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.

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.

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.

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.'

A man dies, yet lives on to tell about it; another man travels to Vegas seeking the base but instead finds the noble; a young woman too eager to please gets in over her head; a young man mistakes cowardice for revolution; and a teenager decides to take justice into her own hands. All these and others find themselves Shooting at Morals. But they also find that when they do so, morals can, and do, shoot back. "Veteran non-fiction author and philosopher Loewen turns to fiction. The results will amuse you. Disturb you. Shock you. Shooting at Morals: truly `the most dangerous game' of all."

A man dies, yet lives on to tell about it; another man travels to Vegas seeking the base but instead finds the noble; a young woman too eager to please gets in over her head; a young man mistakes cowardice for revolution; and a teenager decides to take justice into her own hands. All these and others find themselves Shooting at Morals. But they also find that when they do so, morals can, and do, shoot back. "Veteran non-fiction author and philosopher Loewen turns to fiction. The results will amuse you. Disturb you. Shock you. Shooting at Morals: truly `the most dangerous game' of all."