Fifty-Two Weeks with God is composed of fifty-two meditations on God, God's creation, and men and women who gave their lives for others. The book begins with New Year, the time we think of what we have done before and repent and resolve to correct ourselves. We sit in awe at God's magnificent creation and what He has done for us. We meditate on the lives of others who felt the call to follow Christ and care for those in need. We meditate on the innocent children whose characters and beliefs we mold as we care for them by word and deed. We meditate on the spirit of God, the spirit of love and truth. We meditate on God's promise for us to be with him in the warmth of his love for eternity if we follow His example and teaching.

"Whatever is true, whatever is good, whatever is honorable, whatever is of good report. Whatever is lovely, whatever is pure; think on these things (Philippians 4:8)."

Bernard Bolzano (1781-1850) is increasingly recognized as one of the greatest nineteenth-century philosophers. A philosopher and mathematician of rare talent, he made ground-breaking contributions to logic, the foundations and philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. Many of the larger features of later analytic philosophy (but also many of the details) first appear in his work: for example, the separation of logic from psychology, his sophisticated understanding of mathematical proof, his definition of logical consequence, his work on the semantics of natural kind terms, or his anticipations of Cantor's set theory, to name but a few. To his contemporaries, however, he was best known as an intelligent and determined advocate for reform of Church and State. Based in large part on a carefully argued utilitarian practical philosophy, he developed a program for the non-violent reform of the authoritarian institutions of the Hapsburg Empire, a program which he himself helped to set in motion through his teaching and other activities. Rarely has a philosopher had such a great impact on the political culture of his homeland. Persecuted in his lifetime by secular and ecclesiastical authorities, long ignored or misunderstood by philosophers, Bolzano's reputation has nevertheless steadily increased over the past century and a half. Much discussed and respected in Central Europe for over a century, he is finally beginning to receive the recognition he deserves in the English-speaking world. This book provides a comprehensive and detailed critical introduction to Bolzano, covering both his life and works.

We are haunted, Samuel Kimbriel suggests, by a habit of isolation buried, often imperceptibly, within our practices of understanding and relating to the world. In this volume he works through the complexities of this disposition to contest its place within contemporary philosophical thought and practice. He focuses on the human activity of friendship. Chapters one and two examine friendship to unearth the contours of this habit towards isolation and to reveal certain ills that have long attended it. Chapters three through seven place these isolated ways of relating to the world into critical dialogue with the tradition of late-antique and early-medieval Johannine Christianity, in which intimacy and understanding go hand in hand. This tradition drew the human activities of friendship and enquiry into such unity that understanding itself became a kind of communion. Kimbriel endorses a return to an antique and particularly Christian philosophical habit-"the befriending of wisdom."

Dignity is a fundamental aspect of our lives, yet one we rarely pause to consider; our understandings of dignity, on individual, collective and philosophical perspectives, shape how we think, act and relate to others. This book offers an historical survey of how dignity has been understood and explores the concept in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. World-renowned contributors examine the roots of human dignity in classical Greece and Rome and the Scriptures, as well as in the work of theologians, such as St Thomas Aquinas and St John Paul II. Further chapters consider dignity within Renaissance art and sacred music. The volume shows that dignity is also a contemporary issue by analysing situations where the traditional understanding has been challenged by philosophical and policy developments. To this end, further essays look at the role of dignity in discussions about transhumanism, religious freedom, robotics and medicine. Grounded in the principal Christian traditions of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Protestantism, this book offers an interdisciplinary and cross-period approach to a timely topic. It validates the notion of human dignity and offers an introduction to the field, while also challenging it.

