politics cannot function without responsibility, but there have been serious disagreements about how responsibility is to be understood and huge controversies about how it is to be distributed, rewarded, legislated, and enforced. The liberal notions of personal responsibility that have dominated political thinking in the West for more than a century are rooted in the familiar territory of individual will and causal blame, but these theories have been assailed as no longer adequate to explain or address the political demands of a global social structure. Informed by Marx, Foucault, and Butler, Chad Lavin argues for a "postliberal" theory of responsibility, formulating responsibility as a process that is anchored in a persistent ability to respond, not reproach. Lavin works this formulation through discussions of contemporary political issues such as globalization, police brutality, and abortion.
Rather than assigning individual blame, postliberal responsibility challenges the supposed autonomy of individual subjects by taking structural arguments into account. Lavin concludes that a liberal concept of responsibility gives rise to a moralistic and oppressive approach to social problems, while a postliberal approach highlights a shared responsibility for developing collective solutions to systemic problems. Postliberal responsibility not only suggests more generous and democratic responses to social ills, it also allows us to theorize a greater range of issues that demand political response.
Forgiveness is a virtue that author Everett L.Worthington Jr. has advocated throughout his career as a counselor and psychologist. In this book, he explains the paradoxical power of forgiveness through his personal and professional experiences andthrough the wisdom of others. The paradox is that in forgiving for the well-being of others, we actually receive tremendous benefits for ourselves in terms of physical and mental health.
This book treats forgiveness as a quest to find the treasure of restored relationships, personal peace, and even health, which has often become buried in relational harms, betrayals, and injustices. Worthington shows how one begins the quest, prepares the self for the rigors of the search, and makes the journey.
In the process, he describes the resources and supports needed. He also discusses how enemies can continue to betray and how unruly angry emotions can arise but can be tamed by forgiving. Worthington shows readers the map to forgiveness using methods such as his time-tested and research-supported method of REACH, a five-step process of forgiving.
The Power of Forgiving will inspire people to use forgiveness. It will show how forgiving is a transforming process that will enrich relationships and empower people to improve their own lives.
William Vitek enlarges our understanding by treating the act of promising as a social practice and complex human experience. Citing engaging examples of promises made in everyday life, in extraordinary circumstances, and in literary works, Vitek grapples with the central paradox of promising: that human beings can intend a future to which they are largely blind.
Promising evaluates contemporary approaches to the topic by such philosophers as John Rawls, John Searle, Henry Sidgwick, P.S. Atiyah, and Michael Robbins but transcend their more limited focus on promissory obligation. Vitek's innovative approach moves beyond theories of language, ethics, and law to unveil a complex human activity subject to shifting interpretations and changes in nature.
John Dewey delivered two sets of related lectures at the University of Chicago in the fall quarter 1895 and the spring quarter 1896. Designed for graduate students, the lectures show the birth of Dewey’s instrumentalist theory of inquiry in its application to ethical and political thinking.
From 1891 through 1903, Dewey attempted to develop a revolutionary experimentalist approach to ethical inquiry, designed to replace the more traditional ways of moral theorizing that relied on the fixed moral knowledge given in advance of the situations in which they were applied. In the lectures on the logic of ethics, he sets forth and defends the view that the "is" in a moral judgment such as "This is good" is a coordinating factor in an inquiry. Although the subject matter of the lectures is highly technical, its significance is paramount. It provides the key to and opens the door for a theory that preserves the difference between strictly scientific inquiry and moral inquiry even while it provides a "scientific treatment" of the latter.
A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents.
We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives.
Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success.
Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip.
Why has religion persisted across the course of human history? Secularists have predicted the end of faith for a long time, but religions continue to attract followers. Meanwhile, scholars of religion have expanded their field to such an extent that we lack a basic framework for making sense of the chaos of religious phenomena. To remedy this state of affairs, Martin Riesebrodt here undertakes a task that is at once simple and monumental: to define, understand, and explain religion as a universal concept.
Instead of propounding abstract theories, Riesebrodt concentrates on the concrete realities of worship, examining religious holidays, conversion stories, prophetic visions, and life-cycle events. In analyzing these practices, his scope is appropriately broad, taking into consideration traditions in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, and Shinto. Ultimately, Riesebrodt argues, all religions promise to avert misfortune, help their followers manage crises, and bring both temporary blessings and eternal salvation. And, as The Promise of Salvation makes clear through abundant empirical evidence, religion will not disappear as long as these promises continue to help people cope with life.
