Pragmatism and the Reflective Life explains the moral perspective embedded in the American pragmatist tradition and offers pragmatist moral thought as an alternative to analytic moral theory. Following the lead of John Dewey, Rosenbaum explores what it means to make the ideal of the reflective life implicit in pragmatism central to an understanding of morality. The discussion illuminates how this ideal of the reflective life captures the value of both individual autonomy and communal ideals and encourages commitment to a radically idealistic and ecumenical hope in the power of inclusive democracy and global egalitarianism.
He was saved from death on the Nile and raised as an Egyptian prince. He met his wife at a Midianite well, witnessed the birth of a nation as the Red Sea parted, and watched water gush from a rock with one touch of his rod. He died overlooking the Jordan River. In fact, Moses's entire life can be viewed through the water that redirected him.
This all-new 20-minutes-a-day study of Nehemiah reminds readers that with God’s help, one person who is ready to do the impossible can change the world. Hope is not wishful thinking. It is a confident expectation for the future. Nehemiah knew how to live with true hope. After boldly requesting permission from the king to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile, he restored the city and called his people back to God. Despite opposition on all sides, Nehemiah saw God transform a cup-bearer into a contractor, ruins into a city, and a wayward people into followers of God. As Bible teacher Lenya Heitzig reminds readers in this new Fresh Life study, God calls them to live boldly with a hope that only He can give.
How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts, listen to your parents, do lots of research? Make lists of pros and cons, or go with your gut? These are not questions that can be answered in general or in the abstract. Rather, these questions are addressed to the first person point of view, to the perspective each of us occupies when we reflect on how to live without knowing exactly what we're aiming for. To answer them, The Reflective Life focuses on the process of living one's life from the inside, rather than on defining goals from the outside. Drawing on traditional philosophical sources as well as literature and recent work in social psychology, Tiberius argues that, to live well, we need to develop reflective wisdom: to care about things that will sustain us and give us good experiences, to have perspective on our successes and failures, and to be moderately self-aware and cautiously optimistic about human nature. Further, we need to know when to think about our values, character, and choices, and when not to. A crucial part of wisdom, Tiberius maintains, is being able to shift perspectives: to be self-critical when we are prepared for it, but not when it will undermine our success; to be realistic, but not to the extent that we are immobilized by the harsh facts of life; to examine life when reflection is appropriate, but not when we should lose ourselves in experience.
This all-new Fresh Life Bible study takes readers through the book of 1 John, inspiring them to respond to God’s call to be light bearers in a dark world. Each 20-minute study of 1 John in Live Brilliantly reminds readers that when their lives reflect God’s light, no darkness can overtake them. When a Christian follows God’s Word, light shines on their decisions, relationships, and actions. Their words as they live out the gospel bring light to even the darkest places. This rich yet accessible Bible study ignites readers with a new passion for God, shutting out the darkness that threatens their spirits and the world—because God’s Word is light everlasting.
An evidence-filled argument on how the Episcopal Church can help anyone who struggles to cope with the stress of modern life to survive and thrive. In clear, accessible language, Markham demonstrates how the liturgy of The Episcopal Church can enable us to cope more effectively with the stresses and strains of modern life. This book is a delightful introduction to the movement and flow of Episcopal services and demonstrates how the liturgy can transform human lives. Markham shows persuasively how the whole purpose of the Christian liturgy is to provide us with the resources to enable God to facilitate healthy and authentic living.
Trusted counselor offers concrete advice for those facing uncertainty or upheaval, revealing the qualities and character traits that make for good decisions later in life.
In Couplets, Brian Massumi presents twenty-four essays that represent the full spectrum of his work during the past thirty years. Conceived as a companion volume to Parables for the Virtual, Couplets addresses the key concepts of Parables from different angles and contextualizes them, allowing their stakes to be more fully felt. Rather than organizing the essays chronologically or by topic, Massumi pairs them into couplets to encourage readers to make connections across conventional subject matter categories, to encounter disjunctions, and to link different phases in the evolution of his work. In his analyses of topics ranging from art, affect, and architecture to media theory, political theory, and the philosophy of experience, Massumi charts a field on which a family of conceptual problems plays out in ways that bear on the potentials for acting and perceiving the world. As an essential guide to Massumi's oeuvre, Couplets is both a primer for his new readers and a supplemental resource for those already engaged with his thought.
A great fissure occurred in Western civilization in the early modern period with the divorce between the humanities and the sciences and the rise of scientific naturalism. The Metaphysics of Self and World is a philosophical exploration of the relationship between the individual, the culture, and the world. It is, in the author's words, "a philosophy of the humanities, a philosophy of humanity, and a philosophy of social reality." It explores the implications of a world-view that would integrate the perspective of the sciences with humanistic ways of thought. E.M. Adams claims that we do violence to ourselves as human beings by trying to fit into the world as delineated in scientific categories. Rejecting cultural subjectivism and scientific naturalism, he argues for the irreducibility and validity of the categories of the humanities and for a fully developed humanistic philosophy of self and world. In generating this world-view, he utilizes the humanities as a source of culture therapy in order to close the fissure in Western civilization. Author note: E. M. Adams is Kenan Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has written numerous books and articles, and a festschrift celebrating his work, Mind, Value, and Culture: Essays in Honor of E. M. Adams (edited by David Weissbord), was published in 1989.
Civilizational Dialogue and Political Thought: Tehran Papers gathers together Islamic and Western scholars to answer the call of Mohammed Khatami, former president of Iran, and the United Nations General Assembly for a 'Dialogue of Civilizations, ' a global dialogue for peace. Based in international relations, comparative politics, political theory, and philosophy, the essays in this collection stand in direct challenge to Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' thesis. They testify to the urgency and the viability of the agenda of civilizational dialogue as a guidepost and ethical paradigm for the global community
