Download or read book Michelangelo s Finger An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence written by Raymond Tallis and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned British public intellectual illustrates how our unique ability to point the index finger has shaped our amazing evolutionary pathway as humansIn this startlingly original and persuasive book, Raymond Tallis shows that it is easy to underestimate the influence of small things in determining what manner of creatures humans are. He argues that the independent movement of the human index finger is one such easily overlooked factor. Indeed, not for nothing is the index finger called the “forefinger.” It is the finger we most naturally deploy when we want to pry objects out of small spaces, but it plays a far more significant role in an action unique to us among primates: pointing.Tallis argues that it is through pointing that the index finger made a significant contribution to the development of humans and to the creation of a human world separate from the rest of the natural world. Observing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the hugely familiar and awkward encounter between Michelangelo’s God and Man through their index fingers, Tallis identifies the artist’s intuitive awareness of the central role of the index finger in making us unique. Just as the reaching index fingers of God and Man are here made central to the creation of our kind, so Tallis believes that the seemingly simple act of pointing, which is used in a wide variety of ways, is central to our extraordinary evolution.
Download or read book Michelangelo s Finger written by Raymond Tallis and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ability of the human index finger to point is truly unique in the animal world. In Michaelangelo's Finger Raymond Tallis shows just how central this seemingly insignificant difference has been in determining the amazing evolutionary pathway of the human being. In this startlingly original and persuasive book, Raymond Tallis shows that it is easy to underestimate the influence of small things in determining what manner of creatures humans are. He reveals that over time the repeated and multiple effects of the seemingly insignificant can make an enormous difference and argues that the independent movement of the human index finger is one such easily overlooked factor. Indeed, not for nothing is the index finger called 'the forefinger'. It is the one we most naturally deploy when we want to winkle things out of small spaces, but it plays a far more significant role in an action unique to us among primates: pointing. In Michelangelo's Finger, Raymond Tallis argues that it is through pointing that the index finger made a significant contribution to hominid development and to the creation of a human world separate to the rest of the natural world. Observing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the hugely familiar and awkward encounter between Michelangelo's God and Man through their index fingers, Tallis identifies an intuitive indication of the central role of the index finger in making us unique. Just as the reaching index fingers of God and Man are here made central to the creation of our kind, so Tallis believes that the simple act of pointing is central to our extraordinary evolution."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book God s Presence written by Frances Young and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how teachings of the church fathers can be applied today, despite the differences in our intellectual and ecclesial environments.
Download or read book Unimaginable written by Graham Ward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What we imagine can crush us or create us, destroy us or heal us; it can pitch us into battles with demons or set us among the songs of angels. It has roots beneath consciousness and is expressed in moods, rhythms, tones and textures of experience that are as much mental as physiological. In his new book, a sequel to the earlier Unbelievable, one of Britain's most exciting writers on religion here presents a nuanced and many-dimensional portrait of the mystery and creativity of the human imagination. Traversing landscapes that are both physical and emotional, palpable and intangible, the author enlists the company of fellow-travellers William Wordsworth, William Turner, Samuel Palmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams – alongside many other creative artists – to try to get to the bottom of the true meanings of originality and memory. Drawing the while on his own rich and varied encounters with belief, he asks why it is that the imagination is so fundamental to who and what we are. Using metaphor and story to unpeel the hidden motivations and architecture of the mind, and show what might lie beneath, Graham Ward grapples here with profound questions of ultimacy and transcendence. He reveals that, in understanding what it really means to be human, what cannot be imagined invariably means as much as what can.
