The contribution of this book to the field of reconciliation is both theoretical and practical, recognizing that good theory guides effective practice and practice is the ground for compelling theory. Using a Girardian hermeneutic as a starting point, a new conceptual Gestalt emerges in these essays, one not fully integrated in a formal way but showing a clear understanding of some of the challenges and possibilities for dealing with the deep divisions, enmity, hatred, and other effects of violence. By situating discourse about reconciliation within the context of Girardian thought, it becomes clear that like Peter who vowed he would never deny Jesus but ended up doing it three times any of us is susceptible to the siren call of angry resentment and retaliation. It is with a profound awareness of the power of violence that the emergence of mimetic discourse around reconciliation takes on particular urgency.

In The Plays of Samuel Beckett Eugene Webb first summarizes the western philosophical tradition which has culminated in the void--the centuries of attempts to impose form and meaning on existence, the failure of which has left experience in fragments and man a stranger in an unintelligible universe. Succeeding chapters take up the plays work by work, interpreting each individually and tracing recurrent motifs, themes, and images to show the continuity in the underlying tendencies of Beckett's mind and art.

A search for an understanding of the order that can be found in history, and within the human being who is the subject of history, has resulted in a large and complicated body of work by this contemporary philosopher. Eugene Webb offers a full illumination and assessment of that work.

After the disappointing events of the 1960s, including the loss of Algeria, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the American war in the former French colony of Indo-China, people in France began to look seriously to Freudianism in the transformed version of Jacques Lacan, for a new way of understanding human relations and the relations between human beings and society. The movement in France is not specifically psychoanalytic but developed against such a background. Psychoanalytic thought acquired the kind of centrality in French intellectual life once associated with existentialism and Marxism and later with structuralism--a centrality it probably never possessed in the United States, even at the peak of its popularity. The movement was a reassessment and rethinking of Freud's thought and influence, and it iwa a movement that was almost unknown to the American public.

Philosophers of Consciousness is both an expository study of the thought of the six figures it focuses on and an original exploration of the themes they address. In addition, as Eugene Webb states, "it does not hesitate to probe the more problematic areas of the thought of each thinker and to suggest what to some of their advocates will probably seem rather bold and controversial interpreations of their ideas." The book reveals some deep differences that set the six off against one another in what is basically a clash between the intellectual emphasis of Lonergan and the more existential approaches of the other thinkers in this study. Readers of Kierkegaard may find much of Webb's interpretation surprising and perhaps disturbing.

Collectively the works of Samuel Beckett, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, reveal a remarkable continuity of theme. Together his writings present a particular view of life and each novel constitutes part of a larger whole.

This study focuses on the striking relationship between one of the most important and enigmatic poets of the twentieth century and the art and artists of the Art Nouveau. The author explores the depth of the relationship itself, examines Rilke's activities as an art critic, and analyzes the profound influence of Art Nouveau upon the themes, motifs, and structure of the poet's early works.

In a subtle exposition of the tension between sacred and secular themes in twentieth-century literature, Eugene Webb analyzes works by Yeats, Mann, Rilke, Stevens, Beckett, Joyce, Nietzsche, Eliot, Auden, and Ibsen. He demonstrates the connection between modern literature and religious tradition, and shows how conceptions of the sacred and its relation to the secular have been transformed in modern literary imagery. Webb considers the writers he discusses to be the true explorers of their generation, who have had to find a new symbolic language in which to understand and express their "idea of the holy." Because the sacred consists of "additude" and "experience" as well as "concept," Webb maintains that it receives its most direct and adequate expression in works of imaginative literature, where imagery can combine the intellectual and emotional elements of the sacred and communicate them to the reader.

We seem to be abandoning the codes that told previous generations who they should love. But now that many of us are free to choose whoever we want, nothing is less certain. The proliferation of divorces and separations reveal a dynamic we would rather not see: others sometimes reject us as passionately as we are attracted to them.
Our desire makes us sick. The throes of rivalry are at the heart of our attraction to one another. This is the central thesis of Jean-Michel Oughourlian's "The Genesis of Desire," where the war of the sexes is finally given a scientific explanation. The discovery of mirror neurons corroborates his ideas, clarifying the phenomena of empathy and the mechanisms of violent reciprocity.
How can a couple be saved when they have declared war on one another? By helping them realize that desire originates not in the self but in the other. There are strategies that can help, which Dr. Oughourlian has prescribed successfully to his patients. This work, alternating between case studies and more theoretical statements, convincingly defends the possibility that breakups need not be permanent.

After the disappointing events of the 1960s, including the loss of Algeria, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the American war in the former French colony of Indo-China, people in France began to look seriously to Freudianism in the transformed version of Jacques Lacan, for a new way of understanding human relations and the relations between human beings and society. The movement in France is not specifically psychoanalytic but developed against such a background. Psychoanalytic thought acquired the kind of centrality in French intellectual life once associated with existentialism and Marxism and later with structuralism--a centrality it probably never possessed in the United States, even at the peak of its popularity. The movement was a reassessment and rethinking of Freud's thought and influence, and it iwa a movement that was almost unknown to the American public.

Philosophers of Consciousness is both an expository study of the thought of the six figures it focuses on and an original exploration of the themes they address. In addition, as Eugene Webb states, "it does not hesitate to probe the more problematic areas of the thought of each thinker and to suggest what to some of their advocates will probably seem rather bold and controversial interpreations of their ideas." The book reveals some deep differences that set the six off against one another in what is basically a clash between the intellectual emphasis of Lonergan and the more existential approaches of the other thinkers in this study. Readers of Kierkegaard may find much of Webb's interpretation surprising and perhaps disturbing.

A search for an understanding of the order that can be found in history, and within the human being who is the subject of history, has resulted in a large and complicated body of work by this contemporary philosopher. Eugene Webb offers a full illumination and assessment of that work.

In a subtle exposition of the tension between sacred and secular themes in twentieth-century literature, Eugene Webb analyzes works by Yeats, Mann, Rilke, Stevens, Beckett, Joyce, Nietzsche, Eliot, Auden, and Ibsen. He demonstrates the connection between modern literature and religious tradition, and shows how conceptions of the sacred and its relation to the secular have been transformed in modern literary imagery. Webb considers the writers he discusses to be the true explorers of their generation, who have had to find a new symbolic language in which to understand and express their "idea of the holy." Because the sacred consists of "additude" and "experience" as well as "concept," Webb maintains that it receives its most direct and adequate expression in works of imaginative literature, where imagery can combine the intellectual and emotional elements of the sacred and communicate them to the reader.

In The Plays of Samuel Beckett Eugene Webb first summarizes the western philosophical tradition which has culminated in the void--the centuries of attempts to impose form and meaning on existence, the failure of which has left experience in fragments and man a stranger in an unintelligible universe. Succeeding chapters take up the plays work by work, interpreting each individually and tracing recurrent motifs, themes, and images to show the continuity in the underlying tendencies of Beckett's mind and art.

Collectively the works of Samuel Beckett, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, reveal a remarkable continuity of theme. Together his writings present a particular view of life and each novel constitutes part of a larger whole.