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Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), also known as St. Therese of the
Child Jesus and the Holy Face, is popularly named the Little
Flower. A Carmelite nun, doctor of the church, and patron of a
score of causes, she was famously acclaimed by Pope Pius X as the
greatest saint of modern times. Therese is not only one of the most
beloved saints of the Catholic Church but perhaps the most revered
woman of the modern age. Pope John Paul II described her as a
living icon of God. Her autobiography Story of a Soul has been
translated into sixty languages. Having long transcended national
and linguistic boundaries, she has crossed even religious ones. As
daughter of Allah, she is venerated widely in Islamic cultures.
Therese has been the subject of innumerable biographies and
treatises, ranging from hagiographies to attacks on her
intelligence and mental health. Thomas R. Nevin has gained access
to many untapped archival materials and previously unpublished
photographs. As a consequence he is able to offer a much fuller and
more accurate portrait of the saint's life and thought than his
predecessors. He explores the dynamics of her family life and the
early development of her spirituality. He draws extensively on the
correspondence of her mother and documents her influence on
Thereses autobiography and spirituality. He charts the development
of Thereses career as a writer. He gives close attention to her
poetry and plays usually dismissed as undistinguished and argues
that they have great value as texts by which she addressed and
informed her Carmelite community. He delves into the French medical
literature of the time, in an effort to understand how the
tuberculosis of which she died at the age of 24 was treated and
lamentably mistreated. Finally, he offers a new understanding of
Therese as a theologian for whom love, rather than doctrines and
creeds, was the paramount value. Adding substantially to our
knowledge and appreciation of this immensely popular and attractive
figure, this book should appeal to many general readers as well as
to scholars and students of modern Catholic history.
Nietzsche was famously an atheist, despite coming from a strongly
Protestant family. This heritage influenced much of his thought,
but was it in fact the very thing that led him to his atheism? This
work provides a radical re-assessment of Protestantism by
documenting and extrapolating Nietzsche's view that Christianity
dies from the head down. That is, through Protestantism's inherent
anarchy. In this book, Nietzsche is put into conversation with the
initiatives of several powerful thinking writers; Luther, Boehme,
Leibniz, and Lessing. Using Nietzsche as a critical guide to the
evolution of Protestant thinking, each is shown to violate, warp,
or ignore gospel injunctions, and otherwise pose hazards to the
primacy of Christian ethics. Demonstrating that a responsible
understanding of Protestantism as a historical movement needs to
engage with its inherent flaws, this is a text that will engage
scholars of philosophy, theology, and religious studies alike.
For over a century, the Carmelite Sister Therese of the Child Jesus
and the Holy Face (1873-1897) has been revered as Catholicism's
foremost folk saint of modern times. Universally known as "the
Little Flower, " she has been a source of consolation and uplift,
an example of everyday sainthood by "the Little Way. " This book
puts aside that piety and addresses the torment of doubt within the
life and writing of a saint best known for the strength of her
conviction. Nevin examines the dynamics of Christian doubt, and
argues that it is integral to the journey toward selfless love
which Therese was compelled to take. Therese's metaphors for doubt
were 'tunnel', 'fog', and 'vault', each one suggesting darkness,
dimness, and enclosure. What, Nevin asks, did doubt mean to her?
What was its source and nature? What was its object? He gives close
attention to her reading and interpretations of the Old and New
Testaments as pathways through her inner wilderness. Her Carmel of
spiritual sisters becomes a vivid setting for this drama, with
other women challenging Therese by their own trials of faith. One
of Therese's indispensable lessons, Nevin concludes, is the
acceptance of helplessness. Bringing a new direction to the study
of Therese, and of the problematics of sainthood itself, this book
reveals how Therese's response to divine abandonment is a unique
and painfully won imitation of Christ.
Nietzsche was famously an atheist, despite coming from a strongly
Protestant family. This heritage influenced much of his thought,
but was it in fact the very thing that led him to his atheism? This
work provides a radical re-assessment of Protestantism by
documenting and extrapolating Nietzsche's view that Christianity
dies from the head down. That is, through Protestantism's inherent
anarchy. In this book, Nietzsche is put into conversation with the
initiatives of several powerful thinking writers; Luther, Boehme,
Leibniz, and Lessing. Using Nietzsche as a critical guide to the
evolution of Protestant thinking, each is shown to violate, warp,
or ignore gospel injunctions, and otherwise pose hazards to the
primacy of Christian ethics. Demonstrating that a responsible
understanding of Protestantism as a historical movement needs to
engage with its inherent flaws, this is a text that will engage
scholars of philosophy, theology, and religious studies alike.