In his first book composed in English, Rémi Brague maintains that there is a fundamental problem with modernity: we no longer consider the created world and humanity as intrinsically valuable. Curing Mad Truths, based on a number of Brague's lectures to English-speaking audiences, explores the idea that humanity must return to the Middle Ages. Not the Middle Ages of purported backwardness and barbarism, but rather a Middle Ages that understood creation—including human beings—as the product of an intelligent and benevolent God. The positive developments that have come about due to the modern project, be they health, knowledge, freedom, or peace, are not grounded in a rational project because human existence itself is no longer the good that it once was. Brague turns to our intellectual forebears of the medieval world to present a reasoned argument as to why humanity and civilizations are goods worth promoting and preserving. Curing Mad Truths will be of interest to a learned audience of philosophers, historians, and medievalists.

Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks and practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies, contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments, anthropological observations and neurophysiological research relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to Wittgenstein’s objections. By developing and responding to his criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to religion, human nature, and the mind.

In this thesis the author firstly investigates various terms related to tathagatagarbha in the Srimalasutra. Secondly he focuses on the languages features of its Sanskrit fragments in the Schoyen Collection. It turns out that none of their noticeable language features can ultimately suggest the school-affiliation of the Srimalasutra. Thirdly he analyzes its paleographical features. Besides, the author conducts an initial study of textual history the Srimalasutra, and discusses the older recension(s) of the Srimalasutra based on the Sanskrit morphology, criteria of lectio difficilior and lectio facilior, ascertainment of later contents in the course of transmission, and the development of Buddhist doctrine. Finally he provides a careful textual collation, and makes an annotated translation.

What is religion? Where does it come from? Which religion best fits our needs? Mankind has always been curious to discover what's beyond the visible. From the moment that confusion surrounded the existence and the true identity of God, new sciences developed, and many philosophers fell into question. Many more questions have followed ever since.In Beyond the Visible: Uniting Science and Religion, author Issa Gammoh ponders some of these age-old questions, considering whether there is a universally true answer. In the twenty-first century, with humanity's advanced knowledge and ways of thinking, science is getting closer to resolving many of the questions that have been confounding humanity for centuries. The discovery of the Higgs field, the derivation of the famous equation E=mc2, a better psychological understanding of ourselves, and our developing knowledge about neurology--all of these and much more provide us with guidance. One way of thinking can link all of these concepts together to reach scientific answers about many unknowns that humanity has pursued for many generations.Beyond the Visible travels a path of discovery to find the link between many unknown phenomena and theories. This journey seeks to erase your confusion with what will be the scientific evidences of invisible randomness. Expand your consciousness and understanding about life and the world in which you are living.

Gandhi and Philosophy presents a breakthrough in philosophy by foregrounding modern and scientific elements in Gandhi's thought, animating the dazzling materialist concepts in his writings and opening philosophy to the new frontier of nihilism. This scintillating work breaks with the history of Gandhi scholarship, removing him from the postcolonial and Hindu-nationalist axis and disclosing him to be the enemy that the philosopher dreads and needs. Naming the congealing systematicity of Gandhi's thoughts with the Kantian term hypophysics, Mohan and Dwivedi develop his ideas through a process of reason that awakens the possibilities of concepts beyond the territorial determination of philosophical traditions. The creation of the new method of criticalisation - the augmentation of critique - brings Gandhi's system to its exterior and release. It shows the points of intersection and infiltration between Gandhian concepts and such issues as will, truth, violence, law, anarchy, value, politics and metaphysics and compels us to imagine Gandhi's thought anew.

There is good reason why some people don't want to talk about religion in polite company. Like conversations about politics, discussions about religion all too often set people at odds with each other in ways that are hard to predict and difficult to control. For all the controversy involved with such debate, this book invites the reader to engage with an ethical appraisal of religion(s) as they are practised today. It is written in the belief that this is an important dialogue for our time. It claims, despite the emotive character of the subject, that the free exchange of ideas and experience between people of differing views and commitments can with practice generate more light than heat. Particular effort is made to answer the question: how can we fairly evaluate the ethical character of religion(s)? It focuses especially but not at all exclusively on the religions of Christianity and Islam, being critical of them in many respects; but it also offers sharp rebuke to some of the perspectives of Richard Dawkins and others among the new atheists.