Download or read book Middle earth and the Return of the Common Good written by Joshua Hren and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-10-05 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political philosophy is nothing other than looking at things political under the aspect of eternity. This book invites us to look philosophically at political things in J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, demonstrating that Tolkien's potent mythology can be brought into rich, fruitful dialogue with works of political philosophy and political theology as different as Plato's Timaeus, Aquinas' De Regno, Hobbes's Leviathan, and Erik Peterson's "Monotheism as a Political Problem." It concludes that a political reading of Tolkien's work is most luminous when conducted by the harmonious lights of fides et ratio as found in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. A broad study of Tolkien and the political is especially pertinent in that the legendarium operates on two levels. As a popular mythology it is, in the author's own words "a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them." But the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings contain deeper teachings that can only be drawn out when read philosophically. Written from the vantage of a mind that is deeply Christian, Tolkien's stories grant us a revelatory gaze into the major political problems of modernity--from individualism to totalitarianism, sovereignty to surveillance, terror to technocracy. As an "outsider" in modernity, Tolkien invites us to question the modern in a manner that moves beyond reaction into a vivid and compelling vision of the common good.
Download or read book Sehnsucht The C S Lewis Journal written by Bruce R. Johnson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-02-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal, established by the Arizona C. S. Lewis Society in 2007, is the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of C. S. Lewis and his writings published anywhere in the world. It exists to promote literary, theological, historical, biographical, philosophical, bibliographical and cultural interest (broadly defined) in Lewis and his writings. The journal includes articles, review essays, book reviews, film reviews and play reviews, bibliographical material, poetry, interviews, editorials, and announcements of Lewis-related conferences, events and publications. Its readership is aimed at academic scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, as well as learned non-scholars and Lewis enthusiasts. At this time, Sehnsucht is published once a year.
Download or read book The Battle for Middle earth written by Fleming Rutledge and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2004-11-04 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fleming Rutledge discovers the deeper religious meaning behind Tolkien's masterpiece.
Download or read book The Hobbit Party written by Jay Richards and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who has read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings can gather that their author hated tyranny, but few know that the novelist who once described himself as a hobbit Òin all but sizeÓ wasÑeven by hobbit standardsÑa zealous proponent of economic freedom and small government. There is a growing concern among many that the West is sliding into political, economic, and moral bankruptcy. In his beloved novels of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien has drawn us a map to freedom. Scholar Joseph Pearce, who himself has written articles and chapters on the political significance of TolkienÕs work, testified in his book Literary Giants, Literary Catholics, ÒIf much has been written on the religious significance of The Lord of the Rings, less has been written on its political significanceÑand the little that has been written is often erroneous in its conclusions and ignorant of TolkienÕs intentionsÉ. Much more work is needed in this area, not least because Tolkien stated, implicitly at least, that the political significance of the work was second only to the religious in its importance.Ó Several books ably explore how TolkienÕs Catholic faith informed his fiction. None until now have centered on how his passion for liberty and limited government also shaped his work, or how this passion grew directly from his theological vision of man and creation. The Hobbit Party fills this void. The few existing pieces that do focus on the subject are mostly written by scholars with little or no formal training in literary analysis, and even less training in political economy. Witt and Richards bring to The Hobbit Party a combined expertise in literary studies, political theory, economics, philosophy, and theology.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Merit written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.
Download or read book Leadership in Middle Earth written by Michael J. Urick and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By examining leadership examples, Leadership in Middle-Earth explores evidence-based leadership and management practices from the unique perspective of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, making actionable recommendations you can implement in your organization.
Download or read book Leadership in Middle Earth written by Mike Urick and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By examining leadership examples, Leadership in Middle-Earth explores evidence-based leadership and management practices from the unique perspective of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, making actionable recommendations you can implement in your organization.
Download or read book Infinite Regress written by Joshua Hren and published by Angelico Press. This book was released on 2022-01-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years since his graduation from St. Marquis University, Blake Yourrick has fled his family and Milwaukee, rotating from job to dead-end job-working the Bakken oilfields in Dakota and even signing on as the night caretaker of a rural abbey graveyard. Deep in student debt and estranged from his misanthropic, alcoholic father, Blake is haunted by the memory of his mother's death-and by his relationship with his college mentor, a defrocked priest named Theo Hape, who is known for his adventurous theological ideas as well as for the uncanny, seductive power he wields over his students. When Hape, learning of his former charge's desperate straits, proposes a perverse exchange of services, Blake finds himself tempted to test the professor's radical theories in real life. What follows is a metaphysical duel reminiscent of the novels of Dostoevsky and Bernanos, pitting a modern-day anti-Christ against a reckless but resilient young man and his well-meaning, dysfunctional kin.
