God, Belief, and Perplexity

God, Belief, and Perplexity

Author: William E. Mann

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0190459204

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This volume presents fourteen of William E. Mann's essays on three prominent figures in late Patristic and early medieval philosophy: Augustine, Anselm, and Peter Abelard. The essays explore some of the quandaries, arguments, and theories presented in their writings. The essays in this volume complement those to be found in Mann's God, Modality, and Morality (OUP, 2015). While the essays in God, Modality, and Morality are primarily essays in philosophical theology, those found in the present volume are more varied. Some still deal with issues in philosophical theology. Other essays are aporetic in nature, discussing cases of philosophical perplexity, sometimes but not always leaving the cases unresolved. All the essays display, directly or indirectly, the philosophical influence that Augustine has had. His Confessions is a rich source for philosophical puzzlement. Individual essays examine his reflections on the alleged innocence of infants, which raises questions about cognitive, emotional, and linguistic development; his juvenile theft of pears and its relation to moral motivation; and his struggle with and resolution of the problem of evil. One essay presents the rudiments of an Augustinian moral theory, rooted in his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. Another essay illustrates the theory by discussing his writings on lying. Mann argues that Abelard amplified Augustine's moral theory by emphasizing the crucial role that intention plays in wrongdoing. Augustine bequeathed to Anselm the notion of "faith seeking understanding." Mann argues that this methodological slogan shapes Anselm's "ontological argument" for God's existence and his efforts to explicate the doctrine of the Trinity.


The Perplexity of a Muslim Woman

The Perplexity of a Muslim Woman

Author: Olfa Youssef

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-03-08

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1498541704

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Using the methodology of modern scholars in the fields of Arabic lexicography, linguistics, and psychoanalysis, Tunisian feminist scholar Olfa Youssef investigates the rulings about inheritance, marriage, and homosexuality in the Qur’anic text itself and compares them with the interpretations provided by male Muslim theologians and legal scholars from medieval times to the present. In this book, she makes five central arguments: (1) There is a discrepancy between the layered signification in the Qur’anic text itself and the sutured explanations by religious scholars which have been enacted into law in many Muslim countries today; (2) the plurality of meanings is the quintessential essence of the Qur’an as evidenced in the absence of any sura over which there was unanimous agreement among Muslim scholars; (3) when male privilege was at stake, male legal scholars, to protect their own interests, ignored the divine text and based their rulings on human consensus; (4) Muslim medieval views on gender and homosexuality were more tolerant than contemporary ones; and finally (5), preferring indetermination and perplexity over the finality and certainties found in the judgements of male theologians, Youssef argues that only God knows the Qur’an’s true meaning. Her job as a Muslim female scholar is only to raise questions over those human interpretations that many Muslim societies mistake for divine will.


Pain, Perplexity and Promotion

Pain, Perplexity and Promotion

Author: Bob Sorge

Publisher: Bob Sorge

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0962118567

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This may well be the most practical, inspiring book on Job you'll ever read. The book of Job comes alive, portraying Job's spiritual journey as a template for those who are in God's refining fires in this hour. Let God lead you to higher heights than you ever imagined!


GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Author: E. F. Schumacher

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1978-05-31

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 0060906111

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The author of the world wide best-seller, Small Is Beautiful, now tackles the subject of Man, the World, and the Meaning of Living. Schumacher writes about man's relation to the world. man has obligations -- to other men, to the earth, to progress and technology, but most importantly himself. If man can fulfill these obligations, then and only then can he enjoy a real relationship with the world, then and only then can he know the meaning of living. Schumacher says we need maps: a "map of knowledge" and a "map of living." The concern of the mapmaker--in this instance, Schumacher--is to find for everything it's proper place. Things out of place tend to get lost; they become invisible and there proper places end to be filled by other things that ought not be there at all and therefore serve to mislead. A Guide for the Perplexed teaches us to be our own map makers. This constantly surprising, always stimulating book will be welcomed by a large audience, including the many new fans who believe strongly in what Schumacher has to say.


Ethics and Perplexity

Ethics and Perplexity

Author: Javier Muguerza

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-06-08

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 9004458743

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Dialogical reason requires dialogue among the members of a community. Thinkers like Habermas and Apel have proposed that judgments of both fact and value become objects of public debate. The debate should determine whether these judgments can earn the assent of the community. If so, they attain a degree of intersubjective validity. Javier Muguerza’s Ethics and Perplexity makes a highly original contribution to the debate over dialogical reason. The work opens with a letter that establishes a parallel between Ethics and Perplexity and Maimonides’s classic Guide of the Perplexed. It concludes with an interview that repeatedly strikes sparks on Spanish philosophy’s emergence from its “long quarantine,” as Muguerza puts it. These informal pieces—witty, informative, conversational—orbit the nucleus of the work: a formidable critique of dialogical reason. The result is a volume by turns vivid and profound. Muguerza insists that the experience of perplexity is inseparable from the exercise of philosophy. Perplexity is linked to aporia and wonder, which the ancients identified as the origin of their activity. The only solidarity among philosophers is that of searching, and philosophy is hardly more than a set of questions unceasingly posed and posed again, of forever open problems, of perplexities that assail us over and over again. Perplexity avoids both the certainty of dogmatism and the ignorance of skepticism. In fact, it is the only philosophical ailment capable of immunizing us against both. Philosophy is always a guide to the perplexed. The series Philosophy in Spain, founded to bring Spanish philosophy to the attention of English-speaking philosophers, seeks outstanding works by classic and contemporary Spanish thinkers as well as books on Spanish philosophy.


Emotions and Personhood

Emotions and Personhood

Author: Giovanni Stanghellini

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-02-07

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0199660573

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Emotions and personhood are important notions within the field of mental health care. How they are related is less evident. This book provides a framework for understanding the important and complex relationship between our emotional wellbeing and our sense of self, drawing on psychopathology, philosophy, and phenomenology.


Turkey's Necropolitical Laboratory

Turkey's Necropolitical Laboratory

Author: Bargu Banu Bargu

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1474450296

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This book makes a strong case that Turkey's regime and its vicissitudes are dependent on a necropolitical undercurrent. Building on the insights of critical and contemporary theory, the essays address the multiple ways in which lives are brought into the fold of power. Once there, they are subjected to mechanisms of death and destruction, and to modalities of infrastructural violence, strategic neglect and exposure. This produces new forms of impoverishment, inequality and disposability. Bringing together historical, discursive, and ethnographic approaches from multiple disciplines, this collection offers a sobering and original analysis of contemporary Turkey.