Now remembered primarily as Franz Kafta's friend and literary executor, Max Brod was an accomplishered thinker and writer in his own right. In this volume, he considers the nature and differences between Judaism and Christianity, addressing some of the most perplexing questions at the heart of human existence.
“One of the most famous and widely discussed books of the 1920’s, Max Brod’s Paganism—Christianity—Judaism, has at last found its way into English translation to confront a new generation of readers. Max Brod is best remembered today as the literary editor and friend of Franz Kafka. In his day, however, he was the more famous of the two by far. A major novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and composer, he was also, as this book demonstrates, a serious thinker on the perennial questions that are at the heart of human existence. . . .Some of his judgments are open to question. Still, with all its limitations, this is a forthright and passionate proclamation of the uniqueness of Judaism. Paganism—Christianity—Judaism was an intellectual and spiritual event when it was first published and it remains a valuable document even now.” —Rabbi Jack Riemer, Hadassah
In this comprehensive work, Eugene Taylor uses the tenets of modern psychology, concepts from the world's religions, and a lifetime of spiritual experiences and interior exploration to show how true healing comes from within. Taylor asserts that "consciousness and healing are linked and this connection can best be understood within the context of a growth-oriented psychology of self-realization." Everyone has the capacity to develop a healing personality.
Drawing from such diverse interpreters of transcendental and psychological experiences as William James, Emanuel Swedenborg, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Victor Frankl, and Abraham Maslow, Taylor explores the divisions between science and religious traditions; presents his own personal experiences, including his meetings with the Dalai Lama and Tenzin Norgay; and provides glimpses into the spiritual lives of others who have shared their experiences with him. The function of belief in the alleviation of suffering, the development of self-awareness, and the importance of human relationships form the basis for Taylor's psychology of spiritual healing. This cogent work both provides answers and raises questions for the spiritual seeker.
The Revd. Dr. John Polkinghorne is a world-renowned authority in the field of science and religion. His numerous books in this area, written over the past three decades, have been hugely influential. The Polkinghorne Reader brings together key extracts from his writings on core issues such as the nature of science, the physical world, human nature, love, theology, creation, providence, prayer and miracle, time, evil, Jesus, the resurrection, the Trinity, eschatology, and world faiths.
Ideal for readers who are new to Polkinghorne or who are just beginning to explore the interplay between science and religion, this collection will also be welcomed by all who have read his earlier works but would like one handy resource that presents the major facets of his thought in an accessible and systematic fashion.
Boer elaborates a theory of political myth in dialogue with Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Alain Badiou, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj Žižek. Through close readings of well-known biblical stories he then scrutinizes the nature of political myth in light of feminism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. Turning to contemporary politics, he examines the statements of prominent American and Australian politicians to show how the stories of Creation, conquest, Paradise, and the Promised Land have been distorted into a fantasy of Israel as a perpetual state in the making and a land in need of protection. Boer explains how this fantasy of Israel shapes U.S. and Australian foreign and domestic policies, and he highlights the links between it and the fantasy of unfettered global capitalism. Contending that political myths have repressed dimensions which if exposed undermine the myths’ authority, Boer urges the Left to expose the weakness in the Right’s mythos. He suggests that the Left make clear what the world would look like were the dream of unconstrained capitalism to be realized.
In 1462 Pope Pius II performed the only reverse canonization in history, publicly damning a living man. The target was Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini and a patron of the arts with ties to the Florentine Renaissance. Condemned to an afterlife of torment, he was burned in effigy in several places in Rome. What had this cultivated nobleman done to merit such a fate?
Pagan Virtue in a Christian World examines anew the contributions and contradictions of the Italian Renaissance, and in particular how the recovery of Greek and Roman literature and art led to a revival of pagan culture and morality in fifteenth-century Italy. The court of Sigismondo Malatesta (1417–1468), Anthony D’Elia shows, provides a case study in the Renaissance clash of pagan and Christian values, for Sigismondo was nothing if not flagrant in his embrace of the classical past. Poets likened him to Odysseus, hailed him as a new Jupiter, and proclaimed his immortal destiny. Sigismondo incorporated into a Christian church an unprecedented number of zodiac symbols and images of the Olympian gods and goddesses and had the body of the Greek pagan theologian Plethon buried there.