Download or read book J R R Tolkien s Sanctifying Myth written by Bradley J. Birzer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new introduction by the author Peter Jackson's film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy - and the accompanying Rings-related paraphernalia and publicity - has played a unique role in the disemmination of Tolkien's imaginative creation to the masses. Yet, for most readers and viewers, the underlying meaning of Middle-earth has remained obscure. Bradley Birzer has remedied that with this fresh study. In J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth, Birzer reveals the surprisingly specific religious symbolism that permeates Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He also explores the social and political views that motivated the Oxford don, ultimately situating Tolkien within the Christian humanist tradition represented by Thomas More and T.S. Eliot, Dante and C.S. Lewis. Birzer argues that through the genre of myth Tolkien created a world that is essentially truer than the one we think we see around us everyday, a world that transcends the colorless disenchantment of our postmodern age.
Download or read book Common Goods written by Catherine Keller and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of globalized ecological and economic crises, how do religion, the postsecular, and political theology reconfigure political theory and practice? As the planet warms and the chasm widens between the 1 percent and the global 99, what thinking may yet energize new alliances between religious and irreligious constituencies? This book brings together political theorists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of religion to open discursive and material spaces in which to shape a vibrant planetary commons. Attentive to the universalizing tendencies of “the common,” the contributors seek to reappropriate the term in response to the corporate logic that asserts itself as a universal solvent. In the resulting conversation, the common returns as an interlinked manifold, under the ethos of its multitudes and the ecology of its multiplicity. Beginning from what William Connolly calls the palpable “fragility of things,” Common Goods assembles a transdisciplinary political theology of the Earth. With a nuance missing from both atheist and orthodox religious approaches, the contributors engage in a multivocal conversation about sovereignty, capital, ecology, and civil society. The result is an unprecedented thematic assemblage of cosmopolitics and religious diversity; of utopian space and the time of insurrection; of Christian socialism, radical democracy, and disability theory; of quantum entanglement and planetarity; of theology fleshly and political.
Download or read book The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy written by Gregory Bassham and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2013-11-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lord of the Rings is intended to be applicable to the real world of relationships, religion, pleasure, pain, and politics. Tolkien himself said that his grand tale of wizards, orcs, hobbits, and elves was aimed at truth and good morals in the actual world. Analysis of the popular appeal of The Lord of the Rings (on websites and elsewhere) shows that Tolkien fans are hungry for discussion of the urgent moral and cosmological issues arising out of this fantastic epic story. Can political power be wielded for good, or must it always corrupt? Does technology destroy the truly human? Is it morally wrong to give up hope? Can we find meaning in chance events? In The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy, seventeen young philosophy professors, all of them ardent Tolkien fans and most of them contributors to the four earlier volumes in the Popular Culture and Philosophy series, address some of these important issues and show how clues to their solutions may be found in the imaginary world of Middle-earth. The book is divided into five sections, concerned with Power and the Ring, the Quest for Happiness, Good and Evil in Middle-earth, Time and Mortality, and the Relevance
Download or read book Recovering Consolation written by Greg Maillet and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2024-09-19 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Tolkien’s letters call Samwise Gamgee the “chief hero” of The Lord of the Rings, Sam is easily underestimated by both readers and critics. Recovering Consolation focuses attention on Sam’s point of view throughout the long journey that is the novel. This book responds to Frodo’s famous words at the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, imagining a child speaking to a parent: “I want to hear more about Sam, dad; why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?” Listening to Sam not only makes us laugh but also shows him to be, like Tolkien himself, a master of mythopoesis; as the novel’s narrator puts it, “Sam had more on his mind than gardening.” Yet the concrete act of gardening, another passion that Sam shares with Tolkien, should help us to understand how consolation is recovered, as is well explained in Tolkien’s great essay, “On Fairy Stories.” Both there and in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien offers a “theological aesthetic” that has much to teach us. Although we may not realize it while laughing along with Sam, this humble servant-hobbit is key to this aesthetic.
Download or read book The Road Goes Ever On and On written by Jeb Smith and published by Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2023-04-12 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engrossing...Tolkien's principles--patriotism, Medievalism, localism, Catholicism--are certainly out of fashion today. And yet they're the foundation for all his books, which have sold hundreds of millions of copies. Mr. Smith does a wonderful job of explaining why modern readers are so enthralled by Tolkien's reactionary vision. Whether you're a casual Lord of the Rings fan or a serious Tolkien scholar, every page of Mr. Smith's book will delight and fascinate. And if anyone ever tells you that fairy-tales are only for children, hand him this book. Tolkien ought to be regarded as one of the great social critics of our time, as Mr. Smith so masterfully demonstrates. -Michael Warren Davis is an editor for Sophia Institute Press and the author of The Reactionary Mind: Why Conservative Isn't Enough. You can find him on his blog, The Common Man. As the popularity of Tolkien's work continues to endure, the importance of Jeb Smith's work continues to grow. This is because of a prolonged siege against Tolkien's work: the attempt to dislodge it from its Christian and Biblical foundations. Jeb Smith's insights are immensely helpful to this and future generations of Tolkien admirers. Scott L. Smith, author of Lord of the Rings and the Eucharist J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth has captured the imaginations of millions of readers around the world for generations. He is considered the father of modern fantasy, but few understand how Tolkien's worldview impacted his mythology. The Road Goes Ever On and On is the first book of its kind to place Tolkien within his proper context, giving the reader a deeper understanding of Tolkien and Middle-earth. Smith takes us on a quest through a wide range of Tolkien's writings to unlock Tolkien's perspective--a perspective that, like the elves who have sailed into the West leaving Middle-earth, has faded away from our world. You will gain an in-depth knowledge of Tolkien's views on politics, environmentalism, religion, and much more. From the Valar to Hobbits, the free peoples closely follow Tolkien's sentiments. In contrast, forces under the Shadow represent what Tolkien believed was immoral. Covering a wide range of topics, The Road Goes Ever On and On is filled with breathtaking illustrations bringing Middle-earth to life like never before, making this the 'one book to rule them all.'
