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Books > Religion & Spirituality > General > Philosophy of religion
Nihilism seems to be per definition linked to violence. Indeed, if
the nihilist is a person who acknowledges no moral or religious
authority, then what does stop him from committing any kind of
crime? Dostoevsky precisely called attention to this danger: if
there is no God and no immortality of the soul, then everything is
permitted, even anthropophagy. Nietzsche, too, emphasised, although
in different terms, the consequences deriving from the death of God
and the collapse of Judeo-Christian morality. This context shaped
the way in which philosophers, writers and artists thought about
violence, in its different manifestations, during the 20th century.
The goal of this interdisciplinary volume is to explore the various
modern and contemporary configurations of the link between violence
and nihilism as understood by philosophers and artists (in both
literature and film).
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Convergence
(Hardcover)
Daniel J Fick, Jesse K Mileo; Foreword by R J Snell
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R1,111
R934
Discovery Miles 9 340
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Everything, Briefly
(Hardcover)
Thomas O Scarborough; Foreword by Martin Cohen
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R1,248
R1,049
Discovery Miles 10 490
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Nietzsche's famous attack upon established Christianity and
religion is brought to the reader in this superb hardcover edition
of The Antichrist, introduced and translated by H.L. Mencken. The
incendiary tone throughout The Antichrist separates it from most
other well-regarded philosophical texts; even in comparison to
Nietzsche's earlier works, the tone of indignation and conviction
behind each argument made is evident. There is little lofty
ponderousness; the book presents its arguments and points at a
blistering pace, placing itself among the most accessible and
comprehensive works of philosophy. The Antichrist comprises a total
of sixty-two short chapters, each with distinct philosophical
arguments or angle upon the targets of Christianity, organised
religion, and those who masquerade as faithful but are in actuality
anything but. Pointedly opposed to notions of Christian morality
and virtue, Nietzsche vehemently sets out a case for the faith's
redundancy and lack of necessity in human life.
Ma?berot Immanuel is a collection of twenty-eight chapters in
Hebrew of rhymed prose and poetry written by the poet and amateur
philosopher Immanuel of Rome during an era of rapid political
change in late medieval Italy. The final chapter, Mah?beret
Ha-Tofet Ve-ha-'Eden (A Tale of Heaven and Hell), like Dante's
Commedia, depicts Immanuel's visits to hell and heaven. Bridging
Worlds focuses on the interrelation of Immanuel's belletristic work
and biblical exegesis to advance a comprehensive and original
reading of this final chapter. By reading Immanuel's philosophical
commentaries and literary works together, Dana Fishkin demonstrates
that Immanuel's narrative made complex philosophical ideas about
the soul's quest for immortality accessible to an educated
populace. Throughout this work, she explains the many ways
Mah?beret Ha-Tofet Ve-ha-'Eden serves as a site of cultural
negotiation and translation. Bridging Worlds broadens our
understanding of the tensions inherent in the world of late
medieval Jewish people who were deeply enmeshed in Italian culture
and literature, negotiating two cultures whose values may have
overlapped but also sometimes clashed. Fishkin puts forth a
valuable and refreshing perspective alongside previously unknown
sources to breathe new life into this extremely rich and culturally
valuable medieval work.
What does it really mean to be modern? The contributors to this
collection offer critical attempts both to re-read Max Weber's
historical idea of disenchantment and to develop further his
understanding of what the contested relationship between modernity
and religion represents. The approach is distinctive because it
focuses on disenchantment as key to understanding those aspects of
modern society and culture that Weber diagnosed. This is in
opposition to approaches that focus on secularization, narrowly
construed as the rise of secularism or the divide between religion
and politics, and that then conflate this with modernization as a
whole. Other novel contributions are discussions of temporality -
meaning the sense of time or of historical change that posits a
separation between an ostensibly secular modernity and its
religious past - and of the manner in which such a sense of time is
constructed and disseminated through narratives that themselves may
resemble religious myths. It reflects the idea that disenchantment
is a narrative with either Enlightenment, Romantic, or Christian
roots, thereby developing a conversation between critical studies
in the field of secularism (such as those of Talal Asad and Gil
Anidjar) and conceptual history approaches to secularization and
modernity (such as those of Karl Loewith and Reinhart Koselleck),
and in the process creates something that is more than merely the
sum of its parts.
This first of a two-volume work provides a new understanding of
Western subjectivity as theorized in the Augustinian Rule. A
theopolitical synthesis of Antiquity, the Rule is a humble, yet
extremely influential example of subjectivity production. In these
volumes, Jodra argues that the Classical and Late-Ancient
communitarian practices along the Mediterranean provide historical
proof of a worldview in which the self and the other are not
disjunctive components, but mutually inclusive forces. The
Augustinian Rule is a culmination of this process and also the
beginning of something new: the paradigm of the monastic self as
protagonist of the new, medieval worldview. In this volume, Jodra
takes one of the most influential and pervasive commons
experiments-Augustine's Rule-and gives us its Mediterranean
backstory, with an eye to solving at last the riddle of socialism.
In volume two, he will present his solution in full, as a kind of
Augustinian communitarianism for today. These volumes therefore
restore the unity of the Hellenistic and Judaic world as found by
the first Christians, proving that the self and the other are two
essential pieces in the construction of our world.
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