Sisyphus No More
Sisyphus No More

Author: Roger C. Byrd

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-01-14

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1538136619

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Prisoners released from our bloated American correctional institutions return to a mostly unwelcoming society where they face onerous post-release challenges. No wonder recidivism is near fifty percent, adding tens of billions of dollars annually to the cost of American prisons. Sisyphus No More is a multifaceted argument for increasing prisoner education and training programs to promote the reintegration into society of returning prisoners and increase the likelihood of their securing living-wage jobs. By greatly reducing recidivism, the programs will pay for themselves several times over. Such programs also humanize the treatment of prisoners and help them escape the fate of Sisyphus, the mythological king condemned to a bitterly repetitive fate. The book has two parts. The first provides background on the American prison system and enumerates the tolls incarceration takes on prisoners, their families, and their communities and the costs released prisoners continue to pay that severely hinder their reintegration. In the second part, the authors set forth compelling psychological, sociological, ethical, and financial grounds for increasing education and training to support the reintegration of released prisoners. The final two chapters report on innovative prison education programs and identify steps toward making education and training a priority in our prisons.

The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays
The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays

Author: Albert Camus

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0307827828

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One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.

The Children of Sisyphus
The Children of Sisyphus

Author: Orlando Patterson

Publisher: Peepal Tree PressLtd

Published: 2011-12

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781845230944

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A bleak portrayal of life on the Dungle—the rubbish heap where the very poorest squat—this beautifully poetic, existentialist novel turns an unwavering eye to life in the Jamaican ghetto. By interweaving the stories of Dinah, a prostitute who can never quite escape the circumstances of her life, and Brother Solomon, a respected Rastafarian leader who allows his followers to think that a ship is on its way to take them home to Ethiopia, this brutally poetic story creates intense and tragic characters who struggle to come to grips with the absurdity of life. As these downtrodden protagonists shed their illusions and expectations, they realize that there is no escape from meaninglessness, and eventually gain a special kind of dignity and stoic awareness about life and the universe.

Sisyphus Shrugged
Sisyphus Shrugged

Author: Robert Peate

Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub

Published: 2012-07-17

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9781478240204

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“It scares the hell out of me. Every day, politics gets closer to the reality you project.”—Bob Cone, inventor of Liquid LightThe second strike is on.John Galt's strike of the “men of the mind” brought down Roger Thompson's dictatorship and ushered in a conservative dream: no taxes, regulations, or social programs. The end of government services such as policing, firefighting, and infrastructure-building has created a vacuum filled by unscrupulous and unregulated businesses that few can afford. With no safety or labor standards, most Americans have abandoned their homes to work several jobs in the cities. After eight years of living in a dog-eat-dog wasteland, America has elected liberal Senator Laurence Sterling (D-VT) president.Mere days before Sterling's inauguration, twenty-six-year-old World Times reporter Evelyn Riley hears that in recent months both absenteeism and productivity have risen at General Motors, one of the two remaining automobile manufacturers in Detroit, and decides to investigate. Her mother's death decades before reminds her daily of the importance of family and human connections. Little does Evelyn know that John Galt is planning his return to fight Sterling, or that this time a new generation of labor leaders is preparing a strike of its own.“If you have ever read Atlas Shrugged, whether you liked it or not, you really should read this book.”—David Scott Moyer “I really like your quote 'I live for Humanity, and I ask Humanity to live for me (and for everyone else).' That's the way it should be.”—Paul Buchheit, professor of economic justice at DePaul UniversityFor more information, please view sisyphusshruggedbook.com or robertpeate.com.

Sisyphus's Boulder
Sisyphus's Boulder

Author: Eric Dietrich

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9789027251961

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Consciousness lies at the core of being human. Therefore, to understand ourselves, we need a theory of consciousness. In Sisyphus's Boulder, Eric Dietrich and Valerie Hardcastle argue that we will never get such a theory because consciousness has an essential property that prevents it from ever being explained. Consequently, philosophical debates over materialism and dualism are a waste of time. Scientific explanations of consciousness fare no better. Scientists do study consciousness, and such investigations will continue to grow and advance. However, none of them will ever reveal what consciousness is. In addition, given the centrality of consciousness in philosophy, Dietrich and Hardcastle claim that philosophy itself needs to change. That the central problems of philosophy persist is actually a profound epistemic fact about humans. Philosophy, then, is a limit to what humans can understand. (Series A)

Statues
Statues

Author: Michel Serres

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-12-18

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1472522060

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In this first English translation of one of his most important works, Michel Serres presents the statue as more than a static entity: for Serres it is the basis for knowledge, society, the subject and object, the world and experience. Serres demonstrates how sacrificial art founded and still persists in society and reflects on the centrality of death and the statufied dead body to the human condition. Each section covers a different time period and statuary topic, ranging from four thousand years ago to 1986; from Baal, the paintings of Carpaccio, and the Eiffel Tower, to Rodin's The Gates of Hell, the Challenger disaster and the literature of Maupassant, La Fontaine and Jules Verne. Expository, lyrical, fictionalized and hallucinatory, Statues plays with time and place, history and story in order to provoke us into thinking in entirely new ways. Through mythic and poetic meditations on various kinds of descent into the underworld and new insights into the relation of the subject and object and their foundation in death, Statues contains great treasures and provocations for philosophers, literary critics, art historians and sociologists.

Freedom and Fulfillment
Freedom and Fulfillment

Author: Joel Feinberg

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0691218145

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Dealing with a diverse set of problems in practical and theoretical ethics, these fourteen essays, three of them previously unpublished, reconfirm Joel Feinberg's leading position in the field of legal philosophy. With a clarity and humor that will be familiar to readers of his other works, Feinberg writes on topics including "wrongful life" suits in the law of torts, or whether there is any sense in the remark that a person is so badly off that he would be better off not existing at all; the morality of abortion; educational options; free expression; civil disobedience; and the duty of easy rescue in criminal law. He continues with a three-part defense of moral rights in the abstract, a discussion of voluntary euthanasia, and an inquiry into arguments of various kinds for not granting legal rights in enforcement of a person's acknowledged moral rights. This collection concludes with two essays dealing with concepts used in appraising the whole of a person's life: absurdity and self-fulfillment, and their interplay.

The Mythic Dream
The Mythic Dream

Author: John Chu

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1481462407

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An all-new anthology of eighteen classic myth retellings featuring an all-star lineup of award-winning and critically acclaimed writers. Madeleine L’Engle once said, “When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.” The Mythic Dream gathers together eighteen stories that reclaim the myths that shaped our collective past, and use them to explore our present and future. From Hades and Persephone to Kali, from Loki to Inanna, this anthology explores retellings of myths across cultures and civilizations. Featuring award-winning and critically acclaimed writers such as Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Rebecca Roanhorse, JY Yang, Alyssa Wong, Indrapramit Das, Carlos Hernandez, Sarah Gailey, Ann Leckie, John Chu, Urusla Vernon, Carmen Maria Machado, Stephen Graham Jones, Arkady Martine, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, and more, The Mythic Dream is sure to become a new classic.