Download or read book Evil in Modern Myth and Ritual written by Richard Stivers and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Stivers’ concern is with the social construction of evil, that is, with how modern societies, in a partly unconscious way, create evil as a category of the sacred and how symbols, myths, and rituals of evil are related to this. He is interested, moreover, in how modern societies provoke individuals to commit evil actions. This fascinating and stimulating book is the first attempt to work out in detail how the concepts of the sacred, symbol, myth, and ritual form a cultural configuration in modern technological societies, and not just in traditional societies.
Download or read book Evil in Modern Myth and Ritual written by Richard Stivers and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Stivers’ concern is with the social construction of evil, that is, with how modern societies, in a partly unconscious way, create evil as a category of the sacred and how symbols, myths, and rituals of evil are related to this. He is interested, moreover, in how modern societies provoke individuals to commit evil actions. This fascinating and stimulating book is the first attempt to work out in detail how the concepts of the sacred, symbol, myth, and ritual form a cultural configuration in modern technological societies, and not just in traditional societies.
Download or read book Religion written by and published by PediaPress. This book was released on with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myth and Ritual In Christianity written by Alan Watts and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1971-06-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Our main object will be to describe one of the most incomparably beautiful myths that has ever flowered from the mind of man, or from the unconscious processes which shape it and which are in some sense more than man.… This is, furthermore, to be a description and not a history of Christian Mythology.… After description, we shall attempt an interpretation of the myth along the general lines of the philosophia perennis, in order to bring out the truly catholic or universal character of the symbols, and to share the delight of discovering a fountain of wisdom in a realm where so many have long ceased to expect anything but a desert of platitudes.” —from the Prologue
Download or read book The Sacred in the Modern World written by Gordon Lynch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often claimed that we live in a secular age. But we do not live in a desacralized one. Sacred forms—whether in 'religious' or 'secular' guise—continue to shape social life in the modern world, giving rise to powerful emotions, polarized group identities, and even the very concept of moral society. Analyzing contemporary sacred forms is essential if we are to be able to make sense of the societies we live in and think critically about the effects of the sacred on our lives for good or ill. The Sacred in the Modern World is a major contribution to this task. Re-interpreting Durkheim's theory of the sacred, and drawing on the 'strong program' in cultural sociology, Gordon Lynch sets out a theory of the sacred that can be used by researchers across a range of humanities and social science disciplines. Using vividly drawn contemporary case material - including the abuse and neglect of children in Irish residential schools and the controversy over the BBC's decision not to air an appeal for aid for Gaza—the book demonstrates the value of this theoretical approach for social and cultural analysis. The key role of public media for the circulation and contestation of the sacred comes under close scrutiny. Adopting a critical stance towards sacred forms, Lynch reflects upon the ways in which sacred commitments can both serve as a moral resource for social life and legitimate horrifying acts of collective evil. He concludes by reflecting on how we might live thoughtfully and responsibility under the light and shadow that the sacred casts, asking whether society without the sacred is possible or desirable.
Download or read book Introducing Religion written by Robert Ellwood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introducing Religion, 4/e explores the different ways of looking at religion in the twenty-first century. A broad overview to religious studies as a discipline introduces students to the various subjects of religion. Introducing Religion teaches readers how to think in academic religious studies and its main areas, including: sociology of religion, psychology of religion, history of religion, religion and art, ethics, and more. The fourth edition has been expanded with new chapters exploring topics of contemporary interest: myth, spiritual paths, religion and popular culture, religion in the computer age, religion and war. Contemporary topics engage today’s students, relating the topics to the changing world around them.
Download or read book Tales of Darkness written by Robert Ellwood and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-12-10 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evil, an undeniable yet inexplicable force in human existence, is often defined as that which ought not to be, yet is - so it must be destroyed, or contained, or lived with. Myths of evil function to universalize the human condition, to show the tension between the ideal and the real, to reveal but not allegorize that condition, and to go some way to assist humanity in understanding, combating, and coping with evil within its societies. Tales of Darkness explores the causes of evil in myth, encompassing themes such as defilement, the figure of the trickster, evil people both within and outside the society, and traumatic initiations. Robert Ellwood then looks at "cures" for evil: laughter, sacrifice, the flood, the hero's quest, initiation, the savior, divine wisdom and the end of days. This is a fascinating examination of how people have dealt with evil, not philosophically but in terms of the myths, ancient and modern, which present stories convergent with our own, from creation myths to Star Wars.
