The Mystical Sources Of Existentialist Thought

Author : George Pattison
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135160726X
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Mystical Sources of Existentialist Thought written by George Pattison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-11-21 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the time when existentialism was a dominant intellectual and cultural force, a number of commentators observed that some of the language of existential philosophy, not least its interpretation of human existence in terms of nothingness, evoked the language of so-called mystical writers. This book takes on this observation and explores the evidence for the influence of mysticism on the philosophy of existentialism. It begins by delving into definitions of mysticism and existentialism, and then traces the elements of mysticism present in German and French thought during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book goes on to make original contributions to the study of figures including Kierkegaard, Buber, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Marcel, Camus, Weil, Bataille, Berdyaev, and Tillich, linking their existentialist philosophy back to some of the key concerns of the mystical tradition. Providing a unique insight into how these two areas have overlapped and interacted, this study is vital reading for any academic with an interest in twentieth-century philosophy, theology and religious studies.

Author : Iris Murdoch
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1440621160
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Existentialists and Mystics written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999-07-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known as the author of twenty-six novels, Iris Murdoch has also made significant contributions to the fields of ethics and aesthetics. Collected here for the first time in one volume are her most influential literary and philosophical essays. Tracing Murdoch's journey to a modern Platonism, this volume includes incisive evaluations of the thought and writings of T. S. Eliot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvior, and Elias Canetti, as well as key texts on the continuing importance of the sublime, on the concept of love, and the role great literature can play in curing the ills of philosophy.Existentialists and Mystics not only illuminates the mysticism and intellectual underpinnings of Murdoch's novels, but confirms her major contributions to twentieth-century thought.

Author : William Barrett
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307761088
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Irrational Man written by William Barrett and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-01-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist philosophy ever written, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Barrett speaks eloquently and directly to concerns of the 1990s: a period when the irrational and the absurd are no better integrated than before and when humankind is in even greater danger of destroying its existence without ever understanding the meaning of its existence. Irrational Man begins by discussing the roots of existentialism in the art and thinking of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Baudelaire, Blake, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Picasso, Joyce, and Beckett. The heart of the book explains the views of the foremost existentialists—Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The result is a marvelously lucid definition of existentialism and a brilliant interpretation of its impact.

Author : Ronald Grimsley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780758114624
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Existentialist Thought written by Ronald Grimsley and published by . This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Lydia Amir
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429000863
Total Pages : 575 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter written by Lydia Amir and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the role of humor in the good life, specifically as discussed by three prominent French intellectuals who were influenced by Nietzsche's thought: Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, and Clément Rosset. Lydia Amir begins by discussing Nietzsche’s reception in France, and she explains why and how he came to be considered a "philosopher of laughter" in the French academe. Each of the subsequent three chapters focuses on the significance of humor and laughter in the good life as advocated by Bataille, Deleuze, and Rosset. These chapters also explore the complex relationship between the comic and the tragic, and of humor and laughter to irony, satire, and ridicule. The Legacy of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Laughter makes an invaluable contribution to recent interpretive work done on Bataille and Deleuze, and offers further introduction to the relatively understudied Rosset. It illuminates the philosophies of these three thinkers, their connection to Nietzsche, and, overall, the significant role that humor plays in philosophy.

Author : Don Seeman
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1487558724
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Between Life and Thought written by Don Seeman and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existential anthropology is an approach inspired by existential and phenomenological thought to further our understanding of the human condition. Its ethnographic methodology emphasizes embodied experience and focuses on what is at stake for people amid the contingencies, struggles, and uncertainties of everyday life. While anthropological research on religion abounds, there has been little systematic attention to the ways anthropology and religious studies might benefit from better consideration of one another or from the adoption of a shared existential perspective. Between Life and Thought gathers leading anthropologists and religion scholars, including some of existential anthropology’s most recognized advocates and thoughtful critics. The collection opens with a comprehensive introduction to phenomenology and existentialism in anthropology and religious studies and concludes with an analysis of how existential anthropology might address the long-standing problem of constructivism and perennialism in religious studies. The chapters altogether present existential anthropology as an especially generative paradigm with which to rethink and remake both anthropology and the academic study of religion. A timely and significant intervention across multiple areas of research, Between Life and Thought is an invaluable source for critically exploring the prospects, as well as the limits, of an anthropological approach to religion grounded in experiential ethnography and existential thought.

