Download or read book Feeling Pleasures written by Joe Moshenska and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feeling Pleasures argues that the sense of touch assumed a new and unique importance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that the work of major poets of the period, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and John Milton, should be read alongside these developing ideas.
Download or read book Feeling Pleasures written by Joe Moshenska and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sense of touch had a deeply uncertain status in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It had long been seen as the most certain and reliable of the senses, and also as biologically necessary: each of the other senses could be relinquished, but to lose touch was to lose life itself. Alternatively, touch was seen as dangerously bodily, and too fully involved in sensual and sexual pleasures, to be of true worth. Feeling Pleasures argues that this tension came to the fore during the English Renaissance, and allowed some of the central debates of this period—surrounding the nature of human experience, of the material world, and of the relationship between the human and the divine—to proceed through discussions of touch. It also argues that the unstable status of touch was of particular import to the poetry of this period. By bringing touch to the fore in a period usually associated with the dominance of vision and optics, Joe Moshenska offers reconsiderations of major English poets, especially Edmund Spenser and John Milton, while exploring a range of spheres in which touch assumed new significance. These include theological debates surrounding relics and the Eucharist in the work of Erasmus, Thomas Cranmer and Lancelot Andrewes; the philosophical history of tickling; the touching of paintings and sculptures in a European context; faith healing and experimental science; and the early reception of Chinese medicine in England.
Download or read book Pleasure Activism written by adrienne maree brown and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls "Pleasure Activism," a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, including Audre Lourde's invitation to use the erotic as power and Toni Cade Bambara's exhortation that we make the revolution irresistible, the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism. Writers including Cara Page of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of This Body Is Not an Apology, and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—they create new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own. Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!
Download or read book The Pleasure Zone written by Stella Resnick and published by Conari Press. This book was released on 1998-12-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the eight core pleasures--primal pleasure, pain relief, the pleasures of play and humor, and mental, emotional, sensual, sexual, and spiritual pleasure--and how they can enrich one's life
Download or read book Pure Pleasure written by Gary Thomas and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gary Thomas, one of this generation's most trusted writers about the spiritual life, explores what it means to build a life of true pleasure - one that will liberate your spiritual life, marriage, family, community, and outreach. Many Christians assume "pleasure" and "sin" are synonymous. Others define godly pleasure so narrowly that they drastically minimize the powerful and holy role that pleasure can play in their lives. Still others feel guilty even thinking about how to build a life of pleasure. For all of them, Pure Pleasure provides an entirely new paradigm. It invites Christians to embrace a life of true pleasure as a pathway to obedience, worship, and service. Building on his bestselling books Sacred Pathways, Sacred Marriage, and the ECPA Gold Medallion-winning Authentic Faith, Gary Thomas takes readers to a new level of faith by providing a theological and inspirational framework to help them cultivate the kind of life that pleases God. Abounding with spiritual insights and practical exercises, this book invites you to shake off the shackles of misunderstanding about sin, provides the freedom to approach life in Christ with new wonder and joy, and challenges you to experience life as God meant it to be: overflowing with pleasure. Also available: Pure Pleasure small group video study and study guide, Spanish edition, and more.
Download or read book This Is Pleasure written by Mary Gaitskill and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.
Download or read book Pleasurable Kingdom written by Jonathan Balcombe and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recognition of animal pain and stress, once controversial, is now acknowledged by legislation in many countries, but there is no formal recognition of animals' ability to feel pleasure. Pleasurable Kingdom is the first book for lay-readers to present new evidence that animals--like humans--enjoy themselves. It debunks the popular perception that life for most is a continuous, grim struggle for survival and the avoidance of pain. Instead it suggests that creatures from birds to baboons feel good thanks to play, sex, touch, food, anticipation, comfort, aesthetics, and more. Combining rigorous evidence, elegant argument and amusing anecdotes, leading animal behavior researcher Jonathan Balcombe proposes that the possibility of positive feelings in creatures other than humans has important ethical ramifications for both science and society.
Download or read book Small Pleasures written by Clare Chambers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion. "With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape. That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life. Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences. Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.
Download or read book Endangered Pleasures written by Barbara Holland and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2000-06-20 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a refreshing look at life as it ought to be. Bare feet, gardening, dawdling over the newspaper, oversleeping, and idle summer vacations are infinitely more satisfying than counting fat grams, eating only vegetables, and sitting behind that desk every day. So toss out the guilt and rebel. Don't just stop and smell the flowers--call in sick and lie among them, preferably with a good friend, a bottle of wine, and a handful of chocolates. Endangered Pleasures is a delightful reminder that rest and relaxation are more rewarding than a job performance review. After all, life's too short. Why not have some fun while you're supposed to be living it?
Download or read book Pleasures of the Brain written by Morten L. Kringelbach and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pleasure is fundamental to well-being and the quality of life, but until recently, was barely explored by science. Current research on pleasure has brought about ground-breaking developments on several fronts, and new data on pleasure and the brain have begun to converge from many disparate fields. The time is ripe to present these important findings in a single volume, and so Morten Kringelbach and Kent Berridge have brought together the leading researchers to provides a comprehensive review of our current scientific understanding of pleasure. The authors present their latest neuroscientific research into pleasure, describing studies on the brain's role in pleasure and reward in animals and humans, including brain mechanisms, neuroimaging data, and psychological analyses, as well as how their findings have been applied to clinical problems, such as depression and other disorders of hedonic well-being. To clarify the differences between their views, the researchers also provide short answers to a set of fundamental questions about pleasure and its relation to the brain. This book is intended to serve as both a starting point for readers new to the field, and as a reference for more experienced graduate students and scientists from fields such as neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery.