Few men in America's intellectual history have sought as much as
Irving Babbitt to be a crucible for the cultural values that
America, expecially in its ""progressive"" epoch, had no
inclination to receive. Over sixty years after his death, Babbitt
remains a figure of controversy. He retains his reputation as a
reactionary defender of genteel morality and taste, yet, as Thomas
Nevin reminds us, he continues to be a scholar of importance and an
erudite, forceful teacher who influenced -- among others -- T. S.
Eliot, Van Wyck Brooks, Walter Lippmann, Austin Warren, and David
Riesman. Nevin argues that the tradition Babbit represented did not
so much uphold class mores as it urged that literature embody and
inculcate discipline. In this book-length study of Babbitt's
humanism, Nevin examines the controversial critic's attacks on
collegiate educational reform, his literary and aesthetic
criticism, his political philosophy of an ""aristocratic
democracy"" and his fusion of humanism with Buddhism. Included in
each chapter are substantial portions of Babbitt's unpublished
correspondence with Paul Elmer More, letters that eloquently reveal
points of agreement and difference between Babbitt's humanism and
the theism that More came to espouse. Although this study reflects
the variety of Babbitt's concerns, it concentrates on his major
ideas: the need to maintain the dualism that is the legacy of the
Western philosophical tradition, the imperative that critically
sound standards of judgment be maintained in the individual and in
society, and the affirmation of the human will against the
reductive forces of materialistic ideologies. Humanism, as Babbitt
defines it, opposes the ascendance of utilitarian science because
the sciences, however legitimate in the area of phenomenal inquiry,
as a secular faith supplant the traditional strength and appeal of
cultural and religious standards. Literature itself under the
influence of naturalism either reflects a mechanized, demoralized
society or merely escapes aesthetically from its ugliness. With the
reprinting of some of Babbitt's writings, scholars may now reassess
his thought. Irving Babbitt should renew interest in a major
American thinker and vindicate many of his arguments that apply to
the problems of our own day. Originally published in 1984. A UNC
Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the
latest in digital technology to make available again books from our
distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These
editions are published unaltered from the original, and are
presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both
historical and cultural value.
Over fifty years after her death, Simone Weil (1909-1943) remains
one of the most searching religious inquirers and political
thinkers of the twentieth century. Albert Camus said she had a
"madness for truth." She rejected her Jewishness and developed a
strong interest in Catholicism, although she never joined the
Catholic church. Both an activist and a scholar, she constantly
spoke out against injustice and aligned herself with workers, with
the colonial poor in France, and with the opressed everywhere. She
came to believe that suffering itself could be a way to unity with
God, and her death at thirty-four has been recorded as suicide by
starvation.
This extraordinary study is primarily a topography of Weil's mind,
but Thomas Nevin is persuaded that her thought is inextricably
bound to her life and dramatic times. Thus, he not only addresses
her thoughts and her prejudices but examines her reasons for
entertaining them and gives them a historical focus. He claims that
to Weil's generation the Spanish War, the Popular Front, the
ascendance of Hitlerism, and the Vichy years were not mere
backdrops but definitive events.
Nevin explores in detail not only matters of continuing interest,
such as Weil's leftist politics and her attempt to embrace
Christianity, but also hitherto unexamined aspects of her life and
work which permit a deeper understanding of her: her writings on
science, her work as a poet and dramatist, and her selective
friendships. The thread uniting these topics is her struggle to
maintain her independence as a free thinker while resisting
community such as Judaism could have offered her. Her intellectual
struggles eloquently reveal the desperate isolation of Jews torn
between the lure of assimilation and the tormented dignity of their
communal history.
Nevin's massive research draws on the full range of essays,
notebooks, and fragments from the Simone Weil archives in Paris,
many of which have never been translated or published.
Originally published in 1991.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the
latest in digital technology to make available again books from our
distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These
editions are published unaltered from the original, and are
presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both
historical and cultural value.
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Gravity and Grace (Paperback)
Simone Weil; Translated by Arthur Wills; Introduction by Gustave Thibon, Thomas R. Nevin
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R606
R549
Discovery Miles 5 490
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Simone Weil, the French philosopher, political activist, and
religious mystic, was little known when she died young in 1943.
Four years later the philosopher-farmer Gustave Thibon compiled La
pesanteur et la grâce from the notebooks she left in his keeping.
In 1952 this English translation accelerated the fame and influence
of Simone Weil. The striking aphorisms in Gravity and Grace
reflect the religious philosophy of Weil’s last years. Written at
the onset of World War II, when her health was deteriorating and
her left-wing social activism was giving way to spiritual
introspection, this masterwork makes clear why critics have called
Simone Weil “a great soul who might have become a saint” and
“the Outsider as saint, in an age of alienation.”
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