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Richard Popkin has assembled sixty-three leading scholars to forge a highly approachable chronological account of the development of Western philosophical traditions. From Plato to Wittgenstein and from Aquinas to Heidegger, this volume provides lively, in-depth, and up-to-date historical analysis of all the key figures, schools, and movements of Western philosophy. 'The Columbia History' significantly broadens the scope of Western philosophy to reveal the influence of Middle Eastern thought, the vital contributions of Jewish and Islamic philosophers, and the role of women within the tradition. Along with a wealth of new scholarship, recently discovered works in 17th and 18th century philosophy are considered,such as previously unpublished works by Locke that inspire a new assessment of the evolution of his ideas. Popkin also emphasizes schools and developments that have been traditional overlooked. Sections on Aristotle and Plato are followed by a detailed presentation on Hellenic philosophy and its influence on the modern developments of materialism and scepticism. A chapter has been dedicated to Jewish and Muslim philosophical development during the Middle Ages, focusing on the critical role of figures such as Averroös and Moses Maimonides in introducing Christian thinkers to classical philosophy. Another chapter considers Renaissance philosophy and its seminal influence on the development of modern humanism and science. Turning to the modern era, contributors consider the importance of the Kabbalah to Spinoza, Leibniz, and Newton and the influence of popular philosophers like Moses Mendelssohn upon the work of Kant. This volume gives equal attention to both sides of the current rift in philosophy between continental and analytic schools, charting the development of each right up to the end of the end of the 20th century. Each chapter includes an introductory essay, and Popkin provides notes that draw connections between the separate articles. The rich bibliographic information and the indexes of names and subjects make the volume a valuable resource....

We live in a profoundly spiritual age, but not in any good way. Huge swaths of American culture are driven by manic spiritual anxiety and relentless supernatural worry. Radicals and traditionalists, liberals and conservatives, together with politicians, artists, environmentalists, followers of food fads, and the chattering classes of television commentators: America is filled with people frantically seeking confirmation of their own essential goodness. We are a nation desperate to stand of the side of morality--to know that we are righteous and dwell in the light.
In An Anxious Age, Joseph Bottum offers an account of modern America, presented as a morality tale formed by a collision of spiritual disturbances. And the cause, he claims, is the most significant and least noticed historical fact of the last fifty years: the collapse of the mainline Protestant churches that were the source of social consensus and cultural unity. Our dangerous spiritual anxieties, broken loose from the churches that once contained them, now madden everything in American life.
Updating The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism, Max Weber's sociological classic, An Anxious Age undertakes two case studies of contemporary social classes adrift in a nation without the religious understandings that gave them meaning. Looking at the college-educated elite he calls "the Poster Children," Bottum sees the post-Protestant heirs of the old mainline Protestant domination of culture: dutiful descendants who claim the high social position of their Christian ancestors even while they reject their ancestors' Christianity. Turning to the Swallows of Capistrano, the Catholics formed by the pontificate of John Paul II, Bottum evaluates the early victories--and later defeats--of the attempt to substitute Catholicism for the dying mainline voice in public life.
Sweeping across American intellectual and cultural history, An Anxious Age traces the course of national religion and warns about the strange angels and even stranger demons with which we now wrestle. Insightful and contrarian, wise and unexpected, An Anxious Age ranks among the great modern accounts of American culture.

A clear-sighted revelation, a deep penetration into the world of Scientology by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the now-classic study of al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack, The Looming Tower. Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with both current and former Scientologists--both famous and less well known--and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative skills to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology: its origins in the imagination of science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard; its struggles to find acceptance as a legitimate (and legally acknowledged) religion; its vast, secret campaign to infiltrate the U.S. government; its vindictive treatment of critics; its phenomenal wealth; and its dramatic efforts to grow and prevail after the death of Hubbard. At the book's center, two men whom Wright brings vividly to life, showing how they have made Scientology what it is today: The darkly brilliant L. Ron Hubbard--whose restless, expansive mind invented a new religion tailor-made to prosper in the spiritually troubled post-World War II era. And his successor, David Miscavige--tough and driven, with the inenviable task of preserving the church in the face of ongoing scandals and continual legal assaults. We learn about Scientology's esoteric cosmology; about the auditing process that determines an inductee's state of being, about the Bridge to Total Freedom, through which members gain eternal life. We see the ways in which the church pursues celebrities, such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and how such stars are exploited to advance the church's goals. We meet young idealists who joined the Sea Org, the church's clergy, whose members often enter as children, signing up with a billion-year contract and working with little pay in poor conditions. We meet men and women "disconnected" from friends and a family by the church's policy of shunning critical voices. And we discover, through many firsthand stories, the violence that has long permeated the inner sanctum of the church. In Going Clear, Wright examines what fundamentally makes a religion a religion, and whether Scientology is, in fact, deserving of the constitutional protections achieved in its victory over the IRS. Employing all his exceptional journalistic skills of observation, understanding and synthesis, and his ability to shape a story into a compelling narrative, Lawrence Wright has given us an evenhanded yet keenly incisive book that goes far beyond an immediate exposé and uncovers the very essence of what makes Scientology the institution it is.

