Download or read book Escape from Predicament written by Thomas A. Metzger and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a critique and response to Max Weber's The Religion of China, arguing that sagehood, implying the transformation of the social order, was taken as a personal goal by Neo-Confucians, producing an "extreme ethical tension" that later provided the impetus for modernization-- J. Carmen.
Download or read book Escape from Predicament written by Thomas A. Metzger and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Human Predicament written by David Benatar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortality be an improvement? Would it be better, all things considered, to hasten our deaths by suicide? Many people ask these big questions -- and some people are plagued by them. Surprisingly, analytic philosophers have said relatively little about these important questions about the meaning of life. When they have tackled the big questions, they have tended, like popular writers, to offer comforting, optimistic answers. The Human Predicament invites readers to take a clear-eyed and unfettered view of the human condition. David Benatar here offers a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism about the central questions of human existence. He argues that while our lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the insignificant beings that we fear we might be. He maintains that the quality of life, although less bad for some than for others, leaves much to be desired in even the best cases. Worse, death is generally not a solution; in fact, it exacerbates rather than mitigates our cosmic meaninglessness. While it can release us from suffering, it imposes another cost - annihilation. This state of affairs has nuanced implications for how we should think about many things, including immortality and suicide, and how we should think about the possibility of deeper meaning in our lives. Ultimately, this thoughtful, provocative, and deeply candid treatment of life's big questions will interest anyone who has contemplated why we are here, and what the answer means for how we should live.
Download or read book Tradition and Modernity written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Question for Twentieth-Century China has been the integration of tradition and modernity. In this collection of essays written over a period of some twenty years (1987-2006), Chen Lai reflects on the question in an informative and original way. He reads behind the political slogans and engages with the thought both of Max Weber, Talcott Parsons and Western sociology, and representative Chinese thinkers, notably Feng Youlan and Liang Shuming. While the focus is on China, the book also appeals to anyone interested in this fascinating question of how to modernise whilst retaining the positive values of tradition. Chen Lai s unique and balanced grasp of society marks him out as the foremost thinker in China on this topic today.
Download or read book Questioning Scotland written by E. Bell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-09-20 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questioning Scotland considers the ways in which Scottish Literature has often been discussed in parochial, essentialist terms. It suggests that Scottish literary studies must now expand its conceptual boundaries in order to account for changes taking place at wider European and global levels. It is literary-based but also scrutinizes the methodological construction process of national traditions. Drawing on wider theories of postmodernism, (post)nationalism and globalism, it will help map the changing nature of national studies and Scottish studies in particular.
Download or read book Visions of Ryukyu written by Gregory Smits and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1609 and 1879, the geographical, political, and ideological status of the Kingdom of Ryukyu (modern Okinawa) was characterized by its ambiguity. It was subordinate to its larger neighbors, China and Japan, yet an integral part of neither. A Japanese invasion force from Satsuma had conquered the kingdom in 1609, resulting in its partial incorporation into Tokugawa Japan’s bakuhan state. Given Ryukyu’s long-standing ties with China and East Asian foreign relations following the rise of the Qing dynasty, however, the bakufu maintained only an indirect link with Ryukyu from the mid-seventeenth century onward. Thus Ryukyu was able to exist as a quasi-independent kingdom for more than two centuries—albeit amidst a complex web of trade and diplomatic agreements involving the bakufu, Satsuma, Fujian, and Beijing. During this time, Ryukyu’s ambiguous position relative to China and Japan prompted its elites to fashion their own visions of Ryukyuan identity. Created in a dialogic relationship to both a Chinese and Japanese Other, these visions informed political programs intended to remake Ryukyu. In this innovative and provocative study, Gregory Smits explores early modern perceptions of Ryukyu and their effect on its political culture and institutions. He describes the major historical circumstances that informed early modern discourses of Ryukyuan identity and examines the strategies used by leading intellectual and political figures to fashion, promote, and implement their visions of Ryukyu. Early modern visions of Ryukyu were based on Confucianism, Buddhism, and other ideologies of the time. Eventually one vision prevailed, becoming the theoretical basis of the early modern state by the middle of the eighteenth century. Employing elements of Confucianism, the scholar and government official Sai On (1682–1761) argued that the kingdom’s destiny lay primarily with Ryukyuans themselves and that moral parity with Japan and China was within its grasp. Despite Satsuma’s control over its diplomatic and economic affairs, Sai envisioned Ryukyu as an ideal Confucian state with government and state rituals based on the Chinese model. In examining Sai’s thought and political program, this volume sheds new light on Confucian praxis and, conversely, uncovers one variety of an East Asian “prenational” imagined political/cultural community.