Download or read book Rescuing Humanity written by Willem H. Vanderburg and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2023-05-26 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rescuing Humanity, Willem H. Vanderburg reminds us that we have relied on discipline-based approaches for human knowing, doing, and organizing for less than a century. During this brief period, these approaches have become responsible for both our spectacular successes and most of our social and environmental crises. At their roots is a cultural mutation that includes secular religious attitudes that veil the limits of these approaches, leading to their overvaluation. Because their use, especially in science and technology, is primarily built up with mathematics, living entities and systems can be dealt with only as if their "architecture" or "design" is based on the principle of non-contradiction, which is true only for non-living entities. This distortion explains our many crises. Vanderburg begins to explore the limits of discipline-based approaches, which guides the way toward developing complementary ones capable of transcending these limits. It is no different from a carpenter going beyond the limits of his hammer by reaching for other tools. As we grapple with everything from the impacts of social media, the ongoing climate crisis, and divisive political ideologies, Rescuing Humanity reveals that our civilization must learn to do the equivalent if humans and other living things are to continue making earth a home.
Download or read book The Culture of Cynicism written by Richard Stivers and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-06-22 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Stivers received an Earhart Foundation research fellowship to write this wide-ranging and thought-provoking book on American morality. The book places American morality in its historical and cultural context. His research uncovered an ersatz morality that has supplanted traditional Judaic-Christian and humanistic moralities, which placed some limitations on the exercises of power. It consists of technical and bureaucratic rules, public opinion and peer group norms, and visual images in the media. Technical and bureaucratic rules are technology’s power to organize society. Public opinion and peer group norms work to transform the normal into the moral, and visual images in the media make tangible what is normal and what is possible, both of which follow the lead of technology. This technological morality is exclusively about unleashing power and has no moral purposes: it is solely about efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, he discusses the social and psychological costs of living without a common morality.
Download or read book Savage Constructions written by Wendy C. Hamblet and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008-03-26 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Savage Constructions composes a critical examination of the popular assumption that violence is an essential quality of certain ethnic or racial populations. Wendy Hamblet challenges the supposition, all too common in the West, that darker-skinned peoples are inherently violent. To challenge this myth, Savage Constructions offers a theory of subjectivity transformed by historical violence. It rethinks how African peoples, once living in simple neighborly communities more democratic and egalitarian than modern states, have come to the condition of abjection, misery, and fierce aggression, in which we find them today. This rethinking she argues that Western affluence is built upon slaughter, slavery, and colonial oppression, and suggests that prosperous nations of the West owe a great debt to the societies they trampled en route to their prosperity. This work is important because Nnewly independent nations of Africa are a primary example of a much vaster phenomenon. Western powers continue to sack poorer, weaker countries through covert intrigue, outright war, crippling debts, and unfair global labor and trade policies. The violences continue because many Westerners still harbor metaphysical assumptions about the supremacy of white Christians over less 'civilized,' darker-skinned peoples. These assumptions depress the possibilities of ethnic minorities within the West, continue to influence foreign policy and frustrate global relations, and ensure that the overwhelming collateral damage of modern wars is color conscious. Savage Constructions will appeal to all levels of scholars and students.
Download or read book Democratic Theory and Technological Society written by Richard B. Day and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the chief challenges posed to contemporary democracy by modern technology, and how can democratic theory best respond to, or at least reflect on, those challenges? Inhabiting the kind of technologically advanced era in which we live, what sources are available within political theory for theoretical insight concerning the problem of democratic engagement with technology? The purpose of this volume is to canvas a broad range of theorists and theoretical traditions in order to address these questions, including Hegel and Marx, Rousseau and John Dewey, Heidegger and Simone Weil, Habermas and Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas. Commentaries on all these important thinkers -- focused on the issue of contemporary technology as posing unique social and political challenges for democratic political life -- yields rich and ambitious resources for theoretical reflection.