Abstract: Filosofische beschouwing over liefde, levenskunst en het romantische liefdesideaal

Here a distinguished American historian challenges the belief that the eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. In crystalline prose Carl Becker demonstrates that the period commonly described as the Age of Reason was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke were living in a medieval world, and that these philosophers "demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials." In a new foreword, Johnson Kent Wright looks at the book's continuing relevance within the context of current discussion about the Enlightenment.

"Will remain a classic--a beautifully finished literary product."--Charles A. Beard, American Historical Review

"The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers remains one of the most distinctive American contributions to the historical literature on the Enlightenment. . . . [It] is likely to beguile and provoke readers for a long time to come."--Johnson Kent Wright, from the foreword

Analytische annotatie: Biografie van de Duitse filosoof (1889-1976).

Utrecht is niet alleen de eerste plaats geweest waar de denkbeelden van Descartes onderwezen werden, maar ook de stad waar de cartesiaanse filosofie het eerste verboden werd. De drijvende kracht achter dat verbod was de predikant en hoogleraar in de theologie Gijsbert Voetius. In 1648 zond Descartes een verzoekschrift aan de Utrechtse vroedschap om hem eerherstel te verlenen. De tekst van deze uitgave berust op een transcriptie van de Nederlandse versie van dit verzoekschrift, die nog nooit eerder gepubliceerd werd. De Verantwoordingh is een echte Descartes-tekst die op een unieke wijze inzicht biedt in de werkwijze van de auteur.

Leven en denken van Spinoza (1632-1677), belicht vanuit zijn joodse achtergrond.

Momentopname van de atheïstische aspecten van het Westerse denken in heden en verleden.

Geschiedenis en actuele situatie van de rooms-katholieke orde der jezuïeten, wereldwijd en in Nederland.

Inleiding tot de Franse filosoof (1596-1650) vanuit de historische context van zijn denken: de Hollandse Republiek in de 17e eeuw.

Tekst, vertaling en verklaringen van het hoofdwerk van de Nederlandse filosoof (1632-1677).

Dit boek is een van de grootste filosofische werken ooit geschreven. De klassieke teksten zijn als beeldhouwwerken, vanuit iedere gezichtshoek laten ze een ander aspect van de werkelijkheid zien. Daarmee zijn ze voor velen een onuitputtelijke bron van inspiratie. Vele versies zijn vaak saai of onleesbaar door de vele voetnoten, maar deze vertaling weet in kernachtige bewoordingen de diepere betekenis van Tao tot leven te brengen.

Over the years, Pema Chödrön's books have offered readers an exciting new way of living: developing fearlessness, generosity, and compassion in all aspects of their lives. In No Time to Lose Pema invites readers to venture further along the path of the "bodhisattva warrior," explaining in depth how we can awaken the softness of our hearts and develop true confidence amid the challenges of daily living.

Pema reveals the traditional Buddhist teachings that guide her own life: those of The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara), a text written by the eighth-century sage Shantideva. This treasured Buddhist work is remarkably relevant for our times, describing the steps we can take to cultivate courage, caring, and joy—the keys to healing ourselves and our troubled world. Pema offers us a highly practical and engaging commentary on this essential text, explaining how its profound teachings can be applied to our daily lives.

Given the salience of the terms 'Salafism' or 'Jihadi-Salafism,' not only in specialist analysis but also in the media, the currents of Islamic thought grouped under these terms are poised to become more widely known. Yet much western analysis suffers from a lack of sophistication and discernment on this important doctrinal trend in contemporary Islamic thought, so that 'Salafism' is some what liberally employed to denote, with far too much specificity, a phenomenon that is only opaquely defined to the western reader. The contributors to "Global Salafism" are careful to map out not only the differences in the Salafist schools, but also to underscore the fluidity of this broad doctrinal tendency. They examine the phenomenon both in its regional manifestations - which demonstrate surprising diversities, ambivalences and contradictions - and in its shared essential doctrines. In so doing they highlight the ambivalences inherent in Salafism itself, and the Salafist believers' claim to be reviving Islamic thought for the modern age - albeit through the paradox of 'out-antiquing the antique' by appealing to a greater, older, purer authenticity. With considerable subtlety the tensions between the local and the global aspirations of exponents and claimants to the 'Salafist method' are explored and the parallels and divergences weighed. This is a unique book that can justifiably claim to be pioneering, as it is the first of its kind to take the phenomenon of Salafism as a whole, and address the task of defining what is, despite its crucial importance, a relatively neglected field.