Download or read book Feeling and will written by James Mark Baldwin and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy written by David Wolfsdorf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of ancient Greek philosophical conceptions of pleasure, which is the first book to compare them to contemporary conceptions.
Download or read book Romanticism and Pleasure written by T. Schmid and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-12-12 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this text nine scholars discuss the aesthetics, culture, and science of pleasure in the Romantic period. Richard Sha, Denise Gigante, and Anya Taylor, among others, make a timely contribution to recent debates about issues of pleasure, taste, and appetite by looking anew at the work of figures such as Byron, Coleridge, and Austen.
Download or read book Spiritual Emotions written by Robert C. Roberts and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2007-07-16 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expert in moral and philosophical psychology, Robert C. Roberts here develops an original, up-to-date understanding of human emotions in relation to spirituality and as a basic part of Christian moral character. With an eye on pertinent Biblical texts, Roberts explores emotions as nonsensory perceptions that arise from personal caring and concern. His study culminates with an in-depth examination of six "fruit of the Holy Spirit" emotion-virtues: contrition, joy, gratitude, hope, peace, and compassion. Though Spiritual Emotions is rigorous in its focus on the inner structure of Christian character, it is nonetheless readable and is laced with many narrative examples. The book will be immensely useful for Christian ethicists, psychologists, pastors, and counselors.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Pleasure written by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The experience of pleasure, alongside pain, is a primary element of human life. It rules our instincts and desires for food, sex and avoiding various forms of harm. Crucial to psychological and social well-being, it has preoccupied philosophers from Aristotle to John Stuart Mill and plays a fundamental role in moral and ethical theory, especially utilitarianism. More recently, it has become a central subject for psychologists, biologists and neuroscientists. Yet it remains an elusive and deceptively difficult concept. What is pleasure? How does it differ from happiness? Should we value pleasure? Should we value only pleasure? Which theories of pleasure are most plausible? In this rigorous and comprehensive introduction to the topic, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek unpacks and assesses these questions and many more, including: The history of pleasure from ancient China, India and Greece to modern times Pleasure, sensation, feeling and consciousness What scientific research reveals about the nature of pleasure – can pleasure be measured scientifically? "Higher" and "lower" pleasures The relation between happiness and pleasure Pleasure and pain Pleasure and animals Pleasure as an ultimate good and the relation between pleasure and rationality. The Philosophy of Pleasure: An Introduction is essential reading for students of ethics and political philosophy, and also suitable for those studying related disciplines such as psychology, politics and sociology.
Download or read book Pleasure and the Good Life written by Fred Feldman and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Feldman's fascinating new book sets out to defend hedonism as a theory about the Good Life. He tries to show that, when carefully and charitably interpreted, certain forms of hedonism yield plausible evaluations of human lives. Feldman begins by explaining what we mean when we ask what the Good Life is. He argues that this should not be taken to be a question about the morally good life or about the beneficial life. Rather, the question concerns the general features of the life that is good in itself for the one who lives it. Hedonism says (roughly) that the Good Life is the pleasant life. After showing that the usual formulations of hedonism are often confused or incoherent, Feldman presents a simple, clear, coherent form of sensory hedonism that provides a starting point for discussion. He then considers a webalogue of classic objections to hedonism, coming from sources as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Brentano, Ross, Moore, Rawls, Kagan, Nozick, Brandt, and others. One of Feldman's central themes is that there is an important distinction between the forms of hedonism that emphasize sensory pleasure and those that emphasize attitudinal pleasure. Feldman formulates several kinds of hedonism based on the idea that attitudinal pleasure is the Good. He claims that attitudinal forms of hedonism - which have often been ignored in the literature — are worthy of more careful attention. Another main theme of the book is the plasticity of hedonism. Hedonism comes in many forms. Attitudinal hedonism is especially receptive to variations and modifications. Feldman illustrates this plasticity by formulating several variants of attitudinal hedonism and showing how they evade some of the objections. He also shows how it is possible to develop forms of hedonism that are equivalent to the allegedly anti-hedonistic theory of G. E. Moore, and the Aristotelian theory according to which the Good Life is the life of virtue, or flourishing. He also formulates hedonisms relevantly like the ones defended by Aristippus and Mill. Feldman argues that a carefully developed form of attitudinal hedonism is not refuted by objections concerning 'the shape of a life'. He also defends the claim that all of the alleged forms of hedonism discussed in the book genuinely deserve to be called 'hedonism'. Finally, after dealing with the last of the objections, he gives a sketch of his hedonistic vision of the Good Life.
Download or read book Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy written by Simo Knuuttila and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2004-07-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotions are the focus of intense debate both in contemporary philosophy and psychology and increasingly also in the history of ideas. Simo Knuuttila presents a comprehensive survey of philosophical theories of emotion from Plato to Renaissance times, combining rigorous philosophical analysis with careful historical reconstruction. The first part of the book covers the conceptions of Plato and Aristotle and later ancient views from Stoicism to Neoplatonism and, in addition, their reception and transformation by early Christian thinkers from Clement and Origen to Augustine and Cassian. Knuuttila then proceeds to a discussion of ancient themes in medieval thought, and of new medieval conceptions, codified in the so-called faculty psychology from Avicenna to Aquinas, in thirteenth century taxonomies, and in the voluntarist approach of Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and their followers. Philosophers, classicists, historians of philosophy, historians of psychology, and anyone interested in emotion will find much to stimulate them in this fascinating book.
