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Defining the common good: empire, religion and philosophy in eighteenth-century Britain

Miller, Peter N.
This book discusses the crisis of the early modern state in eighteenth-century Britain and sets it in its European context. The American Revolution and the simultaneous demand for wider religious toleration at home challenged the principles of sovereignty and obligation that underpinned arguments about the character of the state. At stake was a fundamental challenge to the way in which politics was described. The Americans and their British supporters argued that individuals, by voting and thinking freely, ought to determine the "common good." These influential ideas continue to resonate today in the principles of "one man, one vote" and "freedom of thought."
Cambridge University Press 2004-12-16 472 pages

The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity Essays in Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation

Peter Ochs
The scholars who have contributed to this volume of essays are Jewish and Christian thinkers who, without melding their different religious traditions and scholarly methods, have developed complementary responses to what they believe is wrong with contemporary biblical scholarship in Judaism and Christianity. The purpose of this collection is to draw attention to the similarities among these responses and to the possibility that they may contribute to a family of postcritical methods for interpreting the scriptural traditions. The postcritical scholars employ current methods of critical, scientific inquiry to clarify the language, the historical contexts, and the didactic messages of the biblical traditions. They do not, however, find these methods sufficient. They argue that the biblical traditions communicate to their practitioners some rules of action that cannot be deciphered within the terms set by canons of critical reason that emerged in the European Renaissance and Enlightenment. Rather, among the Bible's unique rules of action are the principles for interpreting the traditions themselves. Postcritical scholars attempt to identify these rules of interpretation, producing what editor Peter Ochs has come to term "postcritical Scriptural interpretation." It is neither strictly modern nor premodern. This form of inquiry emerges in the dialogue that is now unfolding between a contemporary family of scholars and their scriptural traditions.
Wipf and Stock Publishers 2008-05-22 388 pages

Leavetaking

Weiss, Peter
""I was on my way to look for a life of my own." A brilliant, brutally honest autobiographical novel, long out of print, from one of the great artistic polymaths of the 20th century. This is a Sebaldian account of the narrator's attempt to break free of a repressive upper-middle-class upbringing and make his way as an artist and individual, written in a single incantatory paragraph. Leavetaking is the story of an upper-middle-class childhood and adolescence in Berlin between the wars. In the course of the book, Weiss plumbs the depths of family life: there is the early death of his beloved sister Margit, the difficult relationship with his parents, the fantasies of adolescence and youth, all set in the midst of an increasing anti-Semitism, which forces the Weiss family to move again and again, a peripatetic existence that only intensifies the narrator's growing restlessness. The young narrator is largely oblivious to world events and focused instead on becoming an artist, an ambition frustrated generally by his milieu and specifically by his mother, who, herself a former actress, destroys his paintings during one of the family's moves. In the end, he turns to an older mentor, Harry Haller, a fictionalized portrait of Hermann Hesse, who encouraged and supported Weiss, and with Haller's example before him, the narrator takes his first steps towards a truly independent life. Intensely lyrical, written with great imaginative power, Leavetaking is a vivid evocation of a world that has disappeared and of the narrator's developing consciousness. THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY champions books from around the world that have been overlooked, underappreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored. They are issued in handsome, well-designed editions at reasonable prices in hopes of their passing from one reader to another--and further enriching our culture"--
Melville House Publishing 2014-07-08 125 pages

A year and a day: an experiment in essays

Lopate, Phillip
"A compelling record of one year in the life of a writer, including observations about movies, art, music, friendship, travel, and family. The essay is the most pluckily pedestrian and blithely transgressive of literary genres, the one that is most at large and in need, picking through the accumulated disjecta of daily life and personal and social history to take what it needs and remake it as it sees fit. It is, at its lively best, quite indifferent to the claims of style, fashion, theory, and respectability, provoking and inspiring through the pleasure of surprise. In 2016, Philip Lopate, who has been writing essays and thinking about the essay for decades now, turned his attention to one of the essay's offshoots, the blog, a form by that time already thick, as he knew, with virtual dust. Lopate committed to writing a weekly blog about, really, whatever over the course of a year, a quicker pace of delivery than he'd ever undertaken and one that carried the risk of all too regularly falling short. What emerged was A Year and a Day, a collection of forty-seven essays best characterized as a single essay a year in the making, a virtuosic (if never showy) demonstration of the essay's range and reach, meandering, looping back, pressing reset, forging on. Lopate's topics along the way include family, James Baldwin, a trip to China, Agnes Martin, Abbas Kiarastomi, the resistable rise of Donald Trump, death, desire, and the tribulations, small and large, of daily life. What results is at once a self-portrait, a picture of the times, and a splendid new elaboration of what the essay can be"--
New York Review Books 2023-10-10 205 pages