Download or read book Transformations Of The Confucian Way written by John Berthrong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its beginnings, Confucianism has vibrantly taught that each person is able to find the Way individually in service to the community and the world. John Berthrong’s comprehensive new work tells the story of the grand intellectual development of the Confucian tradition, revealing all the historical phases of Confucianism and opening the reader’s eyes to the often neglected gifts of scholars of the Han, T’ang, and the modern periods, as well as to the vast contributions of Korea and Japan. The author concludes his revelatory study with an examination of the contemporary renewal of the Confucian Way in East Asia and its spread to the West.
Download or read book The Paris Predicament written by Sasha Lauren and published by Black Rose Writing. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ooh-la-la! This magical first-person novel poignantly captures the quest for love, truth, and meaning in a tumultuous world. Chances are, you know someone like Camille: tenderhearted and ambitious, yet free-as-the-breeze. An American portrait artist in Paris, Camille Portraro leads an enchanting existence until her life forever changes when everything she loves crashes in a flash. Camille’s life is entangled with a foreigner who mirrors lost parts of her life; as the narrative sweeps these strangers together, you will find yourself doing a double take. Sasha Lauren’s dramatic debut novel The Paris Predicament is a playful, thrilling, and unpredictable page-turner; it will take you for a wondrous ride around the world without ever leaving your seat. The whimsical words lilt and roll off the page, beckoning you on.
Download or read book The Middle Works of John Dewey Volume 7 1899 1924 written by John Dewey and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 11 brings together all of Dewey's writings for 1918 and 1919. A Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions textual edition. Dewey's dominant theme in these pages is war and its after-math. In the Introduction, Oscar and Lilian Handlin discuss his philosophy within the historical context: The First World War slowly ground to its costly conclusion; and the immensely more difficult task of making peace got painfully under way. The armi-stice that some expected would permit a return to normalcy opened instead upon a period of turbulence that agitated fur-ther a society already unsettled by preparations for battle and by debilitating conflict overseas. After spending the first half of 1918-19 on sabbatical from Columbia at the University of California, Dewey traveled to Japan and China, where he lectured, toured, and assessed in his essays the relationship between the two nations. From Peking he reported the student revolt known as the May Fourth Move-ment. The forty items in this volume also include an analysis of Thomas Hobbe's philosophy; an affectionate commemorative tribute to Theodore Roosevelt, our Teddy; the syllabus for Dewey's lectures at the Imperial University in Tokyo, which were later revised and published as Reconstruction in Philosophy; an exchange with former disciple Randolph Bourne about F. Mat-thias Alexander's Man's Supreme Inheritance; and, central to Dew-ey's creed, Philosophy and Democracy. His involvement in a study of the Polish-American community in Philadelphia--resulting in an article, two memoranda, and a lengthy report--is discussed in detail in the Introduction and in the Note on the Confidential Report ofConditions among the Poles in the United States.
Download or read book Human Predicament written by Mayurkumar Mukundbhai Solanki and published by Educreation Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a critical analysis of Vikram Seth's novels with special reference to Human Predicament. The book talks about all the characters of Vikram Seth's novels from human predicament perspectives. The book also talks about psychological and spiritual dimensions of human predicament. The author has thoroughly discussed the various facets of human predicament and how a person feels when he is passing through this stage of his life.
