In the sequel to his fascinating analysis of religion and science, 'What is God?', Loewen proceeds to ask the major question implicit in this previous work; What then is Human? His responses take us on a journey from what has been human and what we are today, and allow us to confront some of our favorite conceptual confusions, including such as those between morals and ethics, modesty and humility, and criticism and critique amongst many others. Along the way he defends Wal-Mart, analyses the Dixie Chicks, suggests we temporarily stop having children while also questioning our motives regarding their nascent sexuality, and tells us how we can share the consciousness of another in bizarre circumstances. Engaging the reader with both philosophical and personal narrative, 'A Modest Society' is a must read for all those concerned with not only the current state of social relations, but of humanity itself.

What does place mean for human beings? What does it mean to exist in space? How do we place ourselves not only in physical space, but within the interior landscape of consciousness? Place Meant is an interdisciplinary exploration of these and related questions, through the lenses of psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, geography, folklore, memoir, and the history of ideas. It will be of interest to anyone who has traveled the earth and pondered their relationship to home, away, and the world at large.

The concept of certainty may be approached contextually through the use of dialogue. In three creative dialogues involving characters that are often seen as representing each other's antipodes -- "a theist" and an "atheist," a "therapist" and "the rapist," and two multi-voiced group personae, 'casual ties' and 'casualties' -- this text negotiates the overlapping aspects of consciousness that each must have in its alter. Coming to know the other in oneself while at the same time othering ourselves is one process of knowing more fully the truth of the human condition. The dialogues are bookended by a meditative and philosophical introduction concerning human finitude and the role of the otherness of death, and a scholarly conclusion about the vicissitudes within the use of human language. Drawing on sources from anthropology, archaeology, socio-linguistics, and critical philosophy, and using both conversation and academic exposition, Three Apodeictic Dialogues offers a unique perspective on some of the disconcerting questions that animate belief, desire, and communication.

In On the Afterlife: You Will Get There from Here, author G. V. Loewen presents a new, fascinating model of the concepts of the afterlife, from early human societies to our own. Based on four "types," this theory stands apart from any kind of personal evaluation or judgment, whether or not the reader believes in the afterlife - either in the form of a return to life in this world, or a continuation of life in some other realm - or not. A fifth "type" is designated by the concept of "nothingness," an integral element of understanding what happens when we die. Beginning with a discourse on how we remember and memorialize life in death, and ending with a chapter on ethics, On the Afterlife: You Will Get There from Here demonstrates how the obligation is on us as human beings to make our lives worth dying for. This intriguing book will change the way you think of the afterlife. About the Author: G. V. Loewen is professor of the sociology of religion at The University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, Canada. The author of twelve scholarly books, he is currently writing about people's personal experiences of art. Publisher's website: http://www.sbpra.com/GVLoewen Author photo by Jennifer Heller Cover artwork by Lina Kazan

The Bungle Book presents a demythology of six salient concepts central to our modern self-understanding, The "suspects" of the self, the machine, and God, as well as the "senses" of home, love, and freedom are subjected to an intense analytical scrutiny that is back-dropped by the work of Gadamer, Heidegger, Lingis, Midgely, and other critical voices. Book-ended by a detailed introduction that asks us to "unexpect the expected" and a conclusion that suggests that we need to stop compulsively making sense of living on in order to become more sensible about its human ambiguities, The Bungle Book will be of interest to any who take seriously the contemporary challenge of a global and interconnected existence.

Life presents us, intimately and immanently, with a series of diverse and puzzling aporia. One event and its interpretation, occurring in the simultaneous context of another and differing event, leads us to reflect on the limits of language in order to adequately negotiate the limits of human experience. The process of perplexity in the face of disjunctive similitudes we may call aporesis. There are many examples of what can henceforth be called aporia_concepts mutually necessary but paradoxical, contradictory expectations of the human condition. The mutual imbrications of nature and culture, the presence of the past in the present, or the contradictions of the modern-self concept are all fundamental examples of aporetic structures. This book attempts, through a series of interpretive discussions, to confront a number of well-known perplexities in their structural form of disjunctive moments, of interpretive contexts of 'this is' and 'this is not.'