The ability to imagine is at the heart of what makes us human. Through our imagination we experience more fully the world both around us and within us. Imagination plays a key role in creativity and innovation. Until the seventeenth century, the human imagination was celebrated. Since then, with the emergence of science as the dominant worldview, imagination has been marginalized -- depicted as a way of escaping reality, rather than knowing it more profoundly -- and its significance to our humanity has been downplayed. Yet as we move further into the strange new dimensions of the twenty-first century, the need to regain this lost knowledge seems more necessary than ever before. This insightful and inspiring book argues that, for the sake of our future in the world, we must reclaim the ability to imagine and redress the balance of influence between imagination and science.

Through the work of Owen Barfield, Goethe, Henry Corbin, Kathleen Raine, and others, and ranging from the teachings of ancient mystics to the latest developments in neuroscience, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination draws us back to a philosophy and tradition that restores imagination to its rightful place, essential to our knowing reality to the full, and to our very humanity itself."

This edition of Martin Ostwald's revised version of J. B. Skemp's 1952 translation of Statesman includes a new selected bibliography, as well as Ostwald's interpretive introduction, which traces the evolution in Plato's political philosophy from Republic to Statesman to Laws--from philosopher-king to royal statesman.

In Honor, History, and Relationship Stephen Darwall explores the idea of a second-personal framework for morality and its foundations, in which we are committed to morality by presuppositions that are inescapable when we relate to others (person to person). He expands on the argument set forth in The Second-Person Standpoint to explore the second-personal framework in three further settings. The first concerns a fundamental difference between the form that respect and the concept of person take in honor cultures, on the one hand, and the shape these assume in morality conceived as equal accountability, on the other. One essay explores this difference directly while others investigate related themes of justice versus retaliation and vengeance for insult and injury to honor, including in the writings of Adam Smith and Nietzsche on ressentiment. A second setting concerns the role of second-personal ideas in the development of a distinctively "modern" moral philosophy, beginning in seventeenth-century Europe. Two essays here discuss the centrality of second-personal notions in two formative modern natural law theorists: Grotius and Pufendorf. And two others concentrate on the role of reciprocal recognition in Kant and Fichte, respectively. A third group of essays treat the second-personal structure of interpersonal relations. There are three essays in this group: one on promising as a second-personal transaction between promiser and promisee, a second on what it is to be with another person, and a third on the role of second-personal standing in personal relationships.

Concern with authority is as old as human history itself. Eve's sin was to challenge the authority of God by disobeying his rule. Frank Furedi explores how authority was contested in ancient Greece and given a powerful meaning in Imperial Rome. Debates about religious and secular authority dominated Europe through the Middle Ages and the Reformation. The modern world attempted to develop new foundations for authority - democratic consent, public opinion, science - yet Furedi shows that this problem has remained unresolved, arguing that today the authority of authority is questioned. This historical sociology of authority seeks to explain how the contemporary problems of mistrust and the loss of legitimacy of many institutions are informed by the previous attempts to solve the problem of authority. It argues that the key pioneers of the social sciences (Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, Tonnies and especially Weber) regarded this question as one of the principal challenges facing society.

"Thou shalt not kill" is arguably the most basic moral and legal principle in any society. Yet while some killers are pilloried and punished, others are absolved and acquitted, and still others are lauded and lionized. Why? The traditional answer is that how killers are treated depends on the nature of their killing, whether it was aggressive or defensive, intentional or accidental. But those factors cannot explain the enormous variation in legal officials' and citizens' responses to real-life homicides. Cooney argues that a radically new style of thought--pure sociology--can. Conceived by the sociologist Donald Black, pure sociology makes no reference to psychology, to any single person's intent, or even to individuals as such. Instead, pure sociology explains behavior in terms of its social geometry--its location and direction in a multidimensional social space.

Is Killing Wrong? provides the most comprehensive assessment of pure sociology yet attempted. Drawing on data from well over one hundred societies, including the modern-day United States, it represents the most thorough account yet of case-level social control, or the response to conduct defined as wrong. In doing so, it demonstrates that the law and morality of homicide are neither universal nor relative but geometrical, as predicted by Black's theory.