Download or read book Victorian Poetry Now written by Valentine Cunningham and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the definitive guide to Victorian poetry, which its author approaches in the light of modern critical concerns and contemporary contexts. Valentine Cunningham exhibits encyclopedic knowledge of the poetry produced in this period and offers dazzling close readings of a number of well-known poems Draws on the work of major Victorian poets and their works as well as many of the less well-known poets and poems Reads poems and poets in the light of both Victorian and modern critical concerns Places poetry in its personal, aesthetic, historical, and ideological context Organized in terms of the Victorian anxieties of self, body, and melancholy Argues that rhyming/repetition is the major formal feature of Victorian poetry Highlights the Victorian obsession with small subjects in small poems Shows how Victorian poetry attempts to engage with the modern subject and how its modernity segues into modernism and postmodernism
Download or read book Psychoanalysis and the Unrepresentable written by Agnieszka Piotrowska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychoanalysis and the Unrepresentable opens a space for meaningful debate about translating psychoanalytic concepts from the work of clinicians to that of academics and back again. Focusing on the idea of the unrepresentable, this collection of essays by psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors, artists and film and literary scholars attempts to think through those things that are impossible to be thought through completely. Offering a unique insight into areas like trauma studies, where it is difficult – if not impossible – to express one’s feelings, the collection draws from psychoanalysis in its broadest sense and acts as a gesture against the fixed and the frozen. Psychoanalysis and the Unrepresentable is presented in six parts: Approaching Trauma, Sense and Gesture, Impossible Poetics, Without Words, Wounds and Suture and Auto/Fiction. The chapters therein address topics including touch and speech, adoption, the other and grief, and examine films including Gus Van Sant’s Milk and Michael Haneke’s Amour. As a whole, the book brings to the fore those things which are difficult to speak about, but which must be spoken about. The discussion in this book will be key reading for psychoanalysts, including those in training, psychotherapists and psychotherapeutically-engaged scholars, academics and students of culture studies, psychosocial studies, applied philosophy and film studies, filmmakers and artists.
Download or read book Full of Character written by Frances Ward and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging with current philosophers and thinkers, this book looks at what are the roots to our human condition. It looks the wisdom that traditional Christianity can bring to a Western culture preoccupied with post-truth, individualism and utilitarian methods of thinking. The desire for a fulfilling life is a common motivation to people, regardless of religious faith or non-faith. To be full of character - joyful, thoughtful, resourceful and truthful - we need habits of the heart. This book will explore the ways in which we can imagine our humanity differently, and find happiness as a direct result of becoming full of character.
Download or read book Understanding Infants Psychoanalytically written by Elizabeth Urban and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-28 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focussing on infants and the relationship between child and parent, this book presents a discourse on eminent Jungian child analyst Michael Fordham's model of development that extended Jung's theory to infancy and childhood. In this book, Elizabeth Urban, a Jungian psychotherapist in weekly conversations with Fordham, proposes five key areas, such as identifying periods of primary self-funcionin and the active participation of the infant in development, that contribute to the Fordham model of infant development. Drawing extensively on her observations and experiences working in a London child and adolescent unit, and a mother and baby unit, as well as using real-life observations to support the proposed contributions, the author provides a deeper understanding of infant development in the context of the relationship with the parents. This book is a unique contribution to the study of child development and is of great interest to paediatricians, psychotherapists, and other mental health professionals who work with children and their parents.
Download or read book Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth Century Book written by Helen Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers new readings of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy by considering its design features alongside broader developments in eighteenth-century book production.
Download or read book Aping Mankind written by Raymond Tallis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuroscience has made astounding progress in the understanding of the brain. What should we make of its claims to go beyond the brain and explain consciousness, behaviour and culture? Where should we draw the line? In this brilliant critique Raymond Tallis dismantles "Neuromania", arising out of the idea that we are reducible to our brains and "Darwinitis" according to which, since the brain is an evolved organ, we are entirely explicable within an evolutionary framework. With precision and acuity he argues that the belief that human beings can be understood in biological terms is a serious obstacle to clear thinking about what we are and what we might become. Neuromania and Darwinitis deny human uniqueness, minimise the differences between us and our nearest animal kin and offer a grotesquely simplified account of humanity. We are, argues Tallis, infinitely more interesting and complex than we appear in the mirror of biology. Combative, fearless and thought-provoking, Aping Mankind is an important book and one that scientists, cultural commentators and policy-makers cannot ignore. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the Author.
Download or read book Trust in the World written by Josef Früchtl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-20 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the theory, originally raised in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of film, that cinema has the power to restore our trust in the world. Früchtl demonstrates that cinema does this in three main ways: by restoring our belief in the absurd, in the body and in a sceptical abstention from judging and acting. Cinema shares this ability with other arts, but what sets it apart in particular is that it evokes Modernity and its principle of subjectivity. This book further develops the idea of trust and cinema by synthesizing the philosophies of complementary thinkers such as Kant, Nancy, Agamben, Benjamin and Rancière. It concludes with examination of Cavell’s solution to the problem of scepticism and a synthesis of Kantian aesthetic theory with Cavellian pragmatism. Originally published in German under the title Vertrauen in die Welt, this English-language translation features a new introduction that situates Früchtl’s work within contemporary analytical philosophy of film. It will be of interest to scholars working in Continental aesthetics, philosophy of film, and film theory.