In the literature and art that Sigismondo commissioned, pagan virtues conflicted directly with Christian doctrine. Ambition was celebrated over humility, sexual pleasure over chastity, muscular athleticism over saintly asceticism, and astrological fortune over providence. In the pagan themes so prominent in Sigismondo’s court, D’Elia reveals new fault lines in the domains of culture, life, and religion in Renaissance Italy.
Apocalypse. To most, the word signifies destruction, death, the end of the world, but the literal definition is "revelation" or "unveiling," the basis from which renowned theologian René Girard builds his own view of Biblical apocalypse. Properly understood, Girard explains, Biblical apocalypse has nothing to do with a wrathful or vengeful God punishing his unworthy children, and everything to do with a foretelling of what future humans are making for themselves now that they have devised the instruments of global self-destruction. In this volume, some of the major thinkers about the interpretation of politics and religion— including Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt— are scrutinized by some of today's most qualified scholars, all of whom are thoroughly versed in Girard’s groundbreaking work.
Including an important new essay by Girard, this volume enters into a philosophical debate that challenges the bona fides of philosophy itself by examining three supremely important philosopher of the twentieth century. It asks how we might think about politics now that the attacks of 9/11 have shifted our intellectual foundations and what the outbreak of rabid religion might signify for international politics.
Universally, the power of prayer has been recognized by many cultures for immeasurable time. Whether it be a part of a formal service recited with a congregation of worshipers or an individual, quiet moment, prayer is part of the lives of people from a variety of religions.
There seems to be an innate urge among humanity to connect with a higher source of energy and love when we need guidance or direction, and this is called prayer. By reading the prayers from religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, from cultures in Africa, India, Egypt, and China, we begin to share the sense of a common experience.
The deepest inner feelings and longings are similar—concern for family, assistance in healing, a longing for peace, or a wish for greater wisdom. For some people, prayer can be thought of as a way to ask for specific goals or special favors. This type of prayer may or may not be effective. Another type of prayer exists when all selfish desire is put aside and we feel ourselves in communion with God. At this point, our greatest wish is that God's will be done.
There may be pressing concerns that make us turn our sights upward, but we learn to let go of the end result. At this point, prayer becomes a way of opening up to the universal, loving, creative energy that exists and is far greater than any person could imagine. This is the source of miracles, of faith and unconditional love. Prayer then becomes more than a means to an end; it becomes a state of humility and of awe. It can exist whether we are washing the floor or composing a symphony. Prayer is communion with the Divine, a universal loving creative force that exists in a variety of ways for people around the world.
This book brings together an inspirational collection of prayer suitable for all ages and traditions. In addition, it offers insight and guidance about the nature of prayer that will be useful for the serious seeker.
Sunday observance in the Christian West was an important religious issue from late Antiquity until at least the early twentieth century. In England the subject was debated in Parliament for six centuries. During the reign of Charles I disagreements about Sunday observance were a factor in the Puritan flight from England. In America the Sunday question loomed large in the nation’s newspapers. In the nineteenth century, it was the lengthiest of our national debates—outlasting those of temperance and slavery. In a more secular age, many writers have been haunted by the afterlife of Sunday. Wallace Stevens speaks of the “peculiar life of Sundays.” For Kris Kristofferson “there’s something in a Sunday, / Makes a body feel alone.”
From Augustine to Caesarius, through the Reformation and the Puritan flight from England, down through the ages to contemporary debates about Sunday worship, Stephen Miller explores the fascinating history of the Sabbath. He pays particular attention to the Sunday lives of a number of prominent British and American writers—and what they have had to say about Sunday. Miller examines such observant Christians as George Herbert, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Hannah More, and Jonathan Edwards. He also looks at the Sunday lives of non-practicing Christians, including Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds, John Ruskin, and Robert Lowell, as well as a group of lapsed Christians, among them Edmund Gosse, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and Wallace Stevens. Finally, he examines Walt Whitman’s complex relationship to Christianity. The result is a compelling study of the changing role of religion in Western culture.
From the Great Panathenaea of ancient Greece to the hajj of today, people of all religions and cultures have made sacred journeys to confirm their faith and their part in a larger identity. This book is a fascinating guide through the vast and varied cultural territory such pilgrimages have covered across the ages. The first book to look at the phenomenon and experience of pilgrimage through the multiple lenses of history, religion, sociology, anthropology, and art history, this sumptuously illustrated volume explores the full richness and range of sacred travel as it maps the cultural imagination.