The author of Captive State, Heat, The Age of Consent and Amazon Watershed, George Monbiot is one of the world's most celebrated radical thinkers. In Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding, he follows his own hunger for new environmental experiences, and through a riveting tale of possibility and travel with wildlife and wild people, shows why we need to change our policies in order to properly cherish the wild and our experience of it. This is a book that explodes with wonder and delight. Making use of some remarkable scientific discoveries, which transform our understanding of how natural systems work, George Monbiot explores a new, positive environmentalism, which shows how damaged ecosystems on land and at sea can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalise and enrich our own lives. Challenging his own ecological boredom, Monbiot weaves together a beautiful and riveting tale of wild places, wildlife and wild people. Roaming the hills of Britain and the forests of Europe, kayaking off the coast of Wales with dolphins and seabirds, he seeks out the places which still possess something of the untamed spirit he would like to resurrect. He meets people trying to restore lost forests and bring back missing species, such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, wild boar and gray whales. This process of rewilding, Monbiot argues, offers an alternative to a silent spring: the chance of a raucous summer, in which ecological processes resume and humans draw closer to the natural world.

This edition of Will Kymlicka's best selling critical introduction to contemporary political theory has been fully revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last 11 years, particularly the new debates on political liberalism, deliberative democracy, civic republicanism, nationalism and cultural pluralism. The book now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multiculturalism, in addition to updated chapters on utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism, and feminism. The many thinkers discussed include G. A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, William Galston , Carol Gilligan, R. M. Hare, Catherine Mackinnon, David Miller, Philippe Van Parijs, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, John Roemer, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Iris Young. Extended guides to further reading have been added at the end of each chapter, listing the most important books and articles on each school of thought, as well as relevant journals and websites.Covering some of the most advanced contemporary thinking, Will Kymlicka writes in an engaging, accessible, and non-technical way to ensure the book is suitable for readers approaching these concepts for the first time. This second edition promises to build on the original edition's success as a key text in the teaching of modern political theory.

Guided by a literal reading of the prophetic sections of the Bible, Christian Zionists are convinced that the world is hurtling toward a final Battle of Armageddon. They believe that war in the Middle East is God’s will for the region. In this timely book, Victoria Clark first explores the 400-year history of this powerful political ideology, laying to rest the idea that Christian Zionism is a passing craze or the province of a lunatic fringe. Then Clark surveys the contemporary Christian Zionist scene in Israel and in the United States, where the influence of the religious fundamentalists has never been greater.

Clark engages with Christian Zionism directly, interviewing leaders, attending events, and traveling with Christian Zionists in the Holy Land. She also investigates the Christian Zionist presence in Israel. She finds that the view through the Christian Zionist lens is dangerously simple: President Bush’s War on Terror is a mythic battle between good and evil, and Syria and Iran represent the powers of darkness. Such views are far from rare—an estimated fifteen to twenty million Americans share them. Almost one in three Americans believes Israel was given to the Jews by God as a prelude to the Battle of Armageddon and Jesus’ Second Coming. Clark concludes with an assessment of Christian Zionists’ impact on American foreign policy in the Middle East and on America’s relationships with European allies since the attacks of 9/11.

The Falling Sky is a remarkable first-person account of the life story and cosmo-ecological thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon. Representing a people whose very existence is in jeopardy, Davi Kopenawa paints an unforgettable picture of Yanomami culture, past and present, in the heart of the rainforest--a world where ancient indigenous knowledge and shamanic traditions cope with the global geopolitics of an insatiable natural resources extraction industry.

In richly evocative language, Kopenawa recounts his initiation and experience as a shaman, as well as his first encounters with outsiders: government officials, missionaries, road workers, cattle ranchers, and gold prospectors. He vividly describes the ensuing cultural repression, environmental devastation, and deaths resulting from epidemics and violence. To counter these threats, Davi Kopenawa became a global ambassador for his endangered people. The Falling Sky follows him from his native village in the Northern Amazon to Brazilian cities and finally on transatlantic flights bound for European and American capitals. These travels constitute a shamanic critique of Western industrial society, whose endless material greed, mass violence, and ecological blindness contrast sharply with Yanomami cultural values.

Bruce Albert, a close friend since the 1970s, superbly captures Kopenawa's intense, poetic voice. This collaborative work provides a unique reading experience that is at the same time a coming-of-age story, a historical account, and a shamanic philosophy, but most of all an impassioned plea to respect native rights and preserve the Amazon rainforest.