Realms of memory: rethinking the French past

Pierre Nora,Lawrence D. Kritzman
Archives, monuments, celebrations: there are not merely the recollections of memory but also the foundations of history. Symbols, the third and final volume in Pierre Nora's monumental Realms of Memory , includes groundbreaking discussions of the emblems of France's past by some of the nation's most distinguished intellectuals. The seventeen essays in this book consider such diverse "sites" of memory as the figures of Joan D'Arc and Decartes, the national motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", the tricolor flag and the French language itself. Pierre Nora's closing essay on commemoration provides a culminating overview of the series. Offering a new approach on history, culture, French studies and the studies of symbols, Realms of Memory reveals how the myriad meanings we attach to places and events constitute our sense of history. A monumental collective endevour by some of France's most distinguished intellectuals, Realms of Memory explores how and why certain places, events, and figures became a part of France's collective memory, and reveals the intricate connection between memory and history. Symbols , the third and final volume, is the culmination of the work begun in Conflicts and Divisions and Traditions .Pierre Nora inaugurates this final volume by acknowledging that the whole project of Realms of Memory is oriented around symbols, claiming "only a symbolic history can restore to France the unity and dynamism not recognized by either the man in the street or the academic historian." He goes on to distinguish between two very different types of symbols - imposed and constructed. Imposed symbols may be official state emblems like the tricolor flag or 'La Marsaillaise', or may be monuments like the Eiffel Tower - symbols imbued with a sense of history. COnstructes symbols are produced over the passage of time, by human effort, and by history itself.They include figures such as Joan d'Arc, Descartes, and the Gallic cock.Past I, Emblems, traces the development of four major national symbols from the time of the Revolution: the tricolor flag, the national anthem (La Marsaillaise), the motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and Bastille Day. Far from having fixed identities, these representations of the French nations are shown to have undergone transformations. As French republics rose and regimes changed, the emblems of the French state - and the meanings accosiated with them - were also altered.Part II, Major Sites, focuses on those cities and structures that act as beacons of France to both Frenchman and foreigner. These essays range from the prehistory paintings in Lascaux - that cave which, though not originally French in any sense, has become the very symbol of France's immemorial national memory - to Verdun, the site of the terrible World War I battle, now a symbol of the nation's heaviest sacrifice for the "salvation of the fatehrland" and the most powerful image of French national unity.Identifications, the final section, explores the ways in which the French think of themselves. From the cock - that "rustic and quintessentially Gallic bird" - to the figures of Joan of Arc and Descartes, to the nation's twin hearts - Paris and the French language - the memory of the French people is explored.This final installment of Realms of Memory provides a major contribution not only to study the French nation and culture, but also to the study of symbols as cultural phenomena, offering, as Nora observes, "the possibility of revelation."
Columbia University Press 1996 651 pages

Necessary death: what horror movies teach us about navigating the human experience

Grosso, Chris,Fassel, Preston,Pargin, Jason
"Based on very real and practical commentary, life experience, and occasionally, tongue-in-cheek-misfortunes of horror legends, Necessary Death explores how the horror genre, its motifs and characters, offer individuals a unique opportunity for insight and understanding of their own lives. Necessary Death looks back on several iconic horror films and finds that maybe the genre wasn't ever really just about men in hockey masks chasing good looking coeds through old dark houses. Even a cursory examination of the horror convention will reveal a plethora of stories from recovering addicts, survivors of trauma and sexual abuse, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and minorities. So what, then, can this genre so concerned with death teach us about being alive--and how can we apply those lessons in our day-to-day existence? Using some of the most quintessential movies in the genre, Chris Grosso and Preston Fassel invite readers to an in-depth examination of the human condition--its fears, anxieties, hopes, joys, sorrows, and everything in-between--and how it's all grist for our personal and collective evolutionary mill. A hallmark of the genre is how horror films force their characters to find some semblance of inner strength and wherewithal in order to stand up to the monster, ghost, or villain that is trying to take their lives. Through fascinating discussion of this and other elements, Fassel and Grosso relate these films' dark subject matter and characters to real world issues people face every day, showing that there's something deep within us that, if even just metaphorically, can relate to the pain in these stories. This sharp analysis is complimented by exercises that prompt readers to consider gratitude, forgiveness, determination, and bravery in the face of adversity. An unusual mix of film study and self-help, Necessary Death might surprise or even shock readers, but it will also enlighten, educate, and most importantly hearten those looking for an unexpected source of inspiration."--Publisher's website.
Health Communications, Inc 2023-10-31 226 pages