Download or read book Contemplative Realism written by Joshua Hren and published by Benedict XVI Institute. This book was released on 2022-01-02 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As ever, but especially in our present age of raging post-truth unreality, we ought to heed Pope Benedict XVI's summons to "ask rather more carefully what 'the real' actually is." So-called "realism," when relegated to material tangibilities, can blind us-instead of binding us-to things as they are. "Are we not interested in the cosmos anymore?" Benedict asks. "Are we today really hopelessly huddled in our own little circle? Is it not important, precisely today, to pray with the whole of creation?" If this preeminent mind of our time is not wrong, and "the man who puts to one side the reality of God is a realist only in appearance," then we ought to ask with unflinching intensity and openness: what is real? Like liturgy, literature asks this question with a range of forms that answer it very differently. At times, both art and worship seem to devolve into the manners and mood of self-referential and inconsequential play, gestures without meaning, or "bank notes" (says Benedict) "without funds to cover them." These too-closed circles of communication wall off transcendence. In living cruciform liturgy-on the contrary-"the congregation does not offer its own thoughts or poetry but is taken out of itself and given the privilege of sharing in the cosmic song of praise of the cherubim and seraphim." In living contemplative literature something analogous happens: we suffer and praise with the whole of creation; the prose cultivates a grateful disposition, prompting us to yearn for a vision of the whole. But this manifesto on behalf of a "contemplative realism" makes no claims to create, ex nihilo, a new aesthetical species. Nor does it advance this rough school of literary fish as some preeminent or sole "way forward" for fiction in our time. Rather, it seeks to articulate a literary approach that exists already in diffuse books as well as in the potencies of living artists. It seeks to gather and galvanize those souls. More than anything, it yearns to quicken a contemplative realist disposition among as many comers as possible-literary chops or no. For, in a very bad way (to borrow from Josef Pieper), "man's ability to see is in decline."
Download or read book Myth Magic and Power in Tolkien s Middle earth written by James E. Siburt and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-22 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the Social Power Dynamic Model, which helps explain how culture and society impact power. Tolkien’s works are used in sample applications of the SPDM, which demonstrates the value of this new model and provides insight into Tolkien’s views on power.
Download or read book Tolkien for Beginners written by Louis Markos and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2022-09-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tolkien For Beginners will introduce the reader to the multilayered depth and breadth of Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth, what critics, following Tolkien's lead, refer to collectively as his legendarium. J.R.R. Tolkien sweeps us away to a distant time and place that is at the same time, our own time and place. He takes us to a world where difficult choices must be made and are made, where character is defined by those choices, and where redemption is possible though not always embraced. The Lord of the Rings taps a deep root in the human psyche. There is much death, destruction, and defeat in Tolkien's world, but there is even more friendship, courage, and hope. What one remembers when one finishes reading The Lord of the Rings is not the vice of the villains, as strong and as well drawn as it is, but the virtue that empowers the heroes to resist it, even at the cost of their own lives. It will be the goal of Tolkien For Beginners to introduce the reader to the multilayered depth and breadth of Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth. To do justice to the full dimensions of that legendarium, author Louis Markos will speak in two voices: that of the storyteller who loves the stories he tells and that of the critic who seeks to identify and explicate key themes from those stories. In his telling and analysis, he will treat the legendarium both as a collection of secondary-world myths with their own integrity and as a reflection of Tolkien's Catholic worldview.
Download or read book Liberal Education and Citizenship in a Free Society written by Justin Buckley Dyer and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2023-07-24 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The liberal arts university has been in decline since well before the virtualization of campus life, increasingly inviting public skepticism about its viability as an institution of personal, civic, and professional growth. New technologies that might have brought people together have instead frustrated the university’s capacity to foster thoughtful citizenship among tomorrow’s leaders and exacerbated socioeconomic inequalities that are poisoning America’s civic culture. With Liberal Education and Citizenship in a Free Society, a collection of 19 original essays, editors Justin Dyer and Constantine Vassiliou present the work of a diverse group of scholars to assess the value of a liberal arts education in the face of market, technological, cultural, and political forces shaping higher learning today.