Download or read book Science Humanism and Religion written by Matthias Jung and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-26 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the human quest for orientation vis-à-vis personal life and comprehensive reality the worldviews of religionists and humanists offer different answers, and science also plays a crucial role. Yet it is the ordinary, embodied experience of meaningful engagement with reality in which all these cultural activities are rooted. Human beings have to relate themselves to the entirety of their lives to achieve orientation. This relation involves a non-methodical, meaningful experience that exhibits the crucial features for understanding worldviews: it comprises cognition, volition, and emotion, is embodied, action-oriented, and expressive. From this starting-point, religious and secular worldviews articulate what is experienced as ultimately meaningful. Yet the plurality and one-sidedness of these life stances necessitates critical engagement for which philosophy provides indispensable means. In the end, some worldviews can be ruled out, but we are still left with a plurality of genuine options for orientation.
Download or read book The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible written by Vlad Petre Glăveanu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-25 with total page 1812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible represents a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners interested in an emerging multidisciplinary area within psychology and the social sciences: the study of how we engage with and cultivate the possible within self, society and culture. Far from being opposed either to the actual or the real, the possible engages with concrete facts and experiences, with the result of transforming them. This encyclopedia examines the notion of the possible and the concepts associated with it from standpoints within psychology, philosophy, sociology, neuroscience and logic, as well as multidisciplinary fields of research including anticipation studies, future studies, complexity theory and creativity research. Presenting multiple perspectives on the possible, the authors consider the distinct social, cultural and psychological processes - e.g., imagination, counterfactual thinking, wonder, play, inspiration, and many others - that define our engagement with new possibilities in domains as diverse as the arts, design and business.
Download or read book Prolegomena to a Carnal Hermeneutics written by Hwa Yol Jung and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prolegomena to a Carnal Hermeneutics introduces the importance of body politics from both Eastern and Western perspectives. Hwa Yol Jung begins with Giambattista Vico’s anti-Cartesianism as the birth of the discipline. He then explores the homecoming of Greek mousike (performing arts), which included oral poetry, dance, drama, and music; Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical body politics; the making of body politics in Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Luce Irigaray; Marshall McLuhan’s transversal and embodied philosophy of communication; and transversal geophilosophy. This tour de force will be an engaging read for anyone interested in the above thinkers, as well as for students and scholars of comparative philosophy, communication theory, environmental philosophy, political philosophy, or continental philosophy
Download or read book Introducing Bruner written by Sandra Smidt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes the reader on a journey through some of Bruner’s key concepts in relation to early learning and teaching.
Download or read book Metalepsis written by Sebastian Matzner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Metalepsis' is a term from classical rhetoric, but in the twentieth century, it was re-framed more broadly as a crossing of the boundaries that separate distinct narrative worlds. This modern notion of metalepsis, introduced by Gérard Genette, has so far largely been theorized on the basis of examples from post-modern novels and films. Yet metalepsis has a much greater potential to address all sorts of transgressions between 'worlds' or 'levels', not only in post-modern but also pre-modern literature. This volume explores metalepsis in classical antiquity, considering questions such as: if metalepsis consists fundamentally in the breaking down of barriers, what sort of barriers and what sort of transgressions can the concept be fruitfully applied to? Can it be used within approaches other than narratology? Does metalepsis require recognisable levels of reality and fictionality, and if so, what role might be played by other planes, such as the past, the mythical or the divine? What form does metalepsis take in less obviously 'narrative' genres, such as lyric poetry? And how should it be understood in visual media? Reflecting on these questions sheds new light on important dynamics in ancient texts, and advances literary theory by probing how explorations of ancient metalepsis might change, refine, or extend our understanding of the concept itself.
Download or read book Music and the Nerves 1700 1900 written by J. Kennaway and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between music and the nervous system is now the subject of intense interest for scientists and people in the humanities, but this is by no means a new phenomenon. This volume sets out the history of the relationship between neurology and music, putting the advances of our era into context.
