The project examines the reasons for the many philosophical difficulties, and the failures, that Nietzsche sensed when he had concluded The Birth of Tragedy. The subsequent philosophical decision he made, on the way to reconceiving the classical ideas of tragedy, destiny, and martyrdom, allowed him to begin to conceive of what he would identify as a thinking devoted to affirmation. Everything he commits himself to writing after 1872, including the unpublished notes on myth from the Philosophenbuch, is a response to the disillusionment of his belief in Dionysos and the false promise of tragic affirmation. The Greek god had become a problem and an obstacle. Sustaining him, as a philosophical idea, was going to prove to be highly mixed; the struggle would become relentless. The Greek god is, in many ways, impossible to believe in as an ideal, in antiquity or for the present; and for a specific reason: the connection between the institution of the Dionysian festival and the religious ritual of sacrifice could not be ignored by Nietzsche. His sense of a "Dionysian nausea" has been overlooked. Tragedy and sacrifice are a binding relation in the Greek polis. Nietzsche seems to recognize the fact and commits himself to directly confronting the tragedy/sacrifice relation in all his subsequent works and with the intent on being a unique, individual resource for the truth of his self-revelations. He identifies himself with a new conception of the martyr (the witness) in order to provide an alternative to the classical martyr as the victim of violence and death and who, moreover, is executed by the state. Socrates and Jesus are omni-present for him. Nietzsche presents himself as new world-historical alternative and the self-revelations of a witness for the individuals he will often call (especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra) his friends and neighbours and disciples. Is the whole of his philosophical enterprise successful? Do his self-revelations lead to the creation of the free spirit and therefore give him some assurance about the future of his legacy? Or does his commitment to the eternal recurrence, for example, lead him to a terrible realization? The study presents the force of Nietzsche's thought as he created the resources, which he hoped could be effectively transferred to a reader, to begin to create an affirmative reality he defines from out of the fullness of the free spirit and the philosopher.

Looking at the breadth of Joan Didion’s writing, from journalism, essays, fiction, memoir and screen plays, it may appear that there is no unifying thread, but Matthew R. McLennan argues that ‘the ethics of memory’ – the question of which norms should guide public and private remembrance – offers a promising vision of what is most characteristic and salient in Didion’s works. By framing her universe as indifferent and essentially precarious, McLennan demonstrates how this outlook guides Didion’s reflections on key themes linked to memory: namely witnessing and grieving, nostalgia, and the paradoxically amnesiac qualities of our increasingly archived public life that she explored in famous texts like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Year of Magical Thinking and Salvador. McLennan moves beyond the interpretive value of such an approach and frames Didion as a serious, iconoclastic philosopher of time and memory. Through her encounters with the past, the writer is shown to offer lessons for the future in an increasingly perilous and unsettled world.

Now translated and explained by Srila Prabhupada, "The Nectar of Instruction" is the key to enlightenment for all seekers on the path of spiritual perfection. This translation and commentary are guided by scholarship, and devotion in spirituality, in the ligne of the greatest Gaudiya Vaishnavas such as Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Maharaja, the spiritual master of the author, which is directly descending from Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, which make His comments legitimate.

The clash of religion and politics has been a persistent source of polarization in North America. In order to think wisely and constructively about the spiritual dimension of our political life, there is need for an approach that can both maintain the diversity of belief and foster values founded on the principles of religion. In Spiritualizing Politics without Politicizing Religion, James R. Price and Kenneth R. Melchin provide a possible framework, approaching issues in politics via a profile of Sargent Shriver (1915-2011), an American diplomat, politician, and a driving force behind the creation of the Peace Corps. Focusing on the speeches Shriver delivered in the course of his work to advance civil rights and build world peace, Price and Melchin highlight the spiritual component of his efforts to improve institutional structures and solve social problems. They contextualize Shriver's approach by contrasting it with contemporary, landmark decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court on the role of religion in politics. In doing so, Spiritualizing Politics without Politicizing Religion explains that navigating the relationship of religion and politics requires attending to both the religious diversity that politics must guard and the religious involvements that politics needs to do its work.

This book discusses the philosophy of place and the implications for understanding ourselves authentically. It sets out to investigate this by providing a review of the phenomenological and humanistic views of place as background reading for the chapters that follow. This contributed book offers unique chapters from international scholars on place in relation to individual philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sloterdijk, Foucault, as well as more broad areas of research including Ecology, Ontogenesis, Bioethics and Metaphysics. The book then presents an integration of the arguments of the contributing authors to give a better and fresh insight to the relationship between place and self. This fusion of chapters amplifies each to show how they all have an important contribution to an expanded understanding of place and self. This combination of topics as well as each author's view of place makes this book an important contribution to the literature. The book is intended for philosophers but would also be of interest to a general audience.