Between Life and Thought
Between Life and Thought

Author: Don Seeman

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2024-03-26

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1487558724

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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.

Kant's Life and Thought
Kant's Life and Thought

Author: Ernst Cassirer

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1981-01-01

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780300029826

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"Here is the first Kant-biography in English since Paulsen’s and Cassirer’s only full-scale study of Kant’s philosophy. On a very deep level, all of Cassirer’s philosophy was based on Kant’s, and accordingly this book is Cassirer’s explicit coming to terms with his own historical origins. It sensitively integrates interesting facts about Kant’s life with an appreciation and critique of his works. Its value is enhanced by Stephen K�rner’s Introduction, which places Cassirer’s Kant-interpretation in its historical and contemporary context.”--Lewis White Beck "The first English translation (well done by James Haden) of a 60-year-old classic intellectual biography. Those readers who know Kant only through the first Critique will find their understanding of that work deepened and illuminated by a long explication of the pre-critical writings, but perhaps the most distinctive contribution is Cassirer’s argument that the later Critiques, and especially the Critique of Judgment, must be understood not as merely applying the principles of the first to other areas but as subsuming the latter into a larger and more comprehensive framework.”--Frederick J. Crown, The Key Reporter "Kant’s Life and Thought is that rare achievement: a lucid and highly readable account of the life and work of one of the world’s profoundest thinkers. Now for the first time available in an admirable English translation, the book introduces the reader to two of the finest minds in the history of philosophy.”--Ashley Montagu

Mind in Life
Mind in Life

Author: Evan Thompson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-09-30

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 0674736885

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How is life related to the mind? The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan Thompson explores in Mind in Life. Thompson draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind. Where there is life, Thompson argues, there is mind: life and mind share common principles of self-organization, and the self-organizing features of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of life. Rather than trying to close the explanatory gap, Thompson marshals philosophical and scientific analyses to bring unprecedented insight to the nature of life and consciousness. This synthesis of phenomenology and biology helps make Mind in Life a vital and long-awaited addition to his landmark volume The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (coauthored with Eleanor Rosch and Francisco Varela). Endlessly interesting and accessible, Mind in Life is a groundbreaking addition to the fields of the theory of the mind, life science, and phenomenology.

Between One and One Another
Between One and One Another

Author: Michael Jackson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-01-04

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0520272358

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"Between One and One Another is a lively and fascinating exploration of the interplay between being a part of the lives of others, and being apart from them. Michael Jackson, one of the leading and most innovative anthropologists today, draws on a wealth of anthropological, literary, philosophical, and autobiographical resources to make his case on the matter. It's clear that a lifetime of learning and reflection has gone into the thoughts invested in this text."—Robert Desjarlais, author of Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard

The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels
The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels

Author: J. D. Hunley

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9780300049237

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For the last thirty years, scholars have stressed differences between the ideas of Marx and Engels and have blamed the failures of twentieth-century communism on Engels alone. In this book J..D. Hunley refutes this view, arguing that Engels did not disagree with Marx about important issues and did not distort Marx's views after the latter's death. Hunley shows that Engels possessed a wide-ranging intellect and would hardly have supported the repressive regimes that until recently prevailed in Eastern Europe and still exist in China and elsewhere.

Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought
Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought

Author: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 9780810114609

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First published in 1973, this collection of Chekhov's correspondence is widely regarded as the best introduction to this great Russian writer. Weighted heavily toward the correspondence dealing with literary and intellectual matters, this extremely informative collection provides fascinating insight into Chekhov's development as a writer. Michael Henry Heim's excellent translation and Simon Karlinsky's masterly headnotes make this volume an essential text for anyone interested in Chekhov.

Mind and Cosmos
Mind and Cosmos

Author: Thomas Nagel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-11-22

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 0199919755

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The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Prisoners of Our Thoughts
Prisoners of Our Thoughts

Author: Alex Pattakos

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781576752883

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This timely book expands on Viktor Frankl's seminal Man's Search for Meaning, examining the book's concepts in depth and widening the market for them by introducing an entirely new way to look at work and the workplace. Alex Pattakos, a former colleague of Frankl's, brings the search for meaning at work within the grasp of every reader using simple, straightforward language. The author distills Frankl's ideas into seven core principles: Exercise the freedom to choose your attitude; Realize your will to meaning; Detect the meaning of life's moments; Don't work against yourself; Look at yourself from a distance; Shift your focus of attention; and Extend beyond yourself. By demonstrating how Dr. Frankl's key principles can be applied to all kinds of work situations, Prisoners of Our Thoughts opens up new opportunities for finding personal meaning and living an authentic work life.

The Life of the Mind
The Life of the Mind

Author: Hannah Arendt

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 9780156519922

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The author's final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man's mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging. Edited by Mary McCarthy; Indices.

Maimonides
Maimonides

Author: Moshe Halbertal

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-11-24

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1400848474

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A comprehensive and accessible account of the life and thought of Judaism's most celebrated philosopher Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to his life and work, revealing how his philosophical sensibility and outlook informed his interpretation of Jewish tradition. Moshe Halbertal vividly describes Maimonides's childhood in Muslim Spain, his family's flight to North Africa to escape persecution, and their eventual resettling in Egypt. He draws on Maimonides's letters and the testimonies of his contemporaries, both Muslims and Jews, to offer new insights into his personality and the circumstances that shaped his thinking. Halbertal then turns to Maimonides's legal and philosophical work, analyzing his three great books—Commentary on the Mishnah, the Mishneh Torah, and the Guide of the Perplexed. He discusses Maimonides's battle against all attempts to personify God, his conviction that God's presence in the world is mediated through the natural order rather than through miracles, and his locating of philosophy and science at the summit of the religious life of Torah. Halbertal examines Maimonides's philosophical positions on fundamental questions such as the nature and limits of religious language, creation and nature, prophecy, providence, the problem of evil, and the meaning of the commandments. A stunning achievement, Maimonides offers an unparalleled look at the life and thought of this important Jewish philosopher, scholar, and theologian.