Throughout his discussions, Van Lieshout focuses on the relation of Blake's Generation and Eternity, which he identifies as Bakhtinian 'world views'. In Generation, existence is finalized as a hierarchy of geometric 'dark globes', each assuming the character of universal whole to the exclusion of all others. Eternity, on the other hand, is Blake's fractal 'human form' of existence that is continuously organized and reorganized in the dynamic interaction of whole and parts.
Throughout history and across cultures, people have shared the hope and the belief that somehow something about the human person survives death. Indeed, it seems that without a notion of life-after-death, this life would seem meaningless. If, in the end, everything we have strived for and all our love comes to naught and is simply swallowed up by nothingness, then what was the point of it all? In From Here to Eternity, Randall Smith shows how the Christian doctrines regarding the resurrection of the body and the communion of saints provide an understanding of life after death as a meaningful fulfillment of this life, not a negation of it.
This book grapples with a wide range of contemporary ethical and religious issues through the lens of the reflections of Charles Péguy on his friend and mentor Bernard-Lazare. Both Péguy, a leading French Catholic poet and philosopher, and Bernard-Lazare, an iconoclastic Jewish intellectual, were passionately involved in the Dreyfus Affair, which forms the background of these reflections. The book is in four parts. The first sets Péguy’s portrait of Bernard-Lazare in a series of contexts, analyzing it against the background of the rampant antisemitism of its time, situating it in relation to present-day discussions about the "Other,” and, especially, placing it within various twentieth-century attempts to rethink religion. Péguy’s great contribution in this area lies in redirecting our attention to the ways human beings respond to defeat, and to the ways the intellect is oriented by something outside itself, as keys to the discovery of the transcendent. His work reformulates the meaning of hope and incarnation. The second part of the book presents Péguy’s portrait of Bernard-Lazare in a complete English translation. In the third part, the author shows the affinity of Péguy’s thought to that of two Jewish thinkers, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas. All three, in rethinking the religious dimension, located it amidst the daily interactions between people. The final part explores the implications of this notion of transcendence for the task of interpretation in the social sciences and the humanities.
This collection of essays and reviews represents the most significant and comprehensive writing on Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors. Miola's edited work also features a comprehensive critical history, coupled with a full bibliography and photographs of major productions of the play from around the world. In the collection, there are five previously unpublished essays. The topics covered in these new essays are women in the play, the play's debt to contemporary theater, its critical and performance histories in Germany and Japan, the metrical variety of the play, and the distinctly modern perspective on the play as containing dark and disturbing elements. To compliment these new essays, the collection features significant scholarship and commentary on The Comedy of Errors that is published in obscure and difficulty accessible journals, newspapers, and other sources. This collection brings together these essays for the first time.
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.
This introductory overview of Kierkegaard's writings summarizes their central arguments and places them in their historical context. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
For the first time in almost half a century, the world of Hopkins is examined as an indivisible whole. The Split World of Gerard Manley Hopkins is a synthetic study of Hopkins's writings, written within a framework of semiotic phenomenology.
In Kierkegaard's Livingroom David Mercer weaves his way through the Philosophical Fragments, bringing the reader a new understanding of Kierkegaard's work. Placing the Philosophical Fragments in the context of Kierkegaard's others works, Mercer's commentary shows how literary style and character are used to reveal the nature of history and time.
