Suffering may be universal, but it is not universally understood. In this collection, scholars from many nations and disciplines explore theoretical and practical approaches to understanding suffering as well as the ethics and effects of representing suffering in art and literature.
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. Chronic illness, together with people experiencing or treating it, became almost mute to predominant biomedical narration pervasive in mainstream media, education, medical and pharmaceutical industry. Contributors in this book aim to represent, discuss, and preserve the vanishing voices and stories on chronic illness from dimensions beyond medicine so that we may make sense of chronicity with the diversity it deserves. The book also incorporates research articles which share important stories about chronicity. These stories, same as chronic illness in our world, should not be treated in a ‘standardised’ way. Each reader, we hope, will relate the meanings of chronicity in this book to his or her own world.
In November 2011, academics from across the disciplines came together to discuss the idea of suffering. This book is a product of that meeting, bringing together the ideas of 17 authors to discuss, from different perspectives, what does it mean to suffer and can meaning be made out of suffering?
What happens when tourists scream with fear, shout with anger and frustration, weep with joy and delight, or even faint in the face of revealed beauty? How can certain sites affect some tourists so deeply that they require hospitalisation and psychiatric treatment? What are the inner contours of tourist experience and how does it relate to specific emotional cultures? What are the consequences of the emotional cultures of tourists upon destinations? How are differences in emotional culture mobilized and played out in the transnational contact zones of international tourism? While many books have engaged with the structural frames of tourist practice and experience, this is the first to deal with the emotional dimensions of tourism, travel and contact and the ways in which they can transform tourists, destinations and travel cultures through emotional engagements. The book brings together an international array of scholars from anthropology, psychiatry, history, cultural geography and critical tourism studies to explore how the movement to, and through, the realms of exotic people, wild natures, subliminal art, spirit worlds, metropolitan cities and sexualised 'others' variably provoke emotions, peak experiences, travel syndromes and inner dialogues. The authors show how tourism challenges us to engage with concepts of self, other, time, nature, sex, the body and death. Through a set of ethnographic and historic cases, they demonstrate that such engagements usually have little to do with the actual destination but rather, are deeply anchored in personal memories, repressed fears and desires, and the collective imaginaries of our societies.
"'Buddhist Ethics' presents an outline of Buddhist ethical thought. It is not a defense of Buddhist approaches to ethics as opposed to any other, nor is it a critique of the Western tradition. Garfield presents a broad overview of a range of Buddhist approaches to the question of moral philosophy. He argues that while there are important points of contact with these Western frameworks, Buddhist ethics is distinctive, and is a kind of moral phenomenology that is concerned with the ways in which we experience ourselves as agents and others as moral fellows"--
Suppose you're offered an opportunity to experience something that is unlike anything you have ever encountered, but that's all you know—aside from the fact that the experience is physically safe and morally acceptable. How do you decide whether to take up the offer? Several philosophers have recently argued that we are in similar situations for more of our decisions than we usually recognize. Are they right? What resources can we draw on to create such situations? Are they enough to satisfy our aims of making the best decisions we can, especially in high stakes situations? This volume brings together philosophers and psychologists to investigate the phenomenon of transformative change and a host of fascinating questions it prompts. Taking their departure from seminal work on transformative choice and experience by L. A. Paul and Edna Ullmann-Margalit, the authors pursue fundamental questions concerning the nature of rationality, the limits of the imagination, and the metaphysics of the self. They also strike out into new areas, including value theory, aesthetics, moral and political philosophy. Several chapters present the results of experimental investigation into the psychology of transformation, self-concept, and moral learning.
Therapy & the Counter-tradition: The Edge of Philosophy brings together leading exponents of contemporary psychotherapy, philosophers and writers, to explore how philosophical ideas may inform therapy work. Each author discusses a particular philosopher who has influenced their life and therapeutic practice, while questioning how counselling and psychotherapy can address human ‘wholeness’, despite the ascendancy of rationality, regulation and diagnosis. It also seeks to acknowledge the distinct lack of philosophical input and education in counselling and psychotherapy training. The chapters are rooted in the Counter-Tradition, whose diverse manifestations include humanism, skepticism, fideism, as well as the opening of philosophy and psychology to poetry and the arts. This collection of thought-provoking essays will help open the discussion within the psychological therapies, by providing therapists with critical philosophical references, which will help broaden their knowledge and the scope of their practice. Therapy & the Counter-tradition: The Edge of Philosophy will be of interest to mental health professionals, practitioners, counselling and psychotherapy trainees and trainers, and academics tutoring or studying psychology. It will also appeal to those interested in psychology, meditation, personal development and philosophy.
The world wars, genocides and extremist ideologies of the 20th century are remembered very differently across Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, resulting sometimes in fierce memory disputes. This book investigates the complexity and contention of the layers of memory of the troubled 20th century in the region. Written by an international group of scholars from a diversity of disciplines, the chapters approach memory disputes in methodologically innovative ways, studying representations and negotiations of disputed pasts in different media, including monuments, museum exhibitions, individual and political discourse and electronic social media. Analyzing memory disputes in various local, national and transnational contexts, the chapters demonstrate the political power and social impact of painful and disputed memories. The book brings new insights into current memory disputes in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. It contributes to the understanding of processes of memory transmission and negotiation across borders and cultures in Europe, emphasizing the interconnectedness of memory with emotions, mediation and politics.