Author : Benjamin A. Saltzman
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108807968
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Thinking of the Medieval written by Benjamin A. Saltzman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today. Attending to the work of a diverse and transnational group of intellectuals – Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Erwin Panofsky, Simone Weil, among others – the essays in this volume shed light on these thinkers in relation to one another and on the persistence of their legacies in our own time. This interdisciplinary collection gives us a fuller and clearer sense of how these figures made some of their most enduring contributions with medieval culture in mind. Thinking of the Medieval is a timely reminder of just how vital the Middle Ages have been in shaping modern thought.

Author : George Pattison
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198796447
Total Pages : 753 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought written by George Pattison and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-06-13 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought is an authoritative new reference and interpretive volume detailing the origins, development, and influence of one of the richest aspects of Russian cultural and intellectual life - its religious ideas. After setting the historical background and context, the Handbook follows the leading figures and movements in modern Russian religious thought through a period of immense historical upheavals, including seventy years of officially atheist communist rule and the growth of an exiled diaspora with, e.g., its journal The Way. Therefore the shape of Russian religious thought cannot be separated from long-running debates with nihilism and atheism. Important thinkers such as Losev and Bakhtin had to guard their words in an environment of religious persecution, whilst some views were shaped by prison experiences. Before the Soviet period, Russian national identity was closely linked with religion - linkages which again are being forged in the new Russia. Relevant in this connection are complex relationships with Judaism. In addition to religious thinkers such as Philaret, Chaadaev, Khomiakov, Kireevsky, Soloviev, Florensky, Bulgakov, Berdyaev, Shestov, Frank, Karsavin, and Alexander Men, the Handbook also looks at the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art, film, and the novelists Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Ideas, institutions, and movements discussed include the Church academies, Slavophilism and Westernism, theosis, the name-glorifying (imiaslavie) controversy, the God-seekers and God-builders, Russian religious idealism and liberalism, and the Neopatristic school. Occultism is considered, as is the role of tradition and the influence of Russian religious thought in the West.

Author : Leah Kalmanson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350140023
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Cross-Cultural Existentialism written by Leah Kalmanson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging in existential discourse beyond the European tradition, this book turns to Asian philosophies to reassess vital questions of life's purpose, death's imminence, and our capacity for living meaningfully in conditions of uncertainty. Inspired by the dilemmas of European existentialism, this cross-cultural study seeks concrete techniques for existential practice via the philosophies of East Asia. The investigation begins with the provocative writings of twentieth-century Korean Buddhist nun Kim Iryop, who asserts that meditative concentration conducts a potent energy outward throughout the entire karmic network, enabling the radical transformation of our shared existential conditions. Understanding her claim requires a look at East Asian sources more broadly. Considering practices as diverse as Buddhist merit-making ceremonies, Confucian/Ruist methods for self-cultivation, the ritual memorization and recitation of texts, and Yijing divination, the book concludes by advocating a speculative turn. This 'speculative existentialism' counters the suspicion toward metaphysics characteristic of twentieth-century European existential thought and, at the same time, advances a program for action. It is not a how-to guide for living, but rather a philosophical methodology that takes seriously the power of mental cultivation to transform the meaning of the life that we share.

Author : George Pattison
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 1531506844
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book A Philosophy of Prayer written by George Pattison and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the silence of prayer in Post-Kantian philosophy and traditional spirituality A Philosophy of Prayer explores prayer within the perspective of post-Kantian philosophy. Against a background of traditional sources, including Augustine, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the seventeenth-century French school of spirituality, the book uses Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Berdyaev, Tillich, Marcel, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean- Louis Chrétien to provide an interpretation of what is meant by the passivity and self-annihilation of the praying self, suggesting an “apophatics of the personality.” Pattison pays particular attention to the question of language and the implications of the role given to silence in traditional texts, arguing that language remains a defining element of the human–God relationship and that silence is not to be construed as the negation of language but as the revelation of the depth of language itself. The basic structure of prayer is shown to be implicitly eschatological, oriented toward a coming kingdom of justice and peace while, at the same time, expressing a deep desire for ontological homecoming, a tension manifest in, respectively, Levinas and Heidegger. On Pattison’s reading, prayer calls for and develops a particular orientation of the self toward existence, corresponding to the virtue of humility, long understood as the basic Christian virtue. This is shown to be in tension with modernity’s commitment to strong versions of autonomy. However, the choice of humility is not presented as the reinstatement of religious heteronomy but as a free choice of the praying self.