Download or read book The Dark Side of Modernity written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, one of the world’s leading social theorists presents a critical, alarmed, but also nuanced understanding of the post-traditional world we inhabit today. Jeffrey Alexander writes about modernity as historical time and social condition, but also as ideology and utopia. The idea of modernity embodies the Enlightenment’s noble hopes for progress and rationality, but its reality brings great suffering and exposes the destructive impulses that continue to motivate humankind. Alexander examines how twentieth-century theorists struggled to comprehend the Janus-faced character of modernity, which looks backward and forward at the same time. Weber linked the triumph of worldly asceticism to liberating autonomy but also ruthless domination, describing flights from rationalization as systemic and dangerous. Simmel pointed to the otherness haunting modernity, even as he normalized the stranger. Eisenstadt celebrated Axial Age transcendence, but acknowledged its increasing capacity for barbarity. Parsons heralded American community, but ignored modernity’s fragmentations. Rather than seeking to resolve modernity’s contradictions, Alexander argues that social theory should accept its Janus-faced character. It is a dangerous delusion to think that modernity can eliminate evil. Civil inclusion and anti-civil exclusion are intertwined. Alexander enumerates dangerous frictions endemic to modernity, but he also suggests new lines of social amelioration and emotional repair.
Download or read book Global Perspectives on Villains and Villainy Today written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This e-book presents the findings of the 2nd global, interdisciplinary conference on Villains and Villainy, which was held at Oriel College, Oxford in September 2010 as part of the research network Inter-Disciplinary.Net.
Download or read book Technology and Responsibility written by P.T. Durbin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since it may seem strange for a new series to begin with volume 3, a word of explanation is in order. The series, Philosophy and Technology, inaugurated in this form with this volume, is the official publication of the Society for Philosophy & Technology. Approximately one volume each year is tobe published, alternating between proceedings volumes - taken from contributions to biennial international conferences of the Society - and miscellaneous volumes, with roughly the character of a professional society journal. The forerunners of the series in its present form were two proceedings volumes: Philosophy and Technology (1983), edited by Paul T. Durbin and Friedrich Rapp, and Philosophy and Technology //: Information Technology and Computers in Theory and Practice (1986), edited by Carl Mitcham and Alois Huning - both published (as volumes 80 and 90, respectively) in the series, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. The Society for Philosophy & Technology, now more than ten years old, is devoted to the promotion of philosophical schalarship that deals in one way or another with technology and technological society. "Philosophical scholarship" is interpreted broadly as including contribu tions from any and all perspectives; the one requirement is that the schalarship be sound, and all contributions to the series are subject to rigorous blind refereeing. "Technology," the other half of the philos ophy-and-technology pairing, is also construed broadly.
Download or read book The Sacred Monstrous written by Wendy C. Hamblet and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2003-12-10 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Sacred Monstrous author Wendy Hamblet traces the historical and social fact of violence through the work of Girard, Bloch, Lorenz and Burket. She takes up the charge advanced by social theorists, anthropologists and others that violence is steeped in our being; it pervades our generations and is imbedded in the ethos of our modern institutions. Hamblet's discussion of human history re-frames our understanding of how violence works in history and society. The Sacred Monstrous is a salient work of continentally informed philosophy that contributes significantly to any discussion of violence and conflict in the social sciences.
Download or read book Good and Evil written by Anthony S. Mercatante and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1978 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Transforming the Powers written by Ray C. Gingerich and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter Wink's widely acclaimed trilogy from Fortress Press - Naming the Powers 0-8006-1786-X (1984), Unmasking the Powers 0-8006-1902-1 (1993), and Engaging the Powers 0-8006-2646-X (1992) - has sold over 80,000 copies. The Powers are good; the Powers are fallen; the Powers must be redeemed, says Wink; and the illustrious theologians and ethicists in this volume apply this suggestive analysis to economics, politics and government, war and peace, personal ethics and ecological and social justice.Contributors include: Ray Gingerich, Eastern Mennonite University Ted Grimsrud, Eastern Mennonite University Nancey Murphy, Fuller Theological Seminary Daniel Liechty, Illinois State University Walter Wink, Auburn Theological Seminary Willard M. Swartley, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary Glen Stassen, Fuller Theological Seminary