The authors consider pilgrimage as a physical journey through time and space, but also as a metaphorical passage resonant with meaning on many levels. It may entail a ritual transformation of the pilgrim's inner state or outer status; it may be a quest for a transcendent goal; it may involve the healing of a physical or spiritual ailment. Through folktales, narratives of the crusades, and the firsthand accounts of those who have made these journeys; through descriptions and pictures of the rituals, holy objects, and sacred architecture they have encountered, as well as the relics and talismans they have carried home, Pilgrimage evokes the physical and spiritual landscape these seekers have traveled. In its structure, the book broadly moves from those religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--that cohere around a single canonical text to those with a multiplicity of sacred scriptures, like Hinduism and Buddhism. Juxtaposing the different practices and experiences of pilgrimage in these contexts, this book reveals the common structures and singular features of sacred travel from ancient times to our own.
<p>Bringing together a never-before-assembled network of biologists, psychologists, and sociologists, <em>Positive Youth Development and Spirituality</em> scientifically examines how spirituality and its cultivation may affect the positive development of adolescents. </p>
<p>Chapters provide groundbreaking new discussions of conceptual, theoretical, definitional, and methodological issues that need to be addressed when exploring the relationships between spirituality and development. Throughout the book, contributors recommend ways in which the research on the spirituality/positive youth development connection may be integral in building the larger field of spiritual development as a legitimate and active domain of developmental science. This volume, which is sure to be seen as a seminal contribution to a field in need of theoretical underpinnings, will be of interest to scholars and scientists in the fields of biology and the social and behavioral sciences.</p>
<p>Contributors include: Mona Abo-Zena, Jeffrey Jensen Arnnett, Peter L. Benson, Marina Umaschi Bers, Aerika Brittian, William Damon, Angela M. DeSilva, Jacquelynne S. Eccles, David Henry Feldman, Simon Gächter, Elena L. Grigorenko, Sonia S. Isaac, Lene Arnett Jensen, Carl N. Johnson, Linda Juang, Pamela Ebstyne King, Richard M. Lerner, Jennifer Menon, Na'ilah Sued Nasir, Guerda Nicolas, Toma´š Paus, Stephen C. Peck, Erin Phelps, Alan P. Poey, Robert W. Roeser, W. George Scarlett, Lonnie R. Sherrod, Gabriel S. Spiewak, Chris Starmer, Moin Syed, Janice L. Templeton, Heather L. Urry, and Richard Wilkinson.</p>
In the course of caring for the ill or dying, health care professionals are sometimes the only ones available to provide spiritual comfort to their patients. In our modern pluralistic society, where patients could come from any number of religious traditions, it can often be difficult to find exactly the right words in these situations.
Prayers and Rituals at a Time of Illness and Dying: The Practices of Five World Religions by experienced physician and theologian Pat Fosarelli offers clear instructions for health care professionals on how to better understand the needs of their Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish patients during these difficult times. Devoting separate chapters to each tradition, Fosarelli briefly outlines the basic beliefs and then looks at the main tenets of each religion, exploring the varied approaches that they take to illness and end-of-life issues. For each tradition, she also describes practices and offers suitable prayers. Each chapter suggests modifications that may be necessary for Western hospitals, modifications for children, and specific suggestions about what not to do or say in respect to different faith traditions.
This easy-to-use, pocket-sized resource will be referenced again and again by physicians, paramedics, hospital and military chaplains, pastoral counselors, hospice providers, and other medical professionals.
American culture warriors have plenty to argue about, but battles over such issues as abortion and torture have as much to do with rhetorical style as moral substance. Cathleen Kaveny reframes the debate about religion in the public square by focusing on a powerful stream of religious discourse in American political speech: the Biblical rhetoric of prophetic indictment.
“Important and path-breaking. The place of religious discourse in the American public square has received much attention for many years, but the role of prophetic indictment has been largely overlooked. Kaveny’s book not only opens a ‘new front’ in these debates, but starts the conversation with a rich analysis of the history and function of prophetic discourse.”
—Kathleen A. Brady, Commonweal
“A monumental achievement, and a much-needed addition to the academic and societal conversation about the role of religion in public life. In precise prose and with careful analysis, Kaveny challenges some of the leading theorists about public discourse and puts forward her own theories, all accompanied by a storyteller’s gift for anecdote and a philosopher’s talent for explication.”
—Michael Sean Winters, National Catholic Reporter
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