[PDF] Full Laughing On The Brink Of Humanity Download eBook

Laughing on the Brink of Humanity

Author: Jan Miernowski

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2024-11-01

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13:

What does it mean to be human? And, more precisely, what does it mean to be human now, with both humanism and the humanities in crisis? In answer to these questions, Laughing on the Brink of Humanity seeks not some essence of the human but rather an epiphenomenal manifestation—a sign of the human. The book finds such a sign in the joyless, painful, and often deadly laughter that resonates when we cross the barrier between what is human and what is not: animality, machinery, divinity. Jan Miernowski brings together a wide swath of discourses and figures, from Plato and the Bible through early modern humanism, to Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lanzmann, Spike Jonze, Tom Stoppard, and Michel Houellebecq. Looking for laughter on the brink of humanity—in literature and philosophy, natural science and film, theology and computer science—the book offers an exercise in epihumanism appropriate to our posthuman age.

A Society Fit for Human Beings

Author: Elie Maynard Adams

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1997-10-31

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780791435243

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Argues for a humanistic cultural reformation to counter our materialistic values and science-dominated intellectual life and shows how this would affect our lives and transform our society. A Society Fit for Human Beings contends that there is a profound incoherence in the foundations of modern Western civilization and that we are on a self-destructive course. With the quest for wealth and power our dominant concern, we find ourselves with a flourishing economy and a supreme military force based on science and technology, but with our moral, civic, and religious culture undermined by our way of comprehending the world. Our human identity is problematic, the wells of meaning that nourish the human spirit are polluted or drying up, and the social order is in disarray. This situation, E. M. Adams argues, requires nothing less than a historic cultural revolution based on a shift in priorities from wealth and power to humanistic values -- those grounded in selfhood and lived experience that are essential for human growth, meaningful lives, and a healthy society. Such a shift in our governing values would require a restructuring of our intellectual vision of humankind and the world in terms of humanistic categories This book shows the import of such a humanistic cultural revolution for our human identity, morality, the social order, and our major institutions, including the family and community, education, the economy, the government, the military, and religion. It outlines how we can work toward such a cultural revolution and develop a constructive postmodern civilization with a society fit for human beings.

Light, Laugh, and Human Folly

Author: Alexander Belyaev

Publisher: TSK Group LLC

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 74

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Light, Laugh, and Human Folly is a collection of novellas centered around anti-heroes living in a society that makes a straight road to success impossible. Alexander Belyaev’s reality-set stories with a touch of science fiction are chillingly close to home. They present the reader with scenarios that are very plausible and easy to imagine witnessing in today’s world. Instead of introducing a traditional hero, who comes and saves the world, Belyaev centers his narrative around individuals who are not only far from heroic but are decidedly unlikable at times. This collection includes the following works: - Invisible Light - Mister Laugh - Doomsday

A Practical Philosophy for the Life Sciences

Author: Wim J. van der Steen

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9780791416150

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book integrates philosophy of biology and philosophy of medicine with the purpose of making philosophy practical for students and scientists. It contains many exercises and examples from live science. Much attention is given to the translation of scientific reasoning into the language of philosophy. The author shows that philosophical models can be used to evaluate science, if the limitations of the models are recognized so they can be applied in the proper context. On the other hand, some philosophical views of science need to be corrected by science. The book puts philosophy and science in a broader perspective. It integrates practical philosophy and ethics in applications to live science and uncovers limitations of current ethical theory.

Samuel Beckett

Author: Laura Salisbury

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2012-04-04

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 074864749X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reads Beckett's comic timing as part of a post-war ethics of representationSamuel Beckett is a funny writer. He is also an author whose work is taken to respond ethically to the unspeakable seriousness of the post-Holocaust situation. How can these two statements sit together?Ranging widely over Beckett's fiction, drama, and critical writings, and including readings of Murphy, the Trilogy, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, the late prose, and the late plays, the book demonstrates that it is through Beckett's comic timing that we can understand the double gesture of his art: the ethical obligation to represent the world how it is while, at the same time, opening up a space for how it ought to be.Key Features:* Presents innovative readings of the comedy found in Beckett's fiction, drama and critical writings* Spans Beckett's entire oeuvre, using published and unpublished sources* Engages with recent and contemporary philosophical approaches to literature, including work by Derrida, Badiou, Levinas, and Adorno* Makes a unique contribution to theoretical work on comedy and laughter* Provides a rigorous introduction to the theoretical debates surrounding the relationship between modernist literature and a post-war ethics of representation

Laughing Matters

Author: Lee Siegel

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 9788120805484

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Freedom: The End of the Human Condition

Author: Jeremy Griffith

Publisher: WTM Publishing and Communications

Published: 2016-05-24

Total Pages: 591

ISBN-13: 1741290252

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

FREEDOM has its own very informative website: visit www.humancondition.com The fastest growing realization everywhere is that humanity can't go on the way it is going. Indeed, the great fear is we're entering endgame where we appear to have lost the race between self-destruction and self-discovery―the race to find the psychologically relieving understanding of our 'good and evil'-afflicted human condition. Well, astonishing as it is, this book by biologist Jeremy Griffith presents the 11th hour breakthrough biological explanation of the human condition necessary for the psychological rehabilitation and transformation of our species! The culmination of 40 years of studying and writing about our species' psychosis, FREEDOM delivers nothing less than the holy grail of insight we have needed to free ourselves from the human condition. It is, in short, as Professor Harry Prosen, a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, asserts in his Introduction, 'The book that saves the world'. Griffith has been able to venture right to the bottom of the dark depths of what it is to be human and return with the fully accountable, true explanation of our seemingly imperfect lives. At long last we have the redeeming and thus transforming understanding of human behaviour! And with that explanation found all the other great outstanding scientific mysteries about our existence are now also able to be truthfully explained―of the meaning of our existence, of the origin of our unconditionally selfless moral instincts, and of why we humans became conscious when other animals haven't. Yes, the full story of life on Earth can finally be told―and all of these incredible breakthroughs and insights are presented here in this 'greatest of all books'.

The faculty of adaptability : humour's contribution to human ingenuity

Author: Alastair Clarke

Publisher: Pyrrhic House

Published: 2009-12-17

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0955936519

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The definitive text on the pattern recognition theory of humour. When our species turns inward to analyze itself, the two facets of ingenuity and humour are often held in high regard as examples of its unique abilities, and this theory suggests they are more closely connected than has previously been imagined or acknowledged. While adaptability is a necessary facet of biological evolution, its expression in human beings has become accelerated into an intellectual capacity for inventing non-genetic solutions to environmental challenges, producing a versatility and ingenuity that have come to define the species. How does this ability function, then, and what has led to its unparalleled exaggeration in the human race? According to pattern recognition theory, this abundant resourcefulness has arisen due to the presence of a simple, hardwired faculty that exists precisely to encourage it, operating via the recognition of interesting patterns. This, suggests the author, is known as humour. One of two contrasting theories of humour by Clarke, The Faculty of Adaptability interprets amusement as a creative, adaptive system encouraging the invention and discovery of new information and original ideas. Following a detailed description of a schematic model via which such a system could exist, the book proceeds to suggest a timeframe for the evolution of the faculty before addressing the basis for over 100 common stimuli to humour.