Download or read book Heaven slaughtering Sovereign written by Qi LianXue and published by Funstory. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mysterious youth had a slim chance of survival. Killing the black dragon, forming a spirit monkey, eating the spirit fruit by mistake, all of this greatly increased his strength. From then on, he would tread on a path that defied the heavens! Since there is no path to heaven and earth, I shall kill the heavens and destroy the earth, and restore the true face of the world ... Immortals and Buddha are merciless. If I were to continue on the path of ruthlessness, I will not take the normal path. I will destroy the Heavenly Dreams in the Sacred Diagram ...
Download or read book Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity written by Weiming Tu and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen scholars from varying fields here consider the implications of Confucian concerns--self-cultivation, regulation of the family, social civility, moral education, well-being of the people, governance of the state, and universal peace--in industrial East Asia.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements written by George D. Chryssides and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements covers key themes such as charismatic leadership, conversion and brainwashing, prophecy and millennialism, violence and suicide, gender and sexuality, legal issues, and the portrayal of New Religious Movements by the media and anti-cult organisations. Several categories of new religions receive special attention, including African new religions, Japanese new religions, Mormons, and UFO religions. This guide to New Religious Movements and their critical study brings together 29 world-class international scholars, and serves as a resource to students and researchers. The volume highlights the current state of academic study in the field, and explores areas in which future research might develop. Clearly and accessibly organised to help users quickly locate key information and analysis, the book includes an A to Z of key terms, extensive guides to further resources, a comprehensive bibliography, and a timeline of major developments in the field such as the emergence of new groups, publications, legal decisions, and historical events.
Download or read book The Human Predicament written by David Benatar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are our lives meaningless? Is death bad? Would immortality be better? Alternatively, should we hasten our deaths by acts of suicide? Many people are tempted to offer comforting optimistic answers to these big questions. The Human Predicament offers a less sanguine assessment, and defends a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism.
Download or read book William E Connolly written by Samuel A Chambers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-12-05 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William E. Connolly’s writings have pushed the leading edge of political theory, first in North America and then in Europe as well, for more than two decades now. This book draws on his numerous influential books and articles to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of his significant contribution to the field of political theory. The book focuses in particular on three key areas of his thinking: Democracy: his work in democratic theory – through his critical challenges to the traditions of Rawlsian theories of justice and Habermasian theories of deliberative democracy – has spurred the creation of a fertile and powerful new literature Pluralism: Connolly's work utterly transformed the terrain of the field by helping to resignify pluralism: from a conservative theory of order based on the status quo into a radical theory of democratic contestation based on a progressive political vision The Terms of Political Theory: Connolly has changed the language in which Anglo-American political theory is spoken, and entirely shuffled the pack with which political theorists work.
Download or read book Writing written by Celia Hunt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the writing process and its relationship to self, this guide synthesizes critical and creative theories of writing for both writers and readers. Each chapter links a range of theoretical approaches to one practical aspect of writing, using illustrations from fiction, poetry and literary non-fiction, and suggesting practical exercises for pursuing the topic further. The book will enable students to develop literary, critical and psychodynamic understandings of the creative process and to explore a range of key topics.
Download or read book Religion and Social Justice written by S. Thakur and published by Springer. This book was released on 1996-10-04 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a philosophical examination of the relationship between religion and social justice. Its main thesis is that, since the primary purpose of religion is the moral and spiritual transformation of human nature, it ought not to be construed as a direct instrument of social justice on earth - as it is by Liberation theologians, for example, as well as by many liberal Christians and Jews. Indirectly, however, religion may well be a pre-condition of social justice. For it can be argued that, without the counteracting effects of the moral and spiritual values prescribed by religion, the liberal vision of individual rights and social justice may be self-defeating. Humanity is best served if this liberal vision is counterbalanced by the completely contrary utopia enshrined in the biblical idea of the kingdom of God, and its equivalents in the other great religions of the world.
